Cabernet and Pray Episode 4
Check out the podcast at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Picture this; you're leading a megachurch and suddenly, you decide to make a shift. A shift from preaching to coaching, from the pulpit to facilitating high-capacity leaders. This is the intriguing journey of Mike Goldsworthy, our guest for this episode and the founder of Live Contrarian. Mike shares his experiences, from being a lead pastor to transitioning into an executive coach and facilitator. It's not just about change but a reshaping of identity and relationships. As we reminisce about our first meeting and chat about Mike's current passions, we also consider the art of sermonizing and the AI-driven world we live in.
What does the transition from a church ministry to a different medium do to your faith? With Mike, we explore this fascinating question, examining the impact on his relationship with the church and his authenticity. We discuss the guilt associated with not attending church regularly and the nature of faith evolution. We'll also delve into the language of deconstruction within faith, a topic often seen as destructive. We promise; this isn't your typical faith discussion. Mike's unique perspective on faith, drawn from his personal journey, offers fresh insights into the nature of faith expansion, growth, maturing, and evolution.
As we share a communal wine tasting experience, brace yourself for an enlightening reflection on the role of communal experience in our relationship with wine. Mike then introduces us to the Post-Evangelical Collective that he co-founded, a community providing a sense of belonging for pastors who feel they no longer fit within Evangelicalism. We wrap up the episode by exploring the financial models that work within the post-evangelical space. Mike's story is about moving beyond boundaries and forging a new path.
Wines:
2020 Torial Red Wine Blend
2021 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
https://www.mikegoldsworthy.com
https://www.postevangelicalcollective.org
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Cabernet and Pray Episode 4
Check out the podcast at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Picture this; you're leading a megachurch and suddenly, you decide to make a shift. A shift from preaching to coaching, from the pulpit to facilitating high-capacity leaders. This is the intriguing journey of Mike Goldsworthy, our guest for this episode and the founder of Live Contrarian. Mike shares his experiences, from being a lead pastor to transitioning into an executive coach and facilitator. It's not just about change but a reshaping of identity and relationships. As we reminisce about our first meeting and chat about Mike's current passions, we also consider the art of sermonizing and the AI-driven world we live in.
What does the transition from a church ministry to a different medium do to your faith? With Mike, we explore this fascinating question, examining the impact on his relationship with the church and his authenticity. We discuss the guilt associated with not attending church regularly and the nature of faith evolution. We'll also delve into the language of deconstruction within faith, a topic often seen as destructive. We promise; this isn't your typical faith discussion. Mike's unique perspective on faith, drawn from his personal journey, offers fresh insights into the nature of faith expansion, growth, maturing, and evolution.
As we share a communal wine tasting experience, brace yourself for an enlightening reflection on the role of communal experience in our relationship with wine. Mike then introduces us to the Post-Evangelical Collective that he co-founded, a community providing a sense of belonging for pastors who feel they no longer fit within Evangelicalism. We wrap up the episode by exploring the financial models that work within the post-evangelical space. Mike's story is about moving beyond boundaries and forging a new path.
Wines:
2020 Torial Red Wine Blend
2021 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon
https://www.mikegoldsworthy.com
https://www.postevangelicalcollective.org
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Well, hello again, friends. We are back with another episode of Cabernet and Pray. This is the podcast where we get to explore Christianity through the beauty of wine and get to see how these two worlds meet together, and today we are going to talk with a kindred spirit of mine, someone that I deeply resonate with. I absolutely love this guy and I'm excited for you to get to hear from him as well. His name is Mike Goldsworthy. Mike is the founder and president of Live Contrarian, working with leaders who recognize that effective leadership flows out of healthy and whole lives. At 29 years old, mike became one of the youngest lead pastors of a megachurch where he had incredible opportunities, but at the same time, he also lived in leadership responsibilities that outweighed his experience, eventually leading him to anxiety and burnout, finding his own health and wholeness. He currently serves as an executive coach, facilitator and speaker, working with high capacity leaders who feel overwhelmed, in order to help them experience more sustainability while enjoying their life and their work more. Mike, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Look at that. You know I was thinking as you were doing the intro there Cabernet and Prey. You got your nice little rhyming going on there. You can take the preacher out of the church, but you can't take that church out of the preacher.
Speaker 1:You know, when you get used to lists and alliteration and catchy things, it just sticks with you. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was waiting for the three points that all started with a P.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a little before my time.
Speaker 2:You know that wasn't really the genre you and I came up in, so that's very true, but it did still affect us and so, like for friends that are listening in that maybe didn't have church experience, there was a period of time in the church space where you would go to church and the sermon, the talk that was being given, would be an outline that would like spell a word, that it was like there would be five points and it would be like reach and or there'd be five points and they all started with a C, and so you'd work really, really hard to come up with some like and I had, you had a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Well, and you had a thesaurus that you're like searching through to try to.
Speaker 1:And then Google came around. It's like five letter words that begin with R, you know, and then you just. It was like sky's the limit. Yeah, chat B T.
Speaker 2:J, I feel like I've already started drinking the AI stuff.
Speaker 1:We haven't even got the wine yet. Look at you, you're just, you're embracing this Chat GPT. Yes, that would do it for you today. Yeah, that would. You could get a lot done, okay, anything. I mean you're a complicated individual. I covered some of it. What else do we need to know about you that?
Speaker 2:Oh, we're good. Let's see. Dodgers are amazing. Okay, that's really. Where do you live, mike? I'm in Long Beach, california. Yeah, we've been Dodger fans our whole lives. My folks have had season tickets since I was like in fifth grade, so that has been a gift to us and we love the Dodgers. Let's see what else. Oh, the I have this friend who, like, claims to be into food and drink and stuff and every time he visits me the place where he wants to go is to TGI Fridays. It's the dumbest thing ever. You sounds cool. Oh, let's see what else. Yeah, I was pastoring for quite a while and in Long Beach, california, is this lovely church that trusted me. That was really lovely. I've taken up pickleball. I'm a middle-aged white guy and so it feels on point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it feels like that's what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:I've never played a game of pickleball.
Speaker 2:We're a month in and we're sold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have lots of people trying to win me over to this right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's surprising to me that you're not, but I mean you'll get there, you'll be there.
Speaker 1:You haven't given up on me yet, thank you. So here's a fun fact Mike and I met when I did a guest lecture for a class a college class that you were teaching, and I got to come in and teach the class. That day I remember like immediately I didn't know you at all, so we got connected, not because you knew me, but through another professor had connected us and I was out speaking.
Speaker 2:Can we say first of all that it was not my choice to have you be a guest lecturer?
Speaker 1:Okay, who is on on me. The record is reflected, that okay, clearly noted. So Mike didn't want me. Evidently I come in. I have no idea who this guy is, but here's what I remember. I remember like and this has probably happened legitimately like maybe five times in my life where I meet someone and I mean from the very initial first conversation I'm like there's, there's some something with this person I click with. And I didn't know your story. Then I didn't know your background, I didn't know who you were, you and I were, you know different stages of our career at that point. But I just remember immediately meeting you and like I like this guy, there's something about it and we have been friends, maybe against your wishes, since that day. What do you remember about when I was forced upon your classroom?
Speaker 2:I, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I felt the same way in all seriousness, that it was like I didn't it all came from.
Speaker 2:Like the dean of the school had this like, was just trying to pump some stuff up and so thought, like a part of what we do is we take this particular class as teaching, and he thought it could be a way that would potentially give it more visibility, and so he imposed several people upon me, thinking that it would do that. And it didn't do that, which was no fault of yours or any, but it just wasn't the right strategy. But I remember the same sort of thing that there was like, yeah, we had this resonance. I don't remember, I can't remember the particulars, but it was like, yeah, a quick connection and a quick like. There is a thing with people where you have a quick shorthand, where, like, maybe it's because you've had some similar experiences before, you operate in similar spaces, you've been reading similar books, influenced by similar people, and so, like I felt like we've had a quick shorthand about a lot of things, which has made it easy to connect.
