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So stay hydrated, stay healthy, and without further ado, let's start the show. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis.
Thank you so much for tuning in to the Clearview Today Show. We've been having some great conversations this week. We got another good one for you today. This is one that I'm personally very, very excited about. But let's not get ahead of ourselves before we do anything else.
I'm going to introduce our host, Dr. Abadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr. Shah, the studio is ready for you today. I am ready for the studio.
Ready to roll with a great conversation. We're ready to rock and roll. You can tell I'm a dad now because I say we're ready to rock and roll. Y'all ready to rock and roll? I say unironic.
I like saying it. Guys, we want to remind you of a couple things coming up. We are in the final stages of formatting for 30 Days of Seeing Christ in the Book of Judges. And check this out. Keep going.
I got a visual aid. We are very excited about this new installment in the devotional series by Dr. Shah 30 Days. We have several of these devotionals out already.
Some of you maybe even have some of these devotions. That's a good looking, that's a good-looking series. Box set right there. That's a box set. We got one more on the way.
30 Days of Seeing Christ in the Book of Judges. We're Going to be able to trace Christ in the stories of the judges and see how God was faithful through their work and how we can see Christ on every page of scripture. It's going to be so exciting. And the release is coming very, very soon. Dr.
Shah, I don't think I'm out of line by saying that our goal is to turn this into a yearly release.
So far, it's been every other year a book came out.
So this one came out, how to navigate through a crisis in 2020, how to start a new beginning in 2022, and then 2024, how to pray for America. But our goal was, we want this to be a yearly release.
So I think people can look forward to a lot more. 30 Days series coming out. That's right. And it's a two-part thing. One is just focused on such titles or such themes like Crisis or New Beginning or Praying for Our Nation.
But the other one that's coming out, the one is the first in this series called 30 Days of Seeing Christ Through. And they're all going to be on the Old Testament. The first one being Judges, then hopefully Genesis or Exodus or the Psalms. Psalms may be several volumes. But we're going to go through all the Old Testament books and see where Christ is seen.
Now, there's one thing I am going, I'm working on, by the way, to add to some of the. information in the introduction is um How do we see Christ? In the Old Testament. Where do we see Christ? What theological system that we have to embrace, what hermeneutical system that we have to Uh um Utilized to be able to see Christ in the Old Testament.
So there's a small section that is also going to be in that in the introduction that people will see. It ain't just as easy as saying, oh, wait, that kind of reminds me of Jesus. Jesus did that. That's probably Jesus in the Old Testament. Yeah, well, you can do that, but then many times you find that your system is, if it's not defined, if it's not properly explained, then people make mistakes and then we look foolish when we say, oh no, those things, those 10 pegs.
For the tabernacle, those are like the nails on the cross. No, they're not. They're just regular nails. They're just regular nails. So we have to be careful how we.
See Christ in the Old Testament.
So there will be a small section that I think our listeners, our readers, will really appreciate. I agree. We also want to let you know, especially for you music fans out there, that Cafe Sessions Volume 1 is available on November the 2nd. That's coming up on Sunday. That's this coming Sunday.
We got new music coming out.
So a lot of people don't know that, you know, this is a radio show, but this is just a small part of what Clearview Church does. Clearview Worship is putting out a new EP, just like Ryan said. We're very, very excited about it. Every worship team you've ever heard who does this puts out acoustic worship, but nobody puts out Clearview Worship except for right here.
So we want you guys to make sure you check it out. That's right. And then there's one more announcement. Yes. I'm very excited about this one.
Dr. Shaw, we've been holding on to this. We've been teasing for the past couple months that something big was coming. Here it is. Clearview Today Show.
I can't say it. I'm too excited. You say it. I'm too excited. You say it.
Clearview Today Show is going to be available on the streaming app TBN Plus. Here comes. Very exciting. That is worthy of celebration.
