Welcome to Dwell on These Things, a podcast by Dwell Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, where we hear stories and examples of how God is moving in the church at dwell and around the world. All right, welcome to Dwell on These Things, a podcast of Dwell Community Church. I'm Ben Faust, your host today. I'm an adult ministry pastor here at Dwell Community Church, and we're here with James Rochford. He's a student ministry sphere leader, class and CT teacher. He's an elder here at Dwell, and he's also the author of three books and the author of the website Evidence Unseen, which is what we're going to be talking about today. So welcome, James. Hey, good to be here. Yeah. All right, well, I want to talk about the website, but before we did that, I wanted to ask about your books. You're the author of three books. Tell us about those. Yeah, so I got started writing books. No, I started writing studies for people in dorm rooms. So we were doing a Bible study in dorm rooms. And as we're doing that, I realized that these are actually chapters that could be part of a book. Oh, yeah. So anyways, I worked on it for five years, but I was still, you know, deeply discouraged. It was writing. If you're into writing very quickly, you realize, like, this is very difficult. I remember one date night, I was with my wife, and I was like, I don't know if I should ever publish this. This is, you know, slop. It's garbage. She was like, well, what are you insecure about? So I was like, well, number one, I don't have the advanced degrees. You know, I don't have a PhD in the philosophy of religion. Two, I was like, I feel like I'm just repeating what William Lane Craig and JP Moreland. And I'm just repeating what they're saying, you know, nothing original here. Totally. And who's going to listen to me anyway? Yes. Yeah. I wasn't even I don't know if this is even going to work. So flash forward, maybe six months, we're at Summer Institute, JP Moreland's there. And I'm like, the doctor. Yeah. Oh, man. Totally. Like other people want to see, you know, rock stars and celebrities. JP Moreland was like who I wanted to meet. So Mike Sullivan was like, do you want to get lunch with him? He's like, just you and him. So I was just like, all right, let's do this. You know, so we get lunch, we small talk. And one point I was like, you know, why is it that like none of you guys use predictive prophecy as like an apologetic? And he was like, well, it's good evidence. It's really good evidence. So why don't you use it? Yeah. And he was like, I don't know. Maybe you should write a book about it. So I really was not planning to work myself for that. Yeah, right. So I was like, well, I did. And he was like, really encouraging. So I was like, all right, well, how do you get published? I don't know how to do that. So he said, well, first thing you got to do. And he stopped. And he was like, no, scratch that. He goes, two things. First thing, James, don't worry about getting a PhD. And I was like, why? Why should I worry about that? Why not? And he goes, well, these guys, they wait till they get older, and then they get the doctorate, and they get weird and do technical. And he's like, you just need to write, start writing. So I was like, cool. What else? And he goes, don't worry about just repeating the things that you've heard other people say. The two exact things you're actually worried about. I was just flustered. I was like, why, why, why shouldn't I be worried about that? And he was like, because you're going to put it in your own voice. You're going to explain it the way that you talk and your illustrations. And so anyways, I paid the jack, went home. My wife was like, you've got to tell him. So I emailed him and he said, that is amazing, because I have given advice on how to get published hundreds of times. People always come to me and they're always like, how do I get published? He said, that is the only time I've said that in those two specific things. Oh, wow. So it was really weird. Yeah. And that was a shot in the arm. So I was like, got to write this. So yeah, eventually we published in 2013. And that book was evidence unseen. Yeah, that was the the OG. And then I did a couple other books after that. But when we had kids, I was like, still thinking about pushing through writing, writing, writing. My wife wisely said, you know, would you rather write three more books? Or would you rather be available for your kids? Because we're having kids. Yeah. So I prayed about that. And I was like, I'm done. Yeah. So I haven't written anything since 2016. But I'm about to write a new book with my buddy, Joey Francisco on the means of growth. Excellent. Maybe next year I'll be out. So we took a little 10 year hiatus. Yeah. But we'll be back for more writing. That's exciting. Well, we're looking forward to your next 20 books that you write as an empty nester someday. So the book evidence unseen that led to that's the name of the website evidence unseen. And, you know, if you've never checked it out, I've looked at it a bunch of times. I spent some time on it this morning. It's it's a pretty incredible storehouse of information. Like one of the first words that came