The Apprenticeship Way with Marc Alan Schelske

Episode 050 – Letting God Change Our Minds —or, A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Devotional (With Jonathan Puddle) What do you do with an opportunity that comes your way that isn’t right for you? That happened for Jonathan Puddle, and he turned into something beautiful. Show Notes Jonathan’s new devotional: Mornings With God: Daily Bible Devotional for Men Jonathan’s first devotional: You are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about My Conversation Partner Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Find Jonathan at www.jonathanpuddle.com Twitter: @jonathanpuddle Instagram: @jonathanpuddle Facebook: Jonathan Puddle Today’s Sponsor Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Yes! My new book is out and in pre-order mode. Head over and check it out and maybe order a copy or three. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   So are we willing to let God change our minds? Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, And this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 50. When God changes our minds, or maybe a better title: A weird thing happened on the way to the devotional book. You’ll see what I mean. TODAY’S SPONSOR Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling For Spiritual Growth. Yes, finally! My new book has at long last made it through all of the hurdles of writing and editorial and revision and design and all that stuff. Pre-orders are live right now. And on November 15, it will be available to you. I’m so excited about this. Now, if you follow me online, or you’re a regular podcast listener, you already know I’m a big advocate for practical, doable, intentional practices that contribute to personal and spiritual growth. And that’s what this is about. Journaling has been a part of my spiritual practice for about 30 years now. And working with lots of people as a pastor, and in other capacities, for more than two decades, I’ve seen that for many people, journaling is the most consistently transformative practice. But I’ve also seen a lot of people try journaling and then give up. A lot more are intimidated about starting. It feels like a really big deal. So, I wanted to offer an easy-to-follow process that can help a person start a flexible, gracious, sustainable journaling practice that can serve over the long haul. That’s what this little book is about. It’s a day-by-day guide that will, over the course of six weeks, help you set your expectations, lay the groundwork, and begin building a habit of journaling that is specifically focused on personal and spiritual growth–and that will work in your actual life. If that sounds intriguing, you can learn more about the book at www.JournalingForSpiritual growth.com. And as I said, the book is presently in preorder. That’s really important. Why? Because when people preorder a book that does two things. First, it tells the all-seeing algorithms over at Amazon and on social media what’s interesting to people. When that happens, the algorithm start sharing it with people that we don’t even know. But the second thing is that all those pre-orders get counted as sales on the first day the book goes live. That boost helps the book become visible through all the noise of all of the other books. So, the more pre-orders there are, the more visible the book becomes, the more it can be found by other people. I would like to invite you to head over to one of the vendors listed on the book page on my website and preorder a copy. If you preorder a copy just for yourself, I’ll invite you to a special online book launch party happening on November 22. If you preorder three or more copies–you know, to give to your friends–I’ll invite you to that online book launch party, and I’ll send you a free signed copy along with a starter journal that you can keep or give to one of those friends. And if you preorder five or more copies–like for your book group, or your church group or more friends–I’ll invite you to the launch party, I’ll send you that signed copy with the starter journal, and I’ll give you an hour of my time that you can use in a variety of ways. Those are all listed along with information about these other giveaways over at the website for the book, exactly the same place where you’ll find the links for preordering. So head over to www.JournalingFor SpiritualGrowth.com. INTRODUCTION A couple years back, my friend Jonathan puddle wrote a beautiful trauma-informed 30-Day devotional called You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You. But that book is not the topic of today’s conversation with Jonathan. Today, Jonathan and I are going to chat about a weird, unexpected project that came as a result of him writing that first devotional. An unexpected opportunity came his way. A publisher approached Jonathan and asked him to write a year long, daily Bible Devotional for men. Well, that’s not really Jonathan’s audience. It’s not the kind of book he’d really use. The specifications for the project were really odd. They were algorithmically determined, which is just weird. But this whole thing turned into something beautiful. Jonathan is an award winning writer, podcast host, children’s pastor and publishing consultant. This whole project just came out of left field and I was really intrigued to learn how the project turned out for him. And more importantly, how it led him to think about some big ideas like healthy masculinity, how we see the Bible, why some of us have set the Bible down and maybe how we come back to it, where we see God’s love and whether we are open to letting the spirit change the way we see the world ourselves and God. So I started by asking Jonathan to explain how this strange book came about. INTERVIEW Marc Schelske 5:05You successfully wrote and published and got out into the world a beautiful, reflective devotional book that helps people–anybody–go deep into their own heart to understand how God sees them. After that book is out there, you get invited to write another devotional that was not on your radar, that was not the kind of devotional that you would ever have had on your to-do list. The publisher approaches you and says, “Can you do this?” So what was that invitation? And what is this book that we’re talking about? Jonathan Puddle 5:40I love that because my friend Anthony said, “Jonathan, your first book changed my life and changed the way I relate to God. And when I heard you had another devotional coming out, I was thrilled. And then I heard it was a Bible devotional for men. And I figured you had sold out.” Yeah, that’s exactly what he said to me. He’s like, man’s trying to get paid. Yeah, honestly, it’s a funny thing. I had no interest in writing anything like this, as you said. I used to run a Christian bookstore and devotionals were the bread and butter of Christian bookstores–devotionals and journals. But the ones for men are always atrocious. This project came up, and initially, the publisher asked me to write a different devotional, just another 30-day devotional. And I thought, yeah, I can do that. But they actually didn’t take my sample. And a few months later, they came back and said, “Hey, we’ve got another project, a 365-day Bible Devotional for men. Would you be interested? And I was pretty much like, “Hard pass, you guys, hard pass.” But what initially drew me to it was the intensely strict content limit. I was only going to be given around 120 words per day, including the Scripture content. And I had to try and write something on that. And so honestly, man, I took the job because I thought it would stretch my writing talent. And then, actually, you and I started talking about it. And you said to me, “Jonathan, I know you’d never read a book like this. I know, I’d never read a book like this. But you could bring something unique to this space.” And that got the wheels turning for me. So I have to thank you. I tell people this all the time. Marc Schelske 7:24Thank you. What’s interesting is now that it’s out, and I’ve had the opportunity to interact with it, I quite love it. You did something really unique that I’ve not experienced in this type of daily devotional. You know, it’s the daily devotional format, right? You get a scripture. You get a block of text to think about. And you know, you use that as your little spiritual nugget for the day, right? That’s not my spiritual practice. That’s not how I normally do things. But you did something quite interesting that I think you spent a lot of time and heart on. And that is in… in taking, both in curating the selection of texts over the course of a year, and then in thinking through what you could say that would be meaningful in just a handful of sentences, you’ve created a narrative arc that walks through a theology of God who loves humanity so deeply, that that God would focus entirely on everything it takes, through the the path of sacrifice, to bring that love to life in humanity, and the individual person. It’s just, it’s very moving to me. Jonathan Puddle 8:39That means a lot. And that is… honestly my heart is really warmed to hear that because that is exactly what I did. I essentially was like, okay, if I’m going to do this, this is what it has to be. The limit of text is so short, in order to do any kind of justice to Scripture, I’m going to have to tell a long story or maybe a sequence of long stories. And so in my Excel sheet, there is something like six or seven different narratives that I’m telling. And in my head, there’s one big overarching story that I’m telling. And so there’s a number of stories and meta stories that I’m working through. As I got more and more into it, a number of things happened in me that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. One, I actually really started to care for men. I have a tenuous relationship with men, especially men I don’t know. I have I have great, long lasting friendships with men. But when I walk into a party or a new space, I gravitate to women. I find it easier to connect with women quickly and deeply in a way that I often find men take a few times going around the mountain before we can actually have what doesn’t feel to me like a superfluous fluffy conversation. Let alone the kind of machismo and competition that can accompany so many male of spaces. But I feel like, honestly, I guess God softened my heart. And I think it also pushed me to reflect on my own journey as a man because it’s weird. Like, it’s a weird time to be a man, I think. In a moment where we are… Okay, the way I put it in the introduction is that when I was a child, my heroes were guys like Sly Stallone. But today, the picture of manhood that’s held up as sexy and good is Paul Rudd. And so, how do you pivot from Sly Stallone to Paul Rudd in 20 or 30 years, with no guide, no process? And that impacts your view of God, your understanding of the story that scripture has been telling. I didn’t know Scripture was telling a good big story until four or five, maybe maximum 10 years ago. 15 years ago, I put the Bible down in a rage. I was just like, “I know God is loving. I know God is actually love itself. I’ve experienced it. I’ve encountered it, it’s changed me. And I can’t find it in this book!” So basically, it was like, “God, if this is if this book has any significance, it’s on you to teach me how to read it.” And I put it down probably for five years. And I had a heart reconfiguration in that time with God. And when I did eventually pick the Bible back up, it was a totally different book. I get right what why people would put the Bible down. I get why people walk away from church. I get why men honestly have the worst reputation, and Christian men, and church men. We’re looking at the fallout from purity culture, and celebrity Christian culture, and Christian nationalism, and all these different things. And woven through each part of it is patriarchal religion. And like, there’s 101 reasons why I wouldn’t want anything to do with that. And yet my heart breaks when every single school shooting is perpetrated by a male, and that for whatever reason, God incarnated Himself in a male body. And Jesus shows us this completely different kind of strength, and kindness and compassion, and safety. Marc Schelske 12:23It’s such a marked contrast, right? So many Christian voices and Christian communities right now seem to be highly invested in the vision that Christianity that is on track is strong, and in control, and setting the pace for culture. And all of that also then aligns with a kind of a cultural sense of what the job of a good man is. So there’s this tension between our desire… I think, you know, any group, any people has that sort of survival desire. We want to be in charge. We want to control the uncertain. And this model that we have, both in the life and story of Jesus, and in many places in the Christian story historically, where the model is different. It’s “give yourself away,” the model is other-centered, and co-suffering, and willing to bear the burdens of other people. And that’s really who we’re called to be. Jonathan Puddle 13:23Absolutely. Marc Schelske 13:24So now, what happens for you in in these questions on the other side of that project? What did this project do for you? Jonathan Puddle 13:33Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, it showed me a lot of different things. And I love the Bible, and I love and care for men. And I’m not sure I would have told you either of those things. They might have been true, but they certainly wouldn’t have been things that shuffled to the top of the stack. One that was really great as a writer and pastor is to come to peace to this, this thing that not all scripture gets treated equally. Marc Schelske 13:59Yeah. Jonathan Puddle 14:00Jesus doesn’t quote randomly or equally from the Hebrew Scriptures. He is precise. And there’s entire books we have no record of him quoting. There’s books that he hammers over and over and over again. Growing up in a very Bible culture, there has been a pressure to–you know–balance all the seeming contradictions in scripture, right? And I lost the need to do that. And I’ve had one or two reviews of people who didn’t like what I did with certain scriptures, or they say, you know, he’s only picked the nice ones or he’s only picked the ones that make God seem loving. I’m like, Uh huh. Yeah, like Jesus Christ, who did the same thing. So it’s on him. But I’ve come to a great sense of peace with pulling verses out that I believe reflect the overarching narrative of God’s relationship with humanity. I didn’t have that piece before. But I have that piece now. And part of that pieces come from spending more and more time in scripture and actually finding those blueprints and those fingerprints and those whispers everywhere, all through Scripture. Just on Sunday at our church, one of our team was preaching about grace. And she ends up reading from the book of Isaiah. I forget which chapter, I wasn’t taking notes. But it’s this long rant from God about how he is furious with the Israelites. And he hates their festivals. He despises their offerings. And I’m kind of I’m sitting there getting a little nervous, because I’m thinking, oh, man, I hope this ends up nice. I don’t know how she’s gonna land the plane on this, because right now, this is just rage God, which I just think needs a lot of context and exposition to be treated gently. But she let the text speak. And what happens at the end of that chapter? Why is God so mad? Because you have forgotten to care for the widow, and the alien living among you, and the orphan. And all of your religious performance is worthless to me until you care for the people I care for. And so all of a sudden, this scary, angry, God gets recapitulated into the literally the world’s biggest advocate for the poor and suffering. Marc Schelske 16:28Right, right. Exactly right. Yeah, Jonathan Puddle 16:30I think the spirit will do that for each one of us. In our pictures of God, if we’ll let the Spirit. Our fathers, our parents, all the authority figures that we grew up with, everybody shaped our view of God, of the Divine, of our self worth, all those kinds of things, right? It’s a process of having some of those things dismantled, sometimes destroyed, in order to get a fresh vision of what God has actually always been like. And I think Scripture is also going through that exact same journey, right? The Israelites are like, “Well, we know the gods are like this. And maybe our God is a 15% improvement upon the local gods.” You know, it’s like, don’t kill everybody, just kill these people. But we gradually get to this point, right, where Jesus is not only saying do good to everybody, including your enemies, especially your enemies, then he then he goes and dies to rescue and redeem the very people killing him. And honestly, I think we’re invited as men, as humans, but contextually as men, to look at that and go, “Okay, well, that’s a kind of masculinity. That’s a kind of strength. That’s a kind of passion. That’s a kind of peace.” Marc Schelske 17:43Right. Jonathan Puddle 17:44And I don’t see Jesus as strong and in control. I mean, the man is sobbing, and begging the father to take this cup from him. But he’s also trusting the father and saying, “If this is what needs to happen, I’ll do it.” Marc Schelske 17:57Yeah… Jonathan Puddle 17:58I mean, that alone, that moment in Gethsemene alone, surely shatters all of our preconceived notions of what masculinity is and isn’t allowed to be. Marc Schelske 18:07Right! There’s a kind of strength that is not about control. Right? We just can’t imagine that. For us, if you’re not… it’s a binary, you’re in control or you’re out of control. And yet, for God’s infinite heart, to release control to humanity, and still be God and still be ultimate love, and still be capable of bringing all things together for the good? It rattles the brain! Jonathan Puddle 18:33Absolutely. Marc Schelske 18:34We don’t have a model for that. And then if that’s a call for us, as humans… if I sacrifice to the point of death, I’m going to be dead, right? I don’t get to come back three days later to saying to everybody, “Hey, see, I was right all along.” You know, that’s not probably going to happen for me and yet, what would it be like to be formed and shaped by that vision of love, rather than this sort of power-centered kind of love, where I can be generous to others once I’ve secured myself? Jonathan Puddle 19:09So it’s a scarcity mentality, among many other different issues there, right? One of them is simply the fact that we view significance, safety, life as scarce. Marc Schelske 19:19Yeah. Jonathan Puddle 19:20And so there’s only so much going around. There’s only so much strength, there’s only so much courage. I’ve got to look out for number one, and I’ve been told that that’s righteous, and now I’ve got family and children, so I need to look out for them and to protect them from perceived threats. I understand that for some men… being told to sit down and shut up and listen to women–We’re being told that white men have had long enough with a microphone and it’s time for people of color to have their say–I understand that some men feel very threatened by that and feel very scared and I have compassion for anybody who feels afraid. It’s not comforting to have your worldview yanked out from under you. It’s not a pleasant experience to have your assumptions about the way the world works, and about the way you occupy space in the world, called into question. I preached a couple of weeks ago to church in my city. I just made this throwaway comment that Jesus was a brown skinned Jewish man. He was not a Christian, a white Christian, like me standing here on the stage preaching to you today about the church. And there was some some nods and smiles and laughter around the room. Someone came up to me afterwards and said, “What where’s that written? That was just interesting to me. Where is that written that Jesus has brown skin?” Marc Schelske 20:31Where is it written? Jonathan Puddle 20:32Yeah. She had never had cause to consider this ever. And I said to her, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s written. But I mean, everyone from that part of the world has dark skin.” And she’s like, “oh, yeah, I guess that’s true.” And then I said, “You know, f we believe that God made Adam out of dust and dirt, what color is that?” And she’s like, “Brown, blackish, even.” Marc Schelske 20:57Very, very, very white. Wery, very white dirt, Jonathan. Jonathan Puddle 21:02God specifically went and ground up marble into a powder and used that to create Adam Smith. Marc Schelske 21:11That’s right, yeah, exactly! Jonathan Puddle 21:14Right. That’s exactly right. She wasn’t snarky at all. She was sincere. And she was like, “Oh, I’ve never I’ve never thought about that.” I guess that there are many people, and men especially, who I think if they’re honest, could say “I’ve never had cause to think about this, never had cause to really acknowledge that. I’ve been fed a sack of lies about what it means to be a man, and what power means, and what control means, and what strength means. And that maybe I have been, at best naive, maybe ignorant. And maybe for some parts of my life willfully ignorant.” Yes. Because it’s a fear. So be a man and deal with the things that scare you. Marc Schelske 21:58Yes, yes. That’s, that’s part of mature humanhood. That’s right, facing those difficult things. Learning to accept the truth for what it is. Yes. All right. I’d like to hear a little bit about on the other side of this project, maybe what’s been surprising to you. Jonathan Puddle 22:17The very first piece that makes me smile and surprised is the number of reviewers I’m seeing on Amazon and elsewhere who are saying, “Oh, yeah, this is so helpful. It’s a perfect length. Thanks, man.” Like I don’t… clearly, the publisher knew what they were talking about with busy men needing something quick and simple. Like you said, I’m not that kind of guy. I like to sit for half an hour or an hour in contemplative silence and explore the mysteries within. Turns out, we’re perhaps not typical, Marc. Marc Schelske 22:48We’re the weirdos! What? Jonathan Puddle 22:50That’s been really amusing. I think the thing that really blesses me is a number of men and women, some of whom are in full-time ministry roles, or who have been in full-time ministry roles have written to me and said, “This feels like a way that I could get back into the Bible. This feels like I could feel safe in the pages of Scripture again.” And I think “safe” is a loaded word. Before I kind of began to learn about trauma… You know, we always laughed and bragged about how God isn’t safe. You know, like, there’s a line in Narnia, I think in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where he’s like, he’s not a tame lion, or he’s not a safe line, but he’s a good lion. So Safe is a loaded word, in the sense that God is certainly not safe for the long-term survival of our false identities. Marc Schelske 23:46Mmm, yes. Jonathan Puddle 23:47God will gleefully provoke our false self into dissolution. But in terms of whether God is safe, I can come to God and I’m not going to be shamed. I’m not going to be yelled at. I’m not going to be abused. I can comes in with all of my garbage and offer it up before him. And like the father in the prodigal son, before I can even finish my tale of unworthiness and woe, God says, “Sorry, I’m just gonna pause you there, because we’re going to have a party because this is where you belong.” So in that sense, God is profoundly safe. And, and what some people are saying to me is that they feel safe coming back to Scripture, because of the way I’ve offered some of it. So that’s really special. That’s a real honor. Marc Schelske 24:39A conversation you and I had back when this was just a concept that you were knocking around, was, wouldn’t it be interesting if the weird algorithmic formula that led to this invitation to write this book was in some way a tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit to get life and truth and light and freedom to people that might not find it otherwise. Jonathan Puddle 25:12Totally! I mean, I start with the presupposition that God is real. I follow that with the presupposition that God is good, and that God is present in all things. And if those three are true, then we can trust God to just draw us to God’s self through anything and everything. I was raised being taught those three things, in word, but in deed and culture, the space that I grew up in communicated a fragility to God’s tolerance of us. Marc Schelske 25:53Yes. Jonathan Puddle 25:54And because of his everywhereness that kind of was terrifying. You couldn’t really escape him. And he was sort of at any given time about to be unhappy with you. But the more that I dig into Scripture, we find the terrible burning wrath of the Lord is against injustice, real injustice… Marc Schelske 26:16Right, and offering an invitation to extend that reality to others. Jonathan Puddle 26:21Yes! Marc Schelske 26:22…to be less of a participant in the injustices of the world. And to be more a participant in the liberation of the world. Jonathan Puddle 26:30Yeah, like that’s… everything I think we’ve just said is already bonkers in terms of generosity and risk, that God would offer us this, all of this! And then, to go a step further, and say, “Yeah, and you get to give it away, too. You get to be just like me.” We get to expand the community of love on this earth. We get to expand the pool of kindness, and healing, and redemption. And this story of these crazy Israelites–you know, who God chooses to bless the nations so that the nations would know what God is like–is this wild, messy adventure, and eventually Jesus turns up and says, “Okay, well, I am God. And this is how we do it. And now you’re all free from your bondages. And go and do likewise.” REFLECTION Marc Schelske 27:31 Go and do likewise. That’s what I want to be able to do. To go and engage life like Jesus, in the way of Jesus. That’s what I think you want, too. I mean, why else would you be listening to or watching this podcast? But that invitation implies that we have a clear vision of who God is. That’s why what Jonathan did with this strange opportunity, this 365 day daily Bible Devotional for men, it moves me. In this opportunity, Jonathan wrestled with how to see the never-failing, never-giving-up always-and-forever love of God in the pages of Scripture, and how to present that–what is the biggest idea in human metaphysics and religion–in simple terms that anyone could follow. When we see the nature of God’s other-centered, co-suffering love, it has to change the way we see the world. It’s got to change how we think of gender roles and power dynamics. It’s got to change how we think about privilege and wealth and seeking security. It’s got to change what we imagine the church ought to be up to, and how we are going to interact with people who are not like us, even people we disagree with. When we see that God is good, that God is with us, and that God is inviting us to be part of this ongoing project of freeing people from bondage, it’s got to change the way we imagine the life of faith. Now, a 365-day daily Bible Devotional for men may not be your thing. That’s not the point. What inspires me about Jonathan’s journey with this book, and what I hope will inspire you, is that he took an opportunity that was placed before him, and chose to use that opportunity to pursue and share the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. I think that’s the calling for each of us. What will it look like for you and I to think about our lives in this way, to think of every opportunity that we’re given as a way to demonstrate and share the most generous love in the universe? There are so many voices today that want to paint God as narrow, exclusionary, demanding, belonging only to people like us. And so the church becomes a reflection of that, guarding the narrow path, judging and excluding, and believing that honors God. But you don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. That’s why we’re here. You wouldn’t be watching or listening to this podcast otherwise. Those voices of judgment, condemnation, exclusion and fear are so loud. Let that volume be an invitation. It is vital for people like you and me and Jonathan to do what we can to share more beautiful vision. May you have the courage and faith to see each opportunity before you as a way to embody and share the beauty of God’s other-centered co-suffering love. Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW050. That’s right 50 episodes! I’d like to invite you to join my email list. I’m emailing about once a month these days, I’ll never share or sell your info. You’ll get links to my writing, next podcast episode, books that I recommend and more. And if you opt in now you’ll get a free little book that I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has continued to be powerfully helpful to me, as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the world we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get that book: www.MarcOptIn.com. And until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 049 – Church, Stop Acting Like a Hot Topic—or, Building a Church People Actually Want To Go To (With Kevin Makins) Why would anyone bother to go to church? I don’t mean why would Christians bother. I mean, if someone outside of the church was thinking about getting involved, why would they? What might it look like to build a church that people attend because it’s meaningful to them, not out of obligation or habit? What would a church look like that was truly loved by its neighborhood? Show Notes The Nones: Where they came from, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, by Ryan Borge Article: OK, Millennial. Don’t Blame Boomers for the Decline of Religion in America, by Ryan Borge Kevin’s Book: Why Would Anyone Go to Church? Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about My Conversation Partner Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Find Kevin at www.KevinMakins.com Learn more about his church: https://eucharistchurch.ca/ See Kevin’s short films about being human and his 60-min one-man show, “Holy Shift.” Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinmakins Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinmakins/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevinmakinsstuff Today’s Sponsor My Summer Inflation Sale – I am trying to raise some funds this summer to make up for a shortfall in income. If you’ve been thinking about buying anything I make, now is a great time! These sale prices will be active through August 1st. