Meet Jeremy Hall | Pastor, speaker, writer.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jeremy Hall and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeremy, what do you want people to remember about you?
I have actually spent quite a bit of time recently thinking about this. My wife and I began our parenting adventure with our two children during the pandemic, at the time of this interview they are 3 years old and 9 months old.

Now, I am a Christian Pastor, and in my faith tradition there is a big scary phrase “Judgement Day.” It means a couple of different things to Christians but I’ve come to realize that there is a digital judgement day waiting for me out there in my future somewhere. Someday my children will GOOGLE ME… Judgement Day!

I am trying to live in such a way as to have my digital footprint tell a story about me that I can be proud of, and in the process of living intentionally, with the digital Judgement day in mind, I am becoming more like the man I want to be remembered as.

I want to be remembered as honest.
I want to be remembered as loving and kind.
I want to be remembered as competent and thoughtful.
I want to be remembered as someone who acted for truth and justice from a place of humble confidence,
and as loving husband and father, and as a minister who represented Jesus and the Gospel well.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My name is Rev. Dr. Jeremy Hall, these titles appear in this order for a reason. The most important thing about my work is the faith that empowers, grounds, and connects it to the rest of the world. I am first and foremost a minister. I am more alive and Intune with who I was created to be when I am living and operating inside of this role. Those second letters are about the tools that I use to do the work. I recently graduated from Mercer University with a “Doctor of Ministry, in Justice and Peacemaking” (D.Min) degree. My work for this professional degree (as opposed to a theoretical degree like a Ph.D.) was focused on the Church I served from 2018-2022 in Kennesaw, Ga. During that time the congregation voted to become fully inclusive of LGBTQ believers, “without exception.” It was a costly decision, but well worth it.

The decision cost us 1/3 of our staff, 1/3 of our congregation, and almost 1/2 of our budget.

While the church was proud of its newly adopted membership policy, its people were theologically unsure of their actions. If you had surveyed members on why they had welcomed LGBTQ believers, they would either have given you platitudes about God’s love and the ubiquity of sin, or would have attempted to proof-text their way through the question. The concern is that this inclusion decision sat on a weak foundation and could potentially be walked back in the future by means of poor Biblical interpretation. If we could move this group of (formerly) Southern Baptists to look at the Bible in a new and life-giving way that enlivens their ethical imaginations to see a better and more inclusive Church, then it would be possible to form a more robust church witness in a post-Christian United States.

In order to awaken the ethical imagination of the congregation to see these decisions are not just the right choice, but one in line with the themes and trajectory of the Bible, my project sought to train them to approach ethical decisions in the context of the Biblical metanarrative. This training, if effective, would also aid members in making hard decisions in the future from a robust Christian Ethic grounded in the trajectory of God’s dream for the creation as found in scripture. The exploration of the biblical metanarrative allowed for the participants to engage their ethical imagination in such as way as to reconsider their affirming passion; moving from choosing affirmation as a negation of their culturally embedded understanding of the LGBTQ prohibition found in the “clobber passages,” to being able to understand their affirming position in response to the metanarrative of the Bible and the trajectory of God’s redemptive work across the story of the Bible and in the world.

This is what I am most passionate about vocationally: Helping people live up to the faith and values that they claim, and helping them come to understand the Bible in such a way as to activate and catapult them out into the world. The boring academic word for this is Christian Ethics. I have been a student in this field, under the guidance of Dr. David P. Gushee, for almost 10 years while pursuing my M.Div and D.Min degrees. This field is critical for the future of the Church.

With the proliferation of enlightenment philosophy and thinking in the age of Modernity, Christianity felt that it had been put on trial. Scientific advances and the uplift of human reason forced christendom to move into a defensive posture as the “god of the gaps” began to shrink in the combined shadows of the historical method, darwinism, and the western academy. The Church’s response came in the form of an army of apologists, called to protect the flanks of the retreating church. For a while this slug-fest between modernity and the Church seemed balanced, facts against facts, history against history, philosophy vs philosophy. Apologetics developed a clear alternative intellectualism, which had the potential to hold back Modernity’s defeat of the Church, but then the rules changed.

