The Decline of Christianity and the Rise of Godless Religions| Zach Elliott

In this episode, Mike talks with Zach Elliott, president of VUVIVO and the author of Now I See: An Invitation to Life to the Full. They talk about the decline of Christianity and the emergence of new spirituality. Though people are indeed leaving the church, they are not becoming atheists. Mike and Zach discuss why this is happening and the opportunity this presents for the Gospel.

Our conversation covers a range of topics, from the role of storytelling in preaching to the significance of embodying faith in everyday life. We also touch on practical ways to reintegrate meaningful spiritual practices in the home and church settings. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on how to make faith relevant and engaging in today's world.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
That the majority of the ways that we're doing this, they're not working.
And so I do think that we need to be aware of the way the world has shifted here in the West,
how some of our practices, as well-intentioned as they might be,
are not delivering on our promises.
Well, I just got to have a thoroughly enjoying conversation with a good friend

(00:24):
of mine, Zach Elliott, who is the founder and president of VUVIVO,
which stands for Vision Up, Vision In, Vision Out.
And it's a ministry that is committed to uncovering enchanted reality through
imagination, reason, and good storytelling.
We talk about our cultural moment, how it seems like secularism is coming to

(00:49):
the end. But what is emerging is new expressions of religion for a godless society.
We talk a little bit about Tara Isabella Burton's insightful book,
as well as what some good practices ought to be for the church and the family.
The reality is that people are not becoming more atheist.

(01:12):
They're remaining spiritual, but becoming less religious.
So what does this mean for the church? What insight can we gain?
For why the younger generations are leaving the church. What is it that they're
after? What is it that they're finding lacking in the church?
And how can we as pastors and parents demonstrate the truth,
goodness, and the beauty of the gospel that satisfies the deepest longings of

(01:35):
our heart such that this generation can find what they are looking for within
our homes and within our walls and within our religious practices?
It was a wonderful conversation. We actually continued it for about another
hour. We probably should have recorded that bit too, but I hope you, I hope you enjoy it.

(01:55):
Morning, Zach. How are you doing, man? Hey, I am good. It's always better when
I see your face. I love getting time with you, so this is great.
That is so cheesy, I almost don't believe it. But cheers and good morning to you, my friend.
I'm really curious what you think about something that I'm curious about and

(02:16):
have been thinking about. out.
I'm wondering if we're approaching maybe the end of secularism.
And what I mean by that, of course, secularism, this belief movement to create
a world that is purely rational, devoid of anything supernatural,
dependent upon science.

(02:38):
And even if you take a position like Daniel Dennett, that will admit that science
is nested inside of morality.
They have a hope that secular ethics can provide an objective basis for morality
without the appeal to anything transcendent.
This is, of course, an enlightenment project, you might call it.

(03:00):
And I'm wondering if we're reaching the end of it. And I say that because on
one hand, you might look at the Western world or America and go,
no, they're clearly winning.
Look at the universities they're very secular look at
media uh look at film look at
church attendance the mainline denominations are
shrinking even the southern baptists aren't doing i mean just numbers are going

(03:24):
down so on one hand you're like then of course it's not ending it's really succeeding
but if you look at sociological research things like the number of of people
that identify as atheists, that needle hasn't moved at all.
In fact, it may have gone down according to some studies. But anyways,

(03:45):
either way, it's under 10%.
So you think of this Enlightenment project, the secularism of the West,
it hasn't resulted in a world of atheists.
And in fact, we're seeing an increase. So even though we're seeing people leave
the churches, there's no doubt about that.
We're seeing an increase in a category that's been called the religious nuns.

(04:07):
On the census, you check your box, your religious box or whatever,
Protestant or Christian, Muslim, whatever the choices are.
I don't even can't think of what they all are. But one of them is none.
And the box marked none has been being checked with more frequency than any other box.
It may be the fastest growing demographic in this country, religiously speaking.

(04:30):
And as it relates to the millennials, upwards of 40% of them identify as religious or the nuns.
Spiritual, but not religious. And it's interesting when you dive into the research
on this group, it's true that they're abandoning traditional religion,
but they haven't abandoned spirituality.

(04:52):
The vast majority of them believe in some kind of higher power,
a meaningful percentage of them still believe in the Judeo-Christian God,
but a number of them are really open to spiritual ideas.
What it seems to me is, long introduction here, here.

(05:13):
What it seems to me is that this Enlightenment project did not succeed in creating
a secular West, but it tilled the soil for new religious experiences to grow.
And it seems to me that's what is happening here at our time in the West.
What do you think about that? Have you experienced any of that?

(05:34):
Or point me in the right direction if I'm.
Going the wrong way here. No, it's, I think you're spot on.
And I don't think like I would go a little further even and say like,
it's not, is it, is it a question mark of has it run out of gas?
I think, I think it's a yes, like secularism as a project, that enlightenment project.

(05:58):
I think it's, it's day has passed.
That ship has sailed. And I think, uh, there's lots of ways to,
to talk about that, but I'm with you. So I think you're right on.
Experienced it? Yes. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest.
So like we come from a very open, transcendent, spiritual, but not religious
landscape out in the Pacific Northwest.

(06:21):
So that was kind of in the air all, I would say from like early 20s up.
That was my experience out there. So lots of experience. Yes.
I think I think you're right as far as where we are on the map and just like
from the Enlightenment forward, this idea running out of gas.
And now we're at a point of transition.

(06:42):
And I mean, the Pope said this, it's not just an age of change,
it's the very changing of an age.
And I think that was right on, that there is something much bigger shifting.
And to get to your final point there, I think that the project,
especially the American West of Western civilization in America,

(07:04):
the expressive individualism, what the ground tilled up was this idea that we can do our own thing.
And there was a little tilling of ground that led to downstream this idea that
you have your truth, I have my truth, as long as you stay off my lawn and I stay off your lawn.
The idea is that we're all entitled to our own individual take on the thing.

(07:29):
And we're no longer bound by anything that's overarching.
So I think there was like some competing streams, but I think like in the epoch in time, yes, right?
There's an enlightenment project that is done.
We're at the changing of an age here in the West, in America.
There's a particular flavor to that that has that expressive individual soil

(07:52):
in it. So now we've got the confidence.
And I think that that's where we're starting to experiment. And you can't shake.
This is why Charles Taylor said we're in a God haunted world.
So you can say, I don't want the religious institution or structure or dogma or whatever.
I don't want that. But I can't shake transcendence. I can't shake spiritual things.

(08:15):
I live in a God haunted world and I'm a God haunted person that I can't shake.
So I think now what you have is individuals who are empowered to be like, yeah, I'm open to that.
I'm not denying the fact that there's something other, but I'm not going to
let you tell me what that is or how to relate in that in that landscape.
But I think you're right for sure.

(08:37):
So why do you think secularism ran out of gas or is running out of gas or to
take your position, maybe has run out of gas?
And what about this God hauntedness?
Is that a, would, you know, like an atheist say, yeah, that I with you, it's still haunted.
That's because of how long Christianity pervaded the West and we just still need to clean it up.

(08:59):
I mean, what do you think about why it's run out of gas or what the hope even
would be for the atheist to say, yeah, I'm with you on the haunted part, but we just got to get the.
Rational exorcist to turn them loose. Sure.
I mean, that would have been Nietzsche's thing of like, yeah,
we're almost there, right?

(09:20):
Will to power, finally break loose of it and shed that, but you're going to
pay a price for it, you know, all that.
I think that first it ran out of gas because it's not sufficient to,
it's not sufficient for reality.
And so, I think truth, if you think about beauty, goodness, truth,
and truth is reality, like that what is real. It's not a dogma. It's like reality.