Speaker 1:I like that. A quick shorthand, I'm gonna use that. All right, mike. That's down means it's time for us to talk about our beverages today, all right. So I'm going to go first. Today, I am drinking a 2020 Toriel red wine blend. This is from Sonoma County, giving some love to California for you. Today, and this is incredible, I'm actually really digging this. On the nose, I get a very pronounced red plum and tart cranberry, like this thing is just firing all cylinders just smelling it, and then, when I tasted it, I also noticed there are some earthiness there that I dig that. I picked up some dried leaves, which again some of these flavors. I know people are like that sounds weird, but when you get them balanced in a wine, it's really complex and actually very enjoyable, and so I found this to be nicely balanced, has a big mouthfeel, just a great. You could drink this as a regular, everyday drinker or compare with foods. Big enough. That's what I'm drinking. What are you drinking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's red, it's red. Here's what I got for for those of you on the video at home. So this is from Mr Mondavi, robert Mondavi, and it's a bourbon barrel aged Cabernet Sauvignon 2021, which was a good year for Mr Mondavi. Let's understand. I actually haven't drank it yet. I just poured it and I feel like, well, while I take my first sip to see what's going on here, maybe you could share about how I picked out this wine.
Speaker 1:So Mike texted me and I asked him for you know, hey, tell me what the details of what wine you're going to do. And I think your response was what year is two buck, chuck, I think he'll get me. And so I said, okay, we're in for it. And then he said he texted me. He said should I FaceTime you when I get to the store to figure out what bottle to which I gave you a gift? And said, yes, absolutely 100%. So then we navigated the aisle for you last night and I have had that bottle that you're trying before. I thought it was fun. I've had other people try it as well, and the barrel bourbon barrel age, I think, adds a nice little little pizzazz to it. What do you think?
Speaker 1:You're a bourbon. No, I like it.
Speaker 2:I like. Yeah, I mean it was attractive to me because it's barrel aged in bourbon barrels I'm a bourbon guy it definitely is pretty easy to drink. I don't know, I don't. I'm not necessarily great at picking out flavors in the wine, but I definitely taste some stuff on, like the back of my tongue. Is that the tan ends? Is that what that's going on there?
Speaker 1:So yeah, you can taste some. The tan ends are kind of like a bite to it, right, that's a little bit that comes from, like the stems and the skin of the grape. Okay, that, differently different parts of your mouth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's almost something like maybe caramel esque, vanilla esque, something that feels a little bit maybe from the bourbon, yeah well, that's probably from the barrel. From the barrel, yeah. So I'm getting a bit of that. All right, that's what I got. What else should I be getting? What did you get when you drink this? Oh?
Speaker 1:it's been a while and I've had a few bottles since then, so I don't know that I would be able to to remember. I just remember it was fun, I had some interesting notes and, yeah, you know, robert Mondavi is a big boy producer and so you're going to get a pretty easy drink in Can go to every day for that, so that's a good one. You can find that. I think you got it at Trader Joe's. So if you're listening or watching this and you're like, hey, I could, I could dig that that's a. That's a good. Go to bottle one or there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was recently priced. That was attractive to me as well. Yeah, I think we're like at 13. Yeah, hey, can I ask you not to mess up your podcast here? But our neighbors gardeners just came by. Are you hearing that? Yeah, I can. Okay, I was trying to mute it some.
Speaker 1:Are they? I had to happen a couple episodes ago to me and don't they understand.
Speaker 2:There are podcasters trying to record stuff and I don't know. I don't think you've been over here since we've built this. This is my like yeah, I call it my bunker, so like a tiny house in our backyard that we built for so and so the thing I did not anticipate is it's in a corner in our backyard of like three of our neighbors back up to this corner and Anything that's been done in any of those yards like magnifies in this room like 10x. If I were to go outside the room it would be quieter.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. I don't, I don't hear it now, so maybe he's okay. Great, move along. Moved along to another part. All right, mike, tell us a little bit. What are you doing with Liv Contrarian?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Liv, contrarian with. So I left the church that I had been pastoring in 2019 in August of 2019, and I didn't know what I was gonna do next Like genuinely didn't know what I was gonna do next, but I knew I was gonna try some things on my own and I knew I needed an organization to house it and so so we decided to start this organization as kind of like a catch-all for all the work that I would do, and the name kind of came from I had done a life planning process several years before and Out of that, one of the things that, like you, develop is a sort of like life mission statement, and my life mission statement was I exist to challenge people, to rebel against the status quo, like that's always been like my framework, my lens for like what's made sense to me. So in the work that I did in the church, I always saw that when I was calling people to a Life of following Jesus, I always saw it as a life that rebelled against the status quo. The way that I saw the work I was doing in the church, I always saw it same sort of way as like something that would challenge people to rebel against the status quo of Whatever culture they were in the church culture, the whatever. So At first I thought it would be a space where we were gonna help churches create space to do that kind of work, talk about things they weren't talking about, not talking about. Well, but it actually quickly became a space for helping people.
Speaker 2:In the same way that I was pastoring and really for me, there's a couple of things I realized that were behind the work as you and I was pastoring like I wanted to. I wanted to help people to live more fully. So Jesus says this thing that I think he's serious about that. He says I came that you might have life and all of its fullness, and so I was trying to figure out, like how do I help people step into like a more full life? So I'm getting to do that work with folks.
Speaker 2:And then there's this author in Steven Pressfield who I think you like as well, yeah, and he has this line that stuck with me that he says all of us live two lives. There is the life we live and the unlived life within us. Hmm, so I often found my work in the church is like I think there's unlived lives within people that I'm supposed to help bring out. And so, anyways, in live contrarian, I find myself doing that kind of work, and increasingly more and more of that kind of work outside of the church space, helping leaders Live more fully, helping leaders Live the unlived life that's within them.
Speaker 1:So you you've made a pretty major pivot and you've referenced, you know, your your previous life as a lead pastor a few times already, I think. When I met you, you were still lead pastor. We were both, you know, still in the the full-time ministry scene. You did that for, I think, 11 years right and then stepped away from it. You're obviously.
Speaker 1:Using a lot of those same skills, but you're not using them in a way that probably a lot of people in your church you would use them don't know a bit about that journey of Stepping away from that role and deciding that isn't where you fit the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's probably a few different ways to talk about it. So one way to talk about it is in the work that I'm doing now versus the work I was doing before, and I would even say I don't know where you're at with this. I would even say I'm not closed off to being on staff at a church again, but it's not the right thing for me in the season and it would have to be. There'd have to be a lot of right things for that to work. But one of the things that I came to realize is that, like, I'm still doing the same work, or it's still like, in a lot of ways, the same heartbeat that's behind it, and the church was the medium that I was living it out through. And if you've been in the church for a while, especially if you've been in ministry, you think that the medium is the point. And one of the things that I had to work through was that, like no, the medium has shifted and I'm still doing this, the same kind of work, just with a different medium. That takes some work in through, like if Folks have spent any kind of time in any kind of professional ministry. It's one of the roles, or so I think a few kinds of occasions that do this. But but pastoring is definitely up there where you become super enmeshed with your role and so, as much as I had tried to work through like healthy differentiation that who I am is not what I do, it wasn't until I actually stepped out that I, like, could actually wrestle with how I meshed those things were. So there's a lot of identity work that comes there. There was a lot of like.
Speaker 2:The thing Maybe I was most unprepared for Was the way it changed relationships with people. So many of my friends were in the church and our friendship radically shifted overnight and I wasn't prepared for that and I I left in a fine enough way at the church, but one of the things I realized was there was always some level of a power dynamic in our relationship and that shifted. So even though, like, we were friends but I was always still their pastor, and then that wasn't there and there was this weirdness of like not knowing how to relate anymore. There was also like, in a lot of ways the church was at the center of our lives in a lot of ways and so, and for that person like the, the thing that we have in common is this Organization that we're a part of, that we show up to every week and that we're Participated in on a regular basis, with all these sort of things, and you remove that thing from the equation and you've removed kind of your point of commonality. That it's like. I think of it like If I had a friend that I went to a Dodger game with every week and suddenly, like they stopped liking the Dodgers and stopped showing up To Dodger games, it like we would probably hang out less, and not because I hated them, not because there's anything wrong with them, just because that thing that bound us together Was no longer the thing binding us together anymore. So, yeah, like that changed.