to my mind was, you know, this is this is actually overwhelming when you look at how much just material is on this website. So if you've never checked it out, you should. And I'm not even sure how to describe it. Like if someone said to me, okay, what is evidence unseen dot com? I'm not even sure what I would say in a sentence to describe. How would you describe this website? I want it to be an encyclopedia. Essentially, I want this to be biblical theology, you know, going through book by book, Bible difficulties, systematic theology, apologetics, history. Like I got into the church fathers for a while, got into science and scripture for a while, attributes of God. I just wanted to be a broad Christian counseling. Yeah, I'm not a counselor, you know, but I read on it. And whenever I read, I'm like, I should write. So it would eventually, you know, span to the point where it would encompass a number of different subjects. It wouldn't be pigeonholed. Like most, most guys say, if you're into apologetics, find your thing, you know, the moral argument, your one thing. Yeah, cosmological or historicity or, and I've just never been into that because people ask me a litany of questions. So I just never feel like I'm just going to do one thing. I got to be kind of a jack of all trades. Well, it sounds so you're interested in a lot of different things at different times. That's really interesting way to think about it because, yeah, like an encyclopedia, but you're also sort of describing it on a personal level. Like this is sort of a life's work, almost like a, like a web log of what you're learning. Yeah. Is that a way to think about it? Totally. Like if I read, I'm going to write. Yeah. So if I'm reading a book, I can't, I've got to jot down the quotes and the thoughts and keep those in a file. Yeah. Because I know there's going to be a rainy day where somebody says, what does gay kitchen think about, you know, the, the Exodus, you know, and I got to have that somewhere, you know, so. I mean, I, I totally hear what you're saying and you're like, you're describing it like, you know, naturally, of course, if I read, I've got to write, I bet a lot of people listening are like, no, not naturally. I don't have that at all. That sounds like maybe just sort of the way that you're wired though. Yeah. Yeah. It's strange. Yeah. Well, that's a, that is a strange, but also wonderful talent. So when you're working on the website, do you think about it? Like, do you think about it? Like this is work, this part of my job, or do you think about it? Like this is my hobby? Or do you think about it? Like this is my journal or all of those? Like, how do you, how does it, where does it live in your mind? So it lives in my mind in a different place than my wife's mind. Okay. So we're watching a movie together and I'm working on something on the website and she'll turn to me and say, is this work or are you relaxing? And I, it's hard for me to distinguish that. So lately I've been airing on the side of don't multitask, you know, be available. It's when we're doing stuff like movies where you're, you know, maybe you're on your phone, maybe you're, I don't know what people do when they watch movies, but, you know, make popcorn. Yeah. Right. But I'm like working on the computer and it's work and it's, it shouldn't be so, but yeah, the difficulty is I really, really enjoy it. Right. It's just so enjoyable that it's hard to put it down, but there's a fine line between that and overworking. Sure. So I need to chill and not do that. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the, like the history of it. Like, where did it, where did, where, where did you get the idea for, I could put this on the web, not just like folders in my computer that I keep track of. How did that happen? Yeah. I had all these articles and then people would email me and Samuel and Saul and the witch of Endor. I remember being one of them and I was like, first Samuel 28, I think I remember just being like, who is asking me about how do they know that I wrote something on that, you know? Yeah. So eventually I was thinking about, nobody asks me for my article on that. So it's hard. It's hard because I was like, do I just keep emailing people stuff that I've written? So like all my great ideas, I stole this from somebody. I was in my class teaching. One of my students came up to me. He's a web engineer, aficionado. And he comes right up to me and he says, you know, hey, I can get a website for you. And I've seen volunteers before. And I'm like, okay, that's cute. All right. Sure. Didn't think anything of it. The next week, he was like, do you have 20 bucks? And I was like, rarely. I do. I had $20. My wallet. He goes, let's get a domain name. I got my computer right here. We were on break. What do you want your domain name to be? And I was like, you're serious. He said, yeah. I'm like, you're actually going to build the site. Yeah. I'm like, I don't have any money. Like I had just to be clear. He just got all my money. Yeah. $20 is that. That's it. So if you're looking for that, he goes, no, no, no. Like, I just want your material to be online. Got the domain name within a week. He had me up