A Conversation Between Judge Phil Ginn and Alisa Childers
Judge Phil Ginn: Your father passed away not long ago, and I think it was probably a fairly long illness, a battle with cancer.
Alisa Childers: It was. Well, “long” is relative, because it was about nine months from the time he was diagnosed, and then he was in hospice for about three months. For a lot of that time he was fairly active, so it really wasn’t until maybe the last month that he was starting to become more bedridden. That was like the last two weeks. And so, yeah, it was the sweetest couple of weeks of my life, hardest couple of weeks of my life. I actually went over to stay with my mom and dad. My mom has her own health issues, so I slept in the room with my dad, next to his hospital bed. That was just an experience that I will treasure forever. Hard and sweet and holy, and all the things.
Judge Phil Ginn: My dad’s been gone for about 25, 26 years now, and he died of congestive heart failure. It was an elongated process, but I learned more about my dad in those last few weeks and months than at any other time. We were very close, and it is a precious time. Talking with you earlier, I realized we’ve got a lot in common. You come from a family of four girls, your dad had four daughters, and so do I. That special relationship between a dad and his daughter is something that’s really to be treasured, and I know that that existed between you and your dad. He was a great influence in your life.
Alisa Childers: He really was. My dad was one of those hippies that trusted in Christ through what is now being called the Jesus Revolution. In fact, his band was actually featured in the movie. He’s a musician. I grew up as a first generation Christian, so he didn’t have any kind of background in Christianity prior to that. It was really sweet growing up, where he would take me around to his local concerts, and I would sing a song to a track. He did a lot of evangelism. In fact, that’s something about his life that not a lot of people know. For his entire life as a Christian, even up until he died, he would go out with his friends to the Berkeley campus, or to New York, sometimes San Francisco or Los Angeles, and they would set up a stage and sing and preach the gospel and witness to people walking around. So I grew up doing a lot of that. I got to see the power of the gospel really in action as a young child, and I’m very thankful for that experience. It’s something I really treasure, and I don’t do it well enough with my own kids, I would say.
Judge Phil Ginn: All of us feel that way about passing on our faith to other generations. One of my grandsons is very interested in Dude Perfect, and they are very committed Christians. I didn’t realize that, but he went to one of their shows. Well, it’s not a concert, it’s more of a demonstration. And they came out at the end and proclaimed the gospel. It’s very powerful for young people to see these fellows who are very athletic and do all sorts of things that folks think are impossible, and then preach the gospel. That’s a legacy you grew up with. And yet, from what I know, from *Another Gospel*, you kind of moved away from that for a while.
Alisa Childers: Yeah, not on purpose. My heart never did. What happened was I didn’t grow up in an environment where I was really taught *why* I believe what I believe. And that’s no insult to my pastors or my family. I just don’t think they could have foreseen the internet and all of this being taken for granted. Which is part of the reason I’m always so excited to come here. I attended this conference in 2016 as just a fan girl, loving all of the apologetics, because what had happened a few years prior was that my husband and I were attending a new church where the pastor had already deconstructed and become a progressive Christian. But he wasn’t telling people that, he wasn’t telling his parishioners.
So a lot of people in the church began to deconstruct as a result of these classes he would hold on the side, where he would be a very different person than he was on Sunday. I was in one of those classes, and it really rattled me to my core. While I was in the class I would try to debate with him, but then I would go home and tell my husband, “You won’t believe the things they said and the things we’re reading.” But once we left the church and I left the class, those doubts really went deep. I didn’t have anybody to debate with anymore, and I didn’t know how to debate it. I was just doing the best I could. I knew, though, and this is interesting, I knew that if Christianity wasn’t true, my only options were Christianity or just meaninglessness.
I knew progressive Christianity wasn’t for me, because it gave me nothing except some things I had to go do without any kind of meaningful belief. So I really cried out to the Lord one night and just said, “God, if you’re real, if the gospel my parents gave me is true, I need information.” And SES was actually one of the first ministries I found. I remember downloading the SES conference app to my phone. This would have been maybe 2012 or 2013, and I just started binging all the lectures. It was like, *oh, there are answers to all of these things the pastor was saying in that church.* It seemed like every single lecture was answering a specific question we had discussed in the class.
So I started following all the people giving the lectures, and this whole wide world of apologetics opened up to me. In my book I describe it like being a kid in a candy store who also just found out that candy exists. It was just amazing. I started auditing classes, and the professors here were amazing. I didn’t know any of the etiquette. I’d been in music my whole life. They were so patient. Even if I emailed with a question, they’d send me resources to dig in on my own and engage. I’m very thankful to SES for being part of that journey for me. I had no idea at the time that I would go on to do apologetics publicly as a ministry, but I’m just so thrilled. It’s always a thrill when I get to come back, because it’s sort of like home base for me.
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This article is based on a video transcript and does not necessarily reflect the official positions of SES. To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/EjaxcZY0xn0?si=ybGxsoWXZhMG4Irf