Speaker 2:I Also think and if folks have never been in any kind of professional ministry might not fully get this either but like when you're paid to be a professional Christian, there's a whole lot of subconscious things that are there that you don't realize, that are there that like you need to believe a certain way, because it's not just like your paycheck is dependent on it, but it's not just that, it's like your whole livelihood, your whole life, that you know your community, all the things, and so you subconsciously don't question things and I remember I'd taken a sabbatical, I got in an extended period of leave from the church was a gift, and One of the things I decided to do on that was I used to say like I feel like I have guardrails up about what I can think and as long as I'm within those guardrails it's okay.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like in the church, like you might hear a phrase sometimes where people say pursue truth wherever it leads, but I but I think that it's actually pursue truth wherever it leads as long as you arrive at one of these three conclusions.
Speaker 1:Leslie say within our guardrails, yes.
Speaker 2:So when I went on my sabbatical, that was the first time I had four months where I was away from the church and I was like I'm gonna let the guardrails go and I'm gonna let just where everything's go. I want them to go. And there's a lot of stuff that I realized like, oh, I haven't processed this. Well, I thought I'd process this, but I haven't Stepping out of the church. It's even more so. Or stepping out of, I Should say, like full-time vocational ministry at a local church, like it's even more so. It's given more freedom for that. And even when I thought I didn't have guardrails, I did so, yeah, there's been a lot of freedom there and maybe a maybe. A last thing that's been interesting for me is like I Was curious what my relationship with the church at large would still be, and I found that I do still love the church. In a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm able to be a bit more honest about some things that I Couldn't allow myself to be honest about before, and it wasn't like I was holding back.
Speaker 2:It was that subconscious guardrails by still of the church, but it looks very different and one of the things I had a lot of guilt about for a while, like we are not engaged in like weekly worship Somewhere and I would have utilized things and sermons back in the day that, like, looking back at it, probably would have created some shame and guilt for people that weren't engaged regularly in a church worship space.
Speaker 2:And I realized and had people kind of push on me in that same sort of direction when, when we weren't engaging regularly at a place. But I realized like one of the things that was true is for 20 years I had set up my life to not need the regular worship Service as a part of, like, the way I connected with God, the way I grew spiritually, and so like going back into that space like it just doesn't what it is for most people who attend. It is not that for me, it's not that for most people who've been in leadership and so like I had already built my life in a way where that wasn't like a necessary component because my role was always contributing to it, it was never receiving from it, and so it's actually for us, been for the most part, pretty healthy. There's some churches I connect with. There's a church that's halfway across the country that in a lot of ways I consider like my church, but I'll be there like three times a year, yeah, that's very well said.
Speaker 1:I've had almost identical experiences in, you know, in my journey, and obviously a lot of the details are different, but just that sense of the guardrails, of the subconscious holding back and, you know, noticed I changed my view on a whole bunch of things Once I stepped away from the role, and part of that was because I didn't have all the restrictions, all the things that that you get used to living with and I'm, and the thing you just mentioned. I think that's been the hardest thing for me to explain to people and you just did a great job of it. But when you give your entire career to creating an experience for people, week in and week out, you're not the recipient of that experience. And so people would come to church and they would get a different experience there than I was getting, because I was behind the scenes, spending all week trying to do my part to whatever that experience was, which means you don't show up as that person. You don't show up on the weekend in the same headspace as someone who has no idea what's coming and just shows up.
Speaker 1:But, as you illustrated, it also means there isn't a sense of loss, as I think people would expect when you step away from that role and say, yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna attend somewhere every week, and we tried.
Speaker 1:We've kind of bounced around with a few different communities and I still teach regularly and so we pop in and out of different communities.
Speaker 1:But that has been a real challenge for us to find that place and for all the reasons you mentioned and I think that's just one of those for someone outside of the ministry bubble may not understand that, but when you're creating that experience, you get used to not expecting to receive out of it, and then you just don't need it because you've learned to have your Christianity elsewhere. So I think that's fascinating. I wanna go into more because I know this is a huge part of your journey, but during this whole season I know a lot of your faith was already changing, even when you were in that role, and then I think it's, as you've said, has gone further. I'd love to hear what are some ways that you could point to these? Say, I used to be more of this and then I kind of went there and what are maybe some of the ones you felt you could be comfortable to share? Hey, I see this differently than I used to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think for me if fits under a the umbrella that it fits under is that, like my faith is more expanded, it's more generous and it's more open, so that moves into all sorts of places Probably could say it has a lot more room for mystery and a lot more room for things that are unanswered, even though I would have said that would have been true before. I have a friend who a phrase that he used with me that has stuck with me it's been really helpful for me is he said he had made several faith shifts and people were saying like you've just gone progressive and he didn't feel like he fit in that camp in a lot of ways. And there's I end up in a lot of progressive spaces but I really don't feel like I fit in that camp in a lot of ways, and so his language was really helpful for me. He said I feel like I didn't move from conservative to progressive, I moved from closed to open. That became this really helpful like picture for me, cause I even think like if you're to look at the ministry and the work of Jesus, it's a lot of like trying to move a closed system to a more open system. There was.
Speaker 2:I had this really profound experience in Israel, palestine, on trip with but I know you've been on with friends at the Telos group who do peacemaking work in Israel, palestine and a guy was with us who's my first time meeting him was on this trip, but he's since become a good friend and he was we were in the church of the synagogue, which is where Jesus takes that. He's in the synagogue, takes the scroll from Luke down and or Luke records him taking the scroll from Isaiah down and he's describing to us this experience that happens of where everyone is amazed at who Jesus is. And then it's just a few verses later when we walk out to the area where there's the cliff that they then, not that long later, are trying to push Jesus off, to kill him, and there's a shift that happens really quickly, where he is saying that the people of God is bigger and more expansive than you thought that it was. And the thing that caused them to shift from like being amazed at Jesus to wanting to throw him off a cliff was that he was saying the kingdom, the people of God, is bigger and more expansive than you've thought that it was. So I think that's been a significant shift for me. So, like sure, there's details of things of like moving into, allowing myself, I should say, because I think I was in this place before but wouldn't allow myself to be there moving into a place where I allowed myself to be more fully in the camp of what would be called universal reconciliation, saying that God is actually redeeming all things. That when Christ says that I'm redeeming all things actually means all things. That when Paul says that death can't even separate you from God, that Paul actually means death actually can't separate you from God. That actually, how dare you say that? So I allowed myself to move into a camp like that, which to me feels like a more open, generous, expansive place to be. I moved into places of this had happened while I was at my church, but I was able to lean into it more fully after leaving of full LGBTQ inclusion in the church and seeing the scriptures, both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, the Christian scriptures, neither of which prohibiting what we understand today, what we understand of same sex, mutual equal relationships today. So things like that became much more, yeah, expansive, open, generous, and saw the scriptures as something that was actually a springboard to that rather than a guidebook, like a catalyst.
Speaker 2:I there's this thing in Galatians. Paul talks about the law and he says the law was this babysitter until Christ came. And so it was essentially like you needed this to grow up. You couldn't handle it until you grew up and I realized like that's a lot of the ways that I needed the scriptures. I've been really informed by a guy named James Fowler and his work on stages of faith, and so this kind of thing it makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2:Within stages of faith and earlier stages of faith, you need like a lot more stricture. You need a lot more like these are the rules, this is what's right, this is what's wrong. It needs to be black and white. This is our tribe, this is not our tribe. So you needed the law was a guardian, it was a babysitter's one way to translate it. It was helping you grow up. So you needed it. You needed it to operate in that kind of way.