on WordPress. I don't know any of that. Yeah. You're not like a web development person at all. And yeah, my, this is embarrassing. So, um, when I went to college, I didn't know how to save onto a floppy disk, which is problematic on many left, like a floppy disk. We didn't even have hard drive or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I did not put it in the, there was no cloud, but I had to ask people at William Oxley library, like that's my computer knowledge. Right. So he walked me through that entire process. And, um, then he stayed with it since 2011 till today. So I'd be like, I mean, we got hacked. We got, there was, um, can I say pornography? Somebody hacked it and put on my web. This Christian apologetics website. So I was calling Vince. I'm like, Vince, Vince, Vince, get it down. Get it down. Can't kill it. There was a screenshot where I, this can't be true. Okay. Can't be true. But it said, we are ISIS and we own your website now. Oh my gosh. It was stuff like that. Like it was creepy stuff. No, I don't believe it was ISIS. Yeah. But maybe it was ISIS. I have no idea, but it was like, this is weird. So I could, you know, text, call, email events. And within, you know, minutes he would have it fixed and it was all free of charge. He was just serving. It was amazing. So, so Vince, he's the, he's the mastermind behind the whole, he's the guy. He's the guy. He's the man. I just, yeah, it never would have happened that there, there would be no website. I just never would have, I would have thought book writing, but the website has reached way more people than books for me. Yeah. At least. Yeah. How many, how far is the reach as far as you can tell? So a woman I know who will know what I'm talking about. She lived in Southeast Asia for a while, doing work over there. And she came back and visited. And when she visited, she said, I'm in a small group, Bible study of 10 people. And we were going through the book of Ezra. And we got to the end where there's that weird, they divorce the wives and they do all of that. And we were like, what do we do with this and all that? We sat on it. We didn't know what to do with it. And then the next day I get an email. This is the woman speaking. I get an email from one of the men in the Bible study. And he said, I think I found an article that nails it. And I think this will really help sent the link. And she read the link and it was evidence unseen. Ezra nine through 10. Why did the men divorce their wives? Is that immoral? So she laughed and sent the message back. I know that guy from Columbus, Ohio, right? And I did his premarital counseling for, uh, for his marriage. Right. That's crazy. So it was so weird. Like when I heard that it gave me chills because I was like, here's a random person I know and love over in this Bible study. And they're benefiting 12,000 miles away. Man, when something goes online, you never know who's going to read it, what God's going to do with it. So, all right. If you're thinking, uh, you know, Oh, well, this, this sounds interesting. He's got a few articles or something, you know, a couple of teachings, 2200 articles on this. Uh, I was scrolling through today. You've got, you know, stuff about your books. You've got a section on theology, apologetics, Bible. You've got courses. You've got audio and video. You know, I clicked on audio. Here's your systematic theology class. 119 episodes. Like the amount of content is, is striking. Yeah. And I was looking at, um, okay. So you've got a section on Bible books, right? So you click on any book, New Testament, Old Testament, and it's got a little graphic. It's got, you know, some of the background, your commentaries are available there. And I was like, so I clicked on Matthew and then I clicked on Romans. And then I was like, okay, but I bet he doesn't have anything on Obadiah. So I click on Obadiah. Yes, he has stuff on Obadiah. I'm like, how about Habakkuk? Yes, there's stuff on Habakkuk. Uh, and the thing that just was coming to my mind was, you know, there's lots of, there's tons of Christian websites. There's tons of websites about books. There's, there's websites with teachings and sermons. I don't think there's a lot on the internet like this, though, that's this comprehensive. It feels like this is, you know, that's, that's able to answer questions directly the way that yours does. Um, I think it's pretty unique on the web. Yeah, it, I think it is unique. Um, a lot of the stuff online is Matthew Henry's commentary. You know, it's on the cutting edge of, you know, the 18th century, you know, it's, people read that and they think that's good. Well, it's free, which is good, but it's not good commentary anymore. There's not a lot out there that when you look at it, you wonder, is this just some random guy's opinion? Sure. Is he credentialed? Is he, is anything annotated? You know, what I try to do is like, here's a, um, issue. Here's an issue. Here's DA Carson. Here's what he thinks. Here's Andreas Kostenberger. Here's his view. Here's Leon Morris. Here's Colin Cruz. And here's four options. And it isn't like, here's the option. Here's the answer. It's kind of giving you the panoply of what many people