(09:44):
Eventually, our dogmas and our beliefs, even secular beliefs,
if they're insufficient for reality, then reality is iconoclastic.
It's going to shatter even our most ardent, educated, prideful stance against it.
At the end of the day, water is water.
There's a touch and a feel to reality that you go, I can name it or label it

(10:08):
or deny it however I want.
But at the end of the day, I feel something, I experience something that is reality.
It's rooted in a the material world. So I think it's just, it's not,
it's been proven not sufficient for the totality.
Did you experience that any? You'd mentioned growing up in the Pacific Northwest
and kind of being in this era of spiritual but not religious.

(10:31):
What was some of your background? You've been a Christian your entire life.
Maybe personally, how have you experienced some of what we've been talking about here?
Yeah, it's so good. I grew up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church,
so very rational, like very rational, very, very orthodox in conviction,
very rational in approach.

(10:52):
And went through catechism and was kind of, I'm a middle child,
so a little bit rebellious, not wanting to just follow in line.
And my first like God-haunted experience that was like really profound for me
was actually in church. I was sitting there listening.
And I would do this often because we had our catechism class was next to the

(11:15):
sanctuary in the fireside room.
And so we would go from our school up through the actual sanctuary and then
pass through to the fireside room.
And I would kind of delay my entrance to catechism class as long as I could.
And I would hide out in the church.
And sitting in that sanctuary, they have the eternal flame.
And I would sit there all alone in that sanctuary. And there was something that

(11:39):
was just true beyond words, beyond experience that I knew,
there's something and that little candle was just like
a flicker of like something beyond right
uh didn't have language for it didn't even know wasn't interested but knew it
there same feeling came standing at the edge of the pacific like if you've been

(12:02):
out there for anybody who's listening you know that there's like a there's a
there's a sense that you get of smallness when you're at the edge of the Pacific.
And I was just keenly aware, like...
I'm not at the center. There's something mysterious and big.
And I felt it in the sanctuary.
I felt it sometimes when I would hear the story of the gospel being preached.

(12:25):
I felt that same thing next to the Pacific.
I would feel that same thing. And it came around later in some experiences around
tragedy where life was, I saw the preciousness of life and was wrestling with like,
okay, the idea that we're just an accident doesn't square.
With any of those doesn't square with death doesn't

(12:46):
square with beauty doesn't square with this sacredness
that i experience it's insufficient for
what i'm experiencing and so then you start digging and you're going hey other
people have found that too and then you know i grew up in the age of dawkins
where the shadow of dawkins was like looming large and even he now is like i'm
a cultural christian right like all right it's it's even the stuff that i was

(13:10):
like wagging my finger about.
When I'm really late in life, it's just, I can't say that it holds everything.
So I have those experiences and I can go on, but so many of those really, really...
Would you say that you've always been a Christian or you grew up in a religious

(13:33):
environment, wandered away, but these things haunted you and you came back?
Or yeah, maybe just tell a little bit more of that because it seems like maybe
you've lived a bit of what we want to talk about here.
Yeah, I think so. Like, again, awesome parents, faithful parents,
wonderful church community, really great pastor that I grew up under that was

(13:54):
very compassionate to my questions and my wrestling.
And the biggest thing, we had a book, my family has some indigenous Native American
heritage through my dad's family.
And there was a book called Touch the Earth that my parents had,
and kind of an old 70s hippie book, but it was so wonderful.

(14:15):
And it told like the history and the tragedy of some of the things that had
happened to indigenous people in America.
And I remember reading that book, and it was the first time,
I was probably only 12 or 13, the first time I was really wrestling with this.
And that wrestling got so significant.
My question was like, okay, this person who has no context, no language,

(14:40):
no idea of the gospel, Jesus, law, gospel, you know, in the Lutheran church,
it's law and gospel, and it's very, very rationally presented.
Here's the not systematic theology is what you'd name it, but here there's a
framework for what you believe.
And that's what you're being trained
in. And so, I'm going through that experience about that same time.
And then I'm thinking about that kid who's never heard the name of Jesus,

(15:03):
has no experience. And it's that question like, what happens to him, right?
And does he have to assent to some belief to be in the club?
And that doesn't seem right.
So, I'm wrestling with that. And I pressed my dad. I was like.
I'm having a hard time with like the narrow way of Jesus is the,

(15:23):
you know, that because what happens and then my brain went to like cognitive decline,
death in the womb, like even as a young person, I was like, I don't know, right?
Like if this, then it has to hold true.
So, my dad wisely just, he threw a book on my bed one day when I was 14,

(15:43):
he threw True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. And he said,
I just think you should read it.
And I read True Spirituality and it didn't answer a particular question,
but it widened my imagination, my thinking about a God who's cosmically at work
to reconcile something that has touched all of creation.

(16:04):
It just was a helpful way. I'd never encountered Christianity thinking deeply,
addressing philosophical questions, universal questions.
And that was helpful to me. I found a way through that.
But yeah, it was about that 14-year-old age where I was wrestling and I felt
like the Christian faith was too small, right? Right. And it had to be bigger.

(16:29):
And what I discovered was actually there is a way that you pass through and
it becomes, it becomes infinitely great.
Okay. So I think that that hits on it right here. And I think this is pretty interesting to me.
I think partly why I agree with you. Why partly why don't want to oversimplify
a complex problem, but I came across a great quote here recently.

(16:53):
I forget, I forget mocking maybe who it's attributed to, but for every complex
problem, there is a simple, neat, and wrong solution.
Yep, for sure. So be careful about a complex problem and reducing it too much here.
But secularism is too small.

(17:14):
It doesn't, it's not big enough. And I think that's what people run into.
They run into this, this, this numinos, that sense that you're talking about,
that there's more, there's something transcendent, there's more.
And so secularism is just, you try it out and you're still hungry when you're done with it.

(17:37):
I think though, and that's something that, you know, I know you picked up the
book too, The Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton, who's done a lot of work
exploring who are these religious nuns.
And those that have left the church, they've left the church for the same reason.
Christianity was too small.

(17:58):
And some of the challenges here that they're running into are secularism may
provide some liberation in the sense of, you know, for personal autonomy.
This expressive individualism.
But it's lacking of meaning and purpose. It's too small, but there's some freedom there.

(18:19):
Within the church, you're having different experiences because there are some
mainline churches that are as loose with morality as any.
So you're finding almost with some of these mainline Protestant churches where
you're having almost a similar experience to secularism where it's like,
it's too small, there's nothing here.
You may find some people that are going to churches that maybe are more rigid

(18:41):
rigid, but they lack the insight into the rules and the, why is it rigid like this?
And what does this still point to anything? Or is this the end of the road or these rules of the end?
And it still seems too small.
And so I think that's something that's being, it's commonly experienced,
particularly amongst the younger generations today, this sense of.

(19:06):
I know reality is bigger than how I'm experiencing it, whether that be through
some secular endeavor or a religious one.
And in the aftermath of some of these movements, there's a group of people that
have decided, I'm going to find this someplace else.

(19:27):
And I'm going to try to find this outside of traditional religion.
I'm not buying into an atheistic worldview.
There's got to be more and I'm going to find it.
And so, and sociological research is bearing this out, how people's world,
nobody really holds a consistent worldview anymore. They they're just picking and choosing.
I saw something recent where of those that identify as a Protestant,

(19:53):
they hold the exact same amount of new age beliefs as the religious nuns do.
It's no different. Yes, 100%. And in our country right now, more people believe
in the power of astrology than they do believe that the Bible is the word of
God. But it's somewhere close.
And what that shows is, I'll take a little bit from here, I'll take a little

(20:16):
bit from here, and I'm going to try to find something that works.
Now, Zach, I know you work a lot with the younger generations.
Have you seen any of what we're talking about lived out in them.
And if you have described what
they're like and what your experience working with them has been like.
Yeah, it's great. Or if I'm moving too fast, just comment on whatever I just said.