Speaker 2:Later on in Galatians, there's this part where he's saying don't give into your fleshly nature, in other words, don't give into like the destructive part of yourself and he lists all these destructive ways that you could live and he says so. He says here's what you do instead. And while he gives this list of here's, these destructive things you could do, instead of giving a list of here's all these better things that you could do, he just simply says this. He says so. I say instead walk with the spirit.
Speaker 2:So it's like this shift of and in stages of faith like this would make a lot more sense. Like you have had these rules, you've built this structure in order to make it make to make like life makes sense, to make a good, fulfilling, full life makes sense. But then you move into a place where Richard Rohr would say you are filling the structure. You're no longer like building it, you're like filling it. And it's like where you move, like you've been informed by all this in such a way that it's just a part of you and it catalyzes you into a trajectory and you're now living in the trajectory rather than needing to go back into, like here's the situations coming up. I got to go back and figure out chapter and verse. What do I do with this thing? That makes sense on an earlier stage of faith, you need that. But then you, gradually, you grow, you expand into more mature stages of faith where you live by the spirit and you're on a trajectory and you can improv your way based off of the trajectory that's been embedded within you.
Speaker 1:Ooh, that is so good. Oh, my gosh, that is so good. I love taking Paul's image of the law as the babysitter and saying that is the scriptures for a lot of us, and I think that's so true. When you're beginning, you don't know what is good and what is not good, what is good and what is not good. But you certainly get to a place and I think this has been part of my recent journey where you realize that for many people, the Bible is a restricting force upon them and they can't even creatively process new work of the spirit unless they have a chapter and verse to give them permission to do it. And so there's a lot of times I will talk about something and a comment I will get from someone online will be yeah, but do you have a verse to back that up? And I try to be as empathetic as I can to say Better man than me.
Speaker 1:I don't always do well. I understand where they're coming from and if I have a great verse, I'll certainly provide it, but there are times where I'll just say let me give you a broader understanding of where I'm coming from or what I'm trying to do here, and this is how I understand Jesus. But I just think that's so great. Now, the word that some listeners may be thinking as you're talking like oh, this is deconstruction. You're talking about deconstructing all these things. Isn't that a bad thing? You certainly have lived much of that experientially. You are in a lot of conversations with people who are in the deconstruction process. What's your take on this word? How do you interpret it? Speak a little bit to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Gosh, it's so interesting to me because I don't remember deconstruction, that language being so in the like no encleture of Christian culture and the zeitgeist of the Christian space, until the last two or three years Before that, like, groups of us were using that language, which really comes from the French philosopher Derrida and I haven't read any Derrida, but I just like saying his name because it makes me sound smart.
Speaker 1:If you were drinking a French wine, why would you say that you would have taken it to a whole nother level? I just want something like that.
Speaker 2:I like to say like-.
Speaker 1:As Derrida says, in Bordeaux.
Speaker 2:I probably could have gotten away with that right. Yeah, I like to read people who read Derrida, that's good. Yeah, I mean that language comes from him and in some ways, it's about like the way that Derrida uses it. That it's really about like questioning reality. It's about questioning language and really, in a lot of ways, it's about trying to make sense of like, what are you when you say a thing? What are you saying about that thing?
Speaker 2:I think the way that it's being used today is it's describing something that should be a natural and normal process, that has always been a natural and normal process. That really what it is is. It's faith expansion, it's faith growth, it's faith maturing, it's faith evolution. It's words like that that are about like moving and building and growing and expanding. But and, by the way, 15 years ago, like this was all happening in our church all the time, and this is like if you ever were, if your pastor ever talked about reading CS Lewis, if they ever talked about Brennan Manning affecting them, like it's all been in the waters even in modern times.
Speaker 2:But some shifts have happened in the church, where the church has doubled down and drew some hard lines in some ways, where it has made it something that is seen as destructive, and so destructive language has gotten associated with it.
Speaker 2:So people go through a deconstruction process, which really should be a natural, normal process and always has been, not only in faith, but in a lot of areas of our life where what it's just simply this it's the way that we had understood faith before doesn't make sense to us anymore, or the way faith had worked for us before doesn't work for us anymore. That has always happened, it will always happen, and it happens in other areas too, and it's natural and normal. But we have made it bad, and so now we have attached language that feels really heavy to it when it actually yeah. I mean I use that language because it's in the when I think it's helpful to use language that people understand real quickly what you mean by it, but I don't think it's the most helpful language and my hope is that it's. We have short-term use of the language.
Speaker 1:You see Jesus do this too, when he says things like how do you read it? And it's this open invitation to discuss and to process. I think so many times we go no, no, just tell me that, tell me the right answer, then I got it, rather than the journey of unpacking something and figuring it out and processing it. And that's certainly a huge part of faith and of maturing in your faith.
Speaker 2:Yes, so what's been really really helpful for me and even like, I think, a framework that's helpful for folks like if you are on this kind of journey. And again, I think that the journey comes where at some point. It's one of two things. It's the way faith made sense to you no longer makes sense anymore at least parts of it don't, or what worked for you before is no longer working. So it becomes a head journey and it becomes a like tactile journey, like so it might be like I would always pray like this and like this was my experience and I'm not having that experience anymore sort of thing. I'd always serve in the church and this was my experience, and that experience isn't working for me anymore. It's not happening in that same sort of way anymore, and what people will often do then is they will often then make it a head journey. I have all these questions, these things. I was always taught this. That doesn't make sense to me anymore. I have all these questions and I need to answer some. It becomes this head journey and I think that head journey is really important, but if that's all that it is, is it's a head or a hand journey, what you will do? And this is again where stages of faith has been really helpful for me.
Speaker 2:By the way, the work of stages of faith by James Fowler he's a behavioral psychologist in the 70s he sought out to try to see is there ways that are common, not just in the Christian tradition but in other faith traditions, of how people mature and grow in their faith, what people see in those faith communities as mature, and are there ways that we can observe, as behavioral psychologists studying this, are there ways that we can observe that are true? And he found that there were. And so one of the things that can happen when it's just a head journey or just a hand journey is that we will regress in our stages of faith, but it'll just be a different kind of faith. So, to just use numbers to just make it easy, let's say you hit a stage four of faith is where these things start happening to you. A lot of times what will happen is you will regress.
Speaker 2:You grew up in a conservative space, in a fundamentalist space. You will regress back to a two, but you'll just be a fundamentalist too and, like I, like Jesus's language of you, become twice as much of a son of hell, like it's those folks that you know that were a pain as a fundamentalist conservative, but they are even worse now as a fundamentalist progressive. But the way forward, the only way that you move to the more mature stages, is always through an internalized journey, which in the Christian tradition is often called a contemplative journey, and so it's only by doing the internal work that we can move into the more mature stages. So that's why I like my friend's response of like I didn't move from conservative to progressive because you can be one of the things in the deconstruction space that I think it's perpetuated is a more progressive view of Christianity as a more evolved view, and I don't think that that's the case. A more generous view is a more evolved view.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you would say you can have that generous view on either side of the conversation.
Speaker 2:I think that you can be a really generous conservative. I mean, gosh, there are folks I just I mean, it was last year. I read Philip Yancey's memoir and Philip Yancey gosh, he was so formative for me and significant for me in a lot of ways, and as I read through his memoir, there were things it was really helpful to like, identify with him and things. And then there were things that I was like, gosh, I think you're missing this and I think you're holding on to some things that you're not willing to let go of. And like I don't know if I don't know him at all, so I don't, but he would be much. He would be much more conservative than me on a lot of things, and my guess is he'd be a lot more generous than me, though. So I don't know that a conservative theology in and of itself makes you less generous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think some of what we're seeing today in some conservative spaces is certainly less generous, and I certainly do not fall into the place of like. Yeah, and that's true of the Progressive Space too. It is true in the Progressive Space too, but if we're to put it on a scale, it would be like it's of where the Christian space is less generous. It's going to be 80% in the conservative space and 20% in the Progressive Space, and it is a problem in the Progressive Space, but it's a significant problem in the conservative space right now.