think rather than just here's, here's my take. And then a lot of online stuff doesn't get deep enough. In my opinion, people I work with and you do, when we talk about these subjects, people are like, well, the questions they're asking, I don't see answered. And there's that question of reliability. Well, it's tricky, you know, when you're just, you know, if you just do a Google search on a question that you have, you're going to get answers, but you don't know, you know, when you're looking at them, like, so is this the mainstream answer? Is this a common answer? Is this just some rando's hot take? And I don't know, you know, without doing all the reading and all the research. So it is super helpful when it's like, okay, here are several, here are several takes. And that, you know, I've got to ask you about the Bible difficulty section. Far and away, that's the most often I'm coming to your website. It's for that. You know, I run into some problem. I'm in some deep, odd, you know, far flung corner of the Bible and I run across someone like, what does that mean? And I always think the same thing. I always think, oh, he's not going to have an entry on this. And literally every time, every time you do, no matter how out there. So if you don't know on that website, you can click on Bible difficulties, or I think they're also under each book of the Bible too. So it's just like, you know, the common questions that come up, what does this verse mean? Doesn't this verse contradict with that verse? And like you described, you know, some of the responses are fairly short and straightforward. Here's a good explanation of this question. But other times you give a full treatment. There's a full article with various views, strengths, and weaknesses. How did that develop over time? Because that just like, it's super comprehensive. And do you still add to it? Like, do people hit you up and say, hey, you need to, here's a question you don't have Bible teaching. And my biggest fear was, I don't, they're going to hit me with a question that I don't know the answer to. And that was such a silly fear, because you just say, I don't know. I don't know is a pretty good answer. Sometimes it's great. That's the right answer. It's great. And, but for whatever reason, I thought I got to really know this. Yeah, I've got to. So I would start to write on those subjects, because I would think to myself, I'm not going to remember what I studied on this. I've got to write it out. So when I would do that, that kind of turned into those difficult. So that started as a tool for you. Yeah. A library of your own, right. Frequently asked questions. Yeah. Those notes became personal notes. And then eventually I could, well, I had a website. Right. So I thought, why don't I just do New Testament difficulties? But then that just kept kind of burgeoning into this bigger catalog. And yeah, people will email me and say, you don't have anything on such and such and such. And sometimes I do. I'll be like, you just didn't look, you know, it's there. One time it was Isaiah 65 and 66 as quoted by 1 Corinthians 2. And he kind of melds those together. And the guy was like, yeah, you don't have anything on this. And how do you explain this? And the article was there and he was just laughing. You know, it was just all LOLs. I thought I got a deep cut that James didn't have. No, that's, I'm telling you, that's my experience. I haven't found one yet. That's good. So yeah, I wait on people will email me. I usually say, I'll put that in the queue. Yeah. I don't feel the need to respond immediately. I'll get to that in two years when I'm studying, you know, Obadiah or whatever. And I'll get to that later. And I don't feel the need to get to it immediately. Well, I think, I think this it, the reason I think that this is encouraging for a lot of people is that I think a really common lie that people believe, you know, you get a, you're reading through the Bible, you come across something that strikes you as implausible or not right or contradictory, and you get a question or a doubt. I think a lot of people's first instinct is, I've discovered a problem that no one has ever discovered before with Christianity. You know, I see a crack in the armor of Christianity. And I don't even want to ask the question because there's probably not a good answer. Probably nobody's even asked this question before. And then that's going to be, that's going to, you know, give me doubts about my faith or maybe even stumble other people in their faith. But it's such a lie, because the truth is any question you can think of, not only has someone else thought of it, probably someone else has written books about it, right? And so I think that, you know, there's a lesson there, which is like, when you have a question, you should ask it and you should search for what other people have said, I promise you're not going to be the first person to wonder the thing you're wondering. So true. And I remember reading Geisler's big book of Bible difficulties. And I would think, no way does he have something on this. And sure enough, he would. Yeah. Constantly. I run into that. The thing I was studying about six months ago or a year