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, A podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 49. Church stop acting like a hot topic! Or maybe a better title is “Building a church people actually want to go to.” TODAY’S SPONSOR Today’s podcast is made possible by My Summer Inflation Sale. You heard me! Life has gotten expensive, hasn’t it? Gas, groceries, it’s all a bit much. Now, Christina, my wife, is a teacher. And so the normal gig is that our family is without a second paycheck for a couple of months every summer. In past years, we’ve budgeted to cover that. But this year, the dramatic increase in prices of essential things has just outpaced our budget. So I’m looking for some extra income. So if you’ve ever thought about buying something I make, now is an excellent time. So what could you get? Any and all of my books, my online courses, and of course for some people, there’s the work that I do to support writers. See it all with special summer inflation sale prices at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/ Summer-Inflation-Sale. Those prices will be available until August 1. So act fast, I’ve got some bills to pay. INTRODUCTION I grew up in Ohio, the American Midwest, in the 1980s. And in that place and time, everyone went to church, everyone I knew. The only question was how into it were you, but everyone went to church. Fast forward through two recessions (maybe three now), the 9-11 attacks, a pointless 20 Year War, a housing bubble (or two), and a global pandemic that shut down in-person gatherings for, in some cases, a year or more, and the world has changed. The assumption that everyone goes to church is just no longer true, especially where I live here in the Pacific Northwest. Ryan Burge wrote a book called “The Nones” about that category of people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. In an article he wrote, looking at the most recent data from the General Social Survey, he pointed out that in a 30-year time period, the share of Baby Boomers who believe in God dropped 3%. In that same time period, but just the last 20 years, the share of Millennials who believe in God dropped 10%. And in that same period of time, just the last five years, the share of Gen Z who believe in God has dropped by 18%. 18%! In that same time period, every single cohort has shown a significant increase in people who don’t attend church and don’t consider themselves affiliated with any religion at all. In concluding his analysis, Burge wrote, “I think it’s entirely fair to say that Generation X (my generation!) represents the last generation raised with traditional American religion.” He’s saying that everyone younger than me is experiencing a different culture and expectation when it comes to church than what was considered normal by people my age and older. The question of churches is one a lot of people are wrestling with right now. Especially after the pandemic sort of broke the habit of church attendance for a lot of people. People are wondering if church even matters to them? Does church contribute anything worthwhile to the world? You might jump in and say yes, but then that probably means you’re one of the deep insiders. Consider the question from the outside. Apart from religious obligation, why would anyone make the commitment to be part of this kind of community? Today, we’re gonna dig into those questions. I’ll be chatting with Kevin Makins. He wrote a book called “Why Would Anyone Go To Church.” More importantly, he’s wrestled with this in a real community with real people. He’s a founding pastor of Eucharist Church in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This is a guy who has spent a lot of time thinking about this very question. And so I started by asking Kevin why he thinks so many people right now just aren’t interested in church at all. INTERVIEW Kevin Makins 4:07It’s probably in part because church just isn’t that interesting anymore. Sorry, church! Not that it’s not, it is. If you believe unto the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s quite an amazing place. However, if you haven’t had a lived encounter with the sort of transcendence that church is pointing to, if you haven’t walked the way, the good road of Christ, long enough to see how it works and what it produces, in and of its own way, then church just to you looks like the strangest social club for people that have nothing better to do or are just struggling with guilt over their dead grandma who prayed for them every day. You know, there was a time when I imagine church was good. Like in air quotes, “good.” You know, there was a time when there just wasn’t that much entertainment. You know, it’s like 1750 and you’re a cobbler, and you cobble shoes and your father cobbled shoes. Maybe there’s one wedding a year where people get together and celebrate, but what do you have going on? One person in town has a lute and occasionally they play a song? There’s not much going on. But on Sunday, on Sabbath, the whole town shuts down. Everyone gets together at the four or five buildings nearby, there’s music, there’s singing, there are hymns, there’s a sense of transcendence, belonging, and connection. Your whole life is wrapped up in a singular moment where everyone you know looks to something beyond them, beyond the economy, beyond what they’re doing that week, their stresses, their worries. Very intelligent, well read, people are bringing these intellectual philosophical questions. Very simple people are bringing their daily concerns and their daily needs. And everyone gets together and looks at something beyond them. It’s not only the height of the collective psyche of that town. It’s also the only thing that’s going on. Church–It’s amazing. 300 years ago. Marc Schelske 6:10Right? Right. So it seems like there are two things in that description that are going on that we have to contend with. One is that for a long time, and it’s not just 300 years, it’s the last probably 1300 or 1400 years, the church was the cultural center of the community. That is no longer true. And then the second thing is that, in some way, the church is associated with a transcendent experience, and that doesn’t feel true now for many people. Kevin Makins 6:39Yes, absolutely. And you know, I’d see it fitting in with broader themes of the secularization of the West. It’s not just that people don’t believe in the Christian God, but we don’t even know if we believe in a God. And if we do believe in a god, he’s not a transcendent God, or they’re not a transcendent God, it’s a kind of hobbyist God. I do yoga, but if I fall out of yoga, the god of yoga is not going to come and wake me up in the night with a haunting message of transcendence. Marc Schelske 7:07Right, right. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no attached judgment. Kevin Makins 7:10No. Which I understand because also at the same time as what we’re talking about, the church got a little too powerful for her own bridges, and started to make a lot of strong declarations about what God was saying, and who God was that weren’t necessarily about God at all. They were about Christendom, the power of Christianity, the church, the institution, the pastor, the voice. So you know, I understand why people balk and push away at that idea of a transcendent God. You know, I totally understand that because, well, the church is often said that transcendent God is a mouthpiece and He sounds just like me, your white middle age Baptist pastor. And so I understand why people push against that. Makes perfect sense. But we haven’t yet known what to put in its place. And so we have these little buffet-style religions where we’ll pick up things that we find interesting, transcendent, and meaningful, but they don’t give shape to our life. They’re something that we pick up and put down as we desire. And that’s very different from a transcendent force–God–who picks you up when you are down. And so that direction of things! If you’re in AA, you’ve probably encountered the transcendent God, or this transcendent reality–whatever language people put to it–but if you haven’t experienced that transcendence, you haven’t experienced that sense that there is something beyond you greater than you. If you haven’t put that to the test to some degree or relied on it, If you have the privilege to buffer yourself from the suffering of life, the privilege to have insurance, to have food on the table, to have a Netflix subscription on your phone whenever you want it, if you have all that, you may have never needed to encounter that transcendent God. This rise of secularism has also come with a rise in wealth. Not that we’re rich. Right now we have a lot of wealth inequality, but our basic needs are provided for. Our lives are sort of safe; the air in our houses is usually conditioned. So we’ve been guarded from some of what might have naturally led other generations towards spirituality. So there’s what church means to me as an individual who perhaps has encountered a sense of transcendence. But then there’s also the question of what does church mean to us at a cultural or sociological collective psyche level? For us, Church used to be this–Not in all places, not all times, of course. There’s a lot of colonization and other factors, so don’t take this too far–but I think we could probably say that in many settings, if not most settings, the church was also a place of collective unity, where we set aside our little tribal identities, whether we were rich or poor, people had different intellectual beliefs–but we’d all go to church and we’d all surrendered to one thing. And so what used to function as a gathering point for diverse people has also become, in our culture and our cultural understanding, a tribal space for a particular group of religious people who are de facto in opposition to other people. And so I think those two realities are intertwined: the lack of personal transcendence, and the fact that it has become now not a collective place of unity, but a tribal place of disunity, or of loyalty to your religious cause. I think those two things make church very unappealing for someone looking in from the outside who’s trying to figure out how to be a human in 2021. Marc Schelske 10:45Well, that last part there, that question that they’re asking feels really helpful to me. If this outside person is looking at the church and saying, “How does this group or belief system or community help me be a human?” and they’re not getting clear answers. They’re seeing the church as a group that actually (some of them) spends a lot of time denying what it means to be human. They’re not going to talk about emotions. They’re not trauma aware. They’re not going to talk about struggles with mental health. So that’s not helpful. Some of these groups are centering a particular very narrow kind of humanity. And you can tell, whether it’s on the billboard or not, that this church is only for this kind of person, this group of people, this political persuasion. And (they say to themselves) I don’t want to be a part of that. They’re also saying, “Hey, I have this intuitive sense of compassion toward people around me. There are people that are hurting and this group of people is contributing to that hurt or excluding people.” And so that person that’s saying, “How do you help me be human?” is looking at the church and not seeing a helpful answer. Kevin Makins 11:54No. And I mean, I don’t even know where we begin on that one. Because the truth is that a lot of what we’re describing is not necessarily a reflection of the historic Christian church or the historic Christian faith. But we have this sort of elephant in the room, or maybe a donkey in the room—I don’t even know all your metaphors. But… Marc Schelske 12:12…both of those, the elephants and the donkeys… Kevin Makins 12:15I think it’s a bit both… America (I say this as a Canadian—you know, love you all) but you make a lot of noise. We all watch your shows. You’ve exported your media around the world. So there’s a sort of hijacking of the collective imagination at a larger scale, both in America and even beyond, around the stories we tell ourselves about church and religion. And those stories are in part reflecting a truthful reality. As you said, there is loyalty, tribalism, nationalism, and white supremacy that has snuck into, in particular the evangelical church in America. The problem is then that people who don’t know that much about church think the Evangelical Church in America, that must be every Christian… Marc Schelske 12:54Right? Kevin Makins 12:55…That must be what Christianity teaches, right? And it actually just might be a 200-year heresy. And, if not heresy, it might be a 200-year misstep. Looking at church history, we find a lot of couple-hundred-year missteps. That’s part of the evolution of the spiritual life of the church. When we’re in it, and we are so ill-equipped to know our own story–for those of us who are part of the church–and when those who aren’t a part of the church haven’t been given a place to hear the story, and we’re used to quick sound bites… Well, what are we going to get fed? We’re gonna get fed the worst stories about the church. Now, I think that the church is in a moment of reckoning, a well-overdue moment of reckoning, because so much of our theology and our structures, come with this colonialist mindset, especially in North America–Turtle Island. We started our experiment here using religious language and violence and oppression against indigenous people. So this is a necessary reckoning for us. We shouldn’t be crying that we’re oppressed. But also, it’s not the whole story. We need to look at the global church, we need to look at the story of the Christian faith in the Orthodox tradition, in the healthy expressions within the Catholic tradition, and the healthy examples of Protestant churches. In every city where there’s a billboard by some very ignorant, big brother church of ours that’s going, “Come to our church, Get this, Vote for this person” –For every one of those, I bet there are ten people faithfully loving their neighbors or 10 congregations in an inner city faithfully serving. I think part of what we have to do as we tell the story, is to try to see the story clearly enough that we who are followers of the way don’t get spun by the spin of anger and bitterness… Marc Schelske 14:39Right. Kevin Makins 14:39…but also at the same time, we need to read the times and say this is the church’s judgment for her sin of white supremacy, nationalism and getting into bed with the powers. Both those things can be true at the same time. And I think the rebirthing of the church that we’re experiencing, as sort of all the fields starts to die off here in Canada… the field is fallow. We’re gathering the seeds from what had been grown here… You know, we’re losing… more than a third of our church buildings will be closed in the next five or seven years! If we can gather the seeds and say, “What was the Spirit of God doing in this mess?” That, I think, gives us a good opportunity to plant the future of the church that is going to hopefully reflect much more clearly and beautifully the gospel, the good news, the good road that we’re trying to witness to. Marc Schelske 15:29It seems like when I look at the church landscape, there are sort of two umbrella responses that churches are making. Some churches are seeing everything you’ve described and their response is, “These changes in the culture we have to stand against, we have to resist these things, we have to use our influence and our resources to hold on to the culture that is slipping away from us.” And then there’s another group that is saying, “Look, culture is what it is, the cultural changes have happened, we have to figure out how to be the church in new ways in the culture we find ourselves in. Holding on to some of our culturally determined responses from the past are going to get in the way of our mission of being the people of God.” Two kinds of responses: Can we, on the one hand, bring back, hold on to, and conserve the culture that feels like it’s slipping out of our grasp? Or is that change out of our control and we need to adapt, adopt and improve? Kevin Makins 16:38I think those are two of the responses that we’re seeing, the two predominant responses, I might even say of that second response, there is a group that says we need to stop this change from happening (as you said, that first group) by using force, and there’s a second group of us, who are more likely to say, “We need to improve, pivot, do things with our force to make things better.” And I think that both of those are ways of being the church that have blind spots. The blind spot is that they both include us doing things. I’m really starting to wonder if perhaps our goal isn’t to do a bit less. To say, “What is happening in the culture around us? And how do I not fight that with all my might, as if this is a culture war?” But also, “How do I not try to make that culture happy and run really hard and work really hard to look like I’m the church that’s keeping up with the times?” Because, you know, I look around at the times we’re in, it’s not like people are particularly happy, Marc. They’re not having a great time. The times we’re in are making people miserable, too. And so, yes… I’m all for queer belonging in the church. 100%. I’m all for talking about critical race theory and reckoning with the sins of the past. So, if people are calling those cultural changes, I would say those are cultural changes that seem to be in many ways fruitful. But if I run out and start trying to do a bunch of things, I’m actually just as likely to get things wrong from the opposite side as I used to get things wrong from. So, there’s a certain amount of attentiveness, I think, that is called for. Life on the vine, you know? An abiding in Christ that says, “How do we pay attention to what the Spirit’s doing” and come alongside what the Spirit is naturally doing, without trying to then pick up our power, and then saying, “Good, thanks for leading us here, God. We’ve got it from here.” Marc Schelske 18:28Yeah, yeah. Right. Kevin Makins 18:28Because I think that is such a temptation for all of us. I’m preaching to myself here. I love doing stuff, you know, but this, just doesn’t seem to be fruitful. Marc Schelske 18:37When you surface the word power as a troubling word in either a kind of response we might have, it leads me to think back to where we started in the conversation about why people are not finding church helpful or meaningful. I’m wondering if one of the significant reasons is the many, many poor ways the church has handled power. When you think about all the different modes of power, whether its influence in society, whether it’s that we own a lot of property and take up space in the community and asked not to be taxed on top of that, or whether its influence through the media, whether it’s religious figures getting connected to political figures and lobbying for political solutions to things–those are all misuses of power. So then I look at that questioning person who’s observing the church from the outside. Is part of the reason why they’re saying “I don’t want to be a part of this group” because the power dynamic feels unsafe? Kevin Makins 19:40I absolutely am sure that part of why people don’t want to be a part of the church is the history of how this institution uses power. I get that and I’ll also say at the same time, I also don’t know an institution that hasn’t gotten into bed a bit with power. I expect better from the church because we know the story. We know the Christ story; we have no excuse. At the same time, I expect corruption in the church, because there are sinners in the church. Just like there are sinners in the banks and there are sinners in local politics and national politics. So, I don’t want to be so naive as to say I can only participate in something that’s pure. That’s something I’m noticing among my generation and in myself. I want to say, “Well, I’m a Christian, but I’m not that kind of Christian.” Because I want to be pure! When I went to youth group it was sexual purity. That’s how you got status in that setting. You followed the rules perfectly. Thankfully, we’re coming to a bit of a reckoning on the ways that we’ve used that kind of language. But we have not yet dealt with our desire to be pure ethically, that we want to be associated with no one who’s less than us. If you’re pro-vaccination, you don’t want to be associated with anyone who’s an anti-vaxxer. If you are a liberal in America, you certainly would not want to even be associated with a conservative, never mind at church or in your own family. And I really get why people feel this way. I just can’t shake the feeling that one of the best things about church is that you’re stuck with losers. And you’re one of them! Marc Schelske 21:23Right. You’re doing if we’re doing it, right, yes. Kevin Makins 21:26Yeah. Like maybe this is the only place where you’re gonna run into these people that you wouldn’t choose. And I feel that that is inversely sort of this jujitsu move–using this impulse for purity against itself–is the gospel saying, “Yeah, of course, you don’t want to be associated with all these annoying people, and you want to be the good kind of Christian. But look, what a beautiful thing: that the entrance into the way of life that Christ talks about is that you have to be associated with people you don’t like, and they don’t like you. If we’re going to try to love everyone… People are telling me, “I love everyone?” BS! No, you don’t. I don’t like everyone; I certainly don’t love everyone! But if I can learn to do it with a hundred and fifty people to begin, that’s a pretty good training ground. And then if I can be associated with a religion that’s going to be full of people I don’t like, and I don’t get to remove myself from my own purity or my own appearance on social media or in the eyes of my friends? That’s a pretty good place to begin loving your enemy. Marc Schelske 22:26That’s really compelling. Kevin. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it from that perspective. If we start by saying, “Hey, God is love, and being a part of the church is about learning how to live that kind of other-centered, co-suffering love, if that’s what this is really about.” And a lot of people will say, “Yeah, that’s great…” Kevin Makins 22:43We cheer! Yay! I want that. Who doesn’t want the whole world to come together? Let’s sing, “Imagine!” Marc Schelske 22:51Yeah, that’s good, but the only way you really know that you’re loving someone is when you’re interacting with someone that you wouldn’t choose to be benevolent toward… Kevin Makins 23:03Preach! Marc Schelske 23:04That’s how you know that you really love. Jesus said something similar, right? Even the tax collectors will do good things for each other. How do you know you really love someone? Well, it’s your enemy that will tell you. Your enemy is the one who knows if you’re loving or not. Kevin Makins 23:20Also, loving your enemy doesn’t mean that you need to be in close proximity to your enemy. You don’t need to be close to abusers. If you’re a person of color, you do not need to be in a church with people who are acting racistly. Let’s just be clear that this doesn’t mean you have to be associated with all these other people all the time. But maybe there’s something worthwhile, even if in stepping into a broader faith tradition that includes those you would disagree with very strongly or even those you would find quite despicable. They may even be false Christians, but some people who hold those views may be real followers of the Way. So, there’s some nuance here. I hope people are intelligent enough to tease out on their own with their own community and context. Marc Schelske 23:59Well, that nuance is part of it, right? Because the thing about purity culture is there’s no need for nuance. I’ve got a line. You’re on one side of it or the other. I can apply that methodology to any belief system or any particular stream in Christian heritage. Nuance isn’t just saying the whole world is gray. Nuance is saying that love requires me to have empathy for people anywhere in relationship to the line I’ve drawn. Maybe even to the question of if that line is necessary. That empathy is where the nuance comes from. So yes, a church that’s built on love doesn’t mean it’s a church where abusers get a free pass. In fact, that is not loving, right? It’s the nuance to have empathy for everyone in the conversation and to think carefully through what it looks like to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ in those many particulars. Bearing the burden of an abuser is going to look one way. And that’s going to be different than bearing the burden of the person who has been abused. Kevin Makins 25:15And each local community is going to have to discern how that is faithfully lived out. Which cares, which people are going to… even if you say we want to lean towards victims, great, but you can have also different groups of victims that overlap. For example, where somebody who’s a refugee from another culture and someone who’s a sexual minority may not see things eye to eye, even though they have both suffered. This is the wisdom of Christ that we need. Every community has to discern this in its own local context. Even if these congregations are doing a good and faithful job… if I look at a church in the Deep South, I’m gonna think they’re crazy, no matter what they believe. The world they inherit is so different from mine. The powers and principalities that have shaped them are so different than mine, and we each are going to have blind spots. And so you know, we need to allow ourselves to relax a bit and say, “I’m just such shaped by my culture as anyone else is.” How are we going to get through this, if we’re all shaped by our own cultures? The only way is, as you said, the rule of love. These are schools of love, where we learn to love those who are just different from us so that we can be in contact with them. And in that relationship, bridge the gap. Marc Schelske 26:25That is so interesting to me if I think about the fact that real love requires me to pay attention to particularities. I parent my two children differently, because they’re different human beings, and they have different needs. If I expand that principle, which we intuitively agree with, all of a sudden, I can see that the sort of franchising of Christian culture across the globe–this sort of declaration that the way church looks, the way we articulate theology, the way we do Christianity is what needs to happen everywhere. That a church in Nashville needs to look like a church in Portland. That assumption, which has implications for church practice, ecclesiology, applications of theology, and even the metaphors that we use to articulate theology—that assumption is, maybe on the face of it, a denial of the nature of love. Kevin Makins 27:24Yeah, man! Or at least the nature of incarnation. You know, how does the spiritual church manifest physically? I talked about this in my book in a much less wordy way. In one of the chapters about trying to plant a church in the city that I was born and raised in and love, and how it had to grow up like an organic seed from the soil, and we needed to give it space. We didn’t church plant with a big budget, not because we didn’t have the money (although we didn’t have the money). But we also church planted the way that we did simply because we didn’t know what it was yet. We bought a building a couple of years ago and I thought I knew what to do with it, and my congregation graciously said, “We don’t think we should do anything for at least a year. We don’t even know what it is.” And as you were talking about earlier, about force and the church saying we either need to stop this cultural thing or we need to rush it ahead. No, no, no! Just see what it wants to be and look for the spirit. Yeah, the spiritual church is going to be universal, loving your enemies, down is the way up, a life that is lived in secret, letting things come to you–all these beautiful truths that are in the Gospel–these are all going to be a part of the spiritual landscape of every congregation everywhere. The Creeds are probably a good spiritual starting place for a confession, as that tries to manifest, but almost everything else is going to be as unique as the place that it is and that maybe that’s a gift. Maybe that’s actually necessary. And maybe the thing that scares me most about what we’ve done with the church is this photocopying reproducing a particular manifestation of church. And we all know what happens if you photocopy a photocopy. Or if you photocopy a photocopy of a photocopy. Maybe part of our quest to master church, make it look the same way, maybe that’s actually what’s backfiring on us right now, as you were talking about Mark. That we actually photocopied one vision of the church so many times that it became unappealing. It was no longer able to be seen for what it was. Maybe there was a particular kind of church that worked in a particular kind of context, but now that church is being sent everywhere. And when that’s all over the news, all over social media, and all the bad fruit of that’s being revealed, and there are no other kinds of visions of church, then maybe it’s no surprise that that bad photocopy is going to start falling apart. Marc Schelske 29:46I think about how in our world, globalization and constant access through social media homogenizes things in a way that at first is really exciting, but then at some point starts to feel hollow. We’ve got a local pan-Asian fast food chain called Panda Express. That’s not… Kevin Makins 30:12I’ve had Panda Express! Marc Schelske 30:13Okay, so it’s fine. Kevin Makins 30:16Yea, it’s like a nice photocopy of a photocopy. Marc Schelske 30:18People love it, but it’s not anything in particular. It’s not a particular Asian culture’s cuisine. It’s sort of Asian themes that have sort of been filtered through this corporate lens. You get it and it’s fine. It’s not great. It’s not expensive. It’s available. But what’s happened is that the particularity of Thai cuisine and Japanese cuisine and Indian cuisine, the particularities have been filtered out and it’s been made very, very sort of what they would probably call accessible, as a good thing, but the uniqueness of the location has been stripped away. And I think that’s a