Speaker 1:Sure, one of the phrases that I've heard you use in your own work in and out of the church is you're referring to people who are ecclesiologically homeless, and I love that phrase. You have a passion for these people. What are you referring to when you use a phrase like that and why do you have a passion for this?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, at first I should say it's not my phrase. A friend of mine said it and I think I actually don't know if he just kind of said it off the cuff or like if it was something he'd been stirring for a little while in him. But for folks that don't know, ecclesiology is essentially like the theology of like church, of like how we function as a church, like what does it mean to be the church. And he said to me I feel he's a pastor of this great church and he says I feel ecclesiologically homeless, meaning I don't know where I fit in the church space, like I lead this church but this church doesn't fit anywhere. And he named what I felt like it always been true for me and so, like I have a passion for it because, like that's me, I went when I was leading my church, like I never knew where I fit in the church space.
Speaker 2:I tried on, like, tried on different communities, like pastoral communities, like kind of like larger church communities, and none of them ever felt like they fit right. And so I think there's this growing number of us who don't know where we fit in the church space anymore, but who want to like be a part of Jesus community, but like not necessarily meaning like the weekend week out showing up to worship service, but a part of, like, the global community of people who are pursuing the way of Jesus and feel like we don't fit anywhere. So yeah, I've been trying to find ways to like care particularly for the people who find themselves leading in that space, who are leading churches, leading other kinds of faith experiences, who feel like they're all alone, who feel like they're the only ones doing it, who feel like I don't know where I fit anywhere. I'm just trying to create a space of belonging for them.
Speaker 1:Love that. Yeah, that's a share. I share your heart for those people. As you look at Christianity today from a slightly different vantage point than you, than you were looking at it, what do you see as some of the main issues facing just Christianity as a whole? Or perhaps, if you want to focus in on Christianity in America?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't think I could really speak to Christianity outside of America. Well and honestly, there would be a lot of the same things that I was concerned with when I was leading the church. I think, obviously, like there's a lot of talk about polarization, not only in our country but particularly in the church, but some, for me, the way that I see that is, it's particularly at least one of the ways that is sort of driving that, or one of the things it's stemming from, is that the church in North America does not have a view of the breadth of historical Christianity. It doesn't have a view of the depth of the current global Christianity and so, like the church that I grew up in, like I came to realize, one of the things I started saying was that we acted like the church was birthed in the 1950s and that when people started like reading the Bible and making sense of it was the 1970s and that, like that's what we would look at and what many of us don't realize is what we are inculcated in, even when we'll say that this is the biblical way of reading it or when we think something is a Christian thing. Oftentimes that is a Christian thing a lot of times. But it is a small slice of a much larger thing that you haven't been exposed to, and when you get exposed to those other things, there is strong pushback against those or strong defensiveness against those, and to just have an understanding, like actually those things are actually been a part of the church longer than the thing that you're so passionate about. So like I think that's so helpful and I think like that would help with things like you and I I think we're probably preaching against Christian nationalism.
Speaker 2:Before there was language of Christian nationalism that was normative in the church. I remember taking a lot of hits, a lot of hits for teaching on that kind of stuff, and I've had a lot of people come back to me in the last two years and say like oh gosh, you were talking about this stuff 10, 15 years ago and I didn't realize like it actually was going to be. I didn't think it was an issue. It is an issue, I think. So there's just this amesement of Americanism and amesement of partisanship. There's an amesement of our political partisan-ness like affecting our views, as opposed to the other way around. Like I think faith is political but it's not partisan, and so like that's concerning to me.
Speaker 2:I get really concerned about like trite understandings of God that people never do an inquiry on. So I think there's a beautiful naivete for some folks that you need to have, especially at earlier stages of faith. But I think if you hold on to that like to me, it's like why would you think about, why would you hold on to the same worldview at 42 that you had at 11? But that's what we do in the church. We don't do an inquiry on our faith, we don't investigate those things. And so, like gosh, I experienced this all the time.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of work with an organization that works with all kinds of different churches and I don't fit there in a lot of ways. And I was in a meeting the other day and we're saying this and this gets brought up a lot in this organization we work really hard, but the results are up to God. And I was like, well, if God's going to give the results, then why do we work hard? Like I'll just sit back and collect a paycheck and let God do all the work, like that makes sense to me. So I'm like I don't think you actually think that you don't actually think we work really hard and God delivers the results, because if you did, you wouldn't need to work hard. Or what you think is, you unlock God in some sort of way by working really hard, so somehow your actions have control over God. But I don't think any of you would say that that's true. So I want to take things like that, I want to poke at them and I want us to do investigative work on these things that we hold to that we just kind of throw out but we've never actually done any kind of inquiry on them. And what are we actually saying when we say those things? What do we actually think? What do we actually believe and what's actually driving our lives? All that sort of stuff, yeah, so, yeah, I think that's an issue.
Speaker 2:I think that the church has got to move towards more generosity, more. I think that evangelicalism I think for folks that don't know any of the history, what folks don't realize is that evangelicalism was a response to fundamentalism and that fundamentalism saw itself as this like we're the ones who are right, we've got it all figured out and they created this really small tent and evangelicalism was this response that Christianity is so much bigger and wider than that, and so some of the language that we get used is it would talk about big tent Christianity, that it was like there's room for all these things. And what's happened over the last 15 years is that tent has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and it's become the new fundamentalism in a lot of ways and I just gosh. I wish that the faith, like Christian faith, could recapture that big tent and keep expanding it. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's a great synopsis of how you see Christianity. Drill it down to the models that we have of church, and by that obviously mean what most people think of. We go to a building on the weekend. We gather, you know, for hour, hour and a half. There's some singing, there's a person talking. What do you see as some of the main issues facing the model of church that we currently live in today? How do you see that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that has bothered me for a while, that I see creeping in continually, is the sort of like up into the right mentality, the kind of idea that the church has adopted from a kind of like American imperial kind of mindset that says that everything should always be growing. In fact there's a very well known book that has that. Probably just about every pastor is leading a church is read at some point that says a part of its premise is healthy things grow and so meaning that if your church is healthy, it will be growing, and meaning growing numerically. And there's so much that can be lost in the church. The church is not a machine, it's an organism and healthy organisms have times of growth and healthy organisms have times of plateau. And like I stopped growing when I was like 20 years old, or at least stopped growing in height, like my middle aged belly is growing in different ways in the season, but like you got the orange theory in there, right, the orange theories helped me out some. The only reason it's not worse, but it's like no, no, no, like what.
Speaker 2:What organisms actually do is that they go through natural life cycles and they grow and they plateau and they decline and they die. And in fact, this is even the Pascal mystery, right? The Pascal mystery speaks of the death and resurrection of Jesus as this like rhythm that undergirds the universe, that the way that the universe actually works is through death and resurrection and that there is no new life without death. And Jesus would even say this, right, like a kernel of wheat must fall to the ground and die in order to produce multiple seeds, that this is this like underlying rhythm of energy, of how the universe works. And so what we are doing in the church, when we're trying to make everything bigger, faster and it should always be doing that is we're actually pushing against the natural rhythms that the divine has embedded in the universe. That's embedded within the seasons we have seasons where things grow and seasons where things go fallow goes against the way that we even see like teachings on for the Hebrew people on here's how to handle your fields and things like that. That like they're, these rhythms are these seasons, are these like natural sort of things?
Speaker 2:And so I had this come up recently with a church who has a. The pastor has an 18 year old son who's gonna die soon. He's born with all these disabilities and they did not think that he would even live to 18, but I guess it's become pretty apparent he's gonna die pretty soon. At the same time, the church is in a season where it has a lot of momentum and on the calendar they've got several events coming up that they think are gonna help them capture this momentum. And somebody who's working with the church reached out to me and asked me like hey, could you give me some advice? I'm trying to figure out how to consult them, because what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that we like honor this pastor well, but that we don't lose momentum.