So, here's the thing: Clearview Today is on the Truth Network. That's where we're syndicated all throughout the East Coast. I hit the wrong theme song, by the way, but I think this one applies to you. I don't realize that. I was like, What is happening?
It was supposed to be like mariachi. It was supposed to be mariachi celebration music.
So, Clearview Today is syndicated through the Truth Network all up and down the East Coast and a little bit on the Midwest as well. I think they're in Utah as well. We are on Prey.com, but now we are going to be on TBN. This is one of the biggest, this is one of the biggest Christian broadcasting platforms there is. That's right.
And it was interesting and really, really humbling because we didn't start this conversation. They contacted us. They approached us because they heard about the show and they saw the quality really of the show: of how well we do it and how the discussion flows and the humor and the theological depth at the same time, easy application. I mean, so they it was very appealing. To them, and they approached us.
That's right, that's exactly right. Very humbling. Yeah, that's awesome. Extremely humbling. We were out to dinner.
I guess it's okay to tell this. We were out to dinner with Prey. And, you know, we talked about that on the show. Prey took us out to dinner, and I got a phone call at dinner. I said, Excuse me, guys.
Walked outside and they contacted us about that.
So I had that on one hemisphere of my brain. And then the dinner with Prey, which is also still very important because we're talking about strategy for 2026 and all this stuff.
So all that to say, God is really, really blessing. To God be the glory. And that's the whole point. God is good. He is greatly to be praised.
I mean, everything that we're doing here is because of him. Amen. And it's about him and through him and for him.
So, really, we're in for the ride. Amen. Amen. Amen. I love it.
Well, guys, as we get started today, we got a little game. Ooh, game I have to call it. One of my favorites. Pick it up and preach. I love pick it up and preach.
Tell the people what it is, Ryan. Pick It Up and Preach is a game where there's sort of an impromptu, an off-the-cuff, if you will, nature of the object lessons we're going to be preparing. We're going to receive random objects, and with those random objects, we're going to have to come up with a short little object lesson, a little Like a weekly second, yeah, yeah. That helps us grow in our walk with God and enhance our understanding of the Bible. Dr.
Shaw, what are our items today, my friend? I don't know what this is. Oh, okay, gotcha.
Now I got it. And it's broken, by the way. It's completely broken. Oh, gross. Oh, there you go.
John, that's for you.
So, this is a prosthetic leg. Yeah. No, it's not. Yeah, somebody needs to. You got a real leg up in life.
Yeah, I know. Winter Soldier is hobbling around somewhere. Rocket raccoon. Can I have that leg?
So, Ryan has what's supposed to be a black magic camera cover that shields the light from getting into the lid.
So you can see the viewfinder. It is broken, so I'll blame that on some of our staff. And then I've got. David's boot, like one of those boots when you break your ankle or something.
So, you want to go first? Yeah, I can go first. All right, go ahead. All right, so this is a camera cover, and when it works correctly, you close it and it prevents the camera from seeing, from receiving information. It filters the information that's coming through.
But as you can see, This one is broken. Of course.
So there's no filter. Everything is just kind of wide open, all access. Everything is being absorbed through what would be the lens of the camera. But for us, it is into our lives, into our eyes, into our mind.
So, too, without a relationship with Christ, your filter is broken, and everything and anything in the world gets into your mind, gets into your heart, pollutes your senses, corrupts your viewpoint. When you have the filter of Christ and the filter of the Christian life, you can see things properly and know what to let in and what to keep out. Man, very great. You really want to even go? I don't even want to go because mine is weak.
You and your stinky stinky boot. Stinky boots.
So, if what I have here, this is one of those boots that the doctors put you in when you break your ankle. When you make foolish decisions in life, right? A lot of times you'll end up injured. You'll end up in one of these things where you have to hobble around. You're an inconvenience to the people around you, right?
Everybody, you have to scoot around on one of these little scooters, and it reminds you that your sin has consequences. Not only that, but these things have to, they stink, they stink to high heavens. You are so putrid that you gag your own self and the people around you. Wow. Sin will do that to you.