ago was God and time, his relationship to time. And I thought, no one's looked into this like that. And then, you know, William Lane Craig has three books on it. He studied it for eight years, you know, it was like, and it wasn't obscure, not faith ending subject, right? But I was like, I want to look into this. And you're right, there's better and brighter people that have been thinking about this way longer than we have. And my job is just to make that palatable, make it accessible. So if I could take a book like Time and Eternity, is that the name of it? By Craig. I think that's the name of it. If I could take that and shorten it into a page, that would be fine with me. I don't feel like I need to get into that subject fully, but just make it accessible, edible, for people like us. Yeah, because most people aren't going to sit down and read five books on God and time. But they are curious about it. They don't really want James Rochford's random opinion or hot take, or they don't want to read his five page article on his opinion. But to be able to get, it's like, here, James has read all these books, and here's some of the highlights, some of the distillation. It's such a service to other people. It makes things a lot easier. One of the things I'm picking up on is, it sounds like, you know, I sort of pictured like, okay, you're sitting down and saying, now I'm going to build out this section in my website. It sounds more like what's happening is, just as you're doing your own personal studies, you're sort of logging what you're learning and putting it up there wherever it goes. Is that the right way? That's right. For personal study, I'll go through subjects. So I did three months on the attributes of God, and then wrote up, rewrote all my material on that. Next would be, you know, Jesus study on the kenosis, incarnation, deity of Christ, the ascension, the intercession, and just get out all of the books and read through that. And then I just go through systematically, subject by subject. But if I do that, I'm just going to write on it. I don't know how long the loop is, I don't really mind, but I'll just go through a loop of God, Christ, Holy Spirit, biblical anthropology, Satan. That's my new class coming up in three weeks. You know, I read a number of books on that. And regardless, I go through topic by topic by topic. And I guess I share that because I get deeper, but I don't get different. Like there's some things I've changed my views on. Mostly it's just you get deeper, and you get more of that iceberg effect in your understanding. And I really enjoy it and helps for the work that we do. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I want to ask you about, all right, so the website's undergone a huge change this year, right? An upgrade across the board. Tell us a little bit about that. Probably over the last three years, Vince, who's the guy in charge of the site, all of the backend, he kept saying, we've got to upgrade. And I was so reticent to do that. I did not want to do that at all because I don't want to learn. I don't want to learn the new thing and the new, I've been doing this for 10 years and I've got that website structure down. And he's like, we've got to migrate this. We've got to do it. So you're one of them talking about that. I was like, no, we just can't do it. Year two, he was like, fine, I'll just do it. And then year three, he just didn't have time. I mean, he does a lot. He has a life. Yeah, he does a lot. I could get into all the work that he does. So we reached a point where I was like, I can't pay what you're worth because that just wouldn't work. But if we could pay you, would that help you to move the site and get things moving? And he said, yes, that would. And he's like, it's not about the money. And I'm like, obviously you've been doing this for a decade. And for free. Yeah, totally for free. So I mean, I think I gave him gift cards. It's kind of like, thanks, but not like what you're worth. So he said, yeah, would help. So he got a team together and they migrated 2,200 articles, which is insanity, right? Think about that. So he not only did that, but then he did the footnotes. Every one of those footnotes in every article, there's so many. It's stupid. It's stupid amount of footnotes. So he got the whole team to move all those over. And then he made a new skin and a new picture of what it was going to look like. And I remember seeing the proofs of what it was going to look like and just going, wow, this looks cool. And then he broke up the, you know, the big books like the commentary on Matthew was 250 word pages, which is long. If you need to scroll. Yeah, that's a long scroll. So you got up, you know, and they got to get down to 28. Yeah. So I felt like, sorry, you know, but it's free. I don't know what to tell you. People would say, you know, why do we have to scroll? And I'm like, well, it's free. But anyways, he would, he changed that over to now, every chapter, you can just go right to that chapter. It looks beautiful. I wouldn't praise it so much if I did it, you know, but he did it and the team he put together did it. And it's just fabulous. The work he did on it and things are