(20:37):
No, it's good. I love this. And I appreciate this podcast to just conversations like this are helpful.
I think for me, they're helpful for us and our team just to keep thinking about
where have we traveled? What's our landscape?
Because it is the very changing of an age. And I think we have to pay attention to that.
I think that's why everybody who's partners with your work and our work, it's so important.

(20:58):
This is a new moment. And it's not like its own thing. It's never happened in history.
But there is a nowness to this changing of an age where there's an urgency to
return back to some things and offer some things that have been lost.
So I'll come back to that maybe at the end.
But yeah, young people, I think I think I've kind of been on this journey with

(21:20):
young people and as a young person myself for a while now.
And so I've seen a movement, right?
And at first, there was that like rejection.
I was around a lot of the rejection, like, I think no, and I don't want anything to do with that, right?
And I think about it like food, I think, like, you know, you've had like traditional

(21:44):
food and traditional food,
very simple ingredients, beautifully presented in the way that it is like featuring the ingredient,
right? And that's the tradition of the food.
And then along comes the innovators. And we're like, I don't think it doesn't
have to, let's put it in a bowl. Let's blend it.
Let's put, you know, you can have steak and fish.

(22:06):
You can have this and that. you can have savory and sweet, like,
you don't have to choose, we can just blend it all.
And you do yours, and I'll do mine. And innovation is the highest good, right?
And I lived through that. And I think religiously in the West,
specifically, that became kind of really palatable.
Like people love that taste of like you're describing, I can do yoga,

(22:29):
I can smoke weed, I can love Jesus, I can read the Bible, I can go to mass,
I can go at Christmas, I like that Christmas Eve service, but I don't love that.
And I can just kind of blend it all together.
And that was comfortable for a while.
And I think now there is a desire that there's an exhaustion that comes from that.

(22:51):
And then I think that people are starting, young people that we know are starting
to go like, hey, was there ever a time where you could just taste something good?
And the burden wasn't on you to innovate and you didn't have to create it.
You didn't have to constantly be caught up in that novelty of making something new and authentic.

(23:12):
Is there something beautiful, right?
That is alluring that I can taste and it's good.
And then I can explore why it's true. Like, why does that taste that way?
Rather than going, I have to deconstruct it and make my own thing.
Like, I can actually just rest there and say yes to it.
And I think a lot of the young people we're encountering now are past that innovation

(23:36):
stage. They're kind of exhausted of it.
And, you know, every single restaurant now, you stand in line and there's 37
things and you've got to build it yourself.
And then you've got to pay for it with an app and nobody talks to you.
I think young people are like, has there ever been a thing where you could go
to a restaurant and there would be like just an ingredient prepared well by

(23:59):
a chef and I could just rest and somebody could bring me something delightful
that I could enjoy that was beyond me?
That sounds more fun than me just constantly having to curate my own bowl, right?
So I think we're there. And I think that's and there's a really important thing
for the Christian community to understand is like it's always been there, right?

(24:19):
Return to the old ways, the ancient past there, you'll find rest for your soul.
There's something there.
It became too small when you don't allow for people to experience that the beauty
of what's eternal, good, beautiful, true, and for themselves and delight in it.
You don't help them encounter that fresh, right? With fresh eyes.

(24:43):
When you don't do that in a generous way, you kind of finger wag down to them
that it's, this is the way it is and that you have to eat it in this way at this time in this.
Yeah, that's a little, that becomes too small.
But then the innovation becomes too small.
Well and you think about the exhaustion here in order for an expressive individualistic

(25:07):
religious experience to be big enough you yourself have to be big enough,
and that's exhausting you know exhausting and you think about the kind of person
that believes they are big enough enough.

(25:28):
That's a tyrant. That is a villain, a demon from the pit of hell that's going
to use this freedom to exploit everything and every person around them.
But for the vast majority of people, everybody else, they run out of steam and

(25:48):
they need something else put together that captures what they think that they're after.
Which to some degree does explain the culture wars here, right?
This whole, like, you know, especially when it relates to sexual issues,
why if sometimes you hear people
say, well, who cares? Just do what you want to do, but keep it quiet.
No, you can't keep it quiet. You need the visibility of it because you need

(26:10):
the group and the organization and the recognition of it such that this identity
and lived experience is big enough to provide the kind of meaning,
but it not all rest just upon your shoulders and be merely a subjective enterprise
because it's exhausting and it's small.
No, it must be larger. It must be understood.

(26:32):
It must be validated. And so that's one of the reasons why in the West right now,
I think why the fighting is so intense is because ultimately what people are
fighting for is something that is big enough to really satisfy their deepest longings.
So why, why, this is such a stupid question.

(26:56):
There are no stupid questions. Just, just stupid people that ask them. I agree with you.
Um, so why do you think, okay, if, if, if this is, if we're on,
if we're right about any of this, where we're living in a time in history where
people are just finding that these religious institutions, cultural institutions are, uh,

(27:20):
worldviews are too small to,
What about those that have grown up in the church? What is it that they found too small?
Why did they not find the God of the universe, the story that is the grandest of all stories?
Why did they not find that either big enough, experience it,
or what was the problem there? You got any insight?

(27:43):
Yeah. I love, I mean, that's right on.
That's part of my experience was, and I'll just share from, I don't know everybody's, everybody's.
I don't know if there's a universal, but I can say for me, like where there's
clearly mystery in scripture and it's actually really alluring because there are things that we,

(28:06):
I mean, literally says in scripture, his ways are not our ways.
His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Like there's things that we are going to see in part.
That's literally a refreshing thing.
And I think our discomfort with mystery was like, it was a miss.
And again, that was like that enlightenment over correction to say,

(28:30):
we can even explain the unexplainable.
Even if we can't explain the unexplainable, we can get you the equation that
explains the unexplainable.
And that like rigid commitment that we have to be certain about every certain,
certain, certain, certain thing, even if we're uncertain about the outcome of that certain thing.
Yeah, I think that was just a miss, right?

(28:50):
So, confidence in mystery and allowing that, right?
We are dealing with a God who, if he is ever able to be defined by us,
he's our God, not the God, right? Not God himself.
So, that idea that God is ineffable. And so there's things that we're going
to be, we can get right up there, but there's always just around the corner,

(29:12):
there's a widening out of who God is.
And so he's knowable and you can personally encounter and know God,
but you cannot contain him.
And that comfort with mystery, I think was part one. There's more, but I'll let you go.
But I think that was a big miss that was enlightenment kind of saturation and

(29:34):
fear. I really honestly think fear, Schaefer talked about it.
That's why he created Labrie, honest answers to honest questions,
because he said, we don't have to be scared of these things.
We can actually go out there and wonder about God.
And that's actually a really beautiful posture.
Year this idea of over

(29:55):
reacting or over correcting you think
of like you know when you're driving and you swerve and you over correct and
there was an obvious there was a reason to
move but you just moved too far too much or too quickly one particular aspect
i'm stuck in thought on relates to preaching so you think of the rise of liberal

(30:18):
christian or liberal theology in the 1900s.
This is an Enlightenment movement, deconstruction, postmodernism.
There's no meaning in the text.
Authorial intent, who cares? It doesn't matter. It's all about reader experience.
So you have the pushback to that, and you have really an emphasis on hermeneutics,

(30:40):
sound practices for discovering the meaning in a text.
This becomes standard in seminaries, emphasis, preaching that comes from this.
And now kind of the mark of a good Bible preaching church is a church that preaches
exegetical sermons, which means it takes you 27 years to go through the book

(31:01):
of Romans, because you have to break it down so small to make sure you get all
of the meaning out of every part of it.
And here's what I'm trying to process. Now, having good sound skills to get
the meaning out of the text that is clearly there, I think that's important.
I think the overcorrection is that we've lost the art of storytelling in the church,

(31:22):
and we take seven months to go through a letter
from paul that's 1400 words yeah and
if you just and it's amazing what emerges
to you when you read the biblical
text in uh more fully
and in one sitting like if you read the story of esther and it take you like

(31:44):
20 minutes to do it and just read it as a story without that i got what what's
what's behind that word what's behind that word what's behind that word what's
It's the historical context there. And all those things are fine, but...
What if you just read the story? What jumps off the pages? When you read the
first, the letter, just this week, I read First Thessalonians.