Speaker 2:And like that killed me a bit where it was like gosh, I don't want the church to be centered around the pastor, but to have something. So in a church that has a primary point leader, which might not be always the best way of doing it, but if that's your reality, to have them go through such a personally emotional thing and to say, but what we've gotta do is we gotta keep driving, we gotta keep pushing the thing forward. I mean to me it's like American work, ethic, exceptionalism, all the things like run amok in the church, yeah, which I think like pushes into things like we've seen lots of issues with power dynamics in the church that need to get fixed and again, to me a lot of that comes down to like we're taking a way of running organizations that is in some ways anti-Christian and try to impose it then onto the church Instead of recognizing the church as this distinctive, unique kind of community that needs to function and operate in different kinds of ways. And I don't think that there's a right like structure to fix that Like. I work with churches that have a more flat structure, that have shared leadership at the top, that have co-pastoring things like that, and those can be helpful. But we've also seen Mark Driscoll was in a co-pastoring model. Originally Mars Hill Church in Seattle was a three-person model. He was only one of those three.
Speaker 2:So like fixing just a model to me doesn't work. It's why I think when Paul writes about leaders in the church, what he writes about is not a leadership structure but he writes about character attributes. And so there is what Scott McKnight would the New Testament scholar, scott McKnight would call a reclaiming of a tove or a goodness culture in the church. And I think if there's a reclaiming of that, a reclaiming of character, a reclaiming of a movement towards lives that reflect the person of Jesus and the way of Jesus, the life ministry, teachings of Jesus.
Speaker 2:We recapture that. We recapture that in our lives, like we will start to figure out in our local context what's the right structure, because I didn't come to serve but to be served. The greatest among you will be the least. We'll start figuring out what does that actually look like with flesh and blood on in our context and like that kind of stuff to me, like I think that's the. There's a lot of conversations I'm in in the church where it's about fixing the surface issue. There's power dynamics here. Let's flatten them and that's to me that's a good first step, but it's not getting at like what's underneath the surface.
Speaker 1:You know, as you're talking, I was thinking healthy organisms. They have a limit to growth too, so you need to. But there is, you know, a human's only supposed to get so tall right. And if you, you know, it's actually a disease if you don't stop growing and it's bad for your body and it can lead to premature death. And I think you know the what's a living organism that's known for growing and growing and growing. We call that cancer.
Speaker 2:Preach it Jeremy, journey again.
Speaker 1:No, I just think, like that's what cancer is. It's something that will not stop replicating and it takes over and it creates all sorts of havoc, right, and yet we have this model, that is this deep assumption, as you're referencing built into what a successful church ministry looks like, and it's why these days, some of my favorite preaching opportunities are in small churches that could never afford to have a teaching team, and I love getting to go into these churches and almost just like defiantly projecting upon them like your size is in no way, you know, an indicator of whether or not this is a healthy ministry, and I'm honored to be here. And they usually feel bad for asking like, oh, you know, we can't pay you much, it's like I don't even care, like it would be a blessing to be a part of your community, and I just find myself drawn to that these days. And you think about the. You talk about the life cycle thing, and I was reminded of a conversation I got in recently with a pastor and he was talking about their church is multi-site and they're you know they're creating opportunities to go more campuses. And again, I understand that I lived this world for a long time.
Speaker 1:I know you're involved in these conversations too, but he was referencing another small church and he was talking about this church is dying off. It's this kind of core to use an earlier phrase use very closed-minded community and they're not growing and they're I mean literally the people are dying off. And they were talking about we need to come in and assume, you know the leadership of this church, make them one of our campuses, otherwise they'll die. And he was telling me this and I just like blurted out, I said, well, maybe they should die as a church. And he's like what I said yeah, maybe that entity of a church needs to die so that something brand new can be birthed in its place. And maybe the worst thing you could do is you swoop in and save it and keep it, you know as is, and then assume it let it die. But it was interesting and you know he's brought that up numerous times since then of what a novel idea that was to him to go.
Speaker 1:Should we even entertain the idea of letting a church die? And I think most Christian go. No, you never want a church to die and I think you know that's part of the life cycle. Like how are we expecting new birth to come.
Speaker 1:And so you know, you hear people talk about like, oh, that building used to be a church and now it's a bar and like it's almost as if, like Satan has won. You know, like look at this monument to the devil, you know, and it's like, well, maybe God did something really beautiful out of that, like maybe that needed to happen and maybe like who knows? But I just think there's so much and you're scratching the surface of it and there's we can do episodes or episode on these underlying assumptions, and when you sit in the hot seat and you're the lead pastor, you really recognize what these currents are that are propelling you forward and that you have to. You know you have to steer the boat on top of and I think it's for all Christians listening to this, if you are a part of any type of Christian community, it is worth us pausing and going. What are we assuming success looks like? And is it healthy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, one of my favorite things that I've learned in the last few years is the way that the Amish approach new technology, which I'd always been. You know somebody that would. You know I would tease and whatever of like, oh, you know they're stuck in this time or whatever. But there's actually one of the things they're concerned about with introducing new technology is the way that it will change your lives and the way it'll change your community. So they have a rigorous set of questions that they'll go through. They don't necessarily just stop technology and won't adopt anything new. It's well, what is the change it's gonna bring and is that worth it for what it's gonna disrupt? And I get to teach a class you and I both get to teach at the same college and I get to teach a class with folks on like different models of ministry. And one of the things that I have them work through is asking that kind of question of like okay, you can do this thing. You can add, let's say, just something like adding image magnification of the pastor preaching, like it's not necessarily good or bad, but what dynamic does that change? What does that do? Okay, having another site for the church and having the video of that pastor projected over to that other site. It might not necessarily be inherently good or inherently bad, but what dynamic does that change? Going from one service to two worship services right, like all of the things that are seen as like this is what you do when you're successful changes the dynamics of who the church is, and I think it is worth pausing and asking questions about what that's actually doing. And is that actually positive in terms of what it means to be the church and what we're called to do? Is that negative?
Speaker 2:One of the fallacies is, I think, that churches make evangelism an idol and that the goal of the church is to always continue reaching people, which, by the way, in North America, churches that talk about reaching people, it's something like 70 or 80% of the people they're reaching are just people who are already churched. So and the people that they're baptizing are people that grew up in a tradition that baptized babies and they just hadn't been baptized as an adult. So like there's all these like undercurrents there or whatever, right, but I don't remember what I was saying. I drink too much of this wine already. I'm allowed to cuss on this. Is there an explicit thing yeah, you can get it.
Speaker 1:You know. On that note, I think it's time for a drink break. I'm not sure if you can hear me, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure if you can hear me, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Are we just going to pretend like that was normal?
Speaker 1:No, there is no normal, we're just going to move on. We just got. No, we're moving on. I was literally thinking how great it would be. I was like I should figure out a way or maybe you can pull this off of getting this episode into one of my classes and make it an assigned video that they have to watch. And Mike and I have designed a bunch of different courses that we're teaching and I was just thinking like that would be awesome, like they're. Like, let's give a professors of ours drink and wine and talk in theology.
Speaker 2:I have multiple students in my classes that would not think that is awesome.
Speaker 1:That's DUI. All right, that was just an idea. That's the wine talking. Ok, we're going to switch gears here for a second. I want you to share. I have no idea where you're going to go with this based on your two buck. Chuck, I want you to share. If I asked you what's your favorite experience that you've ever had, that glass of wine, that it just the way I say it is. All the stars aligned, the wine tasted amazing, the setting was amazing. You just went wow, this is really good. Hopefully you have at least a moment. What is that moment that comes to mind for you?
Speaker 2:All right, and I'm not just saying this because I don't like wine's not normally my thing, so I'm not. I don't have it very often, but I went on your. Is it your first communion wine co-trip.
Speaker 1:You might have been on the first, I don't remember.
Speaker 2:You might have been the first one, I think it was the first one and I had genuinely never, like I've always made fun of like what are you tasting in this? What are the notes that you have here? And so, like I'd seen on something where somebody had said something was fruit forward. So whenever somebody asked me about my wine, I'd be like it's very fruit forward. That was my, that was my go-to.