part of the struggle the church is facing. Here in Portland, one of our current biggest things that people are so excited about and proud of is food carts. What makes a food cart exciting in comparison to a chain restaurant is its particularity. It’s a couple of people making one thing they’re really good at making. They love making it and they make it the best that can be, and they just made it thirty seconds before you got it and you eat it. And it’s so much better than going to the chain restaurant where everything came out of a freezer pack. Kevin Makins 31:36It’s completely true. You know, in Hamilton, a lot of my friends run small businesses, small food stuff. And you know, if half the city doesn’t like what they’re making, they don’t care, right? Because they’re not making it to keep people happy. They’re making it because they think it’s really good. And those that love it, it, love it. It’s the highlight of their week if they get to go out and eat there. And so you can see how particularity… you can’t recreate it in any other place. You have to go to it. It’s a unique manifestation of something true. And that’s gorgeous. The only problem is everyone I know that runs a local restaurant is nearly broke and tired all the time and that raises questions about business culture. The culture we’re in does not want them to do that. You know, it doesn’t it doesn’t work. We’re too dehumanizing of a culture. And I’d say the same thing is true with church. Why, why are all of these churches singing the same songs? What the hell are you doing? They’re not even good ones! If you’re gonna sing all the same songs, make them old! Or pick up one or two classics, don’t pick whatever’s new this week, like you’re a hot topic! Marc Schelske 32:46Right. Kevin Makins 32:48I don’t mean to poo-poo on churches. Everyone’s just trying their best. But… Marc Schelske 32:55Let me interrupt, though. I think we’re on to an important question here. Because the issue is this. It’s easy in a system where the engine of the system is that we got another service this week. We’ve got to go, we have to keep moving forward. We have a certain amount of income we need to make to pay our bills and pay our staff. Let’s keep cruising. In that system, it’s easy to take the top 25 songs from CCLI and just drop them into the Planning Center. Your musicians get the charts, and boom, you go. Sitting down with your local musicians and saying, “Let’s write a song that speaks to the moment we’re in, that talks about what God is doing in this community among these faces” That takes way more time and effort and pain than pulling number four off the CCLI list and having your musicians do a great cover of it. Kevin Makins 33:44But it’s not just the songs. It’s the whole model. If you’re in that large church model, if you’re in that kind of setting, just sit for 20 minutes and ask God, “Is this okay?” Ask your soul, “Is this okay by me?” and just see what you think. If you’re finding that that system is fruitful and that system is actually serving and honoring God and creating a church that is more and more, over time, becoming a unique manifestation of the kingdom, then keep going. And if you know there are things you could do to slightly shift the culture in a different direction, away from becoming more homogenized and towards becoming a unique manifestation, then just take the next step. You don’t need to do everything; just take the next step. After that happens, take a look and see what you got. For people then who are maybe in smaller congregations or looking to church plant, I would say just then do as little as possible, Force-wise. Make as few big decisions as possible right away. Let things grow slowly and organically. It probably means that your three-year plan with the budget dropping 33% every year from the grant, that’s done. Just get rid of it. Don’t take money from anyone for the church plant. Don’t take any money. If you’re going to church plant and you need a salary raise some money like a missionary. Get people to give to you because they believe in you. But don’t let the church take a dime. Let the church grow into what it’s meant to be. That might be 15 people in a living room. That might be a thousand people on a Sunday. I don’t know. That’s God’s business in your place. Just don’t decide what it is in advance. I really think we’ve just got to shift from trying to pay for churches to start to just paying our missionaries to be missionaries, and letting churches become the churches that they’re meant to be so that we don’t have to try to make them something they’re not. Marc Schelske 35:29Yes. Right. So I want to tie some threads together. This plea that you’ve made, which is just so intriguing, countercultural, and intuitively feels right to me–I want to tie that back to our starting conversation about the person who’s saying, “Why should I go to church?” One of the threads that surfaces for me is this idea of a church being able to be particular to its location, to where people are at, to what’s going on in that neighborhood. If the church was more responsive to that, more open to that, would more people say, “I’m intrigued, I’m interested?” Let’s push into that space. How might that model of church begin to speak more meaningfully to the folk who are asking the question, “Should I go to church or not?” Kevin Makins 36:22So, let me give you another metaphor here that I think will speak to your Portland heart: Coffee shops. We’ve always had Tim Hortons in our neighborhoods, which is a very affordable, cheap coffee shop chain. The people that love it, love it, then there was Starbucks. They come into town and people go, “Ooh, Starbucks!” It’s exciting. There’s a lot of energy and hype around Starbucks. People were lining up in the early days, but then you just start realizing is Starbucks isn’t actually unique at all. Every one of their sites looks the same. All their Christmas decor looks like it’s been a photocopy of a photocopy. It feels produced, too produced. And then you’ve got the neighborhood coffee shop. In Hamilton is a spot called The Canon. I mentioned it in my book a bunch because it was started by a woman from our church. We were starting the church around the same time. This coffee shop paralleled our church so beautifully. We were both broke and scrappy. When they opened, they had a pew from the church building that they had painted. The floors were beat up. Not everyone went, but everyone appreciated that it was there, because it was a genuine reflection of that neighborhood. I suspect if the church is going to see itself through that metaphoric lens, we should be asking, “What kind of coffee shop are we called to become?” And are we able to be clear about that? If we’re gonna make a church that is going to be able to speak in a secular post-Christian culture, it’s going to need to be one where the people don’t just go to church, but they are the church. It’s about more than just the coffee. And then those who don’t go to that church are really glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody. REFLECTION Marc Schelske 38:01 I recorded this interview with Kevin almost nine months ago, and the troubles that he and I talked about have only gotten worse. Political polarization, and the way that Christian Nationalism has become an explicit part of many Christian conversations and even churches, has pushed even more people out of desiring to be part of the church. There’s a real tension right now about whether Christianity in America will double down on power and control at any cost, or whether we will set that temptation down in favor of the humble, other-centered co-suffering path of Jesus. The outcome, at least for the next few years, is by no means certain. So the question of why church matters and what it looks like, is even more crucial. As I listened back to our conversation, I gathered together some of our ideas and insights into a picture of what a future church might look like that is winsome, engages people where they are and aligns with Jesus’ other-centered co-suffering way. What could church look like in the culture we find ourselves in today? What would it take for church to matter to people who aren’t deep on the inside? Now, these ideas are not about doctrine, at least not on the surface. They’re about practice. But make no mistake, our practice, our church structures, and the way we do things, all grow out of our beliefs and principles. So see if some of these ideas resonate with you. The Church of the future needs to let go of operating by force and power, and instead, choose a way that is marked by love and consent. This church would do less. It would be less driven to produce programs and instead spend more time listening–listening to God, listening to its members and participants, and listening to the world around it. This church would be willing to be honest about the past, willing to admit when it’s done harm or contributed to harm. Most importantly, this church would rush toward making things right rather than rushing to circle the wagons to protect an image or an institution or a leader. This church would feel less like it’s trying to build a new “cool kids table,” instead opting for radical and generous inclusivity. This church would focus less on building big crowds where many people listen to the voices of a few and opt for nurturing smaller community spaces where everyone’s voice can be heard. The expectation would be that God speaks through the community, not just through a couple of elevated leaders. This church would double down on loving service, letting go of programs and outreach that come with strings attached or some expectation of conversion or contribution. This church would set aside rigid purity culture, where people’s value and even their ability to participate are measured on some scale of proper behavior or even uniform belief, choosing instead a path of generous welcome where nuance is expected and people don’t have to hide who they are. This church would let go of its addiction to looking like the latest, biggest, famous, franchised expression of Christianity and instead prefer local in particular, following the Spirit into authentic manifestations of community. More food cart, less chain restaurant. This church would set aside the model of religious content programming and move toward being a practical school of love. At the end of our conversation, Kevin talked about an incredible possibility. A church like this would make such a positive difference in the community that even the people who don’t go there would be glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody. That’s a vision that moves me. Does it move you? If it does, understand that this vision comes with a homework assignment. That assignment? If you and I wish that church was more like what I just described, then you and I have to consider what we might do to bring that about. How will we serve? What kind of leaders will we support? Are we willing to be less comfortable as the church becomes less about us and our preferences? Will we invest time and heart and even cash In churches that look like this? The way God seems to have chosen to do things in our world means that God’s work in the world happens only as people respond to the nudge of the Holy Spirit. And that means you and me getting involved. May you see your role in bringing this kind of vibrant church community to life and may all of us have the courage to follow Jesus into this kind of other-centered co-suffering community. Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW049. There you’ll find Kevin’s website, a link to his book, “Why Would Anyone Go To Church,” and links to some of his other creative work: some short films on being human, and a 60-minute one-man show called Holy Shift. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. I usually email about once a month. This amazing email includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend for your spiritual journey, and a little bit of a catch-up with what’s going on in my life. Opt in and you’ll get a free little book called “The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.” That sounds useful, doesn’t it? This short read will teach you a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I have faced the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. Subscribe and get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com. Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 048 – Empathy Is Not a Sin (With Becky Castle Miller) Recently a number of Christian leaders and teachers have been making waves saying that empathy is a sin–or at least something that good Christians need to be very careful with. Why would they say this? What do they get out of it? And why should you be concerned if you hear this line of thinking? Show Notes Following King Jesus by Scot McKnight and Becky Castle Miller Check out Seminary Now, where Becky works. One source on Calvin’s letter justifying the murder of Servetus: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.xvi.xxii.html Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about My Conversation Partner Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental, and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern Seminary with a master’s in New Testament Context, studying with Dr. Scot McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She is working on a new book about Jesus’s emotions. She, her husband, their five kids, and cat returned to the US after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She is presently the Program Manager for Seminary Now. Becky writes on Medium: https://medium.com/wholehearted Twitter: @bcastlemiller Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beckycastlemillerblog/ Today’s Sponsor The Wisdom of Your Heart – This book debunks several myths about emotions that are often taught in church, presents a healthier theology of emotions, and our best current understanding of what emotions mean when we have them, and how we can learn to hear wisdom in them. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   Hey friends, I’m Marc Alen Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 48. Empathy is not a sin–and anyone who tells you so is trying to control you. TODAY’S SPONSOR Today’s podcast is made possible by The Wisdom of Your Heart. We’re talking about empathy today and that means we’re going to touch on the world of our emotions. This is a subject close to my heart. I spent a lot of my life deeply disconnected from my emotions and it costs me gravely. You can hear the story of my recovery in my book, The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Power and Purpose of Your Emotions. In this book, I also debunk several myths about emotions that are often taught in church, I present a theology of emotions, and I talk about our best current understanding of what emotions mean when we have them and how we can learn to hear wisdom in them. So, if today’s conversation is helpful, or if you’re unpacking difficult emotions from your past, or bad emotional teaching from the church, I invite you to check out The Wisdom of Your Heart. It’s available in all the book places. Learn more at www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com. INTRODUCTION In the past couple of years, the strangest controversy has emerged and it’s only getting worse. It turns out that a number of pastors and theologians have been teaching that empathy is a sin. Empathy, you know, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, that? Yeah, empathy is a sin. Now, the idea that empathy is a sin strikes me as patently absurd and dismissible. This whole podcast could boil down to me saying, “No, guys. No, it’s not.” But as I’ve reflected more on this and talked with people and watched the discourse on social media, I think this idea is not just wrong, I think it’s dangerous. And some big name people, pastors, theologians, church leaders are pushing this idea. So today, I’m going to talk about empathy with Becky Castle Miller. What is it? Why is it necessary for human flourishing? What role does it play in our faith? And why on earth would somebody say having it is sinful? Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern seminary with a Masters in New Testament studying with Dr. Scott McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She’s working on a new book about Jesus’ emotions, she, her husband, their five kids, and their cat recently returned to living in the U.S. after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She’s presently the program manager for Seminary Now. She thinks about this stuff a lot, and so I asked Becky to start by laying out exactly what empathy is, and the role that it plays in human emotions. INTERVIEW Becky Castle Miller 2:59So, empathy is primarily understood as feeling with someone, entering into their feelings, and trying to understand where they’re coming from what their experience has been like. And to feel that with them, or alongside them, involves a deep knowing of the other person and a willingness to know them, a willingness to get uncomfortable with them. There are two types of empathy, cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Affective empathy is emotion-based where we’re really trying to enter into their feelings, and cognitive empathy is trying to understand the situation that led to what they’re feeling with our thoughts, trying to understand what they’re feeling. I think both of those are important. A cold, hard, cognitive empathy that’s missing the affective component isn’t actually going to feel very comforting to someone, and yet just entering into their feelings but not questioning what led to it might also feel flat for someone. So I think we need both of those types of empathy. They’re important in our relationships, because empathy, I think, is a key component to validating people’s emotions. And emotional validation is one of the most healing aspects of therapeutic relationships and of healing relationships in general. So I don’t think that we can have safe trusting healing relationships without the aspect of empathy. Marc Schelske 4:23It’s really the thing that we’re probably talking about when we talk about the need to listen well, right? That if I’m really hearing you, what that means when I say, “Are you hearing me?” is “Do you get me? Do you feel me?” The tool we have that’s a part of our brain and limbic system is what we we identify as empathy. Does that seem right? Becky Castle Miller 4:45Yes. Marc Schelske 4:45Okay. So just to draw this in then, you said… the two kinds, this affective and cognitive empathy… so is affective empathy that thing that happens to me when I am at my kids music recital? I’m sitting in the audience and they’re up on stage by themselves about to do their thing, and I just… am feeling every moment of it and when a note goes wrong… no one’s looking at me, but I feel something deep in me about the anxiety of that moment. Is that what affective empathy is? Becky Castle Miller 5:22Yes. You know your child, you know your child closely and you know your own experience as a human. So it’s a combining of our emotion concepts from our own experiences, and, in a sense, perceiving the other person’s emotions, and feeling that along with them. I know what it feels like when I’m nervous, or I might flub a performance. Our child who has learned to mirror our emotion concepts is probably feeling very similar. And so we have this shared emotional experience where we understand, to the best of our individual limits, what they’re feeling, but we’re remembering our emotional experiences, and we’re perceiving their emotions. We are really participating in that moment with them with our whole body. Marc Schelske 6:09And then the cognitive part is that sequence that you’ve talked coming to mind. I’m understanding it, I’m thinking about, “Oh, they didn’t really practice this piece as much as they should have.” And I understand there’s some cost because there’s people watching them. And so I’m interpreting the way that I’m feeling and the way that I think they’re feeling and that’s then the cognitive story about it. Becky Castle Miller 6:34Right. And emotions are cognitive. So I don’t like to separate affect from cognition, because they’re all part of the same process. But cognitive empathy is what else you know about the situation or learning about the situation. You know that the person sitting next to them in the orchestra has just been bullying them all year, and they were afraid that person was going to poke them with their violin bow, and you’re seeing it happen. You know the backstory of what’s going on there and so you’re indignant on their behalf Why isn’t the teacher stepping in? Yeah, sometimes we need to know the story so that we can cognitively understand what’s going on as well. Marc Schelske 7:11So this thing that we’re talking about, I mean, this is essential for human relationships. It’s essential for any kind of collaborative human endeavor, whether community, church, business. We can’t do relationships effectively without this, am I right? Becky Castle Miller 7:28I think that that’s true. If it were, it would be a very sterile, non-intimate relationship, if there was no sharing of emotion going on. So, it would be possible, but I don’t think that’s what most of us want. I think we want emotional relationships. There are people who have emotional injuries that haven’t been tended to might might not want that kind of close relationship, sure. But generally, when we’re healthy, we long for intimate, emotional relationships. Marc Schelske 8:01Empathy, then is part of our capacity to connect emotionally with other people. And that’s what we’re longing for. That’s what we want. I think you and I are both saying that healthy relationships, healthy families, healthy communities have some measure of that. Why would that be a sin? Why would that be bad? Or maybe before we even go into the conversation of why would somebody claim that it’s a sin, maybe we should talk about… is there, just objectively speaking, outside the realm of spirituality, Is there trouble that empathy can get us into? Becky Castle Miller 8:37I can’t think of any. When someone is experiencing uncomfortable emotions–usually white western culture is not okay with that. Generally speaking, white Americans–that’s the culture I come from, so that’s the culture I can speak to–don’t like to see people experiencing uncomfortable emotions. So we don’t like to see people grieving. We don’t like to see people upset and hurting and suffering. So we either try to stay away from them or avoid them, or we try to shut them down. We don’t mean it to be hurtful. We just subconsciously don’t like it. And so we either avoid it or we try to make them feel better, fast. “There, there… it’s going to be okay. You don’t need to cry.” We bypass people’s grief because it’s so uncomfortable for us to see it, because we really haven’t learned how to grieve as a culture. The point I’m working around to is this: If you are not okay with people’s uncomfortable emotions because they make you feel uncomfortable emotions, empathy seems problematic because empathy invites you to step into discomfort instead of avoiding it or bypassing it or shutting it down. So, I think that people who don’t have healthy emotions, and don’t understand how to handle those in themselves or in other people, think of empathy as a bad thing because it makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do about that. So I think that there can be a perception that empathy is bad, because discomfort is bad. And empathy can be uncomfortable. Marc Schelske 10:22Okay, that makes total sense. We don’t like feeling negative emotions. We have lots of structures in our society to make it so that we don’t have to feel them. If something is going to cause that kind of reaction, a lot of times we want to avoid it. So that totally makes sense. Empathy could lead me into a place of feeling uncomfortable emotions that I don’t want to feel. Okay, so maybe here’s another possible angle. In my own work on emotion, one of the things that seemed significant to me was that emotions function in the human person as a way to get us to move, to take action, to get us to respond to something in our environment that needs to be attended to or to be different, right. Becky Castle Miller 11:09Yes. Marc Schelske 11:09So if I’m feeling an emotion that I don’t like, that’s uncomfortable for me, that I might want to avoid, or if the emotions I’m connecting with through empath, are trying to stir up something in me to act in a certain way–Now, we have the question on the table of whether I am being moved to act in a way that is something I don’t like or something I disagree with, or something that my community has said I shouldn’t do. And now empathy–which we were talking about is just a conduit of understanding between human beings–that empathy is actually serving to stir within me a motivation to act. Now I’ve got to think about whether or not I’m okay with that, Becky Castle Miller 11:57I think that empathy can move us toward the more specific emotion of compassion, and compassion motivates us to take action on behalf of someone that we feel sorry for, pity for, compassion for. When we feel that–being deeply moved in our bowels, like the Greek sense of Jesus’s kind of compassion, we want to take action–that emotion is a motivating force. So I think there’s a progression of empathy toward compassion toward taking action. Marc Schelske 12:34If this conduit of empathy is raising compassion in me, and I’m being stirred to act, what then is coming into view is whether or not I’m coming from a place where I think I have to evaluate the reason why the other person is feeling what they’re feeling. So, why are they feeling what they’re feeling because they did a bad thing? Becky Castle Miller 12:57Yes. Marc Schelske 12:57Are they feeling what they’re feeling because this is a consequence of some sinful behavior and now they’re feeling that way. And if I enter into that feeling with them, if I acknowledge it, or even like you’d said earlier, if I affirm that feeling in them, does that mean I’m affirming the bad thing that I think they did? Becky Castle Miller 13:19Yes. So, it’s very much a viewpoint that I have the right to judge the reasons that someone is hurting. Marc Schelske 13:27Okay. Becky Castle Miller 13:28And if I think their reasons for hurting are deficient, then why would I be empathetic? It’s only going to encourage them to continue in sin and pull me down with them. Marc Schelske 13:38Okay. All right. So, then now this conversation about empathy then opens up into a broader conversation that’s really about how I see other people, and issues of judgment and control. Becky Castle Miller 13:53Yes. Marc Schelske 13:54All right. So when this sort of blew up, and I began to see it happening online, one of the things that I observed is that the folks who seem to be loudly talking about empathy being a sin–or a softer version of that would be the idea that empathy is a risk you’ve got to be really careful with–those folks have a couple things in common, as far as I can tell. They are spiritual leaders, pastors, theologians, that are all sort of within the Venn diagram of patriarchalist (maybe softer language–male headship, or maybe strong complementarian.) They’re all folks who are coming from a place where their theological viewpoint is hierarchical. Becky Castle Miller 14:43Yeah. Marc Schelske 14:43I think also… all or most are coming from a theological stream that’s either Reformed, for sure, or Reformed-adjacent.