(32:05):
It's a simple, beautiful letter.
And I just read it in one sitting. It took like 10 minutes.
It's very simple. Paul doesn't make a lot of complex arguments in the book of First Thessalonians.
And I'm thinking, man, if I were to try to preach this now, kind of in that
style of preaching, I would think, okay, I got to do like five chapters and break it down.
You're going to break it down so much you lose the fatherly,

(32:27):
pastoral, warm, encouraging, inviting, protective feel that just jumps off the pages to you.
And so I think this is a big thing for us to think about within the church is
have we overreacted too much? Have we overcorrected?
And in one area that I've been thinking a lot about lately is in preaching.

(32:50):
And have we broken down god's word so much that we don't see it at all book
of hebrews our church is going through the book of hebrews sorry last thing
um some scholars say that they think it was,
written like as a sermon intended to be read like a sermon and some people make

(33:12):
jokes you know how long of a sermon that would be oh my gosh can you imagine
if you read that as a sermon like the The whole book is one sermon.
Yeah, it'd take 35 minutes. That's it.
So enough of me oscillating between being curious and getting on my soapbox
here, but I don't know what you think about any of that.

(33:33):
Well, I appreciate it because the felt experience of being in a church and feeling
that like abuse by particularization is kind of what's happening.
Like, like I'm getting beat by analysis.
It doesn't feel good. And a lot of people are like,
hey, I don't, I think I'd prefer to sit and dangle my feet at the edge of the

(33:54):
ocean and wonder about God than have somebody like over explain why the intensive
of this or that, you know, like it doesn't.
That just becomes exhausting again, and it's not rest for my soul,
and I'm already exhausted. So, let me go here first.
I love Hebrews, by the way. I love that thinking.
I read about Hebrews, too, that potentially or possibly written to 20 to 30

(34:18):
people. We just don't imagine.
We're like, oh, this is like epic megachurch. It was probably written to a house
church, 20 to 30 people engaging this letter. So that's a good,
healthy reframe for us, too, of like, who are we?
But to your point, you're on it.
Ian McGilchrist, the master and his emissary, I don't know if you've worked

(34:39):
through all of that, but he's saying this not from a religious context,
but he's describing the Enlightenment project and saying the master and his emissary, right brain,
left brain, analysis, synthesis, right?
Western civilization has overly particularized everything.
So we've taken apart the car and we've become obsessed with memorizing and naming

(35:02):
and organizing all the parts of the Ferrari.
And we've never actually sat in one. We've never actually enjoyed and stepped back and seen it.
We've become addicted to taking everything apart.
So we count our calories. We count our protein. We count our carbs.
We're like, that's all just this crazy neurotic left brain function to analyze,

(35:24):
analyze, analyze, analyze.
And that's become, and here's what I want to say. That's not a Christian problem.
That's a Western civilization problem.
We've done it in medicine, right? Like a doctor, a good doctor will say,
hey, we don't treat you by your numbers.
Your numbers help us, but we treat people. And so your numbers inform a case
that's a human embodied integral thing, integral being.

(35:47):
And so I want to look at your numbers, but I also want to listen to you.
And I want to understand you. I want to look and see your body, right?
But medicine in the West, fitness in the West, nutrition in the West,
everything has overcorrected to that left brain dominant thing.
So read McGill, Christie, or Master and his Emissary, The Matter with Things.
He deep, deep, deep dives into how we got here.

(36:09):
So it's a yes, and it has infected Christianity.
So it's not a Christian problem. It's not a Bible problem. It's the way we approach
it from our enlightenment-saturated lens.
But what you get, the result is that you lose the synthesis,
and you become only analysis. You see the parts, but not the whole.
And so the story's lost. And when there's no story, I can't locate myself on

(36:35):
a shop room floor amidst a bunch of parts.
There's a beautiful poem called One Day I'll Visit Hawk Mountain.
Lovely poem. And the whole poem, it's gorgeous.
And the author of the poem starts out saying, one day I'll be a good birder.
And a birder is like a birdwatcher.

(36:56):
It says, one day I'll be a good birder. And she proceeds to say,
I'll know the flight speed of this type of bird and I'll know this and I'll know that.
And she goes, she's walking through McGilchrist poetically and saying,
one day I'll have all of that analytical data and I'll be a good birder.
But right in the middle of the poem, she says, but I am a bad birder.

(37:20):
And she makes this beautiful turn and she goes, because I care little about
the. And then she goes back and she revisits all of that data.
And she says, I love to see the rapturous soaring, right?
And she describes the way that these birds are soaring. And she goes,
and she's confessing, but I'm a bad birder because what I really love is to

(37:43):
be caught up in the wonder.
Here's the magic of the poem. She's both.
She's able to describe what it is to be. She has all of the data.
The data is not important or not unimportant.
Lewis said this, imagination precedes reason. It doesn't supersede it.
Analysis is good, but it serves something else. That's McGilchrist,

(38:04):
the master and his emissary. Those parts serve the whole.
And you have to remember that. We have to remember that, that even in our preaching,
the parts actually serve the whole.
And if we become just a analysis you
know club that's actually not the point and.
So one day will be one day i'll be

(38:24):
a good birder right like and i will have moved
past just analysis and that
poem will switch but beautiful way of thinking but mcgill crest
sinking it poets are thinking it members of
churches you're feeling it i i think it's
really dangerous when the biblical story and
stories are lost this is

(38:46):
another one another space of thought
that i'm caught up in is thinking through
this this notion of uh my i
just inadvertently gave a thumbs up here yes teleprompter
as you should to myself
that's that's pretty lame i thought

(39:07):
i turned heard that off anyhow um i've been
really trying to think through this this notion of um how much
we orient ourselves in life through story meaning
the way we make sense of the world our place in it i
think fundamentally it is through through story and uh
isabella terry isabella burton talks to some degree about this in her book and

(39:31):
in the context of this search for meaning looking for something big and i don't
know if she's a christian she kind of hints at coming to faith but she does
not explain it in the book um it's not written like she's a christian but um.
One of the things she comments on is how many people know the story of the book

(39:52):
of Job versus the story of Harry Potter,
and how many millions of people, if not more, like tens of millions of people,
orient themselves in the world through the story of Harry Potter.
And by that, I don't mean acting out as if they are wizards,
but having a conception of reality and how you're to orient yourselves in the world in light of that.

(40:16):
That's what I mean by that. That's what stories do. They capture your imagination.
They imagine you, they allow you through a fictional story to imagine what the
world is like and how it should be and what your place in it should be.
Also, people probably can name the four houses of Hogwarts more than they can name the four gospels.

(40:38):
And I wonder if, if, if part of that is, so if you look at the church,
okay, how the church has maybe dropped the ball in some ways,
or just been unwise or overcorrected. You have some churches that have just
given up any kind of serious teaching to begin with.
And people have left those churches because there's not enough there,
not enough substance. It's still just way too small.