linked together differently. Like that's, it's way easier to navigate. Things are collected together. Totally. Super easy to find your way around. Yeah. I mean, if you, if, you know, if I just went to this website, not knowing who it was, I would think this is a, this is a staff. This is a, this is an organization with a bunch of researchers, a bunch of pastors, and a big technical staff. Actually, it's you and Vince. Yeah. For free in your spare time. Yeah. Right. And that's pretty amazing. I even do the first person plural. We think that's right. And I'll say that and people have emailed me like, why? And I'm like, because I want to hide behind evidence unseen. Yeah. And really it's just me writing, but I don't want that. I want it to be a, a thing where people go to the site and it's not about an individual. Yeah. Yeah. So Vince was, was incredible on that. We were reaching the point where I asked him, can we put a YouTube video on the homepage? And he's like, no, it can't do it. We can't do it. Like we built a foundation for a 1200 square foot house. Yeah. In 2011. Yeah. And you know, that's all I had was, you know, 10 articles and, and he's like, no, we're just, we, it's just broadened to the point where that foundation can't withstand what we've got going. So it was a great move. We just took some financial backing. So you've got a huge quality upgrade in terms on the technical side. There's a quantity upgrade here too, because you've added your classes and things like that. And so with it, you've got part of the new, the new program is you've got a membership. Tell me about that. People can buy a membership. Uh, what is it? 12 bucks a year. Yeah. Which is a dollar a month by my math. What do you get for signing up to be a member? So if you buy a membership, what you're first of all doing is you're saying, I really value this website. Yeah. There's a lot of people that before I moved over to the membership model, say, I want to give you 500 bucks. I want to give you 250 bucks. I love this site. It's benefited me. And I always said no, but it got to the point where we were like, we need it to keep this going. Yeah. There's actually costs. Yeah. Do new things. So if you get a membership, what you're doing is you're saying, I want to, I value this and I really love it. Once you get that, you get access to the commentaries, which is 66 books of the Bible. It's oh boy, 1100 and some chapters of scripture. Yeah. And then you get access to the courses. I thought that would be the real draw. Yeah. I don't know if it is. These are video and audio, like equipping classes, courses. Yes. It's the best I can do teaching. I put them down to 30 to 40 minutes so you could get through it in a sitting. It isn't a two or three hour long form class. We've got study guides, final exams, memory versus homework. You could use this in a men's group, women's group. I really wanted it for small churches around the country. You know, if you had a church, most churches are 100 people. Not going to have an equipping department to run classes. Yeah. And I just thought that would be the big draw, but I hope to continue to create a catalog and just build out that catalog to be something that would equip people from start to finish. Yeah. So means of growth all the way to the end times. Sharing your faith. Well, and to be clear, the vast majority of material on the website is still there for free, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. But when you buy a membership, you're getting access to all of these other resources also. Right. That's cool. One of the, I even saw that you have two songs on there. Yeah. That are behind the paywall. Yeah, buddy. Is this the beginning of like a music? Should we expect a music career? I've heard you sing karaoke and it is disturbingly good. It's much better than it ought to be, or you would expect. Yeah. So that was back in, I think I was 22, 23. And I was really into music, really into songwriting. We were in a band and then that fell through. And yeah, I wrote a couple, five songs. Three of them are just two. I hate them too much to put them up, but two of them, like two of them, I'm like, that's not that bad. All right. Well, anything else you want to tell us about like the membership or the upgrade or anything like that? No, other than, um, I really hope people enjoy the site. Um, I know people have benefited from it for years and I just hope they continue to benefit because, um, it's been a real joy of my life when I get emails and comments from people that share, you know, this was really helpful. And, um, so yeah, I hope people continue to enjoy it and, um, we're going to keep plugging away at making it better. Yeah. Well, I mean, thanks for doing it. We, it's fun for you, but, uh, we benefit from it a lot too. So, all right. Well, thanks James. And thanks for spending time with us today. The website is evidence unseen.com. I'm Ben Faust. This has been dwell on these things. If you like this conversation and you want to hear more like it on all kinds of interesting topics, you can subscribe to dwell on these things, or you can check out dwellcc.org for more info on dwell community church. Thanks for listening.