April 29, 2025 • 52 mins
Is progressive Christianity losing its soul by abandoning church, worship, and leadership? In this episode, Loren talks with Pastor Clint Schneckloth to explore why faith communities, worship, and theological grounding still matter in progressive spaces. Clint pushes back against the tendency to dismiss church as irrelevant or harmful, offering a vision for how ethical leadership, communal worship, and rooted faith can empower justice work rather than distract from it. He also introduces place-sharing as a model for mission and evangelism, showing how churches can engage their neighbors without compromising progressive values—or their faith commitments.
In this episode, you'll hear:
- Why Clint wrote about Progressive Church instead of Progressive Christianity
- How worship fuels justice, rather than distracting from it
- The danger of abandoning theological foundations for the sake of inclusivity
- Reclaiming leadership: Ethical authority in progressive communities
- Place-sharing: A relational approach to mission and evangelism
Clint Schnekloth is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a progressive church in the South. He is the founder of Canopy NWA (a refugee resettlement agency) and Queer Camp, and is the author of A Guidebook to Progressive Church. He blogs as Lutheran Confessions at Substack.
Mentioned Resources:
📚 A Guidebook to Progressive Church by Clint Schneckloth ✍️ Follow on Substack: Lutheran Confessions https://clintschnekloth.substack.com/ 🌐 Good Shepherd Lutheran Church: https://www.goodshepherdnwa.org/staff/ 🏳️🌈 Canopy NWA & Queer Camp: http://www.canopynwa.org/welcome 🍲 Mutual Aid Partner: Food Not Bombs https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
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Phillips Seminary Join conversations that expose you to new ideas, deepen your commitment and give insights to how we can minister in a changing world.
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Future Christian Team:
Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer
Martha Tatarnic – Co-Host
Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer
Dennis Sanders – Producer
Alexander Lang - Production Assistant
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Paul (00:07):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in
the 21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether
(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip
you with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (00:44):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Clint
Schneckloth to the podcast. Clint
is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in
Fayetteville, Arkansas, a progressive church
in the South. He is the founder of
Canopy nwa, a
refugee resettlement agency and queer
(01:06):
camp, and is the author of a guidebook
to progressive church. He blogs
as Lutheran Confessions on
Substack. A, uh, reminder, before we start
today's conversation, please take a moment to
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review
and share Future Christian with a friend. Connect
with Loren, Martha and Future Christian on
(01:28):
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email@laurensonatemediaprouh.com
with comments, questions or ideas for future
episodes. We appreciate your voice in
how we faithfully discern the future of the
church.
>> Loren (01:53):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren
Richmond Jr. And I am pleased to be joined today
by Clint Schneckloth.
Did I get that right?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:03):
You got that right.
>> Loren (02:06):
Thank you. Welcome to the show. Is there anything else you'd like
our listeners to know about you?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:11):
Huh, huh. Well, apparently we're both calling in
from cold locations this morning.
Colorado and Arkansas. It's
ah, kind of rough out there.
>> Speaker E (02:21):
Mhm.
>> Loren (02:22):
Mhm.
Well beyond the weather. Why don't you share just kind of about your faith
background, what that looked like in the past and what that looks like today?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:30):
Oh, sure.
Well, I was born and raised and
still am, ah, in the
Lutheran tradition. Uh,
ELCA is the denomination.
>> Speaker E (02:43):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:44):
And so I grew up as a kind of a
Midwestern mainline kind of
guy.
>> Speaker E (02:50):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:50):
Uh, that's
got a whole kind of shape around it, I would say,
uh, you know, like, um, liturgical,
but also informal and campy.
And
um,
I've been thinking a lot about this lately too, just because
when I was growing up, I remember there being a pretty
(03:12):
broad spectrum of
politics and kind
of perspectives within the one denomination. There,
uh, was always the joke that they told, you know, that,
um, why are there altar rails in Episcopal
and Lutheran churches? It's to divide The Democrats from the
Republicans. But it was like a
(03:33):
60, 40 split. It'd be like 60%
of the clergy were Democrat and 40% of the
parish. And so I grew up in a
large church in Iowa,
St. Uh, Paul Lutheran. It was one of those that was kind of like
a big church before the mega churches.
And my grandpa was a state representative
(03:53):
Republican, uh, in the state of
Iowa. And so I had a lot of exposure to some,
some of that kind of stuff, kind um,
of the connection between care and
community and political decision making
at the state level.
Um, and then I went
(04:14):
to Luther College in Decorah,
Iowa. This is where I kind of
um, had a big transformative moment. Had
a lot of friends and colleagues who were queer
and I made a shift. I started
out college being uh,
literally anti lgbtq. Like I even
(04:36):
participated in campaigns, various uh,
sorts against
um, more full inclusion. And
I ended my college career
as the congregation president bringing
uh, Luther College in as a reconciling in Christ
congregation which is like the
movement for full inclusion in the denomination at that
(04:57):
time.