(40:59):
You have some other churches that are like, no, we're serious Bible preaching
churches, but they've broken it down so much that people may be amazed at,
wow, look at what we just learned from that one verse.
But then they have no ability to back up and go, so what was Paul trying to do in this letter? her.
What is the story of Job? And how do I live that out? The story of Esther.

(41:23):
You may be left with a great sermon point, but you don't leave with the story.
And that doesn't really help you almost. It doesn't help you as much in life
as you begin imagining the way that you are to live in this world.
So I think, and you tell me if you agree, and to make sure that we're also being clear on this.
A lot of the scholarship and the academic rigor that has been reactionary,

(41:45):
if you will, has resulted in a lot of good things that we should use and we
should cherish. The trick is in applying it well.
And so when you're crafting a sermon series and doing your diligence to understand
what was Paul's intent in the book of 1 Thessalonians, to do the work of a good
scholar, to do the biblical theology,
to understand the historical context, text to make sure that you're understanding

(42:08):
the literary context as well.
And you have an understanding of the nuance, maybe of a Greek verb or tense.
If you can do all that, do all of that.
But then when you put together your sermon series and your preaching,
what is it that you should highlight?
Should you highlight that exegetical process or something else?

(42:30):
And I want to be careful about offering a definitive answer here because I think
I don't know yet. I think I'm not quite sure yet what that looks like and if
I were still a pastor and if I were preaching every week I'd be curious to see
what this would result in my preaching habits.
But I think in terms of, I think one thing that I'm sure of,
at least as it comes to the preaching and the teaching practices of the church,

(42:52):
and probably also in the home, we have to move more. We need to move back.
What's the way to say it? Maybe it's not even move back. We need to add story.
That's the simplest way to put this.
We have to add story because it captures the imagination of people.
And when I say capture imagination, of course, I'm talking about imagination.
Imagination, not everything that is imagined is false and fiction, right?

(43:16):
But your imagination allows you to experience the wonder and the what ifs and
the mystery and how am I a part of, and what should I do? And if this happened, what would I do?
It's a way to really begin living out a set of beliefs that's almost in a sense

(43:37):
a priori to you living them out.
And the imagination is something that has to be tapped into again,
at least in Christian circles.
So I don't know if maybe I got too long winded there for you to even comment
on it, but I don't know what you think about any of that.
No, I love it. And you did, you covered a lot of ground. You didn't get long
winded, but you covered a lot of ground that's important for us.
And so I want to frame like for the pastor, because that's a particular role and job.

(44:01):
And I think people are asking great questions and experiencing the friction
point of people are not showing up to church. So there's a good question to ask there.
So at the same time, they're becoming more religious or more spiritual.
They're becoming, you know, distant from the church. So good question.
First, I would say in principle, I think one thing we're learning that we can

(44:22):
take to the bank is that we've gone, if we've even thought classically,
we've ordered it truth, goodness, beauty.
And so we've put the highest emphasis on truth.
And what we're learning is actually, that's not even in scripture,
like the tree in the garden is beauty.
It's alluring it. There's something that catches your eye.

(44:43):
Beauty draws you to goodness and allows you to know truth.
And we can classically go, okay, that's actually the way humans work, right?
I don't walk up to a table and see the data first.
I see the plate and I go, what is that?
So we have to pay attention to that. Beauty draws us to goodness and allows us to know truth.

(45:05):
That's actually reality. So really important for us to understand.
If we're leading with truth, it's harder for people. We just have to be paying attention, right?
And this is what Lewis did. So he slipped past the washtroll dragons,
opened up the curtain. So I want to say that's what is being described.
Story, you've heard it said, the kingdom of God is like this, right?

(45:26):
He got their imagination to start
picturing something because that's how humans, that's how beings work.
And then, right, story, break bread together.
Oh, all of the prophets and everything testifies to you. Oh, right. Right.
So there's a way of engaging that goes beauty, goodness, truth.
We can take that to the bank. And I think everybody listening,

(45:49):
whether you're a parent, whether you're a pastor, whether you're a politician, take that.
But please, please, please take that back and take that to the bank.
And we need to recalibrate because enlightenment thinking has gone.
We have to like stick truth in the ground and fight over it first and we get nowhere.
Nowhere and part of what we need to do is say

(46:09):
hey let's draw with beauty because it will
it carries us to good and then we can start to
know truth so that's the first thing i want to say second thing is we put i
want to say for pastors we put an incredible and bizarre burden on pastors to
be jk rowling cs lewis you know and your favorite brand of hermeneutic or exegetical preacher,

(46:33):
like, and also the most compassionate person and also the most financially shabby. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. We got to dispense with that. And the market doesn't even want it.
Tara and her book is going, I don't go to church.
Like there's something I'm, there's something I'm longing. And I just want,
Mike, I'm so glad we're having this conversation because for pastors,

(46:53):
there's a liberation to say we're a part of a symphony and the whole world as
we've become, we've gone through the just disenchantment of secularism.
Oh, right.
And now we look out at a landscape and the overcorrection again would be that
for the church to say, we have to be the place that everything reappears. Nope.

(47:14):
That's, that is an overcorrection. God never intended the church to like a particular
building for one hour to be the whole thing.
It has a beautiful job to do. There is a part in a symphonic hole that the church
plays. The overcorrection is like, you're right, Mike.
How do we get our sermons more enchanting, deeply true, also ethically oriented, sourced locally?

(47:38):
Like, ridiculous, right?
That's not the church's job. Like the church's job, we have this opportunity
to corporately experience and to make visible an invisible reality.
And Joseph Pieper talks about this, that leisure is the basis of culture,
describes this, that culture is built on festival.

(47:59):
And that the highest divine, the highest expression of festival,
which is what we're made for, not total work culture, which is Western civilization
is slipping into a total work culture. But divine festivals,
actually the highest expression of what it is to be human.
And he takes it right there and says, the corporate worship service is that.

(48:19):
It's actually the most delightful thing that humans can experience.
And this takes you more to Tolkien or Lewis, where the most human thing that
humans can be found doing is gathered in joy, in celebration and remembrance
of the true reality, right? Right.
And the love of God permeating a people who are bound together,

(48:39):
Jew, Greek, slave, free, this radical diversity and yet incredible unity and the love of God.
And that that's not just an abstraction or an idea.
There's an embodied, visible reality to it. And for a moment,
we have oriented really not just in ideas to a gathering that is a joy filled,

(49:00):
transcendent moment of celebration.
Celebration, the centerpiece of that is this remembrance that my body was broken,
the blood was shed, it is finished, like there is a God who has loved you to the end, right?
And the participation in that, that's why people long to be together in a transcendent space.

(49:21):
That's why hanging out at the beach on Easter, when I literally got up on an
Easter morning one time, and so I was wrestling through this,
I was like, Mom, I'd rather be sitting at the beach than in this stodgy,
dodgy old church service. I was wrong.
I was not seeing the whole picture. And so, it felt more transcendent to be out there at the beach.

(49:41):
But the mystery was actually that I was actually participating in something
even more beautiful, right?
And so, there's a both and there. I want to say to pastors, your job,
keep the main thing the main thing.
And we over put the burden on ourselves.
But why people gather, Rather, start with why to go to CENIC.

(50:02):
Like, why do we get together?
What's the point of that moment? And it doesn't mean that education is bad.
No, we should teach and there should be opportunity.
But there's a great, you can get information and teaching.
We access teaching and instruction all the time. And there's actually really
wonderful modes of learning.
And we actually know that like Jesus's way of teaching through mentorship,

(50:25):
mentorship was there's a very effective way of embodying a reality and sitting
in a lecture isn't the most effective way.
So it's not that that we're doing. There's something else. Get back to that.
Ask that question and then relieve the burden to be JK Rowling and a chef and a CEO and everything.
That's not what the church should do. And it's a bad look, right?