… Becky Castle Miller 14:58Yeah, it’s the overlapping circles of Reformed theology, and Patriarchal, and also high-control religious environments. I think it’s those three. It’s the center of those three if you’re making a Venn diagram, Marc Schelske 15:12Okay, so if those are the folks who are saying that empathy is a sin or empathy is at least a risk to be very careful about, if those are the folks that are saying it, what’s the payoff for them? Becky Castle Miller 15:24I think it’s gatekeeping. It’s keeping that high control of doctrine and practice, and keeping people in line. And I think there’s a real fear that people will sin. There’s a lot of fear about sin in those overlapping circles. This anti-empathy strain is simply the most recent head of the hydra. Right? That is, the bigger picture of emotion control and anti-emotionalism that has been part of the church for centuries… I’ve seen in my research that in this anti-emotionalism there’s so much fear about sin. Don’t follow your emotions, because they’ll lead you to sin. don’t follow your desires, because they’ll lead you to sin. So this current iteration of it is simply, “Don’t empathize with people who are hurting because they might sin or you might sin.” There’s so much fear about sin. Marc Schelske 16:23Yes, right. Becky Castle Miller 16:24And I think that there can be two different streams that end up at the same point, but they come from different places. And one of those may be truly a sincere, pastoral desire to care for people. Having been a pastor, I know that I care for people and I don’t want them to hurt and I don’t want them to cause damage in their relationships with God and other people. And so there can be that sincere pastoral desire that I think is misguided in these cases, because it pushes people against their own God-given emotions. But there might be true desire to protect the people that you’re tasked with caring for and shepherd, and I can understand and honor that motivation, even though I think this outworking of it is not healthy. But, I think on the other hand, there are those who truly are seeking power and control. They’re using anti-emotionalism, and specifically anti-empathy, to maintain their control over what people believe and do and even to maintain control over what people feel. Marc Schelske 17:20Right! Because in that system, in that… what was the word that you used? The high control religious environment? Becky Castle Miller 17:26High control religious system. Marc Schelske 17:27Yeah, in that system, we, we want–either out of love, as you’ve acknowledged, or perhaps out of control–we want people to not fall off the rails, we want them to not enter into sin. And so we’re trying to provide guidance for that. And if everyone was just obeying with their brains, everything will be fine. But there’s this insidious culprit inside of us, our emotions, and empathy allows the emotions of somebody else, that’s even outside of us to, sort of evoke that emotion in us, and that thing is outside the bounds of the control. Becky Castle Miller 18:02Mhm. Marc Schelske 18:02Okay, so when, when this all came up, and I started reading and listening to folks talking about this, I was also at the same time doing a lot of reading in church history. I came upon a letter that John Calvin wrote in 1554. He was writing it to justify his position that people, in this case a particular somebody that he disagreed with theologically–so a heretic, but I want to put a very strong emphasis on “a person he disagreed with” because “heretic” sounds so crazy and other and weird and really all we’re talking about is someone who had a different view of a couple points of theology–So Calvin ends up being on the side that this guy needs to be executed and that indeed happens, and John Calvin writes this letter to justify his position. I read this in the middle of this conversation about empathy being a sin, and just like… the lights went on for me. SoI’m going to read this and tell me what you think when you hear this. This is John Calvin speaking: “Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death, will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority. It is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for His church.” That’s pretty serious. Now, here’s why. “It is not in vain that God banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts, that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease. In a word, he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is it so implacable a severity exacted, but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honor unless the piety that is due Him be preferred to all Human duties, and that which his glory is to be asserted, humanity itself must almost be obliterated from our memories.”2One source for the text of this letter: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.xvi.xxii.html Becky Castle Miller 18:57Wow. Marc Schelske 18:58Yeah. So “it is not in vain that God banishes human affections which soften our hearts.” So, I’m hearing John Calvin say that, in fact, sometimes for us to do the right thing–and in this case, right thing is execute a heretic… Becky Castle Miller 20:26Executing people. Marc Schelske 20:28Right?! Becky Castle Miller 20:28Outright Murder! Marc Schelske 20:30Right? That the thing that would stop us from doing that, like… here’s the thing we gotta do, we’ve got to execute the heretics. And the thing that would stop us from executing them would, in fact, be benevolent feelings. human affection. Unknown Speaker 20:45Human. Human affection. Yeah. Marc Schelske 20:47Right? And so then he says, “Well, God wants us to be holy so much that God is going to actually cause us to have to step away from that. Okay. So, thinking back to that Venn diagram that we talked through, this is John Calvin talking, how does this fit into the conversation? Becky Castle Miller 21:05The scripture says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but I think right here we see John Calvin hardening his own heart. God didn’t have to do it, he hardened his own… he seared his own conscience to justify murder, by telling himself that God is okay with it. He’s searing his own conscience, he’s hardening his own heart, and shutting off the humanity and conscience that God gave him. I think that we see, to a lesser degree because we’re not talking about murdering heretics right now in the current climate, but I think we’re seeing a similar hardening of the heart so that we do not have to hear what God is saying, on behalf of the weak and hurting. I think we see similar wording or similar reasoning in more modern language from people like Joe Rigney of Bethlehem Baptist, who said, “Rightly used, empathy is a power tool in the hands of the weak and suffering. By it we can so weaponized victims, that they are indulged at every turn, without regard for whether such indulgences wise or prudent or good for them.” So, this stance is explicitly an anti-victim stance, because then the moment someone says, “Hey, I’ve been a victim of XYZ abuse,” people who’ve been taught this about this anti-empathy teaching, their radar goes off, and they say, “Oh, you’re gonna try to weaponize that victimhood to make me feel sorry for you. And I’m not supposed to feel sorry for you, because you’re just using…, you want me to be empathetic. And that’s a power tool, you’re trying to retake power by making me be empathetic. But you don’t deserve to be indulged.” Marc Schelske 22:44So the person that is objectively in power is saying to the person who’s been injured at the hands of the power system, “You, sir, are manipulating me.” Becky Castle Miller 22:56“And you’re trying to take power,” because they see power, they live for power, and they can’t help but to see someone else as trying to take what they want, which is more power. So they are projecting, they’re viewing people through their own lens, and assuming that person’s motivation must be power, because that’s the thing that’s motivating themselves. Marc Schelske 23:16Right? So any claim by anybody, any marginalized person who stands up and says, “I’ve been injured by you, in particular, or by the system that you’re a part of,” is immediately able to be discounted and ignored, because the very fact that they’re saying, “I was hurt” and demonstrating that is a power play on their part. Becky Castle Miller 23:36Yes, it preemptively prevents victims from being able to come forward out of abusive systems. You know that you have generated a ton of abuse, and you have many victims within your system, in your organization, and you want to make sure that when they come forward, no one will believe them. So, you preemptively teach people not to believe them or care about them, so that when they come forward, everyone who could help them has been conditioned not to. That is a classic abuse tactic. Marc Schelske 24:03That conditioning is actually trying to override–you know, what you are saying from the very beginning–what is a natural God-built part of who we are. When somebody speaks up, when a victim speaks up and says “I have been injured,” they are asking for validation that they’ve been hurt, but they’re also making a bid that you will feel their hurt with them. They’re saying “Do you notice this? Does this seem right to you? Will you come alongside me in redressing this?” And I would argue that empathy is a crucial part in our capacity to, in fact, do that. As Paul instructs us, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” If you speak up and say, “I’ve been hurt,” part of me bearing the burden is entering into that with you to understand it, and then determine if there a way that I can be a part of reconciliation or restoration or reparation? Becky Castle Miller 24:59Right. And in the pastoral care work I’ve done with abuse survivors, one of the most healing steps for them is to be believed and validated and empathized with. It’s so important that the first response to someone’s abuse disclosure be, “I believe you, I hear you, I’m with you. And that should never have been done to you. What that person did was objectively wrong. Yes, I validate your perception that was abusive, it shouldn’t have happened. Now I’m going to work with you to get justice.” That’s what people need to heal. If people don’t receive that it’s very, very, very hard for them to heal. Marc Schelske 25:39Right. Becky Castle Miller 25:40So this whole setup of anti-empathy is creating a world that abuses people and then doesn’t give them a path for healing. Marc Schelske 25:42This is why it’s dangerous, not just wrong. Becky Castle Miller 25:43Yes Marc Schelske 25:43Right? That the teaching that empathy is a sin is actually trying to remove the circuit that God put in place in our emotional and relational systems that empowers healing. It’s what empowers real community. It’s what empowers intimacy. It’s what enables us to actually do the things we’ve been invited to do as followers of Jesus. Becky Castle Miller 26:13Mhm. And I think that black liberation theologians, like James Cone, deeply understand and explain to us what it means for Jesus to empathize with us, what it means for Jesus to have participated fully in the life of the marginalized and the poor. Jesus not only became human, but he became poor, and he became part of an oppressed people, so that from the inside, he could transform of oppression into liberation. Those who say that Christians shouldn’t empathize are denying one of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ life and existence, which is to be in the pain and hurt and experience and alongside us. Marc Schelske 26:42Yeah… In a social system, whether it’s a church or a community, there are people who are hurting. And the way that we make a difference in that is to enter into that with them to understand–which is a part of entering in, understanding–but then being with them in it. And if empathy is a sin, then you can’t do that. And so then what else is happening is if the people that are hurting happened to be people that are on the bottom of a particular social structure, if you take away empathy, you take away any possibility of changing the social structure, Becky Castle Miller 27:36Yes. Because you take away any channel people have to try to explain and seek redress for the abuses perpetuated on them. Marc Schelske 27:45So then that’s where you said this is a control issue, right? If I can convince you that empathy is to be avoided as a Christian, I’ve just made it so that we don’t have to deal with changing the system. If there’s marginalization that’s happening, and women are being injured, or people of color are being injured, or our LGBT kids are being injured with, higher rate of suicide and homelessness, I don’t even have to think about those things. The system, as it is, is safe because the thing that would enable me to question those injuries is empathy. Becky Castle Miller 28:20Yes. And it puts the one holding the power also into the judgment seat of what is deserving of empathy. So for example, James White says this explicitly, he said, “We are told to weep with those who weep, but that assumes that those who weep have a reason for weeping that is in line with God’s revelation…” Marc Schelske 28:44Oh yea, that’s the next verse. Becky Castle Miller 28:45Right?! “We’re not to weep with the drug dealer who accidentally drops his stash down the storm drain in New York City. We are to exercise control even in our sympathy, we are not to sympathize with sin, or rebellion, or evil.” So his whole thing is that we can’t empathize with someone because what if the reason that they’re hurting is because of their own mistake or sin so they don’t deserve to be empathized with. They don’t deserve to be hurting in the first place. So that’s problematic in itself, but also he uses these extreme absurdist examples so that we agree with him like, “Oh, yes, of course, I shouldn’t empathize with a drug dealer.” This is very very specific and extreme, he drops his stash down a storm drain in New York City. It’s just it’s just as really extreme specific example. But we say “Yes, oh, of course, he’s sad because he lost drugs. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him.” But what that does is that get me to agree with him so that when I meet someone who was sexually abused in a Southern Baptist Church, and is seeking to bring her abuser to justice, I will say, “Well, what did she do wrong? There’s probably a reason that she’s hurting and I shouldn’t empathize with her because it probably was her sin.” Marc Schelske 30:00Right. And until I know, until I have enough of the situation sorted out for me to be able to judge whether or not the sadness that she has is valuable holy sadness, then I get to withhold my empathy. Becky Castle Miller 30:14Because I don’t want to support someone in their sin. Marc Schelske 30:15Right. That means that I have to, in order to have this human connection with anybody, I have to pre-qualify them as worthy. And that means my relationship to them is always a hierarchical relationship. I’m the one that’s judging whether or not their sadness and loss is worth grieving. Becky Castle Miller 30:33And generally, it’s going to say, “No, it’s not.” Marc Schelske 30:36That example itself kind of shows part of this thinking. Let’s just imagine that there is a drug dealer in New York City who dropped his stash down the storm drain. Is it possible to ask questions about that guy? Is it possible to ask questions about why that guy is selling drugs? Does he feel like he needs to sell drugs? Is selling drugs what is supporting his family? You know? Becky Castle Miller 31:01Right. What is it about systemic poverty in our country that needs to be addressed? Was he not able to get health care, and he has a million dollars in medical bills, and he’s trying to put food on the table for his kids, because we have no social safety net in the U.S.? But if we just say, “Well, he did something wrong,” then we don’t need to empathize and we don’t have to hear the hurt that led to this place. We don’t have to fix the systemic issues, because he’s just wrong. So we don’t have to feel sad. Marc Schelske 31:31Right. He did it. He committed a crime, he made the choice, it’s his fault. These are his consequences. And he should just buck up and take them and it’s not our problem. So then when when we remove empathy from the equation, basically, what we’re saying is whatever is happening to other people is not our problem. Becky Castle Miller 31:51Yes. And it’s so explicitly rooted in undermining the whole anti-abuse advocacy movement that’s happening in the church world. They see it coming for them. These men who are speaking out against empathy are having abuse cases brought to light in their own organizations, and even against themselves. And so in order to protect themselves and their institutions, they’re trying to preemptively keep the public from listening to those who bring their stories of spiritual trauma. James White is explicit. He went on to say, “When I see a brother or sister who’s experiencing what they call trauma, and I first inquire as to the source of the trauma, and I discover it’s rooted in rebellion, or sin or ignorance of God’s truth, they don’t need me to validate their emotional responses.” So he’s poisoned people against listening to those who say, “I have spiritual trauma,” right. And shame doesn’t change anyone. Shame is not the way that we help people and support their growth and change. If you shame someone, they’re only more likely to withdraw from relationship and to withdraw into themselves. And that’s not how we call people to growth and to change. Jesus never shamed anyone, he invited them and let them choose to follow. He didn’t browbeat them. Marc Schelske 33:17Okay. So then let’s turn this corner, then. If empathy is not only a normal, natural part of a healthy, functioning human person and human relationships, if it’s not only that, but then also a constructive and needful part of our faith life, what does that look like? How do you see empathy playing a constructive role in the life of a faithful Christian? Becky Castle Miller 33:45Jesus’s empathy needs to be the model for our empathy. The way that Jesus entered into human existence and knows what we feel like… to know that we have a great high priest who’s experienced everything we have and prays for us out of that intimate knowledge of suffering and the human experience. Jesus is our model of empathy. We should enter into the experience of the poor and the marginalized and the hurting, and be with them as Jesus is with us. Marc Schelske 34:23Yeah. I mean, you think of some of the key guiding principles or passages ion our Christian faith. How do you do these things without empathy? How do you bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ without empathy? You don’t even know what their burdens are, if you can’t empathize. How do you love your neighbor as yourself? The the underlying software behind that injunction is that you know about what you need, you know about your internal landscape, you know about the things that make you hurt. So love your neighbor in keeping with what you know about what it mean for you to be loved. Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you do that without empathy? How can we be Christians after the way of Jesus without empathy? Becky Castle Miller 35:09I don’t think we can be. And I’d like to try to take on some empathy for the men who are saying these things against empathy. You know, to love them as I would want to be loved. Maybe they don’t know have to love themselves. Maybe they have unhealed wounds that no one has empathized with. And the way of self-protection is to say, “Well, who needs empathy anyway?” Marc Schelske 35:34Augh… I didn’t want to end feeling sorry for those guys, Becky. That wasn’t where I wanted to end the conversation. Becky Castle Miller 35:41Sorry for making you feel empathy! Marc Schelske 35:47Okay, all right. So on the one hand, I can stand up and boldly say that gaslighting around empathy is a method of control. But on the other hand, that I have to think about whether I am participating in that? And why would somebody be in that position? What would make you feel so desperate, (John Calvin!) as to say that you don’t want anybody thinking about the choices you’ve made according to their emotional sense of empathy? You don’t want them using that standard to judge you. Okay, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s gotta take empathy. REFLECTION Marc Schelske 36:46 Are you kidding me? Did you see what Becky did there at the end? She asked me to have empathy for these preachers who are using emotional manipulation to control other people. Was she wrong to do that? Is this some weird both sides perspective? No. Becky was simply asking me to live up to the calling of Jesus. She’s asking me not to abandon empathy as I relate to people, even people I disagree with. If I buy into the message that empathy is a sin, then I get to write people like this off. I get to dehumanize them, I get to stand in judgment over them without any nuance or concern. But if I engage my God-given empathy, then I have to wonder about their story and why empathy is so frightening to them, and what it is about their worldview that leaves them in so much fear. If I happen to have a relationship with someone like this, that gives me a basis for interacting with them in a compassionate way, perhaps even an angle from which I can invite them to something better. And if I don’t have a relationship with someone like this, thinking empathically about them enables me to be better prepared to love the people in my own life and ministry. It shows me why it’s important to listen first, why it’s important to believe victims when they share their hurt. It shows me why it’s important that we think not only about individual sin and struggle, but also about the sin embedded in our systems and in our organizations. I don’t think it’s possible for us to follow Jesus well without empathy. If someone tells you different, pay close attention. They may be trying to distract or control how you feel. And that may be an effort to keep you from hearing the voice of Spirit, calling you to greater love, more inclusive hospitality as you follow the way of Jesus. May you see the world through Spirit-inspired empathy, so that you can love more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW048. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. Usually just one email a month that includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend and more. You’ll get a free ebook PDF when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In that I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the time we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get my email and get this little book at www.MarcOptIn.com. Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 047 – Don’t Choose Shallow Formation (With Rich Vellodas) Does our faith enable us to be “a good gift” to our neighbors, even the neighbors we disagree with? Many Christians, it seems, are living in ways that contradict the core ethic of our faith loving our neighbors as ourselves. What is going on? It seems like we are witnessing a mass failure of discipleship. Why is this happening and what can be done about it? Show Notes The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformational Values to Root us in the Way of Jesus by Rich Vellodas Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazerro Rich Vellodas preaches about Racism as it is manifested in human structures and institutions. Worth your time. Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about Rich Vellodas Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church with more than seventy-five countries represented in Elmhurst, Queens. Rich holds a Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary. He enjoys reading widely, preaching, and writing on contemplative spirituality, justice-related matters, and the art of preaching. He’s been married to Rosie since 2006 and they have two beautiful children, Karis and Nathan. His Website: www.RichVillodas.com Twitter: @richvillodas Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rvillodas Today’s Sponsor The Writers Advance – A unique twice-a-year writers weekend that’s focused on writing. No break-out sessions. No listening to experts talk about what worked for them. No networking. No social media. Just a small group of writers encouraging each other to write. One-on-one coaching and group feedback available. Just a few spots remain for the April weekend. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   Does our faith enable us to be a good gift to our neighbors? Even the neighbors we disagree with? Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is the Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 47. Don’t choose shallow formation. TODAY’S SPONSOR Today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer, and I love supporting writers. Three years ago, I created the writer’s advance. It’s a writer’s weekend. And it’s been crafted to be exactly what writers need to push forward their current project. It’s not about networking or listening to experts speak or trying desperately to get an agent or an editor to notice you. It is about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you. Now, at every event I send all the participants an anonymous survey. You can read their words on the event website, but I want to read a few of their comments right now because they tell the story. They’re writers who have come to this event. And this is what they have to say. This is from the anonymous survey from the most recent event in November of 2021. “This was an amazing weekend. The hosting was on target, the venue was peaceful, and offered more than I expected. I love the pacing. Often retreats such as these are nice getaways with lots of listening to people speak. And I really appreciated the time to write and to wind down with points of contact along the way. Mark is a great host and a guide and provides just the right amount of encouragement and accountability. I’m so looking forward to the next one.” Here’s another anonymous survey review from a previous event. “This weekend reenergize my commitment to my writing craft. It was an excellent blend of accountability, flexibility, creativity and guidance. I felt supported as a human and as a writer throughout the whole time.” Sometimes people love the event so much that they will include their names in their comments. So here’s a couple of those. “This event was a gift to myself. I needed the focus time and also found direction from the coaching. I came away with a renewed passion for the stories I am writing for my family and some concrete ways to move forward.” That’s from Carol H. One last one. This is from Tara Rolstad, a professional speaker who has attended the Writers Advanced twice. Her words: “I’ve come to see the writers advanced as a gift I can’t afford not to give myself. I got more work done this weekend than I have in months. And to do it in a gorgeous peaceful, comfortable location in the company and support of smart, quality people like Marc attracts? Invaluable! I’m deeply grateful.” Well, maybe you are one of the smart quality people that I attract! Or maybe you love a writer and you would love to give them an incredible gift to help them move their project forward. There are presently eight spots left out of a total of 14 for the spring Writers Advance weekend coming up April 1-3, 2022. For more info, head over to www.TheWritersAdvance.com. You can learn all about it, you can sign up there, the link will be on the screen, in the show notes, and underneath the YouTube video. INTRODUCTION Recently, I was chatting with a small group of local pastors. They were from churches that were really different–small, very large, urban, rural, different denominations. It was the first time I had seen any other pastors in person since the start of the COVID pandemic. And we were talking about everything that we’ve been through as a result. Basically, we were telling war stories. Even though our churches were so different, our stories were very similar. Church members were angry because of the way their church was handling COVID. Angry if the church was online, angry if the church was in person, angry if they weren’t enforcing masks, angry if they were. And then there was tension over the pastor’s perceived political position. Even the most general call for compassion and care for vulnerable people would get you labeled as too liberal for the denomination or one guy even got called a socialist. I know these pastors, all of them, all of them desire to protect vulnerable people, you know–like Jesus did. And almost all of them had church members who took offense at that. I’ve heard the same kinds of reports from pastors across the country. It seems like there’s something happening in the wider Christian church right now that is not good–by not good. I mean, not like Jesus at all. Now, I know, I know there are good Christians and good churches and good pastors. Maybe you have one of those great churches or you are one of those great pastors. That’s all true. And yet, can’t you see that there is a sickness bubbling to the surface in the modern Christian church? Among Christians, we’re seeing increasing science denial, COVID denial, dogmatic refusal to take the vaccine or wear masks or do anything to protect vulnerable people in our communities. We’re seeing wide support for intentionally cruel immigration policies, and an almost rabid pursuit of getting anti-abortion laws on the books regardless of the cost or who gets hurt, with a very little parallel concern for sustaining the life of already born people. There’s also a weird, deep resistance to talking about the historical reality of racial oppression and exploitation in our countries. Even an unwillingness to take seriously the issue of sexual abuse of women and children in church communities and by church leaders. Come on, Christians are ostensibly people who’ve been taught to love their neighbors as themselves. These are people who’ve heard Paul’s words in church that to bear one another’s burdens is to fulfill the law of Christ. These are people who’ve been taught about God’s grace and forgiveness, people who read Jesus’ words, “Whatsoever you do for the least of these, you’ve done for me.” So what is going on? Now, of course, I’ll grant that there are great churches and great pastors, and great Christians out there doing good gospel things. But even so, I think we’re witnessing across the nation, and even the world, a massive failure of discipleship. Discipleship is that old word we use in church to talk about the process of learning to follow Jesus. And this process is not meant just to teach us churchy skills like how to study the Bible or pray more. It’s supposed to change our essential values. But it seems in too many cases, that is just not happening. Early in the pandemic, my church and I read a book that offered an intervention on this front, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformational Values to Root us in the Way of Jesus. This book isn’t written by some ivory-tower theorist. It’s written by a pastor, Rich Vellodas. He’s the pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, New York, New Life is a multiracial, multi-class, multi-generational urban immigrant church that has had to walk through some of these very difficult issues. In The Deeply Formed Life, Vellodas offers five values that he suggests we are missing in the church right now, five values that the church needs in this particular moment. The book was really helpful to me and to my church. And so I asked Rich to sit down with me and chat about this crisis of discipleship. And I started out by asking him, “Why is this happening?” INTERVIEW Rich Vellodas 7:11 We’re living in a CPR world. That’s how I’ve tried to explain what’s going on in our day, Marc. In a world that is marked by COVID, Political Hostility, Racial Injustice, and the convergence of those things, CPR is leading us to have ailing hearts and difficulty breathing. And I think the past year and a half has revealed to us the complexity, the stress, the anxiety, the particular moment that we’re in is so fragmented. And the call to discipleship in this particular moment requires a vision that’s large enough, and deep enough to encompass the particular moment that we find ourselves in. Yes, we need the classic practices of discipleship, of prayer, and reading the Bible, and bearing witness to Christ, and church and all the rest, but discipleship–for it to truly impact people in ways that goes beyond the surface–It’s one that resists the pull of formational compartmentalization that we find ourselves in. And we require a new really paradigm or a fresh paradigm, at least. Marc Schelske 8:36 In the book, you talk about how we’ve experienced a shallow formation. Can you talk about, a little bit of what that means? And maybe how that shallow formation is what we are seeing fall down right now? Rich Vellodas 8:48 Yeah, by shallow formation, I’m talking about a way of life that leaves very little space for interiority, a formation that often doesn’t go beyond behavior modification, doctrinal affirmations, political associations. It’s a very thin approach. And so to go beneath the surface, you know, when I think about the various traditions, that I’ve been shaped by, traditions that I love, traditions that have helped