Sin will really do that. Sin will make you to where you are unbearable to the people in your life and you're hobbling around. It will cripple you. But With the blood of Jesus Christ, sin can be shed. And when this thing comes off, you're able to clean yourself.
You're able to clean your nasty, putrid feet, your legs. The cross has that sort of power. And when you give your sin over to Jesus, It falls away, and when you know it, you're free.
So I get to judge, right? Yes, sir. I want some applause too. But I won't get the earhorn. You go ahead.
Definitely, Ryan won it.
So I agree. I agree. But I love the way you roasted David. That was what I was. Thinly veiled roasting.
That's what I really wanted. Oh, too funny. That's a great game.
Well, listen, we had a really cool conversation at lunch that I sort of wanted to bring back up, Dr. Shaq, because this is a show that goes pretty much any platform you can think. It's on the radio, it's a podcast, it's all over the internet, and it's a way that we are communicating with people all over the world. via the World Wide Web. Which is very commonplace these days.
But if you could go back 20 something years before the internet. And see yourself doing what you're doing, how foreign would it look to you? Very. That's what kind of what we were talking about at lunch. We were like, how did the world and ministry work before all of this?
Well, I think we talked a little bit about this on the show. that back in the early nineties when I was in college, and was taking introduction to computers. I remember this person next to me sent me a high message on my computer. Like an instant message? Yeah, instant message, and it came up.
hi and with my name and I was like How did you do that? How did you do that? And this person's like, Yeah, I can do this, and kept on typing more things. And that was my very first. Introduction to what internet would be like one day.
That's that's pretty incredible. Yeah. W were you at you were at uh undergrad? Yeah, I was doing my undergrad.
Now, first time... Even messing with computers, then you have to go back into the 80s. My first ever experience with a computer was in 19. 89. You were at home in India?
I was in home in India.
So, um, This was during the summertime, and computers were just coming in. and my dad signed me up for a computer class.
So I went to this person's home and they had a computer set up and apparently they were a computer instructor. And I didn't even know what to do. I mean, it was just this screen there. I understood the keyboard because it looked very much like a typewriter. We had a typewriter at home, but did not have a computer.
So I was like Now what do you do? And then it was on MS-DOS.
So this person came and typed something and all of a sudden it's you know, the screen comes up, black screen with this. Yeah. And uh and then and and then it you know, I I learned a little bit about what was happening. I just think about the past several decades because computers and the internet haven't been around for. Very long at all.
That's right. But. Man, have they drastically changed the way that we live, the way that we talk, the way that we process information, the way that we search for information? We're living in the biggest communication shift in human history. Yeah.
I mean, and it's crazy. And so to leverage that for the gospel, you know, a lot of times when we talk about when the internet came out, how revolutionary and how new it was, you know, there are people who are like, yeah, I'm all on board. We can really use this. And then there's people who were like, this is the devil. This is useless.
I don't want this. Was your dad like pro-internet, pro-technology? Oh, always. He was always pro-technology. And I saw that growing up.
I mean, we were the first one in town to have a projector. This was a film projector, so you had these little slides, slide projector, and he would do shows and talk about biblical. sites like archaeology and talk about Going to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Athens and all that. I mean, he would he would. Give like not like lectures, but he would talk about them and teach the Bible that way.
And other churches would invite him to come, and he would set it up and do the whole thing. And it was quite amazing. Yeah. By the time you became a pastor. In America now, you're here, you're getting into ministry full-time.
Was the internet established? Like, this is a thing that we all know about and are on board with, or was it still pretty new? In two tha I'm sorry, in nineteen ninety eight, I came to Henderson uh to work at this church. But I came as a youth pastor. But in nineteen ninety eight, yes, uh Internet was there.
Emails were there. Websites were there, but they were not as, um, where we are today. Everything is online. You can go online. You can go to Google.