(50:48):
When we look back in time at pictures of this that the pastor's trying to do
all that it's just going to be like right that was a phase get out of that and
and feed my sheep like there's a beautiful.
Thing that's supposed to take place that is
a part of a symphonic whole that all of

(51:09):
culture is recalibrating back to in the church has a particular place
i don't know if that any of that makes sense but yeah well it you know it strikes
me in some ways as hopeful and overwhelming like this to what degree the reimagining
and reorganizing of our weekly gatherings,

(51:32):
the kind of undertaking that that is.
But another way that I think about this is often I'll give a talk every year
at Summit, giving Summit, which
is a ministry that teaches Christian worldview to 16- to 24-year-olds.
They come for 12 days and sit through 40 hours of lecture on Christian theology,

(51:54):
worldview, and apologetics, but it's set in a relational environment.
And so it has this nice combination of truth and relationship and it's, it's fantastic.
And all right, Summit, I just gave you a plug, which you're going to give me back for that.
Sign up now, spots are limited.
And summit.org. The talk I'm giving, one of the talks I'm giving is on the church

(52:20):
and it's becoming re-enchanted with the bride of Christ.
And the way I give this, this talk is I, you know, I start by asking the students,
what comes into your mind when you think of the church? You hear that word.
And I'll ask for a response. And you can imagine what they would say.
It's typical responses center around a building, a one-hour event,

(52:42):
and then some negative stereotypes.
That's then often flanked by a bunch of positive things. And so it's a bit of
a mix, but central to their imaginative framework here is a building where people gather once a week.
And then the lecture then goes through the New Testament and pulls out the references to the church.

(53:02):
And you're not going to go to the New Testament and find a paragraph summary
of what the church is, how it's to function and all that. Nothing that neat.
You get some instruction from Paul, moderate amount, relating to organization and leadership roles.
Not a lot of instruction from Paul there, but you get a heck of a lot of imaginative
language from Jesus and other writers.

(53:26):
And you get this notion that the church,
a conception of the church is the people of God who have been called out of
darkness from all kinds of different backgrounds, unified by the death and the
resurrection of Jesus Christ,
brought into this holy nation,
this royal priesthood.

(53:47):
But again, this is all the kinds of imaginative language, a family, a body.
And when you walk through the New Testament's description of the church,
you're left in a bit of wonder and awe at what the church is and what we get
to be part of and how it is a small manifestation of the coming kingdom of God and ultimate reality.

(54:12):
Here on earth. And then I asked the students, okay, so let's say we've caught
this vision for what the church is.
And then Jesus ascended and we get together and go, okay, let's get to work.
How should we organize ourselves and what should we be doing?
And somebody raised their hand and said, I've got an idea.

(54:35):
Let's get a big warehouse that's ugly. And we're going to make it really dark inside.
We're going to meet in it for one hour a week. First 30 minutes,
we're going to listen to some kind of new age spiritual mantra,
mindless repetition of lyrics that don't really mean anything,
but it's going to be really cool. It's going to be really done.
And why are the lights off? Well, you don't want to be distracted.

(54:58):
Be distracted from what?
The other people in the room, obviously it's for you to have this experience
with God, not with everybody else. You don't want to be uncomfortable.
That's why it needs to be dark. Okay. Okay. I get get you uh what
about our kids going to be in there no we're going to send them out we
don't want them to be distracting you either we're going to send them to wazumba
land and they're going to learn abstract life lesson stories about
how they can conquer their own goliaths in kindergarten okay that

(55:20):
sounds good and then after that first 30 minutes
we're going to have somebody come up and preach this kind of self-help easy
you know we don't want to offend anybody turn them away kind of
thing you know but let's get as many people in the building because it's better
for them to be here than not be here so let's do that well how are we
going to teach them other things we'll figure that out later don't worry about it all right
that's a great what would they do to that person they

(55:41):
would say okay we're gonna take every
other idea we're gonna do anything but that that's like so i do think part of
the way forward here is to even use satire and mocking kind of beat mocking like that,

(56:01):
just to spur some creative thought again of re-imagining what does it mean to live as the church?
What does that weekly gathering look like? How does it invite people into a
space of transcendence where they get a glimpse of what ultimate reality is
and find the hope and the vision and the faith to live accordingly?

(56:23):
What does it look like as we scatter?
How do we adequately engage the life of the mind and faithfully pass on the
teachings of Jesus Christ?
It's, I think, clear that the majority of the ways that we're doing this, they're not working.
And so I do think that we need to be aware of the way the world has shifted here in the West,

(56:46):
how some of our practices, as well-intentioned as they might be,
are not delivering on our promises, and they are not resulting in people coming
to know the greatest of all stories and how they have been chosen to be a part of it.

(57:08):
Yeah i'm not sure what i'm not sure what else to say yeah
well i think that you're right in
that feeling overwhelming like okay
i think i'm with you that picture you described is disenchanted and there's
something more people are are obviously not participating in that other thing

(57:28):
and and flatly rejecting it and they should i think because it's not the thing
it's not It's not consistent with reality.
And you know me, I'll put some counter tension there to say, let's go back.
We don't have to as individuals, you know, individualists right now in our modern

(57:49):
moment, express something completely new and novel.
We don't have to just make it up. I think there was a period of time pre-enlightenment
that there was some really good thinking done.
And sometimes there's, again, an overcorrection to say, let's go all the way to deconstruction.
And we have to deconstruct it and get back to the first century.

(58:09):
We have to remember that the first century church was the seed.
Like the first century church was the start.
Everything you know like i started a beach
volleyball turn i didn't start it but i got to participate in a beach volleyball tournament
and it was awesome and the first year it was sponsored by bud light and there
was saggy banners and old dirty tents and nobody had a good speaker system by

(58:32):
the end of it coca-cola was a part of that and it was beautiful and there was
there was families integrated and we had figured out some really cool things
because that's what humans,
And the church, right, as the
body of Christ in a world, we've got to get back to this embodied faith,
not a disembodied abstracted faith that says like, you know,

(58:55):
I go to this service to think about something that's true in a different sphere.
That's not it. It's a participation in reality.
And so, if our starting point is reality, God is.
And God made creatures in his image. And he wanted to fill the world with his glory.
And we do that not in abstraction, but with embodied living.

(59:17):
And then he empowered us to be a unified people. All true.
The overcorrection to the first century is let's deconstruct everything.
Well, then you get a Western culture like you tear down all the churches, no good buildings.
It's an anti. high. It's a no rather than a yes.
And that no leaves a very disenchanted, bleak landscape.

(59:41):
The other way calls for rigor. It calls for embodied people to think through
the lens of their faith, beauty, good, true.
What are we going to make? That's what culture is. It's what we make.
And so now you've got Mike and Zach and our families. And in our context,
we go, what does does it mean to be Christians in the world,

(01:00:02):
to be the people of God in the world?
And I think what they learned early on is it's good for us to meet together regularly.
And I think you and I would say this, like, as dads, we're like,
hey, we do family dinner, and gymnastics are good, baseball is good,
football is good, all the things are good.
But you and I know that it's pretty essential for the family to get together

(01:00:26):
at some point during the week and to rest and to remember that we're a family and to give thanks.
And if we lose that, we become exhausted, disparate, frantic.
We don't know each other. Something breaks down.
And so, I think the church in its development realized like,
oh, it's good for us to regularly be together.