me, what I often find is that there tends to have a particular accent. So for example, in the evangelical tradition–I use that in the theological sense of the word, not in the political sense of that word–And the theology in the evangelical tradition is often about right thinking. That as long as you have the right thinking, and you believe certain things about the divinity of Jesus, and about the way of salvation and about something related to the Bible, then you’re good to go. I mean, you got the right thinking, or it’s right–in the Pentecostal tradition, where I have spent many years as well, It’s the right experiences. Do you have the right experience? Whether it’s mainline traditions or progressive traditions or traditions that are oriented by justice? Is there a right action? Are we giving ourselves to the right action in the world? And so it’s often right thinking, right experiences, right action. There’s often in light of that very little interiority, where we’re not examining some of the larger issues from a deeper center. Marc Schelske 10:23 It sounds like you’re talking about the, I mean, kind of the iceberg metaphor that, you know, I first saw in the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality material, talking about how we have so much of our interior life beneath the surface. That metaphor was talking about our emotional reality. And it sounds like you’re taking the same metaphor and expanding it to the rest of our inner life, political identity, racial identity, culture, all that stuff. Rich Vellodas 10:52 That’s absolutely right. I mean, we…there are no icebergs in Queens, but we made that image the logo of our church. And it is, in many respects, the primary image that we come back to talk about–whether it’s our emotional life, whether it’s our political identification–the ways that we navigate and so absolutely right. Marc Schelske 11:13 Right, because we want, we want life transformation and that’s not going to be the surface things you’ve talked about. It’s not just, “Do you understand and articulate your doctrine in the right way? Do you have you added the right set of behaviors to your life?” Those are fruit, that’s Jesus metaphor, right? Fruit on the tree. So something about the tree, something about the roots is what needs to be changed. That’s where we’re headed. And right now in this world, it feels like the roots are missing. Rich Vellodas 11:37 In the world that we live in, the pace is just nonstop. And this is not just that I’m from New York, I’m in the city that never sleeps. And so we’re accustomed to this. But this is not just a New York phenomenon. There’s just a chaotic, frenzied, hurried pace that we live. And because of this chaotic pace, there’s very little time to actually take inventory of our own souls, let alone some of the deeper ways that we are to be thinking about some of the more challenging and important issues of our day. Marc Schelske 12:10 In the book, you pick out five particular themes that you’re suggesting are kind of the intervention to this to this problem that we’re facing. Rich Vellodas 12:21 That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way and I like it, Marc. That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way. Marc Schelske 12:26 We want to get down into the roots or down into the iceberg. Talk us through what these values are and what they’re intervening about. Rich Vellodas 12:35 Yeah, so the five values that I write about, and those values are Contemplative Rhythms, Racial Reconciliation, Interior Examination, Sexual Wholeness, and Missional presence. For contemplative rhythms, the intervention is we are living often at a pace that is exhausting and leaves no room for us to catch up to God. And so in order to catch up to God, we need to slow down our lives. That’s the paradox of the way of Jesus. The intervention for that Racial Reconciliation chapter is that we live in a world that’s so increasingly fragmented around racial, ethnic lines, and we often don’t have the formational language to help us navigate this. You know, to talk about race. We have to talk about it on so many levels theologically, historically, sociologically, ecclesiologically, politically. I thought I need to…the intervention is we need is to talk formationally. Interior Examination, the intervention is that we are living often on the surface of our own lives. And we’re not taking inventory on what’s happening. And so the intervention is that Jesus wants to transform all of our lives, especially our interior lives. Sexual Wholeness is we live in a culture–this is within the church and outside the church–that splits souls from bodies, as opposed to seeing the dynamic interplay between the two. And we are to hold these things together. And that Missional Presence value, really the intervention is we are called to make something of the world. We’re not just called to be consumers of the world, we’re called to participate with God in the creation of something that has yet to be seen in its fullness. That’s how I tried to in essence articulate what I think we need individually and collectively. Marc Schelske 14:28 I think the book came out in 2020. That means that you were writing it, working on it, for two or three years prior to that. So now, here we are a year and a half, more than a year and a half, into this weird CPR world that you’ve talked about. It seems like these five values are maybe even more urgent than they were when you were working on the book. Rich Vellodas 14:53 I knew there were problems! That’s why I wrote I wrote it, but it does seem like a deepening and an acceleration of the problems in the past year and a half. Marc Schelske 15:03 You know, we’re so wired up to avoid discomfort. And, and when it comes to church, honestly, what people want from church is to go to church and feel encouraged and hopeful and leave church carrying that encouragement into the world that they’re in. Rich Vellodas 15:23 Right. Marc Schelske 15:23 Right. That’s the thing that they–that may not be what they need, but it’s the thing they want. Rich Vellodas 15:29 Yeah. Marc Schelske 15:29 And so this acceleration that you speak of, I think part of what has happened is it has accelerated or made more plain, the discomfort! All of us, all of us that are pastors in the last year and a half have had to rethink how we even do church like, like the church… Rich Vellodas 15:44 Or if I wanna do it! Marc Schelske 15:48 Exactly, you know, and the expectations that church members have of what church is like that has changed. How we expect the election to go, that is changed, and how we expect our politicians to talk to each other, that is changed, you know, our expectations of the racial conversation, that is changed. And so all of a sudden it’s like there’s this rawness, this open discomfort, and that emotional immaturity, or emotional unhealth– we just run into all kinds of places to avoid facing that interior discomfort, Rich Vellodas 16:22 What the pandemic has revealed, in many ways, as you mentioned, beyond just the crisis of discipleship, but particularly related to the crisis of discipleship, is the ways that we have not navigated our own interior life in such a way that leads us to be a good gift to our neighbors, even our neighbors that we profoundly disagree with. And so, the church, instead of the church being a place that demonstrates what is possible when Jesus gets a hold of a community, and the kind of compassion and justice and love and humility, what we’ve seen in the church and our discipleship is in many ways, a sad reflection of the world. Marc Schelske 17:11 Right, right. Rich Vellodas 17:11 And so what this has most certainly revealed is, yes, that immaturity, as my predecessor would say, that spiritual maturity and emotional maturity are inseparable. Marc Schelske 17:23 One of the things that you say in this book is that the deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives. So, what I take you to mean by that is that this is not just a change of perspective. This is not like a new list of five values that I should adopt for my church. There’s something more tangible, that has to happen if this is going to be real. Rich Vellodas 17:50 Yeah, what I’m trying to get at is the shifts that need to take place in our lives are not just rational shifts, doctrinal shifts, theological shifts. I mean, we can make all the different shifts in our lives mentally, theologically, and not bear any difference in our lives. Yes, we need theological frameworks to think through and rethink how we understand the world. But if we just have frameworks without formation, we are still in the same place. What does it mean to reorder our lives around contemplative rhythms of slowing down to be with God? What does it mean to reorder our lives around taking inventory of the ways that I’ve been shaped racially, and the invitation to live a more just, reconciled, life? The invitation to take inventory of what’s happening within my emotional life? There, it’s a reordering. And so it’s not just here, check this box. Have you read this book? Have you read this article? It’s no… can we begin to talk about the foundational changes that need to be made. This is why–Marc, you know, I love what you said–most people come to church to hear good news, to be encouraged. I mean, I try to preach encouragement every Sunday. At the same time, I tell our congregation that we should have a sign in the front of our church that says, “Enter at your own risk.” Because we are going to invite you to go places and to consider a reordering of our lives. That might not feel good. But when has following Jesus been about feeling good? I mean, he said, if you’re gonna follow me, take up, take up your cross. That doesn’t feel good. And I think what I’m trying to do in this reordering is, again, trying to contextualize in some ways, what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Marc Schelske 19:48 Okay, so let’s, let’s take one of these values, just as an example. So the last one you talked about racial reconciliation. Let’s just go with that one because that one is troubling for many of us. So when you say that we need to reorder our lives, and that’s not just, you know, reading a book or hearing a podcast nodding your head and saying, “Yep, things were bad.” Like, you’re talking about something practical. So unpack that. What does a reordering actually look like in regard to that value? Rich Vellodas 20:17 It means a number of things. One of the ways, that what it means is for us to actually take a conscious, intentional prayerful inventory of the ways that we have been formed. And so for example, there’s a tool that I’ve developed called Race and Racism In Our Families. In that, my attempt was to help the congregation begin to identify–and not just identify, that’s the first step–begin to now resist the messages, the scripts that we have inherited, related to people who don’t look like us. And so for example, how did your family consciously or unconsciously talk about black people? What were the messages that you received? About black people, about white people, about East Asian people, South Asian people, Middle Eastern people, Hispanic people, Native American people? What are those messages? Who were you taught to fear? Who were you taught were beneath you? Who were you taught was competent and who was incompetent? Who’s dangerous, who’s safe? Unless we are doing that hard work and naming the ways that we’ve been formed, we’re going to have a really hard time imagining something different. And so part of our own formation is taking radical inventory: How have I been shaped in ways that are not in step with the kingdom of God, not instead with the gospel of Jesus Christ, not in step with the way of love? You’re not going to get that by just reading a book. It’s going to take community and intentionality. And, Marc, here’s what I’ve discovered. I’ve led many people in our congregation and outside of it with that simple tool. And to name the messages that we’ve received is such a difficult, often shameful–it feels shameful, because if people really admit how their family gave them messages about black people, or Asian people, Hispanic people, across the board, it’s embarrassing, and so no one wants to do it! And yet, this is the way of the cross. We are actually facing, we’re living in truth. And we’re asking the hard questions. And so that’s one of the ways, Marc, that I think reordering our lives pertains to something like racial justice and reconciliation. Marc Schelske 22:38 So then, I’m, I’m going to think… in this example, I’m going to think about my family, people that I care about. I have an example of that. I spent a summer when I was 12, I spent a summer living with my grandmother who lived in northern Arkansas. My pictures, my memories, my associations of my grandma, are wonderful Christmases, you know, the way that she, you know, the specific things that she made, the special dishes that she made, you know, going into… going to her house for holidays, feeling really warm and loved and cared for. I have all those associations. So then I spent the summer with her and in the course of that summer, what I learned was that she–in a very, sort of non-spiteful way–just authentically thought Black people weren’t as smart as she was. She didn’t curse because she was a good church lady. She didn’t use foul language, because she was a teacher at the local Christian school. But just in a way that was very matter of fact, like how I would talk about the sky being blue, she just believed black people weren’t that smart. And so now I have this tension in my gut over this person that I love, that I have all these wonderful associations with, that I think was a good Godly person, AND also was racist. And now I have to look at both sides of that picture. That process is painful, it is painful, right? I want my people to be good people. Rich Vellodas 24:06 Right? And that’s part A. Then Part B becomes “How am I perpetuating that in ways that I might not be totally aware of, in subtle ways…” Marc Schelske 24:20 Right. Rich Vellodas 24:20 So now it becomes grandma, my grandma or you know, aunt So-and-so in Arkansas. Now the question is, “That’s really sad, now, how are the ways that I’m now participating in that? That’s the hard work and then what are the counter-instinctual acts that I need to now begin to grow into to begin to re-narrate and reorder my life in light of how I’ve been shaped racially by my family. Marc Schelske 24:49 So now I’m moving past thinking about this and reflecting on it. Now you’re saying, Okay, Marc, you also have to do something with it.” What is the… what’s the reordering practices? What is the thing I’m going to do differently if I’m really engaging in this conversation? Rich Vellodas 25:04 Yeah, in your, in your example, let’s go with that example. First of all, I think it requires some level of confession. There is something about externalizing our sins. I mean, this is good Christian tradition stuff here, you know. Confession is good for our soul and confession roots us in love. And if we’re able to name certain things that have been strongholds in our lives, we begin to free those things from the power it’s had over us. You know, whatever we cannot name, we’re a slave to. And so I think it begins with confession. This is what I have been living with, carrying. And then in that case there, you know, I do think part of it now–in this case, we’re just taking a very individualistic approach to address something. And so I think to talk about racism needs to be talked about in individual, interpersonal, and institutional ways, but let’s just stick with the individual lens for a second… How much do I need to pay attention to the various faulty messages that arise on a given day? Marc, you’re at the doctor’s office and someone walks in. And you see it’s a black woman who walks into the doctor’s office, and your first thought (or the hospital, wherever you’re at) your first thought is, “This can’t be the doctor.” Because, you know, black people, black women can’t be doctors… whatever faulty message we have, or Black people can’t be a good director. So this can’t be the doctor. And now you’re asking yourself, you’re taking inventory? What is that about? Your confessing that. You’re praying. You’re asking the Lord to forgive, and then by God’s grace, you’re opening yourself up and moving towards someone that in the past, you might have regarded as some intellectually inferior or whatever it might be? Marc Schelske 26:57 Right. Rich Vellodas 26:57 I think that’s one of the ways that we if we play out a scenario like that, but this is a lifelong journey, requiring us to take note on notes on ourselves, and subsequently identifying what are the counter-instinctual habits, actions, that are required of me and it differs from scenario to scenario. Marc Schelske 27:17 You mentioned, you know, that we were talking about an individualized example and that this also needs to be sort of a larger conversation about communities and systems. Okay. Your book is about values that I think you’re not just proposing for individual Christians. They’re coming out of your church community. And I think you’re proposing that this needs to be a community conversation. So what does that look like in a church community? Rich Vellodas 27:42Number one, understanding the power dynamics. We want to be more than just what we call “a sanctified subway car,” in which we get a group of anonymous, diverse people in close proximity to each other. And, you know, as someone said, plantations were diverse as well, you know? So we’re not trying to be just the sanctified subway car. Part of that is who’s making decisions? Who shaping the community, whose fears are we paying attention to? Which values are we highlighting? And I don’t know if that happens unless there are diverse people in the room at various levels of power and influence and authority. And so in our church, for example, you know, every level, it’s–now granted, it’s a very diverse church–at the same time, we have worked hard and intentionally to ensure that at every level of our community, there is diversity and shared power. And who stories are we listening to? What are the fears that we’re paying attention to? What are the values that we’re prioritizing? And so that’s really related to identity, you know? Who we are, what we look like, but then on another level, it’s a mission, what are we giving ourselves to? As a congregation, we have worked hard over 30 years, to pay attention to the racialized world that we live in. And to try to be a witness that in the name of Jesus, a new possibility, a new racial possibility, is before us. And so what does this look like? Our engagement with our local community. Right? And you know, what, we were not just involved in evangelism, we’re not just trying to preach the gospel and get people to make an individual decision. We’re asking ourselves, what are, where are their points of inequity? Where are the points of disproportionate resources? So for example, right now, you know, our church is involved with a group of other communities within our neighborhood, addressing affordable housing in a community in which gentrification is taking over. For us, this is an issue of justice, of racial justice. This is part of our discipleship. This is part… you know, does God care about our souls or our bodies? The answer is yes. We’re saying this is a holistic gospel that we’re trying to live out. And so whether it’s individually, interpersonally, institutionally as a congregation, we have tried to work through all this. And it’s hard because these are massive issues before us. And we realize we’re not going to solve most of these problems, but by God’s grace, maybe we can touch a few. And as we work together, try to see something of the kingdom of God become more of a reality, within our local spaces. Marc Schelske 30:35 In the book, you have a chapter for each of these values. And that chapter is followed by a chapter that is practices. That structure by itself says something because it says it’s not enough to think these thoughts. It’s not enough to agree with a perspective. It’s not enough for Mark to just acknowledge that his grandmother was racist, right? There’s a deeper thing that needs to happen. That thing involves personal reflection, community reflection, but also has to show up in tangible actions. Rich Vellodas 31:12 I just didn’t want to give theological frameworks for people to say, “Well, I believe that,” or “That’s insightful, and I read the book, and you know what, maybe I’ll read it again if I have to teach on it.” For me, it was, How can this be a resource to guide people into a new way of being in the world? And it was very intentional to offer–I love theology, it’s not that I’m anti-theology. I love theology. I want theology to have flesh on it. I want it to be livable. I want you know… Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” that there is… I just don’t want to think about it. I want to be about it. And so the practices are really trying to orient our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our relationships into a new way of being. Marc Schelske 32:04 Yeah, ’cause it’s very often that in doing things, our minds become conscious of and aware of the implications. We very often live our way into theology. Rich Vellodas 32:18 Yes! Marc Schelske 32:19 Even though we like to think we thought our way into it! It’s the practices that actually shaped us. And maybe that’s part of the crisis of this moment, that we’re seeing the church engaged in practices, that when you look at these practices pastorally, you’re like, “That practice isn’t taking you closer to Jesus! That is headed off a cliff, that practice has to shift. Rich Vellodas 32:40 And you’re right. I mean, it comes to a point where I think, the more… the more I give myself to contemplative prayer, the more now my body starts…. And so it’s not… my body starts craving it… Marc Schelske 32:52 Yes. Oh, man. Yeah, that’s such a big deal. I–a couple of times a year–go down to a Benedictine Abbey that’s about an hour from where I live. And I just did this last week, actually, for two days, to go down and just disconnect from all the obligations, spend some time in silence, you know. Follow the hours, be in a place where the focus is interiority. And what I noticed as I drive onto the campus is I can feel in my body a shift, I can feel… I’ve done it enough times now, that just driving onto the campus, I feel the tone of my muscles and the presence of my mind shift, like some of that pressure, some of those obligations, some of the performance that I constantly live in, and all the other areas of my life, doesn’t belong here. And I feel it, I feel it in me in a way that’s not intellectual at all. It’s in my body. Rich Vellodas 33:48 Now, this is music to my ears, Marc, because I mean, I go to a Benedictine monastery in the Boston area, usually every year. And that’s exactly my experience. I’m there, as I’m driving up, first of all, it feels like a pilgrimage every time I’m going there like I’m going to meet God. I’m not just going on a little trip here, a little vacation, I am going to meet the living God, and something in my body adjusts to it. The question that I wrestle with, and this is why I’ve needed rhythms of this, is how do I carry this with me, when I’m back into the day-to-day operations of the world. And taking the kids to school and getting dinner and grocery shopping, I have to, by God’s grace, I need time to go up the mountain. And for me going up the mountain is the monastery, is silence, is retreats, and then I come back down and then realize soon enough, I better go back up again. Because it is so easy to be dragged down by the pace and the priorities and the values of this world Marc Schelske 34:53 Well, it’s almost like that what happens on the mountain is that you get to practice something that your normal life structure would mediate against. And the more you practice it, the more you can bring it into your normal life structure. Rich Vellodas 35:05 Yes! Marc Schelske 35:06 I think what you’re saying is, you know, contemplative rhythm shouldn’t be a special event, they should be a normal way of living. Racial reconciliation shouldn’t be an annual conference, it should be your attitude toward people around you. Interior examination shouldn’t be something that you’re doing just–you know–at your therapist’s office, it should be a daily practice, it should be your response to watching yourself live. Sexual wholeness, that’s not, you know, something that just happens in certain places. You should be thinking about the body that God made you in and the bodies that God made everyone else in and the dignity that those bodies have and how to relate to everybody’s bodies in that way, you know. Missional presence isn’t an evangelistic event. It’s a way of engaging the world. And so now we’re moving from values, which could easily be interpreted as sort of ideals that we put up on the plaque… Rich Vellodas 35:58 Right. Marc Schelske 35:58 …Now we’re bringing that down to the actual woven fabric of the minutes of my life. Rich Vellodas 36:06 Mm hmm. Yeah. Marc, that’s beautiful. You should take that clip right there, And–I don’t know–put that everywhere. You distilled it beautifully. And the question, I think, when I read the Bible–I think this is Eugene Peterson’s–He believed that what the Bible said was livable, and that’s what concerned him. Is this livable? Is not just is this thinkable? But is this liveable? And for me, that’s the hope, not just that we’re just thinking about new ways of being Christian, but that we’re living into new ways of what it means to follow Jesus. REFLECTION Marc Schelske 36:46 The call to discipleship requires a vision that is large enough to encompass the moment we find ourselves in. Did you hear Rich say that? Whether you agree with the five values that Rich’s proposing, and the way that he articulated them, it seems like he’s really onto something. The discipleship of many Christians over the last generation is so thin, so brittle, and often exclusionary. It seems not to be able to handle much discomfort and that’s a problem. Because the gospel is just the opposite of that! One reason I resonate with Rich’s five values is that they help us, in his words, “resist the pull of formational compartmentalization.” That’s a great phrase, right? That’s when our Christianity only impacts certain narrow compartments of our lives. These values give us practical ways to have our faith shape every part of our lives: How we see our bodies and the bodies of other people, how we relate to our community and the politics necessary to govern ourselves in a pluralistic world, how we think about race, how we think about our own identity. We’re not Christians because we believe certain abstract ideas about God and the world. We’re Christians because we follow the way of Jesus. The way, how we live, how we relate, how we engage others, all of that matters. This is the goal for spiritual maturity, that we would push beyond inflexible intellectual definitions and into a gracious love, an other-centered co-suffering love. One more quote from Rich, “The deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives.” Think about that. Do you have space for interiority? Is your faith deeper than behavioral modification, doctrinal affirmation, and political affiliation? Does the pace of your life allow for this kind of deep reflective faith? Or does the rush keep you skating on the surface? Does your faith enable you to be a good gift to your neighbors? Even the neighbors you disagree with? May you push deeper than a surface religion into the depths of interior faith that can overflow into every aspect of your life, making you more gracious, more loving, and more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode and any links that have been mentioned, you can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/taw047. Was that helpful? Did you enjoy that? Did it make you think? Then subscribe to my email list. Two emails a month at most. Frankly, you usually only get one. That email will contain links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books that I’m reading and would like to recommend to you. And if you opt in to receive it, you’ll get a free little PDF book that I wrote, called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In it. I teach us short spiritual practice that has been absolutely essential for me, as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and some deeply anxious things I’m facing in my own personal life and health. So this practice has been helpful to me. I want to share it with You. Subscribe and get the book at www.MarkOptIn.com. Until next time, remember, in this one present moment, you are loved. You are known and you are not alone.