I don't know. There was no such thing as Google.
So, if anything, there was Yahoo. Yeah. That was there. Was Ask Jeeves there? I remember Ask Jeeves.
I remember Ask Jeeves. I don't remember that. I remember Ask Jeeves. That was the original search. Yeah, that was.
You had a question. You askedjeeves.com. Yeah. It was pre-Google. What happens if you mix baking soda and vinegar?
Yeah, yeah. Ask Jeeves was like pre-Google, but it was nothing like Google is now. It was very basic. Yeah, yeah. Very basic.
Yeah. I remember that. And I remember. uh getting on the internet and uh s dial up. And yeah, that was you couldn't make no phone calls.
Yeah, you would be blocked. Yeah, my mom used to get really upset. She would, she would pick up the phone, she could hear the internet like the dial-up tone. I'm trying to think about internet in 98. I would have been 10.
in 1998 all probably almost 10 because I was I turned 10 in November but just Three short years later, I was in AOL chat rooms talking to a blonde named Elizabeth that lived around the corner. Wow. Yeah, I remember trying to flirt with girls on AIM. I was never good at it. But like you think about what the internet is today, and it's very obvious how you leverage this for the gospel, how you leverage this for ministry.
In the rudimentary days of the internet, Dr. Shaw, when you're first getting started, you're establishing this church, you're trying to update it and bring this church into the modern age. With the limitations that it had, was that a challenge for you? Yeah, it was. This was back in 2000.
I want to say two. Two thousand and two, I believe, is when I may be wrong. I believe somewhere there, 2001, 2002 is when we got. A website. This episode of Cleaview Today is brought to you by Mighty Muscadine.
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Now let's get started. Did you get caught up in the uh the race for the perfect domain? Like everybody's buying up all these domains. Yeah, it was hard to find one, but you know, who's going to buy Tabernacle Baptist Church? True, true.
There were Tabernacle Baptist churches around, not in Henderson, of course, but in other places.
So I went, I was like, oh, so let's see how to do this. And so I'm researching, trying to find out, ask people who knew, and said, man, you got to go to such and such a. website and you can buy the domain from there.
So I had to learn that. Yeah. And I believe it was 2002. I may be wrong, but I think it was 2002, maybe earlier, when I. When I built our website, from the ground up.
From the ground up. That's crazy.
Now, there were some things that were already there, but then I had to. Learn how to populate it and change colors on it and put a bar up there and then. I was like, how do people do this? Not realizing that. This is a whole science behind it.
Were people in the church on board? Were they like, oh, wow, look at our website? Or were they like, I don't care about this? Most people had no clue, but the younger people definitely understood what I was doing. And at the time, there was a gentleman in our church who was very, very good at all this stuff.
So I was. fortunate to be able to Tap him and ask him for advice, and he gave me great advice. Yeah. Not that you couldn't develop that skill set, but just that would save time for you trying to sharpen like tweets. That you wouldn't regularly use other than this.
Right. I built our logo at the time, Tabernacle Baptist Church logo.
Now, we, through the years, Changed our name. from Tabernacle to Clearview Church. Why? Because we moved, we were in a different location, we were doing things differently. Our core doctrines never changed, but we wanted to Have a new vision.
And so, not that we were embarrassed of the past, but we wanted to have just a fresh new start. That's what we were doing.
So, we changed the name. The whole church voted on that. It was quite amazing. The story is, maybe, some of the time we'll talk about that. That's a hard thing to do, though, especially in that time to convince a congregation to change their name and adopt this new vision.
And you did it, and that's a testament, I think, to God's. Plan for this church. Yeah, and that that change of name and all that came a few years down the road in 2008. But website and all of that was in 2002. That's why I'm saying Tabernacle Baptist Church, because some people are probably wondering, it's like Isn't this Clearview?
What are you talking about? I thought that was Clearview today. Yeah, but we were known as Tabernacle. That was our original name. And the church has been around since the 40s.