Postmodernism changed the game. While the world generally shifted to postmodern values and perspectives, the apologists of the Church did not allow their field to adapt. In a world now open to interpretation, nuance, and creativity, the defenders of the Church continued to want to argue about certainty, facts, and structure. The church found itself trying to answer questions that no one was asking. Postmodernism is a gift poorly received by the Church. It seems that the questions now being asked are ones that Christianity has the tools to answer, if it were brave enough to surrender its structures built to resist modernity. They are questions of meaning and truth, of what it means to be human and to live in community, questions of who and what can be trusted, and a willingness to interrogate traditional and embedded assumptions. This is a world in need of a Church that can answer questions beyond squabbling over historical facts and philosophical proofs. The postmodern world needs to see a lived answer to the question of what to do with Jesus.

Enter Christian Ethics. With the failure of the Enlightenment to produce enlightened ubermen who could navigate the world in scientific certainty, the world itself becomes a laboratory to experiment with human purpose. Into this world Jesus says not “repent and obey,” but rather “taste and see.” The Church, specifically of my background: Baptist/Evangelical, has been locked down in ridgid doctrinal stances, when now is the time not for culture wars, but bold invitation. The church that has supplanted Christian Apologetics with Christian Ethics is freed up to invite participation, rather than conformity. When a congregation has a robust Christain Ethic built into its culture, it can equip its parishioners with the freedom to engage the world creatively and become social innovators alongside Jesus, moving beyond rules to find the core values at work in the heart of God.

Exposure to Christian Ethics is liberative for the local congregation, as it elevates the active practice of Kingdom values over rule-keeping. Such a way of being a Christian requires an active relationship with Jesus and a deep study of his teachings. Put into practice, a Jesus-focused, imaginative, values-driven ethic, lived out humbly by a caring community is an act of evangelism, and an apologetic far more compelling than an argument about the age of the earth, the date of the resurrection, or the authorship of the epistles. This sort of faith has something to say about the issues that are on the minds of contemporary society, and possesses the ability to transform individuals, churches, and the world. If the Church is the body of Christ, the ethicist is the imagination. This sort of church has the tools, freedom, and imagination to face the future with faith, hope, and love.

I have two books available on church health and healing from church conflict with a new book on the way.
Worn Out Pages: An Invitation Back to The Bible is based on a series of TIKTOK (yes, I know, very professional) videos I made during the height of the pandemic about what the Bible has to say to our particular moment. These videos are available on my TIKTOK and my youtube channel under the sarcastic title “The Bible is Irrelevant.” The goal of this new project is to help people see the big themes of the Bible and how they are still relevant and applicable to our contemporary situation, concerns, and struggles.

Jeremy is available for guest speaking and writing, podcast/radio appearances, consultations, and good conversation.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Currently I live on the north west side of greater metro Atl, and I can not encourage you enough to come explore the entertainment district of downtown Acworth, cute stores, awesome food, open container, with green space and lake access! What more could you want?

Whenever I make a trip down to the city, if at all possible I stop in to see the brewing brothers at TORCHED HOP on Ponce. Great brew pub with a stellar kitchen and some of the best locally dreamed up brews in the state! From wild IPAs (my favorite one had garlic and onion in it!) to more traditional beers that they nail every time! You can’t go wrong, and I miss living across the street from them.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
(I’m not sure if this should be a list or a paragraph so I’m going to give you something in the middle)

Shoutout to my wife, Ashley, who has sacrificed so much for our family and who has relentlessly supported me and my work.

Shoutout to Mike Rollwagen, who first gave me permission to think freely and creatively about my faith.

Shoutout to Dr. David P. Gushee, who has been my mentor, professor, and friend through two graduate level degrees and the hardest season of my career (thus far.)

Website: revjeremyhall@gmail.com

Instagram: Jeremyshall90

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jhall2

Twitter: @yesimthatjeremy

Facebook: yesimthatjeremy

Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCagIE38j3R72KDeI3pkvLng

Others: Tiktok: PastorJeremyKennesaw Podcast: “Kingdom Ethics Podcast ” and “Virtually Church”

Image Credits
All mine