>> Speaker E (04:58):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (05:00):
And then I went to Luther Seminary,
that's up in the Twin Cities and did my
seminary and along the way I've just
always done church stuff. So I'm just a church guy
in a pretty significant way. I uh,
worked at a, and then was a camp director at a
Lutheran Bible camp in Iowa. My wife and
(05:20):
I served as missionaries in uh,
Slovakia with our denomination for about three
years. Did some youth director
gigs and stuff like that. And then I served some rural parishes
up in Minnesota and Iowa or excuse me, Minnesota
and Wisconsin before I came down to Arkansas.
>> Loren (05:38):
Yeah. Cool. I can only already hear like
in your background perhaps.
Hopefully. I'm not making assumptions, but it feels
like I can hear how your experience
has really shaped the book we're going to talk about
here.
Share if you can just about some spiritual
practices that are meaningful for you.
>> Clint Schneckloth (06:01):
I don't know if I'm very good at them to be honest.
Uh,
or I would say that the way that I think about
spiritual practices maybe is a little bit different than
the
um,
than than normal.
Um Like I
(06:23):
am not the get up in the morning and journal.
Mhm Kind uh of guy.
And um, I'm not very good at meditation.
Although when I do meditate or do those kinds of
things, I appreciate doing it.
Um, my spiritual
practices are more along the lines of
(06:43):
um, how can I pay attention to the world
and then um,
be annoying
in gospel centric ways.
M. Um. So a lot
of my spiritual practices are
around drawing attention to
injustice,
(07:05):
um,
using uh,
uh, platforms and
communication methods to draw
discourses in particular directions.
Um, and a lot of my spiritual
practice is really trying to be
embedded with and know the communities that I
(07:27):
especially advocate for. In particular
if I'm not part of that community. So
like, you know, we have residents who live at our church. We've
started taking in, uh, more and more
unsheltered people just into the church building.
So some of my spiritual practices are like, how do you build
reciprocity between providing
(07:50):
shelter for people and also having
them really think of themselves as
also, um, contributing something
to you? You know, one of our residents the other day had
gone and put a frozen pizza in the oven and then she was walking by
my office while I was working and she's like, brought
me a slice of pizza, you know,
(08:10):
um, and so how do I kind of, you
know, keep in mind that I'm hungry too.
>> Speaker E (08:15):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (08:16):
And um, that we're kind of all in
this together. That's a, that's a big part of my,
uh, spirituality, I would say.
>> Loren (08:24):
Yeah. Uh, the awareness, if I'm hearing
you right, the awareness of recognizing and
receiving the gifts folks are trying to make.
>> Clint Schneckloth (08:35):
Yeah. Or even not just gifts, but like
that we literally just are in community
together. And so you just shared stuff.
>> Loren (08:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks
for sharing that. So
I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Clint.
We're going to talk about Clint's book, A Guidebook
to Progressive Church. Is there a subtitle?
I'm not seeing a subtitle. There's not, I guess, no
subtitle. Okay. A Guidebook to Progressive Church.
(09:03):
Uh, it's out, it's available for folks. So I want to
start because I think this is the most interesting. When
I first talked to you, when I was first introduced to the book,
I want to start by why you chose to
write about progressive church rather than
progressive Christianity.
>> Clint Schneckloth (09:20):
Yeah,
because I'm committed, uh, my
whole life to
uh, church community. In spite of
the way in which, uh, a lot of the people
around me in their spiritual lives struggle
with or maybe have even been harmed by,
(09:41):
uh, prior Christian communities.
>> Speaker E (09:43):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (09:45):
Uh, there's a really,
um. There's a good
reason why many people have left
church and are never planning to come back. And I
totally, uh, like identify with that and
can see why some people would make the decision that for their
own, like, spiritual well being, personal
well being that they just can't cross the threshold of a
(10:06):
church.
But I've also seen repeatedly how
for many people it's coming back into church
community. That's been the way that they
heal.
>> Speaker E (10:19):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (10:20):
Um, I write about this in the book,
um, in some of the content around
religious trauma and church. You know, there's
some really good studies now coming out that show
how getting re engaged in ways that are
affirming of yourself can be incredibly spiritual healing for
people. Um, but I'm
also committed to the church because I'm simply not
(10:42):
willing to let
uh, the abuse of something disallow
its proper use.
>> Loren (10:49):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (10:51):
Which that's something I say often in the
book. You know, just because I mean
the analogy would be like so just because you don't
like McDonald's therefore you're not going to eat burgers.
You know, if somebody can make a really good burger, why are you going to
reject all the good burgers? Because McDonald's
make fakes, makes fake burgers. You know. And
(11:11):
the same goes for like church community.