Speaker 1:That's what half the people do anyways. You just memorize certain phrases and then just use them, and as long as you know when to use the right phrase, you're golden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but at that, like that was just like I think the experience of being in community with a group of people who I'd never met before but it was real sweeping with you and Michelle and Alice and my wife was there too Like it was just a real sweet experience. And so, like I think of multiple of the times there, whether it was a wine tasting, whether it was sitting outside and having some wine, but like to me it was like that communal experience that we were having together was really, was really significant. Up in Oregon Wine Country communionwinecocom going on a trip.
Speaker 1:I'll give you an applause for that. I did not pay Mike to say that plug, but yes, that is true. Mike got to go one of our early Oregon weekends and that was super cool. Ok, one of the things that you co-founded you haven't even mentioned this, yet you are one of the co-founders of the. You're also great with words. Post-evangelical Collective. I feel like you have to say that with a cool voice. Post-evangelical Collective. This is obviously something I'm a big fan of. Tell us more about what is this? You're on the board. You're a co-founder. What is the post-Evangelical Collective?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I left the church I was mentioning like I couldn't figure out who, I resonated with my friend who said I feel ecclesiologically homeless. A group of us started just like connecting over Zoom and who are all? I had just stepped out of my church but they were all pastoring churches and we're just trying to name like what is this space? What's going on here? So we began meeting for several months to find in the space, trying to figure out who else is a part of this, who's doing these churches, who do we know, who do we not know? And other folks started finding out about that and they're like I want to be a part of it. That group wasn't ready to let other people be a part of it, so we started some other groups. What began to happen?
Speaker 2:Where there are all these pastors who felt ecclesiologically homeless, felt like they didn't belong anywhere. They had used to belong but they didn't anymore. And I found, actually, that there were three reasons that would show up over and over again of why people felt like they didn't belong in the spaces they were in before. And when I say they didn't belong that it's like a larger say, like movement of churches, denomination, some sort of association of churches that they had been a part of and had either been asked to leave or had voluntarily left because they didn't fit anymore. And sometimes folks like it was one of these three. Sometimes it was all of them, but it was the way that they were talking about racial justice in the church. It was the way that they had moved towards full inclusion of queer folks in the church.
Speaker 2:And then it was post-2020. It was stuff of like or sorry, post-2016. It was the Association of White Evangelism and Trump Selection and all that sort of came with it and it was a combo of those three. Sometimes it was just one of those three, but people felt like they didn't belong anymore. So we just started creating community for these folks feeling like we want you to know that you belong, to know that you're not alone, to know that you're doing good and beautiful work in the world. That's needed.
Speaker 2:See if we can learn from each other, share resources with each other and let's see in 2021, we put together a little gathering that we genuinely had thought 20 people would come to, maybe 25, that we'd sit around a few roundtables and it'd be pastors of these churches and use post-Evangelical, because they had been shaped and formed by Evangelicalism mostly, particularly by White Evangelicalism, but felt like they no longer fit there anymore, and so we thought we'll get 20 or 25 people together, we'll have some roundtables, sit around and share, learn from each other, build some relationships, and it'll be really beautiful. And 120 people ended up showing up and we realized, oh gosh, there's something that's happening here, or, to use Christian language, like the spirit is stirring something here that we need to pay attention to. Nice, yeah, so we just started building a community of these, like churches and what's happened? So we did another national gathering last year.
Speaker 2:But the point is not to have a gathering Like. The point is like we're trying to find ways to create a sense of belonging, so for pastors to be a part of, like a larger community, to have a way to share resources because, like, if you're thinking about leadership differently, there's not a lot of resources for that. If your theology has evolved, there's not a lot of worship songs that go with that. If you are no longer using he for God and you're trying to figure out, like, how to sing songs or whatever, like there's just not that children's curriculum. Like, what do we do to not pass on toxic theology to our kids and how do we do stuff like that?
Speaker 2:So start like sharing resources together, and then there's this like huge desire amongst people to start new churches that still want to birth something new, but they don't have. What people don't know is that in the church space, in the evangelical space, there's a lot of organizations that can give you a lot of money to help you get those things going, and not just money that they can help build community around you. They can help like have people who are five steps in front of you, be able to help you figure stuff out. There's like so much that's available there's, an ecosystem is available. It's not available here. So we started building out things around those three things around building connection, around resources building and sharing resources, and around creating a space model for church planting app and new churches to be birthed in that space, and so, yeah, there's been some rad stuff that have happened out of that.
Speaker 1:You have a church search feature on that website where you can basically type in where you live and say, hey, where's a church around me that might be in this vein of thinking. And I noticed that there were five shared values that you guys again I don't know how this conversation came up, but you guys basically rallied churches around these five values and said, hey, if you resonate with these five things, you can be in this church directory. And the five are the way of Jesus full inclusion, holistic justice, deep and wide formation and a gracious posture. Just speak a moment. What are those five? Why those five? Yeah, were there originally 10? I mean, how'd that come?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it just came from the churches that were in this space, that were most invested, paying attention to what was true of them and trying to find some common themes.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't us trying to impose something, it was us noticing. And what I should say is that churches that are engaged in the post-Yongiorchal collective don't necessarily all subscribe to all of these things. So we kind of think of it as like a funnel, as like there is this wide space of belonging. People who feel like they don't belong anywhere. We hope can feel like they can belong and we hope that that's true because we want to have a gracious posture. You don't have to be in the same place as everybody else to feel like you can fit. But when we started talking about, like pointing people to churches, being able to have a space and the churches that are on there have all, we are not at a point where we're going after churches. These are just churches that have opted in, that have said that, have come to us and said like these things are true of us, we list us, we said there's got to be some common things that are true there, and so the one that is probably like would be most controversial is full inclusion, which would be not just LGBTQ inclusion, but that is like you're being mindful of people with different abilities. You're being women, can fully serve in every place in the church. All of that.
Speaker 2:The church has a posture of trying to figure out where are people being excluded and how do we be a church that includes? And so at some point we just kind of had to say, like there needs to be some things that we know can be true, that people can feel like they're walking into a space that they know is safe for them. So one of the things that we know is that it is helpful for queer folks to be able to know if they're walking into a church where they will be fully embraced or not. And I think, like I am not somebody who lands on a theology that says, like people that disagree with me on that are bad, wrong, terrible people, I land in a place of like, let's just be honest about it. So people know what they're stepping into. We're not doing more harm, and let them give them agency to make a choice in that.
Speaker 2:So there are plenty of folks that are looking for churches that are that those things are true of, because either their theology is shifted or because because that's what's true of them and they want a community where they know that they could be fully embraced in. Yeah, the others I mean to me, like they all matter a lot. The gracious posture one to me has been a driving one for me in the space of, like, there's plenty of progressive Christian spaces that several of those would be true of, but that they don't necessarily have a gracious posture, and that their siblings in the church that are more conservative, that they wouldn't feel welcomed in their church and that I would want folks to be able to be in a space where, so, like I think that, like there's, you're going to have the most progressive churches and you're going to have the most conservative churches and then you're going to have these middle two and we're trying to capture who are those folks. Those are the folks that we're most interested in kind of working with.
Speaker 1:One of the statements on the website that stood out to me as I was doing my research for this episode. You guys say we find evangelicalism's boundaries too narrow for our experience of God and its politics, corrupted by an un-Christ-like vision. That'll preach right, which is a hell of a sentence I mean. Just, I guess I need another. Okay, so what are? Let's just talk. What are some of the boundaries you guys are pushing against that are robbing the life of people that are perhaps ecclesiologically homeless?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and people probably have different experiences of this and they would probably add their own things to it, which is a part of why we kept this as broad language. This language actually came about when that first group that I was talking about that was meeting. We were trying to figure out, like, how do we, how do we use language to help people understand what this is? And we wrote a manifesto, and so that came out of the kind of manifesto that felt like, okay, people who are attracted to this language, they will resonate with what we're doing. But I mean, it was like boundaries of control and boundaries of gatekeeping, boundaries of like that. There's one right way of thinking and what's interesting is, when there's one right way of thinking, I'm always the one who has the right way of thinking.