Right. So it was an established church where I came as a pastor. Yeah. What was the shift like for you from a ministry perspective of shifting from primarily pen paper to a more digital age? How did that change the way that you researched, the way that you did ministry?
Personally, I can't imagine writing out an entire sermon on paper every single week. Did you for real sit down and just write it out on paper? I have all those papers. How did you keep it organized? I mean, it's very simple.
At the end of the sermon or the end of that Sunday or that weekend, I would just staple those notes and put it in a. a clear file folder. Wow. And they s they're there today. But yeah, for for the first I would say 10 years of ministry.
So let's go back to 1998. I came as a youth pastor. 1999, I came as a senior pastor, or I I was the only pastor. And then in 2008, I shifted from writing out my sermons on ruled. paper, like a yellow rule paper.
to typing it on the computer.
Now for all those years I did that. Because I was trying to emulate my motto, my hero, That was Nicole's dad. He wrote On this yellow notepad.
So I was like, the only way to do sermons is to write on a yellow notepad. The yellow one does make you feel cool, I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty official. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I had a whole stack of them, and I would run out of them over two, three years, and I would buy another stack from Staples at the time. But yeah, that was my thing sitting there. And I remember many times. I would find a better way to say that, or I would think that information was incorrect, or this scripture doesn't fit here.
So then I had to like put an X in it, or just kind of scratch it out. And sometimes if there were too many scratches on a paper, Then I would go to the whole thing out and go to another paper and then copy all that in. You know, in like movies and cartoons where someone's writing something and then it shows the wastebasket and it just fades in and out to more and more paper filling it up. I feel like that's probably never going to happen again in this day and age. But that was you.
That was you, like, literally what started over. Yeah, I don't think I tore it up so many times, but. It was significant enough. But I did it because I saw my dad when he was a pastor. He didn't have the long yellow roll notepa.
Mm-hmm. Paper, but he had the small ones. And so I remember seeing him do that too.
So I was like, this is the way to do it. Yeah. Did you get stuck in that way of thinking, do you think? Because I think sometimes people tend to put so much emphasis on things that don't deserve that emphasis.
Okay, so In 2008, when we moved to the new building, I already knew a couple of years prior that This may not be the best way to do this. Why am I wasting so much time? I'm writing every single verse. Like if I'm cross-referencing, I'm writing every single verse down. I could copy and paste it.
I had biblical programs, Bible programs. I could easily copy and paste, but I was like, no, no, no, I have to do this. Because they did then.
So I made the shift in 2008. And thank goodness I did because it made life so much easier. It it it it gave me more time. To focus on research, on prayer. On better.
Preaching instead of sitting there still writing hand. Yeah, think and think about how much more productive they are, too. Like all of those backlogged sermons, I think your blog goes back to 2012, right? Or even back to the 2020. The blog goes back to 2012.
Um maybe a little bit earlier, but my Sermons go back to like 1996. Yeah. So even just with the blog, that's 13 years of content. I mean, like, these books don't just materialize out of thin air. This is content that you've already preached.
And I think that's something that you were able to learn, and a lot of successful pastors have learned, is that you're sitting on a gold mine. All of your sermons are there, catalogued. On the internet, yeah, and you're able to turn them into other content that will reach people. Like, if people aren't, they're like, Hey, I've got a church, I'm not going to listen to this sermon, but I'll definitely read your devotional. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. With the advent of the Internet and doing things digitally, from a ministry perspective, what's one thing you feel like has been lost or compromised and what's one thing you feel like has been gained?
So for me, not much has been lost because I was always very big on doing original research. When I say original research, I don't mean like starting from scratch and translating every Hebrew word into English or every Greek word into English. None of that. Original research means getting to some core reference works or getting to the best commentary or the most academic, most scholarly, most true to the biblical text, more theologically orient. I mean, I I wanted to b get the best of the best on that particular sermon.