(01:00:48):
And it's a both We just have to keep that both and and not say we get a – it
shouldn't ever be Sundays. We should just be in the world. Well, yes.
But that's like saying to a family, be a family, maintain your DNA and your
ethic and your virtue and your identity and all the things that make you distinctly
your family as the Sherards but never meet together.
Have no liturgies, have no definition, have no father that says,

(01:01:12):
kids, we're the Sherrards.
And that means this. And so never forget that.
And have no celebratory festival because that we would never do that.
And so I think we have to get, we have to reimagine, like you're saying,
we have to get excited about the fact that we have permission.
But right, this is what gets, and I don't want to nerd out on it.
But like when the church started to figure out, like, Why did we build buildings?

(01:01:35):
Oh, well, if we're going to meet as gathered people, we can meet in spaces and we do that in homes.
And if our homes, as we meet in the homes, what should they smell like?
What should they feel like? What should be the centerpiece?
And that's why it's not bad. The cross at the center looking towards something,
the liturgical churches that face east because we imagine meeting the rising

(01:01:59):
sun at the dawn of a new creation,
like the navus of a church where you sit in something, the navy comes from the
word ship in Latin, like all these things that are the church's heritage,
they're not done because we're grumpy and we just accidentally stumbled on them.
There was an imagination that said, if we're going to sit together for family

(01:02:20):
dinner, what should be at the head of our table?
What should be at the center of our table? What What is our story, to your point?
And then I think that's my call for the church is to come back to that idea that it's a both-and.
That gathering is really beautifully important, but it's not primarily just for the teaching.
It's participation. No, that's good.

(01:02:41):
That participation, the participatory language is theologically accurate,
and it's also culturally relevant. in a world that is seemingly devoid of meaning everywhere.
Imbuing things with meaning, understanding the meaning in all things,

(01:03:02):
having practices and rituals and symbols that are imbued with this meaning that
draws us to the source of meaning,
these are all good things to think about and to practice and perhaps put in place.
And for what it's worth, that's what Burton in
Strange Rites identifies in what is a

(01:03:23):
deep longing of this religious nun crowd is
they they're starved for this and are looking for
this and though it may be harder to
figure out what does this look like in our corporate gatherings i get that that's
i don't know without even reinventing the wheel even still thinking through

(01:03:43):
small subtle changes our churches some of them are big machines with a lot of
cogs and it might be hard to begin doing this.
And having been a pastor, I'm very sympathetic to the struggles that pastors
go through and endure and the expectations and the burdens that are placed upon them.
And even if I use sarcasm and mockery, I don't intend that to be another burden
to lay upon pastors at all.

(01:04:06):
It may be easier to conceive of how we start living this out in the home.
And there's a couple of, Burton points this out, Christian Smith,
sociologist years ago, pointed this out um also
tom holland the atheist historian commented on
this what i'm about to say in his book dominion if the

(01:04:28):
home is filled with parents that embody
the gospel in the christian worldview it's almost assured it's almost certain
that their kids will it's remarkable the studies that bear this out even what
burton found these religious nuns they aren't the children of parents who actually
believed this stuff, but also lived it out.

(01:04:50):
And so that's the difference, right? Between this...
Um, religious practice that isn't embodied.
It's I go to, I do, I'm done versus a home that embodies the truth of the gospel
and lives it out. I grew up in that home.
My brother and sister grew up in that home. Yeah. We had a religious experience that was going to,

(01:05:12):
but I saw how these things that we heard about there, the songs that we sung
about there, I saw them lived out in subtle, simple ways in the home.
And so it was never a question to me, one, that my parents actually thought this was real.
Two, I saw in very small ways how this affects your life.

(01:05:33):
Three, I saw a pattern of life that I could then follow that was a firm foundation
for me later in life to start putting the pieces intellectually together,
that which was maybe lacking from the childhood.
Now the childhood, I got taught a lot, heard a lot of stories.
So I had a lot of the raw materials.
So when I'm in high school, I'm asking questions. What does this mean for that?

(01:05:54):
What about original sin? What about abortion?
I have a firm foundation to begin working through all of this.
And so though it may be hard to conceive of what does this look like,
everything we're talking about, what's the relevancy for our churches and our
programs and our this and our that.
I think it's much easier to think about what does this mean in the home?
The home needs moms and dads who are reading God's word, living out God's word

(01:06:17):
in simple and small ways.
And when their children see that, the chances are they are going to cling to
that faith and learn how to live that faith out in all of the challenges.
They're going to learn how to live that out. Yeah. Yeah.
I know we got to be careful on time, but I want to anchor and underscore what
you said because it's brilliant, right? Like this Burton is right.

(01:06:42):
She is right. And this whole idea of remixing religion and the nuns,
like if we give up our birthright as embodied creatures in relationship with
God who are free to create beauty and good and true and participate in these things,
if we just out of laziness and kind of juvenile adolescent,
like, yuck, mom, I didn't like growing up in church.

(01:07:03):
That's an arrogant and immature and foolish posture.
If we can't kind of lean in to the rigor of going, okay, like people will build
these things because we're embodied creatures.
So they will go to yoga. They will form practices. They will shape their lives.

(01:07:23):
You know, Winston Churchill, first we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape
us. We will construct a culture that reflects our ideas. is.
And if Christians just don't have the rigor or imagination to recognize and
are unwilling to participate in reality, you will get a culture that is wildly
spiritual and very remixed religious.
And I think the invitation is the Christian story offers and invites us to participate in reality.

(01:07:49):
And you're describing something beautiful. I learned this from David Clayton, who also was at Oxford.
And I didn't know this, but the commons where they eat the dining hall reflects
almost the same architecture and design as the chapel.
And Oxford did this intentionally because in their Christian imagination,
the place that was nearest to the sacred space of the chapel was the dining hall.

(01:08:14):
And so, as they sat at the table and shared fellowship, love God,
love each other. It was chapel and dining hall.
And they invested the most resource constructing a chapel and a dining hall.
And so the vaulted ceilings, the beauty, everything you saw in the chapel was true in the dining hall.
And Mike, you're describing it, the little chapels of the home.

(01:08:37):
They should reflect this. And again, it's not an either or.
Oxford got it right that the center of the university, the queen of the sciences,
is the theological tower that gives light to all.
We should celebrate that, right? And parents should be like,
yes, and our churches and pastors should make that place, help create and embody

(01:08:59):
something that does give light.
And it's an and, and there should be a little dining hall that reflects the
same embodied realities that we're pointing to.
Magdalene College is built on musical ratio and proportion. It's why it's beautiful.
And you go, and now you go into a secular Western university and you're like,
the cafeteria has plastic tables, plastic white walls.

(01:09:21):
It's made to be hosed down from the garbage that we're feeding each other.
And you get a bunch of kids on phones sitting there and you go,
it's a dehumanized thing.
And over here, you have a Christian imagination that says you were made for another.
And so the highest and the beauty source in some of the human experience is

(01:09:45):
divine festival, worship of God.
And how does our building, how do our colors, how do our windows,
What does that look like for people who imagine the joy of being united with God?
What would it look like if we got together for that festival?
Well, our chapels tell that story.
And that gives light to our tables.
Because then as we leave this and we enter this, we carry with us that same

(01:10:08):
imagination and participation.
Mike, that's how our kids are going to build their tables.
And this is from generation to generation to generation. why it's so important
to not just give ideas, but for them to have that, you know,
Gerard's get to the table.
And at the Sherard table, there's a reality of an embodied love and a meaningful

(01:10:29):
story that's not just an idea.
And Mike, you and I know those things will reappear in our kids' homes.
They will carry them fresh in their context, but they won't be remixing just
a spattering with no framework.
They'll be giving life to these deeply embedded in reality things.