Episode 046 – A More Beautiful Deconstruction (With Dr. Bradley Jersak) Deconstruction is everywhere. People are doing it. Some leaders are fighting it. Some people are excited by it. Some people are terrified of it. Is it just a trendy new word for leaving the church? No. It’s a process that’s necessary for spiritual maturity–and how we think about it matters. Show Notes A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about Dr. Bradley Jersak Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction. His Website: www.BradJersak.com Clarion: Journal for Religion, Peace & Justice: www.clarion-journal.com/ Twitter: @bradjersak Facebook: www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak Today’s Sponsor The Wisdom Of Your Heart – A unique twice-a-year writers weekend that’s focused on writing. No break-out sessions. No listening to experts talk about what worked for them. No networking. No social media. Just a small group of writers encouraging each other to write. One-on-one coaching and group feedback available. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   Is deconstruction just a trendy word for backsliding or leaving Christianity? No. deconstruction is a necessary part of faith and how we think about it matters. Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is the apprenticeship way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is Episode 46. A more beautiful deconstruction. TODAY’S SPONSOR Today’s podcast is sponsored by The Wisdom Of Your Heart. Imagine having two legs, two strong, healthy, functional legs, but then your parents and your teachers, maybe a pastor of the church who grew up in told you that in order to be a good person, a strong person, someone that really does what God wants, you need to only ever use one of those legs. Now you’re a kid, you believe what trusted people tell you. And so you do it. You try living life on just one leg, you hop around, you end up sometimes losing your balance, you get pretty bruised up, but you know that you’re doing what God wants. So you’re being strong and good, even though sometimes you get hurt pretty badly or hurt other people around you.  This isn’t a made up story. A lot of people who grew up Christian are living like this. Maybe it’s you! Were you told that emotions are untrustworthy or immature are only capable of deception? Were you taught that good decision making, clear thinking, and even godly doctrine can never be influenced by emotion, by our feelings? Did some pastor tell you that empathy is a sin? Or maybe you experienced profound trauma that shut down your emotions or made your emotion swing wildly. Living like that is like trying to live with only one leg when you have two functional healthy legs. You’re not using the tools God gave you. You’re only going to end up hurting yourself and others.  If you’ve been trying to live like this–avoiding painful emotions, ignoring how you feel worried that your emotions are just temptations, or that if you really let yourself feel it will hurt just too much–then you might be greatly helped by my book, The Wisdom Of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of your Emotions. Your emotions are an essential part of who you are. Your emotions aren’t bad or sinful. They’re a vital source of information you need to live well. They are a God-given source of wisdom. The Wisdom Of Your Heart is available at all the online bookstores, and you can learn more about it or check it out at my website, www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com. INTRODUCTION If you’ve been following this podcast, you already know that we’ve been talking about a sea change that is occurring in the wider Christian conversation or at least the wider Western Christian conversation. People are evaluating their faith, their theology, what they’ve been taught. Many people across all different traditions and denominations are taking their faith apart in a process that’s come to be called deconstruction. These people are asking critical questions. What is it about my faith story that’s dependable? What does it mean to say that scripture is true or trustworthy? Why does the behavior of so many Christian leaders and institutions contradict the teachings of Jesus? What do I do with the abuse or hurt that I have experienced or seen in the church and then the cover-ups? Are the lines of exclusion that I was raised with necessary? Some leaders, some pastors, think this trend is dangerous, leading people away from Christ. They see these questions as attacks on faith. Other leaders think that much of the work of deconstruction is just peeling away toxic and unhelpful interpretations and experiences. They see deconstruction is a kind of reformation.  A lot of us are in this place, trying to imagine what to do next. Some folks use the label Exvangelical. Some consider themselves post-denominationa. Some say they’re “spiritual-but-not-religious.” Some of us have given up using the label Christian because it’s taken on certain political and cultural associations that aren’t true about who we are. And yet for many of us, Jesus still compels. His other centered co-suffering way seems good and true and beautiful and like God.  Recently, I was reading a book called A More Christlike Way by Dr. Bradley Jersak. It lays out a vision of a Christianity where everything in our faith and practice is rooted in the co-suffering, radically forgiving, compassionate love of Jesus–not just our actions, but also our beliefs, and even how we hold those beliefs. Now, Dr. Jersak is not afraid to take on sacred cows. In a previous book, A More Christlike God, he challenged some familiar ideas about the atonement, the idea that God kills Jesus in order to save us– that’s called penal substitutionary atonement. His most recent book, A More Christlike Word, takes apart the literalistic way we often read Scripture. In these books, Dr. Jersak is contributing to this evaluation of Christian faith that’s happening.  In that way, he’s a part of the deconstruction discourse. In A More Christlike Way, Dr. Jersak talks directly about deconstruction, and suggested something that caught my eye and gave me a different way of thinking about all of this. So I asked if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about deconstruction.  Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction.  INTERVIEW Marc Schelske  5:30   So very early, in A More Christlike Way, you tackle the matter of deconstruction directly talk about it and you said something that caught my eye. I underlined it. I put a star by it, and then I came back to it months later: You said the impulse for deconstruction is necessary for spiritual survival, but the metaphor itself is fraught with violent undertones. So that’s been rattling around my noggin. Something about deconstruction is good and necessary. And something about deconstruction, or at least this language that we’re currently using, is violent and destructive. Do I have that right?  Dr. Bradley Jersak  6:28   Yeah, I’m not sure I have it right, though, you know, because in some ways, my heart in that book was to say, alternative metaphors actually affect how you approach your faith shift. So if you’re going to use a word like deconstruction, that brings to mind like, burn it all down, blow it all up, that affects how you do this. And our hearts deserve to be treated more tenderly than that. They often need healing, not a sledgehammer. Having said that, it’s also not violent enough. In the in the language of Jesus, he doubles down, it is not burn it all down, it is die and rise again.  If you think you’re going to come in and just reform this old wine skin, you’ve not gone far enough. And I would say that’s also true of deconstruction these days, in some ways, it’s gone too far in shattering people’s faith and lives and meaning. In other ways, it’s sort of half-assed. Yeah, we need something that completely consumes what was and so I am of two minds on it in that sense, because I see both and going on. Marc Schelske  7:44   This word may be new for some of us in Christian conversation. Where does this idea of deconstruction come from? What did it mean, then? How has the meaning changed? Dr. Bradley Jersak  7:54   Oh, very good question. And so I you know, I don’t want to be too prescriptive. I think language is descriptive. So I want to describe how it was used by Jacques Derrida, the philosopher when he coined it. And I want to be honest that it is used in a different way today but it is used, so it’s part of our language. So first of all, Jacques Derrida came along and his idea of deconstruction was this: we need to slow down and be more mindful of how power dynamics insert themselves into our language. So for him, deconstruction was observing how we talk, how we talk to each other, and how in that talking, there’s there’s these power things at play, and we need to notice them. So that’s what he was doing.  Now it’s used in a completely different way. Today that’s actually more modernistic. It’s not even postmodern. It was more like Rene Descartes, it’s radical doubt. And I’m just going to start dismantling my belief system, dismantling my faith. It’s hard to stop then because you also end up disassembling you whole purpose of being alive. I get direct messages almost every day about that. “I started by deconstructing my toxic religious belief systems. But then I kind of found myself leaving Jesus. And now I don’t even have meaning. I’ve deconstructed myself.” Well, that’s not what they’re talking about, but it is a common occurrence these days. It’s a popular use of the word. So what I want to do is say, using Derrida’s sense, let’s slow down and think about what we mean by deconstruction, and how it doesn’t just describe what we’re doing. The metaphors we use form how we do it. They form how careful or how sloppy that we are, they form who we listen to, and why, and so I think we want to spend the next time together deconstructing deconstruction in that sense and seeing its necessity, its perils and its possibilities. Marc Schelske  9:57   Okay. So if we take a stance that we need to deconstruct how we use the word deconstruction, what does that mean? What are we implying, even maybe not realizing we’re implying it, when we use the word the way it’s commonly used now? Dr. Bradley Jersak  10:13   So deconstruction, as it’s commonly used today, tends to bring with it a kind of demolition vision, you know. For me, I see dynamite being placed at the bottom of the building and the whole thing crashing down. I see sledge hammers, smashing down walls, and so on. Now, there can be a place for that when you renovate a home, you might want to break walls down to open up space. You actually might need to remove an old building, in order to construct something that is healthier and not been condemned for habitation, right? So I don’t want to be overly harsh about the demolition side of deconstruction. In In fact, I think it’s necessary in some ways, and in some cases, but here’s where we’re too sloppy.  So we might say, Okay, we’ve got to demolish something, well, what? Are we saying we’re demolishing the institution called church, okay. If you think we need to do that, tell me how you’re doing it. You’re probably not doing it. You’re not doing that at all. We’re just being skeptical about what the church was, and now we’re going to leave it. On the other hand, maybe we’re talking about burning down faith? Is that really what you want to do? You want to take an arsonist’s torch to your faith? That seems like a harsh thing to do to your own heart. So I’m wanting to slow down and say, okay, demolish what? If we’re going to demolish creepy belief systems and replace them with something, then let’s have some suggestions.  So I would say Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a paganized version of atonement that actually needs demolition, it needs replacement. My suggestion is that we don’t just make up our own, that we look at the historic Christian faith and say, all right, if we’re going to deconstruct that, what shall we replace it with? I think I have a track record of being a deconstructionist In this sense, too, right? If we’re going to say, you know, actually, Eternal Conscious Torment was a toxic doctrine based in literalizing certain images from scripture that has been totally unhelpful, and in fact, harmful, let’s deconstruct i. Then I am talking about dismantling or razing something. But again, let’s say what it does mean. How do we see this idea? And so I want to be careful in that sense. Marc Schelske  12:43   What you just described makes me think of my experience this summer. My son and I resurfaced our deck. It was quite old. For many years, we kind of gotten it through by putting a thick coat of paint on top of it, you know, to hold everything together, but it was just starting to fall apart. And too many boards were dangerous. And so we went through the process to buy new decking, but then we had to take the old decking off. And in the process of taking the old decking off, we had to evaluate the structure underneath the decking that had been holding it up. There were structural members that were rotted out. There was a place where the deck was attached to the side of my house, where water was actually getting into the side of my house. And so we had to take it apart and evaluate what was going on under there and we discovered that some of what was in there wasn’t good. It sounds like that’s what you’re talking about.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  13:36   Yeah, I think that’s a magnificent example. Because I would, call that example, rather than deconstruction, maybe we would call it renovation. But here’s the thing, what you noticed was sometimes when we’re renovating our faith, as you’re renovating your deck, be careful that you don’t go too far and destroy structural members of your house that are required, but also make sure you go far enough, like don’t just take the deck off and leave the rotten footing in place. And so I think this, again, it just calls for mindfulness. Marc Schelske  14:15   Using a metaphor of renovation brings brings into the conversation the idea that we still have a positive destination in mind. We understand that something needs to change. We know that sometimes the changes may be surface, they may be small, we put new decking on that’s visible, but there are also changes that are more central.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:43   And costly! Marc Schelske  14:44   Right, exactly. We had to replace a structural member. We had to do some reconstructive surgery on the side of my house where water had been getting in for several years and that was unexpected. We didn’t know we would find that. And when I found it, I kind of wanted to just cover it up and not think about it. Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:59   I noticed in that, too, that what you did was to preserve your house. Right?  Marc Schelske  15:05   Exactly right.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:06   So let’s say with Penal Substitution or Eternal Conscious Torment, I’m wanting to say I’m addressing these things directly, in order to preserve the precious structure beneath it, which was Christian faith. Marc Schelske  15:18   Yeah, the house of the Christian faith means something. And behind that, I think the character of God, as we perceive it, is really the thing we’re talking about.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:28   And the person of Jesus! Is he going to be buried in the rubble? Or did we not meet him? And so if you think about your house metaphor, and your wife inside the house. This deck is rotten, so I’m going to blow up the house with my wife in it! And that’s exactly what I’m seeing people do. Marc Schelske  15:47   That’s a problem. All right. So talk about some of these other metaphors. And if you’re proposing alternative metaphors, I’m assuming that means you’re proposing them because they bring something to the table that you feel like is more constructive and more, more leading towards flourishing faith. So take us through some of those and talk about what that looks like. Dr. Bradley Jersak  16:04   Yeah, sure. And I suppose that in many ways, it was a grand, grand effort to avoid using the don’t-throw-the-baby-out-with-the bathwater. That’s so old and boring. There’s other ways to see this. And people are so complex, that we need different metaphors and where the shoe fits, wear it and where it doesn’t don’t. But even in my case, there is a difference between my theological deconstruction, which was quite joyful and liberating and my personal deconstruction, in terms of a meltdown that actually had faith repercussions. Like, in the midst of trauma, do I even trust God is good? So that’s still a theological question. But, but it’s different than my other journey. So one was a dramatic meltdown, and the other was this kind of cool awakening, right. So I’m, again, I’m already rushing into metaphors. But let me go from renovation, which is restoring and revamping existing structures to a completely different ones.  In the world of addictions, we have detox, which may be one or two weeks long. Then we have rehabilitation, which could be months to years long. And then we have recovery, and that is the restoration of health, as we break free of our attachments, harmful habits, addictive behaviors, and then look at the pain beneath them, and bring healing to the things that drove the addictions in the first place. So if I think in terms of faith, then I understand when people need to leave church for a while, for example, or stop reading their Bible for a while, or even not pray for a while, I think of that as detox.  I had to do this with my prayer life, where I had concluded that my prayers had been reduced to me trying to control circumstances and other people’s joy, sorrow and choices by telling God what to do. And when he didn’t do it, I was angry at him for disobeying me. Right? It was really bad.  Marc Schelske  18:13   Yeah, that’s upside down place for sure.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  18:15   Oh, my goodness. So I saw that, thankfully, with a spiritual director who cared for me, and what we did was I detoxed from prayer, because I was so attached to that form. And then we reintroduced it slowly as the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” And after about six months of that, then I reintroduced the Lord’s Prayer, because at least Jesus gave it to us. And it felt very bold and scary, but it’s like, “but You told me when you pray, pray this.” So I went into that. And so over time, my prayer life was rehabilitated after that period of detox. And now I believe I live in recovery, where my prayer life itself is not toxic to me or to others.  I like that metaphor, because it’s personal to one’s body. And I think, then you can apply it both to your own soul as you do your body, but also to the body of your faith communities. Isn’t it a terrible thing when we feel the need to flee from a faith community, because it’s so toxic that it’s killing us? And I don’t want them to just feel guilted into rushing into another one. I get it, right. Yeah, take a break. But I hope you don’t live in the detox unit for the rest of your life. That’s not it’s healthy either. Marc Schelske  19:32   So that metaphor right now, what is intriguing to me is that by talking about those sort of phases that come from substance abuse recovery, you’re actually identifying that there’s a different medicine for different needs at the time, right? That detox is “let’s stop the damage.” But then the next steps are now talking about learning a new way of living and getting to a place where you have a flourishing life that’s not constantly fighting against what was toxic before. Those are different kind of phases of the process. Where the deconstruction metaphor is taking apart, and so you’ve done that. Now what? To what end? You know, recovery is a metaphor saying, “No, we’re going toward a sustainable, flourishing healthy life.” Dr. Bradley Jersak  20:25   Yeah, there are those who think, “Okay, I’ve left, I’ve left the faith now, and that’s forever. And that’s probably the healthiest thing for me.” And then they talk about, you know, “when I deconstructed,” and I’m like, you have no idea how evangelical you still sound, right? Deconstruction is just a new word you use for conversion, and then they have a testimony of their conversion. And then they treat others as less than for not having their conversion. I see this all the time. And my goodness, you’re still an evangelist. You haven’t actually changed that much. This is just conversion, a second conversion, and Okay, so be it. Maybe you need that. I think I needed it. But just be a little bit aware then, again, how the the power dynamics of our old evangelicalism that we thought was so toxic, that we may bring that in now, with a kind of toxic positivity about our great deconstruction experience. “And isn’t it for you?” And there are others who are going, Hang on, my experience was deeply traumatic, and your positivity about this does not recognize my trauma, and, and then they feel silenced and belittled. And like they feel like, “I didn’t have a good enough testimony.” Marc Schelske  21:45   Right, right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Well, the trap, right, I grew up in a very head oriented fundamentalist faith community. And the main thing, the most important thing was to be right. Having the right doctrine, that was what allowed you to enter the church. That was what you were measured on for baptism. People that were backslidden were people who had backslidden from the truth, right? It wasn’t even backslidden from Jesus, it was backslidden from the truth, you know. So knowing the right thing was the gold standard. Well, folks from that kind of community who deconstruct oftentimes, I think, end up in a place where it’s still about knowing the right thing. The thing that matters, that establishes your identity as being okay, is that you’re right. It’s just that you’ve changed the standard and matrix of knowledge. Dr. Bradley Jersak  22:33   Sure. So let’s be honest, many who talked deconstruction have simply gone from conservative to progressive, but they’re still fundamentalist, right? Like they change sides, but not spirits. And yeah, I’m not saying everyone does that. I’m just saying, slow down and check. Is fundamentalism, still part of your structure? Because if it is, then you didn’t go far enough. Using the addict metaphor, we have what’s called dry drunks. A dry drunk is someone who is abstaining now from alcohol, but they’re still active in terms of the addiction itself. So I can stop going to church. That doesn’t mean I’ve dealt with the character defects of like, let’s say, being judgmental, and condemning and condescending. I see that all the time from ex-church people. Their very condemning of evangelicals. And and I’m judgmental of people who do, you know, I’m being it right now! So it’s very infectious. And you’re like, “Oh, I see. We’ve not gone far enough.” Marc Schelske  23:35   Yeah, I get that. I had a conversation. My oldest child is a teenager, and a friend of hers  invited her to go into larger youth group. And so we were having a conversation about that. And I found myself saying some things about the evangelical youth pastor of this church and the kinds of things she might expect in terms of how this person would relate to her. And that evening, I realized, Oh, you know, I’ve literally been that guy. The things that he did, I have done those very things. I probably need to have that conversation with my daughter. Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:07   Yeah, projecting your own judgment of yourself of your past self onto this guy, even as a prejudgment. Here’s what he’ll probably do, right? Yeah, exactly. I did it and I’m ashamed. When we deal with the shame of who we were, then we’re less likely to be judgy. Marc Schelske  24:25   So if I recall, one of the metaphors that was in this write up was talking about art restoration.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:33   Yeah. That’s a really good one. So art restoration. I got that metaphor from Brian Zahnd. So what I mean by this is when you take a masterpiece, over the centuries, where you accumulate grime or people have tried to do touch ups, or they’ve tried to preserve it with varnish, you can you can see how very valuable masterpieces can become almost unrecognizable. So what do you do? Well, art restoration experts carefully strip away those layers of varnish and centuries of touch ups. And, and as they carefully do that with the right tools, you unveil or reveal the original masterpiece.  So I’m assuming that the historic Christian faith, that faith Jesus gave us is actually a masterpiece. The funny illustration of this does actually involve two art images of Jesus. So in the first illustration, you have this one image of Jesus called, Ecce Homo, which means, “Behold the man.” It’s what Pilate said. And it was an icon in this Spanish monastery. But the painted cracked, there was chips out of it, and so on. And an amateur art restorationist came along, and she gave it a go, and she’s so botched it it became famous. It was unrecognizable as Jesus. And in fact, the nickname of the painting is is now Ecce Mano, which is something like, “Behold the Ape.” This is what happens when you have a deconstructionist come along who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they start messing with this historic Christian faith.  What was damaged to begin with is now completely unrecognizable.  Now contrast that to another masterpiece. Someone found a picture of Jesus, a painting of Jesus, and it was called Salvador Mundi, Savior of the world. This thing had passed hand to hand to hand and someone picked it up for 40 UK pounds, so let’s say 80 bucks. Over time, people became suspicious that underneath this painting might be something of value. So they sent it to an expert art restorationist who spent three years very carefully unveiling. At one point, something about the corner of Jesus mouth became completely recognizable as a DaVinci. And by the time they were done, they’re like, “this is!” And it went up for auction and I think it’s sold for something like $400 million, this thing of incredible historic value, a true masterpiece. What do you do with that? You don’t bring scissors to your deconstruction, you bring a care to it. Now here my illustration. What if the Christian faith is not something to be trashed, or cut up or thrown out? What if the gospel of Jesus Christ is something precious and beautiful? So in that sense, I’m talking about the restoration of the content of our faith as this living person who is the Savior of the world. And with great care, we might peel back all the crap that we’ve added to it through the centuries through theological misdeeds and pastoral abuse and so on. But I also want to say, the gospel is not only a masterpiece, what if your heart is? How have we vandalized human hearts in this rush to tear up decades of growth in somebody? And so yes, my good news testimony about that is I grew up in a home that was Baptist, it was conservative, it preached hell, it preached Armageddon, it preached all this stuff. And as I’ve carefully peeled that back, what I’ve discovered is, it’s in that context that I first heard the name of Jesus and fell in love with him. It’s in that context that I fell in love with the scriptures. And now I read them in a way that’s life giving. It was in that context that I learned to share good news. And now I’m sharing it to Christians, so they’ll become Christian. It was in that context that I felt a real living connection with the person of Christ in my prayer life, and all of that has been preserved.  I’ve deconstructed the BS. And now I have a deep appreciation for my Baptist heritage. Because it’s not just my Baptist heritage, It’s the faith of my father that was passed down to me. And then I start exploring that and I realized, oh my goodness, for all the weirdness of how our faith was distorted the amount there was a masterpiece under their worth my great uncle Wilhelm being tortured for in Czechoslovakia, my wife’s grandfather being exiled and murdered in Siberia. It’s like, What? Why would you give your life for this? Well, because it’s priceless. It’s the pearl of great price. So what am I saying? Slow down. With care invest in this because it’s either the great faith of Jesus Himself, or it’s your own precious heart that deserves to be treated kindly. Marc Schelske  30:13   That makes me think that in in a lot of the conversations about deconstruction, a lot of things are sort of being conflated. A lot of things are being put into a one package, when really, you’re identifying that there’s several things happening that we can evaluate. There’s my experience in a Christian community and how that worked and didn’t work. There’s my experience of how to read the Bible, and how I was taught to read the Bible that was helpful and how I was taught to read the Bible that wasn’t helpful. There’s my picture of the character of God, and parts of that imagery that were destructive or hurtful or traumatizing, and parts of that imagery that that were life giving. We can kind of just go down the list. And that that’s the thing that we’ve got to do, to carefully look at the layers like this art restorationist is doing with the varnish and all the layers, the attempts to patch it up to cover over the things we didn’t want to talk about. That requires a lot more nuance than maybe the word deconstruction leave space for. Dr. Bradley Jersak  31:11   Again, I believe in deconstruction, I do it in the real sense and in the popular sense, but, I want to say that there’s been this headlong glee about it. I want to be empathetic with people who’ve had a two-fold trauma. So the first trauma could be the terrible things they learned about God growing up, right, or that first trauma could be abuse by a spiritual leader, or whatever the thing they’re leaving is, had a traumatic impact on them. But there’s also the trauma of the deconstruction itself. Let’s say someone needs to leave a toxic church, but they’re also leaving the only community they’ve ever known. So the leaving itself and the loneliness and isolation and the criticism they get from those people, the sense of betrayal, and then internally, even the loss of meaning, and like panic attacks on Sunday morning, because you don’t know what to do with yourself. So there’s that secondary trauma, or even how the deconstructionists are impacting us, and so on.  The illustration I would use for that, that’s going to be in my forthcoming book, is somebody who has to go through a mastectomy for breast cancer. So the cancer was there, right? And you have to go under the knife to save your life. Sometimes, you have to go through chemo or whatever treatments they’re using for that. And the treatment itself becomes another trauma. And so you wake up from surgery, and your breasts are gone. And you didn’t get to choose how much you lost. So it is with those who experience the deconstruction itself as trauma. They’re like, “I thought I knew there was cancer that had to go, but I didn’t realize how much of me I was going to lose. And I’m absolutely traumatized.” So then they go on Instagram, and they see all the positivity around deconstruction. And it feels like this, that the deconstruction is like a cheerleader who’s spotting for them doing a bench press. “You can do it, you can do it, you’re great, you’re great, this is exactly waht you need”. And they’re like, “I’m not doing a bench press! I’m under a bulldozer! “I really, really care about those people. That’s where I’m coming from on this. It’s like, you treat that person, they need to be treated so tenderly, so carefully. And to say, it was necessary but there are perils to this. And yet, maybe there’s possibilities too. But I don’t want to say that like Job’s counselors. I want to say it as a friend who’s walking along with them and like, “Okay, this is this is disorienting. Yes, I’ll walk with you.” Marc Schelske  34:00   I feel like that is a missing piece of a lot of this conversation, that there’s a there’s a pastoral element of this. And even for folks that are maybe stepping out of the church and the word “pastor” was part of the problem, there’s a coach-of-the-soul element of this, that’s necessary. Because like we said at the beginning, religion however you come to it, is ultimately a meaning-making machinery. And you have to have one of those.