Speaker 1:It's an odd coincidence how that works, isn't it?
Speaker 2:So I always used to like to say people would give me John MacArthur. John MacArthur is a super fundamentalist pastor in Southern California. They give me his commentary series because they didn't like something I was preaching. So they like give me one of his commentaries. And John MacArthur was like I always like to say he think that there's one right way to interpret the scriptures and John MacArthur has the right way to interpret the scriptures. He's figured it out.
Speaker 1:You know, on that note, he's a, you know, one of the probably most influential Calvinists of our generation. I've never met a Calvinist who wasn't chosen. I've 100%, which theoretically that should exist, right Like I believe in Calvinism, but I also believe that I was not the elect.
Speaker 2:I believe in Calvinism, yet God has eternally damned me to hell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm from all the ones that believe that are the elect.
Speaker 2:Well, because only the elect can have their minds open to be able to believe it. The problem is you and I are reprobating our minds, can't understand.
Speaker 1:Well, it wasn't up to us anyway.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, what can we do about it? Boundaries of Calvinism would be one of the things we're pushing.
Speaker 1:All of you jokes.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 2:Boundaries of exclusion, boundaries of a narrow gospel that's just simply about a metaphysical arrangement for your afterlife.
Speaker 2:Boundaries of not fully affirming the full image of God and the other person. Boundaries of certainty, yeah, Boundaries of a church that is incredibly homogenous and all the ways that it could be homogenous which, by the way, for your listeners who have not taken a church growth theory class, that is how you grow a church quickly. It's got the homogeneous principle and it essentially says like attracts like, and so the way that it works is if you can break down a church into the smallest unit of people who are most like each other, then your church will grow quickly. So that's why you have singles groups and that's why you have 30-something groups and you have no longer the church. That's why you have men's like small groups and women's small groups. No longer do you have a church where it's neither male nor female, slave nor free, like where you have the boundaries being broken down. Be of boundaries being re-erected in order to have people, because people feel most comfortable being with people who are most like them.
Speaker 1:No, god, oh God, please, no, no, no, no. I haven't wanted to use that sound effect for so long and you just gave me the perfect opportunity.
Speaker 2:This is the strangest podcast that I have been on. I don't even know what to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, I got a couple more questions. We're going to. This has been way too much fun. I mean this is brilliant, but it's I'm having a good time. What's the problem that you're trying to solve right now, mike?
Speaker 2:Well, since we've been talking about the post-Yvangelical space, I'll do one in that space. We are trying to figure out financial models that make sense in the space. So we're trying to figure out both like at local church level and we're trying to figure out at a larger level. I'm entirely convinced that for a there has been a lot of like, upstart things, of like new sort of network things in the church that fizzle out or that don't have much influence, and I'm entirely convinced that there has to be a larger ecosystem that has to be built in order for not only for this to be sustainable, but in order for for it to be an attractive like. I actually think that there's pastors that want to step into the space.
Speaker 2:I've had multiple pastors of actually very large churches tell me they would plant a post-Yvangelical church if we could help them figure out how to figure out funding. So actually I think there's a lot of churches that would shift in things. I think. So it's got to be a larger ecosystem which just reality of the way things work. Finances are a part of that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we're working through trying to figure out both like at a local church level, figuring out how to be more redemptive in the way that we think about money and separating out the way that we talk about money and the spiritual nature of money versus the funding of the church, because those have been intermeshed in ways that have been harmful in the evangelical church and so separating those out is really difficult to do. So we're trying to figure that out and we're trying to figure out the larger like okay, how does this ecosystem survive and how does the funding of it actually work, and how does the funding of it work in ways that are not just perpetuating old models of how funding worked? So, yeah, that's something that's bubbling up.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's a huge one in the church and, as any pastor who has tried to lead through some of these things we're talking about realizes, money quickly becomes an issue that the we'll say, the more closed minded people in your church who give a lot are quick to leverage that card and say if you go this direction, if you explore this, if you entertain this, we will no longer be funding this. And then, all of a sudden, now you've got legitimate practical issues, and so I love that. That was your answer and that's something you guys are working on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and can I just say for folks that are listening, you should know, I mean, this is just facts and it's just true. The more conservative somebody is the more money they give to the church. The more progressive somebody is the less that they give to the church. So if you are listening to this and you find yourself as a more progressive person, if you want your church, in the spaces that you're in, to be able to be sustainable, then just the reality is that you've got to step up and you have to figure out ways to to, like, help cover that gap, to make that reality. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:That's huge. What's something you're excited about right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, obviously the post evangelical collective like is exciting. It's gotten quite a bit of momentum lately, but personally, like I have been getting to do a lot more work with leaders one on one, and a lot of it has been like just helping them live more fully and it's been really energizing and they're like CEOs of you know, companies that are decently large, where they're like finding freedom to live fully of this as themselves and it's like giving new life in the way they approach their work, but it's also like giving them new life in their life and that's actually been really fun and it was really surprising to me that I would enjoy this as much as I have. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Okay, anything you want to plug for our audience to check out.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I mean, we've talked about the post evangelical collective a bit, so post evangelical collectiveorg you can find that resource of churches If you're leading a church, if you like fits in that like let us know. We've got some regional gatherings going on right now for church leaders. I'd love to have you be a part of that. And then my stuff is at Mike Goldschirthicom. And yeah, I mean, particularly if you're a high capacity leader who feels overwhelmed like I would like love to be able to see if I can be helpful for you.
Speaker 1:Mike, anything you need to drop that we didn't get to cover, anything you feel like is left unsaid. I don't want you to walk away feeling regret.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I mean, I wanted to make sure that I got to tease you about eating TGI Fridays and I feel like that was me by the way if you didn't get his sarcasm.
Speaker 1:So let me just briefly end my honor here. Tell the good people this is on the record now. So one of the things I used to love TGI Fridays has a sesame Jack Daniel sauce. I don't think they call it that anymore, it's changed or whatever but I used to love it on wings and we had a whole bunch of them in Arizona and then all of a sudden they all like went out of business in Arizona. You couldn't find it. So then I realized, is you could still get them whenever I would travel places, but just not at home. So it became like an inside joke.
Speaker 1:Whenever I would lead a team, would go on a trip somewhere, we I would always take them to TGI Fridays and it became just like this memory. Everybody would make fun of me for it and it became like a thing. Like I said, I'll be dead and gone. You guys will still think of me and TGI Fridays. And it worked because I still get like former people that were on my team will like text me a photo if they even walk by a TGI Friday somewhere, and so it literally I've etched myself in people's minds. But Mike lives in California, where they do have TGI Fridays, and so he has had the experience of enjoying some TGI Fridays with me when I've come to visit him, and that's that's why he's mocking me, for for my culture tastes.
Speaker 2:And I feel bad about myself every time. I do Every time. No, you know what? Here's what I'd like to say at the end I and I, I mean this I'm always so inspired by you, jeremy. You risk, you try new things. You and you, like you are I'm impressed with, like your determination when you try new things, like you don't just I will try something quickly and give it up quickly, and like you work through a thing. You've got this like inquisitiveness, natural determination and gosh, I'm always like, really inspired by that, and so I'm really grateful for you. I'm really grateful that we're still friends, even if we have to hang out at Fridays.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. I think people call that stubbornness and so, yeah, I just happen to be very stubborn when I do something. But, dude, I just got to tell you I have loved this episode with you. I've gotten to use sound effects that I was hoping to use. We have covered some deep and heavy stuff and yet you articulate it in such a kind and gracious and, I would say, open way that I think people who are watching or listening on all ends of the spectrum can, can appreciate, can learn from, can walk away and go. Hey, I need to process that more, and that's that's a huge gift to those who you are coaching, those who you are influencing, and salient to all of us who get to benefit from it on this episode. So, dude, thank you for taking the time, love what you're doing, love your friendship and can't wait to see you over some TGF Friday soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks, man. Are we ready to say that this is the best episode you've ever done of a podcast ever?
Speaker 1:Let's do it Like says this is the best episode. Tell your friends see you, see you next time.