Okay, so that was always the way I worked because I saw that in My dad, Nicole's dad. always trying to have good sources.
So, nothing changed there, but I did see a change in other people because. If you're running to the internet. even back in the early two thousands. It was amazing how many websites were up. Talking about the Bible and posting.
Commentaries there, older commentaries, PDF of commentaries. I mean, all that stuff was already being populated up there. Like in by the time 2005, I became a principal of a Christian school. And so I was also teaching Bible. I was also teaching English literature.
uh at the coll at the high school and so I had to tell my students to go online to find this and that. And I was like, some days I was just blown away how much. information was there in 2005. I'm like, who in the world is writing all this? And when do they find time?
Because I surely don't have this much time.
So, before that, before all that internet, how were pastors discovered, quote unquote? How were these churches discovered? I'm guessing TV and radio, but how do you break into that kind of thing? Like, do you just have to know people in the industry?
Well, many times it's. It's Mm-hmm. They are the first ones to be heard of.
So if you're not in the city, Okay, if you're not already in a big market, it's very hard for people to discover you.
So being in the city, like Charles Spurgeon was in a small little town, but his church was busting over until somebody from London came to look for him and said, Hey, we need you here. And he didn't want to, but ended up going, and then Metropolitan Tabernacle, right? Big church. That's been the case. Big cities are where people heard about Big names.
Big churches, big congregations Back in the Twentieth century it became radio. If you're in a big city, more than likely there are radio stations. If there are radio stations, if you are in a big church, you have the money to get on the radio station.
So now you can. Be more known, right? Then came television. Again. If you're well known, big cities Big names you can get on a television show.
There's no television program. There's no big like television studio out in like the Styx or the Boondocks or something. They're going to be yeah, unfortunately, that's how life works. And they may be here in their radio stations or a small little hometown television station, but they are not the norm. And being on those small radio stations and small television station will not get you Nationwide or worldwide fame.
Right. Yeah, right. It's not possible. With the advent of the internet, and we're getting close to time here, with the advent of the internet and all the digital tools that are available to us, AI, all the tech-related advancements that we have, what advice would you give to pastors?
Well, I would tell you that God has really given us a great avenue over the past 20 30 some years now. Um things have changed radically.
Now we have the opportunity whether you're in a small church, small town, rural area out in the middle of nowhere, as long as there is some internet, you're able to broadcast anywhere. That's true. Anywhere in the world.
So make use of that opportunity. That's right. Work on your. skills, work on your content. Pray over it as God's guidance wisdom.
Yeah, I think a lot of us are, and we really are at a time, but a lot of us are counting on technology to make us successful. rather than being like the like if like if we had all these cameras and these switchers and these lights, but we had nothing to talk about, no content, this show would work. I think same thing, what you're saying, Dr. Shah, same thing in ministry. If the heart and the Lord especially isn't there.
the technology can. serve you. That's right. Guys, make sure you join us tomorrow, same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clear View Today Show.
Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And if you're interested in talking about sponsorship for the Clear View Today Show, we'd love to have that conversation with you. You can reach us at contact at clearviewtodayshow.com or you can text us or call us at 252-582-5028. Make sure you're following along on all of our podcasting platforms, wherever you get your podcasting information from: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Prey.com, and make sure that you are supporting us financially at Abhidhanjob.com forward slash give. John, what do you want to plug as we close this?
Just definitely want to let you know about the Truth Network and, of course, TBN Plus that's coming very, very soon. We're going to have release dates, probably the start of the year is when Clearview Today is going to be on TBN Plus. But definitely, definitely, definitely want to push all of you there, specifically if you're tuning in for the video portion. That's what's going to be on TBN Plus. You can still get all of the audio in our original spots, but TBN is going to be a major source of new viewers.
So, we want you guys to beat them there and let them know that you love the Clearview Today Show with Dr. Abadan Shah. That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.