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  34:29   Yeah, if not that, you are vulnerable to any ideology that comes along, to recruit you. Marc Schelske  34:36   All of your books in this series, have a subtitle about…  I guess Christlike Word doesn’t, but it’s still infused, the idea of a more beautiful version. So A More Christlike God is a more beautiful gospel. A More Christlike Way is a more beautiful faith. And I would say, even though your subtitle on A More Christlike Word is “Reading scripture the Emmaus Way” that the challenge throughout is how do we read scripture in a more beautiful experience?  Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:04   Yes. It’s a more beautiful hermeneutic.  Marc Schelske  35:07   Yeah, exactly.  Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:08   It’s points to Jesus. Marc Schelske  35:08   Yeah. And that and that’s rooted in this idea that everything for us, if we’re followers of Jesus, the meaning-making machinery is the other-centered, co-suffering, radically forgiving self-giving life of Jesus. That is the lens! And so when you think about deconstruction, how do you bring this lens of a more beautiful way to deconstruction? What would a more Christlike orr a more beautiful deconstruction look like? Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:39   Yeah, so if we think in terms of restoration, what are we restoring here? We’re restoring the beautiful image of Christ and His Bride somehow. And so one of the metaphors I use comes from the experience of my daughter-in-law who, when she was shopping for wedding dressed. She’s really into vintage–and she had found this website where they had vintage wedding dresses, and she spotted one that was exactly her size. It was a champagne, lace wedding dress sewn in the 1920s. Wow, it was gorgeous and she was able to get it for like a hundred and sixty bucks or something crazy like that. And then she put it on. And she’s like, “I couldn’t even gain one and a half pounds or lose one and a half pounds. It was so exactly made for me.” But it had wrinkles and water stains.  So the scriptures use this metaphor about Christ, presenting his bride without spot or wrinkle. He’s talking about the wedding dress. And so we took it down to this, this incredible, stereotypical Chinese dry cleaner. And we’re like, “please don’t destroy this,” right. And so we left it with him. And we, when we came back, it was hanging in his window and it was just radiant. And everybody who would come into the shop was commenting on it. The spots were gone, the wrinkles were gone. His focus was actually not on removing spots and wrinkles. That wasn’t his primary goal. His primary goal was preserving the fabric. And so that made him more careful about how he used an iron, more careful about what chemicals he used on the spots. His obsession with retaining the beauty enabled him to get rid of the spots and wrinkles without destroying anything. It was unbelievable. And then she wore it to her wedding and we’re just like, “you look so beautiful.” And she said, “I feel like a princess, you know, a daughter of the king.”  I would call that a more beautiful deconstruction, right? It’s this idea of preserving the precious and unveiling the beauty. I do regard beauty as a criteria for truth. Now, in the ancient world, let’s say Plato, he’s like, God is good. God, if there is a God, that God is the good capital G. And that good subsists of beauty, truth and justice. And so the truth people, the head people, they’re like, we need a faith that’s really true, you know, and so they’ll do a literalistic, mechanical reading of Scripture to make sure they’ve got the truth. That’s the conservatives. Then the progressives are like, okay, we need the Justice side. And, and maybe they deify justice even so it doesn’t actually matter if we love all the time, as long as we’ve justice, right? But we have this third thing that sort of adjudicates the truth and the justice and that is beauty. And if it’s not–I got this from Zahnd too–if it’s not beautiful, it’s probably not true. And so whatever gospel, whatever hermeneutic, whatever way that we come to our faith, if it’s truly Christ then we’re going to see beauty as such, with a capital B. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s why I think we have a more beautiful image of God, and a more beautiful faith in the church in the way of being, and now beautiful way of approaching the scriptures, that is almost certainly more true. That’s that’s the outcome I’m looking for in my deconstruction. Not just that I’m doing it beautifully, but that I’m, but I’m drawing out the beauty of the thing that’s there and behind the grime and behind the years. REFLECTION Marc Schelske  39:33   Did you catch this important idea? deconstruction isn’t just one thing. That right there is worth the price of admission. When we think about deconstruction, whether our own or someone we know or in the general culture, we’ve got to keep in mind that there may be several different things going on under that umbrella. This tangled experience might include someone having to detox from a community or a leader or a belief that has been dangerous to them. It might include facing that we were lied to by people we trusted. It might include recovering from religious addiction and perfectionism. It might include healing from trauma. It will certainly include letting go of ideas and communities that used to be a central part of our identity. And always, there’s the releasing of closely held beliefs in the process of adapting and adopting new ones. That is a complicated life experience to go through and it’s often painful.  It serves us to keep these different elements in mind so that we can use the right tools and even the right metaphors as we untangle all of this. Because even the words we use shaped the way we act and think about ourselves and others. So when is it right and helpful to deconstruct, to really knock down some walls? When should we be renovating instead, carefully disassembling parts of our faith so that we can evaluate what is good and noble, trustworthy and true? And when do we need to detox in order to just stop the damage? And then at what point can we move on to rehabilitation? When are we ready to do the slow, gentle work of art restoration? Learning, growing, maturing–whether spiritually or just as a human being–these all require seasons of stripping away, redefining, deconstructing what you once thought was certainly. The process is necessary, but as Dr. Jersak pointed out, it also has perils and possibilities. If we can be gentle, compassionate with ourselves and other people, if we can remember the person–the heart–in the middle of the deconstruction, the process can be healing, whether for ourselves or others. The way of Jesus is the other- centered co-suffering path of radical reconciliation. That means that even when the path you are walking is deconstruction, you’re not alone. Jesus is walking it with you. And there are others, others who’ve chosen to take the other-centered co-suffering path, who will walk along as well.  May you have the wisdom to know when to deconstruct, when to renovate, when to detox, and when to join the Spirit in the gentle work of art restoration, so that a beautiful faith can emerge.  Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, which includes any links mentioned and a full transcript, something new that I’m doing, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW046. if you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. You get two emails a month at most more, likely you’re only going to ever get one, and that email will include links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books that I’m reading and recommend to you. You’ll even get a free little book when you subscribe. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I faced the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. So subscribe, get that monthly email, and the free book, The Anchor Prayer at www.MarcOptIn.com. Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 045 – Let’s Normalize Being Wrong (With Matt Tebbe) I grew up in a faith tradition where being right was essential. It’s what kept us in community. It’s what we thought honored God. For many other reasons–temperament, trauma, and even privilege–being right became an identity issue for me. Then I heard Matt Tebbe suggest that we need to normalize being wrong. For some of us this is the medicine we need. Show Notes “Let’s normalize being wrong. Make Repentance Great Again” – Matt Tebbe John 10:18 Philippians 2 Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode. You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. More about Matt Tebbe Rev. Matt Tebbe (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) has been a coach, communicator and consultant with churches in North America since 2011. He has experience as a youth pastor, a bi-vocational church planter, and working on a team at a large church to transition it from a Sunday-centric worship service to a discipleship and mission paradigm. He has written for Leadership Journal, Shattered Magazine, and contributed to the book “What Pastors Wish Their Congregations Knew” by Kurt Fredrickson and Cameron Lee. He’s also been a featured writer at Missio Alliance and The V3 Movement. He co-founded Gravity Leadership, and is planting a church (The Table) in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis, where he and his wife Sharon live with their children Deacon and Celeste. His Church: www.thetableindy.org Gravity Leadership: www.gravityleadership.com Twitter: @matttebbe Facebook: www.facebook.com/matttebbe Today’s Sponsor The Writers Advance Weekend – A unique twice-a-year writers weekend that’s focused on writing. No break-out sessions. No listening to experts talk about what worked for them. No networking. No social media. Just a small group of writers encouraging each other to write. One-on-one coaching and group feedback available. More from Marc Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Transcription Marc Schelske  0:00   Did you know you don’t have to correct other people? Did you know you can be wrong, and the world won’t end? Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alen Schelske. This is the apprenticeship way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is Episode 45. Let’s normalize being wrong.  TODAY’S SPONSOR Now, before we jump into that conversation, I’d like to tell you that today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer, I write this podcast. I write blog posts. I write sermons, I’ve written three books. I’ve got two manuscripts in the oven right now. I think I’ve written something close to a million words at this point. And all of that writing, I have learned that there really is only one significant obstacle to writing just one. Life. Life and all its business, obligations, responsibilities, chores, people who need you to do stuff right now. And all that stuff, it takes time. And even when you sit down to write and try to focus at all intrudes into the space into your emotions.  So, one of the disciplines that I have learned over the years of writing is that periodically, I need to get out of my life in order to focus. Not an out-of-body experience, I just need to get off the grid, I need to be out of the reach of my schedule and phone, I need to retreat so that I can advance my writing. That’s why I created the writer’s advance.  This is a very unique event for writers. It’s a small group hosted in a fantastic inspiring, quiet venue. No chores, you don’t have to make the bed or dinner or run anyone to the store. You get a weekend just to focus on writing. You’ll get gentle motivation to move forward, you’ll get encouragement from others who know this work. And if you want it, you can get one-on-one coaching or even group feedback. But most importantly, you will get undistracted time to write. I lead this event twice a year. The sixth Writers Advance is coming up soon, November 12 to 14. That one has just a couple of spots left, and then there’s one in the spring in April. Both of these are open and available for registration. I would love to help you kick that writing project into high gear. You’ll come away energized, creatively refreshed. And best of all, you will have a whole bunch of words you didn’t have before. Check out all the details, see if this is a good match for you. register at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/writersadvance.  INTRODUCTION A while back I read an intriguing post on Facebook. First, you need to understand who was writing this. The author of the post was an Anglican priest named Matt Tebbe. He’s a co-rector of a church in Indianapolis, Indiana called The Table. He’s got all the normal theology degrees you’d expect from someone in that position. He’s written for various leadership and theological journals. He’s co-founded a leadership development organization. Oh, he’s also–this will be relevant for the conversation–He’s also a middle-aged white man.  Matt posted something on Facebook that was intentionally provocative. He was stirring the pot, he wanted to get people to react. Now the body of his posts really isn’t important. It was about something that was happening at the time. But what struck me was how we ended the post. He wrote, “Normalize being wrong. Make repentance great again.” Those words have been bouncing around in my head for months. Normalize being wrong. Now I think I’m similar to Matt in many ways. I’m a pastor, I’ve been trained in how to read and interpret scripture. I’ve got decades of pastoral and leadership experience under my belt. I am also a middle-aged white man. And being wrong is not something I like. I mean, none of us do. But in my case, it’s something I’ve been expressly trained to avoid. I’ve even had some identity issues tied up with being right being the person in the room who’s right.   I suspect that a lot of us struggle with this, particularly people like Matt and I. I mean, being right is sort of the target on the wall for pastors and quite honestly, middle-aged white men. So Matt’s words felt jarring, uncomfortable, but at the same time, they felt like truth. So after thinking about this for a while, I asked Matt to sit down with me and talk about being wrong.  One technology note–partway into our conversation, which was recorded by remote video, the main HD video recording failed, and we didn’t know that had happened. So when we went to edit the video, we had to use rescue video footage that is of much lower quality. The audio is fine all the way through. You shouldn’t even notice a difference in the audio, but my apologies if you’re watching this on YouTube because the second half of the video is not ideal. Thank you very much for sticking around. Let’s talk about being wrong. Marc Schelske  5:00   You’re a priest, actually. you lead a church, you train ministry leaders, you study and teach the Bible, I assume that you think there is such a thing as right theology. And that right theology is not only true but has good outcomes. And if that’s true, then I would not expect someone in your position to say that we need to normalize being wrong. But that’s, that’s what you said. Those are your words. Okay. what in the heck do you mean by that? Matt Tebbe  5:29   Well, Marc, I am a 45-year-old white man who has started two things that I lead, I’m relatively affluent, I am able-bodied. I am cis-gendered. And so every single heap that I could be on top of in America, I’m on top of it. I want to normalize being wrong for people like me. This phrase… Marc Schelske  5:57   We’re not telling other people, “hey, you’re wrong. And I’d like to normalize your wrongness.” Matt Tebbe  6:03   …Exactly. Right. They just weaponize it as a mechanism of control. No, I’m trying to cast vision for why I want to normalize being wrong. And you know, if Marc is listening, and Marc goes, “Dang, there’s something in that for me,” then great, rather than telling other people that they should be wrong. Right. Which is, which is actually a really perverted power play. Somewhere along the line, Marc,  as a, as a Christian, I lost vision of how good of news repentance was, okay. Repentance became shameful or embarrassing. And I, you know, as I went back to the Gospels… (I still read the Bible. I know. I know, that might be out of date. I still read the Bible) …And I kept seeing all of the breakthrough and transformation and blessing came to people when they change their mind. Yeah, when they went from something they were thinking, to something God was thinking, and I thought, you know, repentance is actually the best thing that could happen to me today. Marc Schelske  7:03   I was gonna ask you the question, “how did you come to this belief,” but as I was thinking about that, it occurred to me that I wanted to talk about first how we came to the opposite belief. Because when you talk about those different piles that you’re on top of, and the idea that you have some privilege, what occurred to me was that well, in the piles that I have, being right is part of the privilege. The way my family raised me in middle-class America, there were certain things that you do, certain assumptions about how you live, and those are the right way to live. And when we saw other people whose lives weren’t turning out like ours were, our assumption was they had made wrong wrong decisions along the way. They’d done unwise things. And then in my academic training, that’s all about learning the handed-down knowledge, the right way of thinking. My theological training was largely about equipping me to articulate and defend correct doctrine. So the whole goal of that is being right. And then even in pastoral ministry, growing up in kind of evangelical and evangelical adjacent churches, we talked about repentance, but repentance was a one-time thing. Repentance was you crossing the line to follow Jesus, repenting from your sinful ways, and accepting Jesus’ way. That’s repentance. But once you’ve crossed the line, once I agree with that, now I’m right, I’m on the right side. And so from now on, being wrong is actually bad.  Matt Tebbe  8:31   Yes. So how do we get here, I want to maybe like throw a caveat in here. To normalize being wrong isn’t to valorize or make a virtue of being wrong, okay. But normalizing being wrong is the only way that I know to personally on a moment-by-moment basis, become the kind of person who is capable of learning. From a New Testament perspective, and I think modern neuroscience backs us up, it always is about you becoming more than you. Okay? There’s some kind of joining, some kind of connecting, some kind of moving towards another in a way that transforms who you are.  So Paul contrasts knowledge with love and wisdom. And I think he’s trying to get at this in First Corinthians eight, where he talks about how love, or knowledge actually, tends to tear down community. I’ve been formed, shaped, catechized, by… I don’t know, I mean, there’s so many ways to describe it, colonial white supremacy, which is the dominant orienting norming force in the United States in the West. I happen to be a white man, you could throw patriarchy in there too, a lot of my adult life is waking up to how almost everything is normed to my preference, Marc Schelske  9:52   To my preference, being that person at the center of all of that? Matt Tebbe  9:56   Yeah, normed to a white guy’s preference. Normed to my… to what I Is, what occurs to me is good, right, and true. Usually, my socio-political-cultural landscape is ordered by that. And you’ll see, you know, just parenthetically, you’ll see that that’s usually the case. Because when that stops being the case, when let’s say, lots of non-white people get registered as voters somewhere, people lose their biscuit, Marc Schelske  10:23   I start to feel uncomfortable. Because the thing that feels normal to me is actually just the experience of my position and privilege. Matt Tebbe  10:31   Exactly. If this is going to unravel, and be deconstructed, you will feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Your assumptions won’t be right. The way you want things, you won’t get them. Sometimes you’ll think something is self-evident when really it’s just your perspective. And you’ll feel like there’s a fear, right, Marc? Or anger when lots of questions that never need to be answered, because they’re just sort of functioning in the back of our brains as already answered. When those come from the background to the foreground. It creates anxiety, right? Marc Schelske  11:07   Okay, so this feels key to me, right? Because when you say “normalize being wrong,” I think you’re not just saying, “Hey, guys, it’s okay to not be right sometimes.” I think you’re also saying, “it’s okay to feel the interior discomfort that any of us feel when we’re wrong.”  My whole journey of being the guy whose identity comes from being the person in the room who’s right, is that that is a, a locus of certainty. I have a great deal of certainty because I know how society is supposed to work. I have a great deal of certainty because I know what a good healthy church looks like, because my theology is orthodox because my explanation of the atonement is the right one that has come to us purely and perfectly from the apostles. And so I have all of these ways of being right. My ideas about gender roles, my ideas about America’s place in the world, whatever, insert whatever thing. I have an idea in my head about what is right about that. And that idea gives me certainty. And internally that certainty makes me feel okay. It makes me feel good in the middle of a difficult complicated, oftentimes painful world. And so maybe what I’m hearing you say is that the thing we ought to normalize is the interior discomfort that comes up when you don’t know because if I’m operating from a posture that I need to be right, I’m a pastor–I have to be right. I’m a man–I have to be right. If I’m operating from that posture, the second I feel the discomfort of being wrong. I’m going to power up to try and restore the certainty that I feel. Matt Tebbe  12:47   Yeah. And can I just take it another layer deep? That reveals, Marc, I think that what we have done is we’ve made an idol of our certitude. I no longer hold the truth. But my certitude holds me. And so I become brittle, I become rigid, I become argumentative. It leads me to not listen, not learn, not love, not be open to reason, leads me to insist on having my own way. Right? And being impatient. All the things that we hear are the opposite of love.  And so like you, I was… I mastered divinity. Right? At 27! But you know, God is this infinite mystery. What I’m also trying to do is I’m also trying to lean into the knowing that is unknowing, this apophatic tradition, that saints that I hope to be like when I grew up, embrace and talk about. This unknowing or this apophatic way of knowing that is okay with not having all the answers, or having the answer and not being heard from, or someone else saying the thing that you could have said, half as good as you and getting the praise for it. Marc Schelske  14:07   You said almost in passing that one of the options is having the answer but not being able to say it. It’s such a, it’s such a profound and painful thing for some of us,  I’m a musician. And back in the day when I had less children and more marginal income, I would spend time in music stores, playing guitars and looking at equipment and sometimes buying equipment. I had this experience regularly where I would be in the aisle looking at stuff, and overhearing a conversation down the aisle from the store salesman trying to sell something to another customer. And I knew way more about the thing than the salesman did. And I had almost like an eruption inside me, like this moral ought, this deep, profound sense that it was my responsibility and right to enter into that conversation and tell the person what they needed and tell the salesperson off because they were wrong. Matt Tebbe  15:07   This is just I think the way that we, Marc, as white men in America habituated to center ourselves to assert mastery, dominance, expertise. So when I say “normalise being wrong,” it’s really just me telling my soul–you know how the psalmist speaks to their heart or to their soul? Telling my soul, “It’ll be okay. You’re safe. You don’t need to assert your intelligence. Maybe you don’t have to set them straight”. It’s just this permission to be without having to center or norm my perspective at every moment I possibly could. Marc Schelske  15:11   Right? Well, it’s almost like there’s this almost this like ontological fear for some of us that if we aren’t right, in any given moment, like we just stop existing, or our identity is lost. I mean, I grew up in a fairly fundamentalist Christian community. And we were pretty rigorously trained to read the Bible in a certain way in order to articulate and defend our particular theological high horses. And part of that upbringing was that there was a proactive moral obligation to correct people in conversation who were wrong. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience, but it is a heavy weight. Matt Tebbe  16:33   Yes, it is. And I’ve been that person. I’ve taken on that responsibility. And, you know, I’m never at a loss for words. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say if I’m, if I ever stopped talking–It’s because I choose to shut up. So as a young man, I was just spouting off all the time. And I don’t know, even when I was right, I don’t think I was righteous. That is so much more important. We are well-intentioned, well, meaning people trying to help others. But Jesus says you have to be willing to be helped. Yeah, submit to that humiliation, that humbleness in order for you to be of any help. Marc Schelske  17:12   So let’s push this a little bit towards the scary edge here. Okay. If it’s okay to be wrong, or in the various ways you’ve put it, you know, to not have to assert our opinion, to not have to fight for that certainty, What does that imply for theological models that are built on the idea that what matters most to God is that we agree on the correct formulation of a certain doctrinal idea? Matt Tebbe  17:42   I hope that it actually unravel some of that. We have set up litmus tests and hoops, and we’ve, we’ve made ourselves gatekeepers into a kingdom. That was never, we were never, that’s never been our role. And so I think in some ways, it will, and hopefully does threaten it. And actually, by the responses I get from people who I say this to who live in those theological systems, I can report back it does threaten it. They get really angry. Don’t hear it what I’m not saying though. I’m not saying that what we believe or what we think is not important, I want to, one, change our relationship to our beliefs so that they’re not ideological idols, we’re not in bondage to them, so that we can be supple, agile, have our minds changed, but still live with this humble conviction or confidence. And then if we bump up against something that we literally don’t believe, can’t see, disagree with, we own that, so that we aren’t now in a battle of ideas. That’s like an arms race, a rational arms race in my mind whenever I get into those things, and I just wanted to just own like:, “I value your perspective as yours. But I don’t have an imagination for how that coheres or how that can be true for me.” There’s an implicit ask for help there or at least a permission for you to be where you’re at. And then I’m saying, “but I’m not where you’re at.”  Yeah. Another aspect of this is I have decided if I’m going to be wrong, I’m going to be wrong with and for marginalized people. If that makes sense.  Marc Schelske  19:29   I totally hear you. I have had points of conversation with people where we’ve been in disagreement, and the picture in my mind is sort of the classical picture of judgment and you’re standing before God, and I’ve had moments where I’ve had to say, Okay, I’m going to stand before God. God’s gonna know my heart and my circumstances and everything that happened. So when I stand before God, which failure am I more comfortable with? Am I gonna stand before God having failed in the direction of excluding this person from community because of this issue? Or am I going to fail in the direction of including this person, which might fudge the edge a little bit? Which of those failures am I going to take with me before God? And I think that’s what I hear you saying, right? Like, I’m probably gonna get it wrong. Which way is in alignment with love? Matt Tebbe  20:19   Of course, of course, I’m gonna get it wrong. It’s not a question of will I, but I’d much rather in, in the final judgment, have God’s love, burn away my commitment to post-millennial infralapsarianism. Okay, then actively working against teaching the history of racial injustice in America. The dogma that we fight over is not unimportant. But you referenced judgment, like when Jesus talks about judgment It is “have you acted righteously, or with justice, towards people who suffer under the prevailing Kingdom that’s not God’s.” Under the rebellious Kingdom outside of God’s good providential Shalom, there are definite losers, and those people suffer greatly. And Jesus tends to prefer being with them. And what did you do to those people, James and Jesus, even Paul, in some places, and in the pastoral epistles explicitly tell us exactly what’s going to go down there.  It’s really hard for reformation Christians to appropriate that and fit that in, I think, because we want to, we want to flip it around and put words before it? Well, of course, you have to, you have to have the right ideas about God, and then that’ll create the right heart in you, and then that right heart will naturally normally be with the poor and feed people and take care of the sick. But I don’t think humans work like that. I think we’re actually much more complicated. So I think we also live our way into new ways of thinking all the time, all the time. And it’s not unidirectional. And so there’s a sense if I’m going to be wrong, Marc, like what you said, like you use the word include inclusion, I’m going to be wrong–the religious person is going to be yelling at me, because I have the wrong person at the party. I want to be wrong like that, rather than the person who’s keeping people from the party. That’s the kind of wrongness I’m willing to be.  