TGC19 Interview | Melissa Kruger and Brett McCracken | Word First

welcome back to the live stage I'm so excited to be here with my colleague Brett and I get to interview him a little bit can you tell us a little bit about what you do for tgc yeah so I am a senior editor for tgc I have worked for the Gospel Coalition for about a year and a half now it's been so fun to work with Melissa among other editors we have a great editorial team all of us are all over the country though so I'm based in LA in the one the west coast I think I'm the only TDC editor on the west coast and you're on the other side of the country so you have to get up a lot early earlier for our editorial I do yeah we have these editorial calls that I guess it's 9 your attend but 7 my time so yeah that's the downside being on the west coast with mostly East Coast colleagues but yeah so my work at the Gospel Coalition I kind of focus on arts and culture so anything related to movie is music TV technology just trends and culture how the gospel applies to that so yeah I think it's a it's a natural bridge for evangelism and sharing the gospel in a secular age so I'm really interested in finding those areas in in movies and it's the questions that are being asked in art and culture that the gospel can speak to so that's the sort of thing I get to write about and edit for the Gospel Coalition and it's just really fun I've enjoyed your pieces so much and well a couple of things like it's it's helped me think really differently about what I'm watching I think it's bird box you you know I hadn't I hadn't heard about it and so it was so helpful I think you commissioned that piece I can't swallow prior yes you commissioned it and so it's so helpful to think through I would have just watched it in one way but to think through it Christianly and what this is kind of pointing towards and as we're watching whatever it could be it could be or listening to and one thing I love that you put together was our Spotify mix for Christmas but did you just do another one yeah we're listening to it right now and it's kind of drowning our interview out a bit but yeah I get to Spotify playlists together and there's just cool things you can do with with new media forms like that so I put together a playlist for the conference inspired by the theme conversations with Jesus so yeah worked with Carolyn Cobb to do that that's great I really did I kept the Christmas went on the whole Christmas season so it's so nice I love finding recommendations for music because sometimes you just get in a rut and you're like oh listen - and so I find it so helpful to hear new music from friends and there's so much good music out there so one of the things that I love about the platform with the Gospel Coalition is just shining a light on lesser-known artists and helping people discover you know good stuff that's out there one of the challenges that I find just in popular culture today is there's so much of it like Netflix is I get anxiety going on Netflix like trying to figure out what to watch because there's just so much the same is true with music like the Internet has just exploded the amount of content and and culture out there so I think you need people who can be trusted voices to recommend good stuff and there's people that are that for me that I trust their recommendations to kind of sit through the click a lot of information to find the gem to find the good stuff so that's kind of what I want to do at the Gospel Coalition is to point Christians to the the good the true the beautiful in popular culture and and maybe help them avoid the stuff that isn't helpful and isn't edifying because there's a lot of that out there so yeah it's a fun job well our theme is on conversations with Jesus or yeah or is it confrontation we should be praying for this for a year how can we take what we do see in common culture do many good ideas of movies or plays that you've seen and how can we use what we see in the world and we know that our friends you might not know Christ are watching and listening to whether this is us or it's a movie you know that everybody's talking about how can we use those things of Earth yeah to have spiritual conversations with others I think it's in I think it's a very natural segue a lot of times you know movies arts culture are oftentimes good good at asking questions I think they're good at giving voice to the questions that people have about about God about existence about meaning and so even just watching a film with someone and kind of having that conversation afterwards like what it like what is this movie like wrestling with what questions is it asking and how you know how can the gospel kind of answer them or bring clarity to them there's an artist tamakwa Fujimura who once said I couldn't have said that name I'm glad you got that maka humor he's a great artist in New York but he once said something to the effect of art poses the questions to which faith is the answer or offers an answer and I think that's a really good way of looking at the view the way that the arts can be a bridge in especially in a secular age not be as easy to just kind of have a conversation that goes straight to Jesus or straight to religion but pop culture can be a really natural bridge because it is asking those questions that are spiritual in nature they're their questions about the longings we have and the transcendence we're all looking for in this kind of this secular age that's very eminent and it's about the here and now but you look at the movies and like I mean the most popular movies these days are ghost stories like supernatural movies so I think that's interesting that even in the world that a Western world that would say we denied the supernatural we live in this very imminent kind of frame the movies and culture is full of mystery and probing kind of trying to break out of that that secular frame that's really interesting it's funny my husband a few years ago taught a Sunday School class I think it was called theology at the movies and one thing that we talked about in that class was how all the different genres even the horror genres in a surprising way are reflective of something in the bigger story you know and one thing that the romance is the reason we love romance is because it's ultimately pushing us toward the great romance because Christ and his bride but that there's something in us that all these stories they're always pointing to the bigger story even though their secular they don't know that they're borrowing yeah but that God speaks through stories to us and that he's writing this grand narrative and that we play a part of it and movies are a reflection of that even when they're from a secular perspective they don't know what they're doing sometimes yeah I think that's the beauty of common grace so I I talk about common grace a lot in my writing about the arts and culture because it's this idea that even a secular artist who doesn't have any faith or or would never call what they're doing religious or invoke the name of God like by common grace they nevertheless can something that is kind of reflective of truth and yeah the truth of the gospel you men in kind of roundabout ways so I wrote an article a couple of months ago you might remember it for the gospel coalition it was called nine movie moments of unmerited grace and I just like I looked at scenes specific scenes and movies that to me felt like a depiction of the beautiful arrival grace when you least expected like you're rescued no nothing you can do can save yourself so it's things like captain Phillips which is a movie about this true story about this guy who was stranded with or he was abducted by Somali pirates and the way he was rescued at the end of the movie is jarring because he's like out of nowhere rescuers come him out of the captors hands and he's safe or the end of Dunkirk is another one I had on that list where the the people on the beaches of Dunkirk in World War two felt like there was no hope they were completely lost there was no getting out of that dilemma but suddenly the end of the movie that the ships arrived and rescue them so I just wrote that I'd made that article just an example of the ways that you don't have to look all that hard and pop-culture to find these depictions these these common grace grasping for the truth that we know as Christians that we would call grace and special grace and there's that what that beautiful picture that we all want to be rescued it's amazing how much that carries through so many stories like it looks just dark and then the dawn comes and it seems to be this continual theme in literature a movie or in TV shows and it really is that picture when you look at the stories of Scripture they're all pointing like when I think of Noah's Ark there's a rescue there's one rescuer when you think of Rahab and the spies there was one house you could be in that that wasn't destroyed when you think of a lot there was one family rescued and we love the rescue story because it's pointing to this better rest yeah and I think that's exactly what this conference is about clearly that the reason we evangelize the reason we share the gospel is because we're in that dire need we're on the Dunkirk Beach in need of rescue and so often we can just be living our lives and I think we can look at our non-christian neighbor and we can think well they're fine you know it looks like it's their lives working out for them you know and so it's really the case though you know everyone yeah I think everyone if they're honest with themselves does admit that they need rescue and we live in this kind of self-sufficient that's the mantra right I'd like to pull yourself up from your bootstraps like you know you take ownership of your life like you have you are the only one who can control fault you know your dreams making your dreams a reality but that's just a burden like to kind of at the end of the day we can't do that we can't achieve our greatest dreams not that you know we can't do a lot with the gifts God has given us but ultimately we need help we need divine intervention we need rescue and and I think you see in pop culture that that is an existential longing that people have that's a real real thing that people resonate with well thanks so much for being with us it's been so fun to get to talk with Brett I check his articles out there so great I really do love getting to read them and listen go and look for the Spotify list that he made for this conference and spend some time worshiping the god of our rescue