(01:10:49):
Things, but I've said enough, but you're exactly right.
That little chapel, it's a place we can start.
If we're not stewarding a church, we're not called to that vocation,
but you're listening to this podcast.
You go, oh, wow. I had people say this to me all the time. I don't want to put that on my kids.
I'm going to let them find their own way, right? That's just good grief,

(01:11:11):
right? We don't do that with any other reality.
You can figure math out. You just find your own way or find your own way of
driving. Like we don't do that.
And what that says to them is what I believe is true.
Isn't that big of a deal? Exactly. And none of it's just, it's again, it doesn't make sense.
So if, if that's not true, then we go, okay, my responsibility as a dad, a mom,

(01:11:35):
you know, a participant in a family, if I can't affect this yet,
I can in my little chapel start to think about how beauty leads us to good and
allows us to understand and know truth in an experiential way,
and that's a way back so what we're talking about here.
Very right brain kind of thing right if you want to put it that way and for people like us that,

(01:12:03):
We're happy to sit in an hour plus conversation in this somewhat abstract,
creative, contemplative realm.
And what we haven't given, I don't think, maybe if we were to listen back,
we'd find more of what I'm thinking is absent than what I think is absent.
But not a whole lot of practical now therefores.

(01:12:26):
So what what i think though and
i have this maybe it's a wrong naive hope
here but when people start to think in these ways the next thing is just to
gather with people locally and go hey i got an idea here what do you think about
it and what would it look like to live this out in our home So somebody that

(01:12:49):
listens to this podcast is like,
yeah, I'm tracking with something like, what would this look like in our home?
How do we imbue the rhythms of our family life with meaning?
What would that look like? What if we started with meals?
And what if it was something regular in the way we did meals that was reflective
of the hope that we have and what we think is really real?

(01:13:11):
What would it look like for around Christmas time? What would it look like for
the way that we calendar and treat sports?
What would it look like? And then begin to develop these rhythms and pass on
the why that we have these rhythms and habits, which is, of course,
what the Lord instructed in Deuteronomy 6.
When your children ask, what's the meaning of this?

(01:13:34):
Here is what you are to say. Okay.
So one of the things that we do at our house, for example, a couple of simple things.
We have a Christmas tradition at our home that begins with the reading of the story of Jesus's birth.
Why do we do that? In part, it's because what my dad always did.
But the why that we do that is more than just a remembering of the greatest of gift.

(01:13:59):
It's also an honoring of the Lord with our time. And before we move on to receive
the gifts that we give each other, we spend time remembering the goodness of
our Lord. And so we pass these things on to our kids.
Terry, something my wife started at dinnertime around the table was highs and lows of the day.
And it's another simple rhythm to say that this is what it is to be a part of a family.

(01:14:23):
We share our highs, we share our lows, and everybody gets to speak.
And you better shut up when somebody else is speaking.
Which is a constant battle and a fight, but it shows simple ways,
things that we believe to be true,
which is the inherent dignity of each person made in the image of God.
And we are to share in their highs and to share in their lows.

(01:14:46):
And this is a simple, like, you know, you could think of the original religion
and its dogma and its legalistic practices.
Well, yeah, if you divorce them from any kind of meaning and don't ever tell
people these meanings and don't, you know, When you partake of these practices,
actually embody them instead of some kind of out-of-body, check-the-box kind

(01:15:07):
of experience or whatever.
But I think as moms and dads begin to think this way and have these kinds of
conversations, what would it
look like to really live out our faith in our home in simple ways? Yeah.
I have the hope that they'll know what it is. And it's not simply having the
weekly Bible study and the weekly family worship time, which that's fine or whatever.

(01:15:31):
But that's not really what we're talking about here. I think we're talking about
something more embodied than just it's because this is what is really real.
And this is because of who Jesus is and who God is. This is how we live and they see it.
And it invites them to participate in the fullness of reality.
Yeah. Mike, I agree with you. And I love that you mentioned time a couple of times in there.

(01:15:57):
Because again, for mom and dad, we go, where do I start?
And I think the participation in reality is what we're talking about.
Who's the keeper of time? The church used to be the keeper of time.
It was oriented toward a reality that was bigger than us. And Andrew Root does

(01:16:19):
a great job of this saying, we went from the church as the keeper of time to
the state kind of as the keeper of time to commerce as the keeper of time to
now technology as the keeper of time.
And so that's, we're orienting towards time, you know, and it's a really,
that's a conversation for another day, but it's a good question for moms and

(01:16:41):
dads to go, who keeps time in this house?
And how do we orient our time? Is there a first day of the week? Is there a weekly meal?
Is there like who orders the world?
And time is a part of that. It's this thing that we get to shape.
And so what is the rank ordering?

(01:17:01):
Like what gets the first of our time? And what is regularly occurring in our family?
And to not be passive in that and just to be led by the technology world that's
speeding and compressing time, but to say, nope, it wasn't always that way. There was a day.
And that's why he took us right to Christmas, right? There's a way,

(01:17:22):
we're walking up to Pentecost.
And the church has a way of saying, hey, Advent helps us remember that in the darkness, light came.
And there's a long waiting and hoping in a already and not yet.
And oh, that tension, right?
It helps us remember that. And then light comes.
And then there's this desire to see something reconcile and a confession that

(01:17:46):
all is not well yet, and it's broken.
And so, there's this season that leads us with, again, longing to the joy of Easter, boom.
But from Easter to Pentecost is the, what next?
What is to come? And this anticipation that Jesus said, I'm going to empower you all to participate.
And from Pentecost, which will be coming up here and forward.

(01:18:08):
It's the life of the church in the world, right?
Participating, creating. And this goes from our tables to our vocations,
to our ballparks, to all these places.
So I think there's so much invitation for parents and permission.
And again, to not just let religious
like, oh, but I don't want to be religious. That sounds religious.

(01:18:29):
Religion, just relegare, just rebinding to reality. It's like putting a splint on something.
Look at the root word for that. And the West has become so adolescent and just being like, religion.
The word just rebind, relegare, reattach your family to reality.
Because your family's been unwittingly attached to a non-reality in the Western world.

(01:18:55):
And that's why we feel so exhausted.
These invitations to return back to this ancient way, this old path,
it's not just rote religious practice.
It's to say, we have a day where we rest.
And here's the, here's the, here's the truth and the reality of this.
I think the West is in the United States, at least clearly changing.

(01:19:18):
There's a rely, there's a rise in religious desire and religious practice.
We've seen the rise of the religious nun and they nuns, and they've been this
religious, but are spiritual, but not religious.
And they've been operating almost underground social media, net,
internet communities and whatnot.
Not i think we're going to start seeing manifestations of these

(01:19:39):
things publicly and the sadness
here is going to be as the church is becoming less religious
culture is becoming more religious and they're getting all of
our kids because they're building practices rituals communities imbued with
meaning that invite them to participate in something larger than themselves
and the tragedy is that it's not rightly connected to ultimate reality that's

(01:20:02):
it that's it so we must We must be doing this as the people of light, the children of God,
those who know what is true and real and have been invited by our God to live in it.
Zach, I could talk to you for hours, man. And I always say when we hang out, I wish we were closer.
But the truth is we're so busy and we're terrible managers of our schedule.

(01:20:25):
Even if we were 20 minutes apart, we'd probably only see each other on things
like this, which is a shame on our patterns of favor. Maybe,
maybe that's not true. I don't know, but I appreciate your work, man.
I've enjoyed talking to you and I can't wait till the next time.
Yeah, Mike, thank you. And good for you and your team. I mean,
this curating stuff like this is part of the way back.

(01:20:46):
And so really deeply grateful for your work.
Music.