Um, just because some people really abuse it or use it for the wrong
reasons doesn't mean that church rightly
organized.
>> Speaker E (11:21):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (11:21):
And practice isn't one of the most
incredibly impactful and powerful things in the
world. Um, so
that's why I wrote about progressive church. There's also a
thing in publishing. There's,
there are more books on progressive
values.
>> Loren (11:38):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (11:39):
For progressive. An understanding of
progressive Christianity. But there's a lot less out there just
about progressive church practiced as
community.
>> Loren (11:50):
So I think this kind of leads into. Again,
I don't want to get too,
too deep into this because I do want to talk about
the book but I really feel like this is a
philosophical point if even that's the right
word that really kind of undergirds the
overarching theme or philosophy of
your book. Uh, this, this kind of
(12:12):
willingness to accept
or work within
church and Christianity and not
kind of throw the baby out with a bathwater to use another
phrase. And
uh, I feel like that's a, I'm kind of
already getting off topic here in some ways but I feel like this is a trend
that I'm seeing at least again and again and again
(12:34):
in so called progressive Christian
circles. And I that
it, that it's almost like folks see, I mean
I'm literally like working on a substack on this. So
that's why I really appreciate your book that
it's like again it's kind of this throw the baby out with the bathwater like
it's all too corrupt. And I think you have a quote to that.
(12:54):
Uh, but yeah, what comes to mind
for you There.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:01):
Uh, I've got this neighbor
who recently went to Yale Divinity School. She
lived here in the northwest Arkansas and she just recently
moved to Yale.
>> Speaker E (13:11):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:13):
And we, uh, were in a running club together.
That's how I met her.
And she has never
really gone to church.
>> Speaker E (13:23):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:24):
But she's going to divinity school.
>> Loren (13:26):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:27):
And we were talking about. She was
asking me for like a guide,
guidance or advice on, you know,
like, what should I do when I'm going to divinity
school. What are your insights? Because
she, and she was asking me this because of how I
practice Christianity in our church. Even though she doesn't go to our
church.
>> Speaker E (13:47):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:49):
And I was like, well, when you get to Yale you should find a
church.
>> Loren (13:52):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:53):
And you should. And you should connect to a church because
that's going to be your incubator, uh,
for testing out whatever it is you're thinking about or
coming up with in seminary. And her
response was, well, is it okay if I, if I just
think of my garden as my church?
M. And
um, I, I'm not
(14:16):
at all dismissive of that. I think that there
are probably very spiritual people
for whom gardening is the
incubator for their
spirituality. And that's fine. You
know, that's like. I'm pretty respectful of lots of different
religious traditions. But if I
would argue that if you want to work
(14:38):
for uh, justice
and progressive values in the world
in the way that I do it.
>> Loren (14:46):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (14:47):
You have to do it in a community.
And um, it might be
that that community has very loose,
uh, porous boundaries with other kinds of
organizations. But to
ground it in the gospel of Jesus Christ
and to influence the world in the
(15:09):
ways that I think church uniquely does, you're going to
want to commit to a local church. That's
kind of a deep,
uh.
And that comes out of my lived experience,
you know, like, of uh, of how I've
seen. And there's like, there's so many
(15:29):
just practical examples like at ah. One
practical example would be
churches are third spaces.
>> Speaker E (15:38):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (15:39):
They're not a business and they're not the government.
And so they are able to provide this kind of
space and intersection that other
organizations can't do because like a business is trying to
make money so you can't look political because you
know that's. Politics is bad for business. You know, they always say,
right, so businesses are always going to
(16:00):
test the winds and see what's going to be most
marketable. Same with politics.
You know, politicians have to get elected.
Um, it's only the Church. And you
saw this illustrated super well last week with this Bishop
Budi, how to say her last name.
And in D.C. it's only the church that can
(16:20):
kind of whimsically step out and
do that. That she did with all the
attendant risks. I think
that's part of what I really deeply believe.
>> Loren (16:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm
reminded of this quote and I'll read it here.
Uh, you write this in the context of the importance of worship, which again I
think is interesting.
And I want to talk more about this, why worship
matters. Because I think this is a key aspect of
(16:53):
church in this kind
of progressive sphere that
seems to get diluted as either
unimportant or less important than the
so called work, justice, being on the streets,
whatever. So you're right. Progressive Christianity is much
more this worldly than other forms
of Christianity focused on the imminent frame and action in the
(17:15):
world. Worship, which is assumed to be primarily about
the transcendent frame and otherworldly focused,
is to those of this perspective simply
perceived as at best a waste of time and at
worst a distraction from the weightier matters of social
justice and love and love of
neighbor. So I want to stay on this point because this is something
(17:36):
I feel strongly about and this is one of the reasons I really resonated with the
book. Um,
I think that we are seeing this trend where
again, as you say, worship this kind of
gathered community to worship God is seen
as at best a waste of time or at worst a
distraction. So you argue
(17:57):
really in
these pages, from what I read, from what I understood
really
as the importance of grounding oneself in these
Christian and spiritual practices as a way to then go
forth and do justice. So talk more about
why this worship and such really
matters.