So for instance, white supremacy, I’ve never been a white man trying to dismantle white supremacy before. How the hell would I know how to do that? Right? You know, I don’t know, everything’s an experiment. And I’m learning all the time. And in order to learn, I have to recognize that I don’t know at all, yes, and be willing to pivot. Or say, “Sorry.” As a person in my position, regularly saying, but then also demonstrating through habits and practices that I’m willing to be wrong, is one of the only ways I know one of the ways I know not only one of the ways I know, to put my stake in the ground that we are going to develop a culture that’s immune to abuse, or we’re going to repent trying. Marc Schelske  23:06   So if the hope is a culture that’s immune to the abuse of power, if that’s the hope, the idea that is not just that we will be wrong, because that’s a human reality, but that we can be wrong in community, that is being wrong doesn’t exclude us from the table, being wrong doesn’t mean that we’re out on our ear. That being wrong and feeling the discomfort that comes with that is normal.  We’re having to undo, like, deeply, deeply ingrained expectations. I mean, like in the structure of our world, kids to adults, there’s one line, kids are very often wrong. And they’re surrounded by people who are right and who tell them that they’re wrong, and you get older and older and older. And the expectation in our culture is that at some point as an adult, you’re less wrong. And maybe if you’re an important enough adult, you’re never wrong. And then that same, that same expectation happens in the church, we’ve got newbies that are coming into the church, they don’t know anything. They don’t know biblical Greek, they’ve never read the Bible. Of course, they’re wrong. They’re surrounded by people who can correct them. All of these spectrums move up a ladder of being more and more, right, being the person that that doesn’t have to say, “I’m wrong. I was sorry. I’m sorry about that.”  And so if you’re saying our goal in the church is ideally to have a community that’s immune to power abuse, we’re having to unpack a lot of what everybody feels like is normal. I mean, that “everybody” should probably have an asterisk after it because not everyone on those scales feels that way. Matt Tebbe  24:41   Right? But there’s an assumption, right, an assumption about what is power and what’s it for. Okay. And then the thing I’m waking up to the last five years is how to see and negotiate power as you answer those two questions. It’s a much different answer for me as a cis-gendered white man than it would be for a queer black woman. In the same scenario. Marc Schelske  25:02   it’s sort of the same problem with wealth, right? Most people don’t feel like they have a lot of money. No matter where they are on the spectrum. I had a conversation with a friend of mine I went to school with. He’s a dentist, he makes, you know, multiple increments of my income every year and was explaining to me how his family is always on the edge financially and how they’re having to sacrifice. I was feeling frustrated, because I was like, “Dude, you  make in a month what I’m making half a year! How on earth can you be telling me that you’re poor?” But that dynamic happens, right? Because I also make considerably more than other people! Anywhere you are on the scale, people sort of feel like the amount of wealth they have isn’t… They’ll say, “I’m not a rich person.” I think you’re talking about that principle with power, like whatever amount of self-governing autonomy, and power over others I have, doesn’t really feel like power to me. But somebody above me who has more power, they’re the people who have power. When the Bible talks about wealthy people being led astray by their wealth. It’s not talking about me,  Matt Tebbe  26:10   It’s never you and me, Marc. Marc Schelske  26:15   I’ve never once thought of building a spaceship. Never. That’s not me at all, right? You know, same thing with power, right? The kinds of people who abuse power are not people like me. They’re the kinds of people who have lots and lots and lots of power. And so I can never see myself in it.  Matt Tebbe  26:32   I used to ride bikes. In college I was a cyclist. And when, when the wind was at your back, and your pace lining, meaning you, you had riders in front of you, and you were in a paceline, it felt like you could go all day, it was so easy. And then you turn around and head into the wind. And if you’re in a paceline, you’d be at the front and you were pedaling into the wind. And you were like, I want to die. This is so hard.  And I think I think having power is like having wind at your back. You can’t tell there’s wind, because you’re already moving in a direction and the winds aiding you. But not having power in any kind of identity or any kind of intersectionality we’d have is like riding a bike into a headwind, you’re constantly fighting it.  And so like for me, then the way we organize our church, the way that we train, the way that we learned discipleship is all about telling the truth on ourselves and creating spaces where the more you’re known, the more love you receive, not less, so that there’s no spiritual or institutional benefit to hiding. Where we have rhythms and liturgies of owning what we call bad news, and hearing good news, and surrendering, consenting, to it together. Like we do that regularly. So that if I were to try to pull some crap…  We did this during the pandemic, dude! I came back from vacation, and we hadn’t been meeting in person for a long time. And our leadership team did not decide to loosen some of our restrictions on meeting. And I came back and I was impatient. I sort of benevolently insisted on my own way. And I did that with my co-rectors. And then we tried to asynchronously get feedback on this plan that wasn’t presented at the meeting I wasn’t at but was presented afterward on our asynchronous work organizer. Two women on our leadership team sent us two emails about three days later and said, “Hey, there was some kind of violation in our community here.”  Marc, I had so many rationalizations for why it was okay for me to do what I did. But like, I was so overcome with gratitude and, and, blessedness that a non- (so I’m in an Anglican tradition) a non-ordained woman who’s on our leadership team could confront three priests and say, “Hey, the church you say you want us to be, I don’t feel like we did that here.” None of us felt like we lost leadership capital with her by saying, “you’re right.” All of that felt like an artifact to me of, maybe we’re doing something right. Like maybe, maybe the thing that you do right is to create a culture where badness is cared for by the community. I haven’t been a part of a church like that before. So we’re building something we actually don’t even know what to build either or how to build it.  So then we talk about our church, it’s not top-down leadership, but center-out leadership. And what we notice about Jesus is He’s inviting as many people into the center who can possibly stand it. Even in that passage we like to quote, Matthew 28, the Great Commission, the part that I think is, is mind-blowing, “they worshipped him, but some doubted.” And to the worshipping and the doubting, Jesus gives his authority.  I want to be clear that there is some badness and wrongness that I as a leader cannot have. So this person, if she sends me an email and says, “Hey, you kind of lead in a way that violated our community,” and I begin gaslighting her, I embarrass her publicly, and I sent her a scathing email, and I call her and I shout at her–that’s not the kind of wrongness I’m talking about.  Marc Schelske  26:30   Right, now you’re talking about the abuse of power that we’re trying to avoid. And the reason you’re going into abuse of power is because you have to defend that internal certainty that you have to get, you have to get out from under the discomfort of being called out as wrong. And so in order to do that, you’re going to turn all that energy on her and make her the bad guy. That’s the abuse of power. Matt Tebbe  30:40   Exactly. Yeah. Because I can’t be wrong. Because I’ve built I have built my faith upon the rock of my ego, so I can’t justify myself and be justified by Christ at the same time. Either Christ justifies you, or you’re the advocate, you’re justifying yourself. Either Christ is interceding at the right hand of the Father, or you’re busy explaining, justifying, defending, protecting. I’ve done it, Marc. Your circle gets smaller and smaller, you become angrier and angrier, more, there’s more and more fear and rigidity and judgmentalism at people who don’t get it. And I could not find the fruit of the Spirit in that way of living.  Marc Schelske  31:26   Yes, right. That rigidity is the essential quality of every fundamentalism. That rigidity is built on that sense that if I’m wrong, something dire happens, whether that’s death of ego or getting kicked out of the community, losing my position or not being saved anymore. Whatever it is, something dire happens. You’re talking about a completely different way of the community relating to it give me an image of what the church looks like, if we normalize being wrong. Matt Tebbe  32:01   I think that we have misunderstood what sin is. Without relegating Paul’s legal metaphors into some apocryphal dustbin, I think that a more prominent metaphor in Scripture is not a legal judicial way to understand sin. But it’s an illness, sickness way of understanding sin. I think the picture I want to just hold out before us is if we really believe that God was a good doctor, whose love wanted to rid our lives of the cancer of sin, rather than a judge, I think we would run to the good doctor. We would see sin as a cancer, and not just personal sin, but systemic sin and interpersonal sin and inequality, injustice, we would see it as a cancer that God is wanting to heal rather than a crime that God wants to punish. Criminals hide. Cancer patients run to the hospital. Marc Schelske  33:06   Yeah, right. Right. They run to where there’s life, Matt Tebbe  33:10   …to where there’s hope for healing.  But you don’t typically hear if you have breast cancer. “Now, how did you get this breast cancer? What did you do to deserve this?” The doctor doesn’t shame us. The doctor, the doctor becomes immediately our advocate against the cancer, because the cancer is robbing life, breeding destruction and leads to death. Marc Schelske  33:31   Yeah, so what an incredible vision it would be to have communities centered on that idea, right, that we are going to we are going to be each other’s advocate, we are going to draw each other to the advocate, so that this cancer in our lives can be healed. Man. that’s a totally different picture. Matt Tebbe  33:52   This woman, her name is Ellie, who six months ago now called me on my stuff, she did it like a good doctor, like believing the best about me. Right? And, and fighting for my good in the midst of my wrong. There’s a sense in which, it this only this doesn’t work through a sermon series. Like you have to actually build these relationships.  I have serious doubts that If I was at a different social location, meaning if I didn’t have power, if I was a different gender, if I was a sexual minority, if I was a person of color, if this would be helpful for me at all. In fact, one of the reasons why I‘m committed to this is because I think “I’m right” has been weaponized against powerless people.  And I sit in the class of people who’ve used “I’m right” to silence, enslave, steal, exploit, abuse people. I just want to reiterate that this commitment comes out of trying to unwind and undo abuses of power. abuses of affluence, abuses of masculinity, and of race that I’ve seen in my socio-economic kin, that I, I’m not…  I’m not advocating or prescribing it for, for instance, that should be the mantra of, you know, Latina woman. Sure. It may be if it’s helpful for you, go for it. But I just want to say like, I think I think that this is particular to my location, Marc Schelske  35:26   Right. The medicine, the medicine needs to be the medicine for the illness. And the illness we’re talking about comes from being right as a form of power. And if that’s the illness that you have, which it’s certainly one of the illnesses I have, then the medicine is to practice being wrong, learn to be okay with the discomfort that comes from not being right. But that may not be the medicine that everyone needs to take. Matt Tebbe  35:51   No. Right.  Who around you has chronic self-doubt? self-loathing, thinks have nothing to offer, never trusts their perspective, tells themselves all the time that they’re stupid and wrong. I mean, that’s not me, right. But there are people in our church that are like that. And so they need a much different medicine. You’re so right, Marc. Marc Schelske  36:17   Thank you so much for spending this time with me talking about a very exciting and uplifting conversation. Matt Tebbe  36:26   Yes, and I just to bracket this conversation, I may be wrong about everything I’ve just said. REFLECTION Marc Schelske  36:37   So, maybe you’re not like me, and Matt, maybe you don’t have this nagging need to be right. But chances are, that if your experience intersects with ours in a few places, then this might be something you also struggle with. I want to say this: Not having to be wrong is a Marcer of privilege. Now, I know a lot of us don’t like that word. But if you’re used to being the one who does the correcting, if you’re used to being the one in the room that people defer to, if you’re used to being the one who asked to see the manager and you end up getting your way, there’s a good chance that you’ve got some privilege happening.  Here’s why that matters. I’m a follower of Jesus, I’m committed to following Jesus’ teaching and his example, and I think that’s why you’re here as well. So here’s the thing. Jesus’ teaching and example are expressly about setting down our privilege to help and serve other people. in John’s gospel, chapter 10, verse 18, Jesus said this of himself, he said, “No one takes my life for me, I lay it down of my own accord.” And then the Apostle Paul, not wanting us to think that was just Jesus talking about himself and his own life, explain this to us further, in Philippians2. Read the whole chapter. I’m going to share just this part with you.  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interest of each other. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, (pretty high version of privilege), did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  See, this is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus taught his disciples. This is the example we’re told to follow: to lay aside the normal human desire to build up and protect ourselves at the expense of others, and instead to use our resources and our capacity to serve others. Learning to sit in the discomfort of being wrong is one tiny piece of that puzzle, especially for those of us who are used to being right.  See, for us, I think the spiritual practice is listening. Maybe not sharing our opinion, when we’re not asked to do it, maybe not stepping in to correct someone else who’s speaking up. I know, I know that that is hard for some of us. Some of us have learned that our sense of purpose and place and value depends on being right. But this is one of the ways we can step into living the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. So let’s do it. Let’s normalize being wrong. Let’s be willing to not have to be seen as the one who’s strong and right and in charge. Let’s be willing to listen. Let’s lay that stuff aside.  May you discover the gracious piece that can be had when we rest in Jesus, instead of in our own certainty. Thanks for listening.  Notes for today’s episode and the links mentioned are available for you at www.MarcAlanSchelske/TAW045. 

Episode 044 – Your Suffering is Sacred (With K.J. Ramsey) Are you allergic to happy clappy Christianity? There’s a good reason for thats. Churches that ignore suffering are ignoring Jesus. Many churches are not good at holding suffering. People who find themselves in extended suffering — maybe living with depression or anxiety, other mental health issues, or even invisible chronic illness — sometimes find there’s not a place for them in the church. In this episode, I talk with KJ Ramsey who has particular experience with this, and we talk about the gospel according to suffering. Show Notes “There needs to be more room in the Body of Christ to stand in the ground of our sorrow and see our suffering Savior.” – KJR “We prefer to keep death out of sight and any reminders of the decay in our bodies or being less than dazzling, we want to hide and pretend it doesn’t exist but the good news is that’s not the way of Jesus.” -KJR “If you’re in a church where they say ‘This table is for all,’ but you’re not actually included, leave. You don’t need to stay in a community that crushes you…You are not faithless if you need to walk away.” – KJR “To deconstruct the 2x4s of a house that was never actually God’s house is a gift that you give to your future self.” -KJR Follow KJ Ramsey & Get her Book K.J. Ramsey (BA, Covenant College, MA, Denver Seminary) is a licensed professional counselor, writer, and recovering idealist who believes sorrow and joy coexist. She is the author of This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers, and her writing has been published in Christianity Today, RELEVANT, The Huffington Post, Fathom Magazine, Health Central, and more on the integration of theology, psychology, and spiritual formation. She and her husband live in Denver, Colorado. At her website: http://www.kjramsey.com Instagram: @kjramseywrites Twitter: @kjramseywrites Facebook: @kjramseywrites Get her book, This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers OTHER LINKS You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. Today’s Sponsor Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom – If you’re like me, you might not have really been equipped to face difficult feelings. Distraction and denial were my favorite emotional tools. Projects. Video Games. TV. Social Media. More Work. Anything to not feel the discomfort. Learning how to sit with my feelings and understand what they really meant has been life changing. I wanted to share that with people I work with, so I wrote this little journal. The first 30 pages teach you the basics of how emotions work in our bodies and our brains, and how make meaning out of all of that. Then you learn a step-by-step template that guides you through processing an emotional reaction. Find My Stuff Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 043 – Your Purity & Piety Will Get You Nowhere You want to grow as a person. You want a sense of intimate connection with the Divine. You believe or suspect that the way of Jesus has something to say about this. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I write. But in order to grow in the way of Jesus, we have to unpack some ideas we have about the spiritual life, so we can clear away some of the garbage that’s getting in our way. One obstacle to growing spiritually is the picture we have in our minds about what a really spiritual person looks like. Yea. Our expectation of spirituality can be an obstacle to encountering Jesus. Show Notes Do you have either of these ideas internalized? “If we want to know and experience God, we must deal with sin in our lives. Intimacy with God and spiritual growth is tied to our purity.” “If we want to know and experience God, we have to really, really want it and demonstrate commitment through an investment of time and effort. Intimacy with God and spiritual growth is tied to our piety.” If you’re not sure, try this quick test. What is your immediate gut response to the question, “How are you doing spiritually?” If your answer is tied to dealing with sin or spending more time in spiritual practice, then one of these ideas has taken root in your heart. We often compare ourselves to an imaginary ideal holy person in our minds. Whatever this holy person looks like will shape how we feel about ourselves and what we think we need to do to have an encounter with God. Consider a different narrative about encounter with God: Reflect on the story of Jacob. (Read it for yourself in Genesis 32) Jacob encounters God while wrestling in the dark. He doesn’t recognize God. He didn’t go into the dark to be spiritual. He was at the end of his rope. Do we feel like God isn’t present in our lives because we are expecting God’s presence to be something we recognize? Jacob has to tell the truth about himself. The stranger asked for Jacob’s name. In his culture a person’s name represented their character. Jacob’s name was “Heal Grabber,” a conniver, a cheater, a betrayer. God gave him a new name and a new story, but before that he had to admit the truth of who he was. Do we miss God’s presence because we are clinging to justifications and lies about who we are? Jacob wouldn’t let go. Even though he had lost the fight, he would not let go until he received a blessing. Do we sometimes feel like God isn’t present because after we have prayed a little while, we don’t feel like we’ve gotten an answer or a sense of God’s presence, and we give up? You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS Today’s Sponsor My Youtube Channel – I’m working this year to build my Youtube channel. Why? Isn’t this a podcast? Aren’t podcasts audio? It’s really simple. Youtube is one of the largest search engine when you count the number of searches. When people want to learn how to do something, Youtube is the first place they go. My whole purpose with this podcast is to help people develop a healthy, inner life following the way of Jesus. A bunch of those people are never going to search “Christian Podcasts” in a podcast app. But they do come to Youtube and search for practical spiritual insight. I want to meet them there, and you can help. Head over to my channel and subscribe. Every time you like, comment and share a Youtube video, the algorithm assumes that people like you would like that video. That’s how the algorithm knows who to recommend videos to. Find My Stuff Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom. Untangled Heart Course Online. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 042 – Can You Imagine Jesus Demanding Sex? – Interview with Sheila Wray Gregoire. Christian teachers notoriously have lots of opinions about sex. Sometimes they even claim those opinions are God’s will. But what if some of those teachings are hurting people and wrecking marriages? In this interview with Sheila Wray Gregoire we talk about the stunning findings from her survey of 20,000 Christian women about their sex lives, beliefs, and what they were taught in church about sex. This is a crucial conversation if the church is going to be healthy, life-giving community. Show Notes CONTENT ADVISORY: We’re going talk frankly about sex, body parts, sex acts, and porn. Sexual abuse, rape, and marital rape will be mentioned. Meet Sheila: Sheila Wray Gregoire is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex! A popular speaker, marriage blogger, and award-winning author of nine books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, she wants to challenge Christians to go beyond pat answers on marriage to reach real intimacy. Sheila believes in authenticity, and gives real solutions to the very real and messy problems women, and couples, can face. She and her husband Keith spend a lot of their time touring North America in an RV, speaking at marriage conferences, hiking, and birdwatching. The parents to two adult daughters, you can usually find her in Belleville, Ontario, where she’s either knitting, blogging, or taking her grandson out for a walk. Gregoire’s study evaluated the impact of the following beliefs taught many in Fundamentalist or Evangelical churches: “Boys will want to push girl’s sexual boundaries.” “All men struggle with lust. It is every man’s battle.” “If you have sex before you are married, that means you have less of yourself to give your future spouse because a part of you will always belong to someone else.” “The only Biblical reason for divorce is an affair.” “It is a man’s God-given role to provide for his family and a woman’s God-given role to stay home raising her children.” “Women should have frequent sex with their husbands to keep them from cheating or watching porn.” “A wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it.” Interesting Comments In regard to the belief about lust being every man’s battle: “We are conflating sexual attraction with sin.” Sexual attraction is normal and healthy. Lust is objectification that turns people into objects for our pleasure. In regard to the belief that wives are obligated to provide sex to their husbands on demand. One of the consequences of this belief is physical pain. “Evangelical women have twice the rate of sexual pain as the general population.” This is on par with the rates for women who experienced childhood abuse. This belief is abusive. “Consent is the conversation that is missing in our resources.” Almost all of the Christian books on marriage and sex reviewed in this study did not mention consent at all! Gregoire’s Rubric for evaluating Christian Sex & Marriage Books See the questions used to evaluate the sex & marriage books mentioned. Finding more from Sheila Wray Gregoire: Website: tolovehonorandvacuum.com Instagram Facebook Twitter Get the Book: Amazon All other vendors You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS Today’s Sponsor The Untangled Heart Online Course – An online workshop to help you learn to sit with your emotions, identify them, and discern wisdom in what you learn from them. Find My Stuff Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom. Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 041 – Trust Your Instinct About the Church – Interview with Fr. Kenneth Tanner. After everything that’s happened in the past year, are you wondering about whether there’s a place for you in the church? Are you asking questions like “Where do I fit? What I’m seeing around me doesn’t look like Jesus. What do I do? I love Jesus. I want to follow Jesus, but if these other Christians are any indication, I don’t even know if I’m Christian anymore.” Have you had those thoughts? Well, I can tell you from my own experience, and stacks of emails in my inbox, that you are not alone. In this interview with Father Kenneth Tanner, we’ll talk about steps you can take. Show Notes What should we say to people asking these questions? “Yes. This doesn’t look good.” “You are not alone.” “If you’re alarmed by what you see in the church in America, you have good spiritual intuition.” How do we fix this problem of feeling alienated? Admit we have a problem. Our Christian movements and leaders have to admit there is a problem if we want to fix it. Face our amnesia. Most of us have no attachment to the history of Christianity, and some of us have forgotten the testimony of folks who encountered Jesus throughout history. (Not just Biblical history) The historical church in Africa, Asia Minor, and Ireland for instance have much to teach us. If we forget our history, we won’t really know our identity. Listen to the words of our Lord in Matthew 25. Instead of looking to the institution, go to the margins. Jesus says that He will meet us there among the poor, the sick, the hungry, and those who are oppressed. By talking with, being in relationship with, we will be changed and encounter Jesus. Historically, Christians were the most impactful when they went to the margins and served people. This is where we’re off track, trying to amass influence and power for our team. We need the grand reorientation of our minds and hearts to begin to see the world and other human beings the way the Human God does. And then Fr. Tanner just started preaching the gospel. Here’s some quotes: “God loves the world. God made the world in love. It’s because God loves the world that he doesn’t seek to escape the world. He enters the world. He decided to become human, forever identifying himself with every human person.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner. “Christians must fundamentally begin with the revelation of God that we have in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the one who reveals the Father.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner. “Jesus always only brings life. He never brings death. He only always brings healing and not disease. He only always brings liberty and not oppression.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner. “We only come to the point where realize we’re ready to embrace the judgement of God when we understand his character. Perfect love casts out all fear.”  – Fr. Kenneth Tanner. Where can we find hope?  By looking to the broader tradition of Christian history. Listen to faithful Christians from every tradition. In order to see the full picture of Jesus, we must listen to the broad range of traditions—particularly the Christian East of the first 800 years of Christianity. And much more including thoughts on God’s wrath & Judgement, cancel culture, spiritual intuition, the controversies around how to respond to COVID-19 You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube. RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS Today’s Sponsor Discovering Your Authentic Core Values – Life presents us with way too many options. We’re surrounded by potential opportunities, obligations, and distractions. On top of that, our time is limited. We can’t do everything. A meaningful life that is not stretched thin comes from learning when to say no and when to say yes. In Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, I walk you thought a simple, step-by-step process that will help you clearly identify a compass for your life that is unique to you. More than a thousand people have have used this process and many of them have found it deeply helpful. Maybe you will too. Find My Stuff Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list. Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom. Untangled Heart Course Online. Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.