>> Clint Schneckloth (18:20):
Well, one thing I try to say to progressives
who aren't sure that they want to go to church every week
because this is a huge dynamic. I think this is a huge
split on the conservative, liberal Christian
side, You know, conservatives are all in
on weekly worship.
>> Speaker E (18:37):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (18:38):
Sometimes it's because of demand, like it's an actual
Roman Catholic law, right within canon law that
you're supposed to worship weekly and go to the Eucharist. And
I think a lot of fundamentalists and conservatives on the
Protestant side probably just have an internal legalism
around that similar.
>> Speaker E (18:54):
Yes, right.
>> Loren (18:56):
Uh, sometimes it's sometimes explicit legalism of
you better show up to church.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:01):
But on the more positive side, also a
lot of conservative Christianity, it takes place in
rural areas where people don't have a lot of other community
Right, right. So people are like, this is where they get
it. Progressive, uh,
liberal church tends to be,
uh, a little bit more on the,
oh, urban,
(19:24):
uh, diploma.
>> Speaker E (19:27):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:27):
Ah, busy.
>> Speaker E (19:28):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:29):
Side of the equation where they've got a lot of other social
connection and so they're uncertain whether church is even
necessary for their total social life.
And then, and then does it have any value
when so much of progression,
progressive Christianity is focused on love
neighbor. So my first
(19:49):
point to progressives is
you should show up to church for other
people. H m.
Uh, if you really think that progressive Christianity
is primarily about love of neighbor, what better way to
love your neighbor than to show up every week with other people and
check in with your fellow community
(20:10):
members? Um, that might mean that we need to
redesign worship so that there's more
capacity to do that because so much of worship in
our traditions is very passive.
>> Loren (20:22):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (20:23):
You can sneak megachurch, uh, you can like sneak
in and sneak out and not talk to anybody, you
know, um, so maybe that
needs some reshaping. But the point
is still valid. And when I raise that with people,
they're frequently surprised
because I think the majority of people that think that
worship is for you and your
(20:46):
spirituality. I go to get fed is like the most
common, um, thing that people say. And I kind of want to be
like, don't go to get fed. Like, go to like,
take care of somebody else. Somebody has
gone to church who's alone,
who's recently divorced,
who's traumatized by
(21:06):
the inauguration in this new regime,
whatever, go to church and,
and care for somebody. And you do it weekly
because that's about the rate that a lot of
communities care for each other. The German Stamtisch
or the, you know, whatever the
thing is that you do, that's, that's about the pace you need to keep
(21:26):
up. But man, that is a hard sell for progressive
Christians. Yeah, on average.
>> Loren (21:31):
Yeah, it is.
Um, I want to move on here to, to kind of
stay on this theme. You write about why a strong
Christology and theology really
matters. And I guess this really kind of ties into
something else. You wrote about the problem of Christian
progressives abandoning faith commitments.
Uh, and I think this, this broader trend, at least as I
(21:52):
understand it, of like, we want to be as
inclusive as possible. And being inclusive,
kind of that, uh, translation means like, let's just remove all
barriers and any kind of, I don't want to say
boundaries, but also kind of like
markers of who we are and what we're about. Does that make
sense? And in the book you really, as I understand
(22:13):
it, you really argue for, I wouldn't say
like firm or rigid but also pretty solid
theological foundations and groundings. Is that fair? Am
I understanding you correct?
>> Clint Schneckloth (22:24):
Yeah. Uh, I like
to joke that we're where people
come sometimes when they've been
going to the Unitarian Church and they need more Jesus.
>> Loren (22:37):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (22:38):
You know, our, our social perspective, our
values or whatever is very aligned with the Unitarians.
So um, I'm often um, showing up in spaces where there's
Unitarian leaders and we do similar things.
But Unitarians are literally.
You get to pick and yes, yeah.
Progressive Christianity from my perspective is still
(22:59):
grounded in the theological
tradition that ah, comes out
of scripture and is grounded and centered in Christ.
And uh, I
do think that I like, I try to flip that
around and say like our openness comes out of
our groundedness.
>> Loren (23:19):
Mm.
>> Speaker E (23:19):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:21):
Uh, because I feel
secure.
>> Speaker E (23:24):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:25):
In Christ in the sense of who
Christ is. For me. It allows me to
be open in my stance toward a lot of
other things and also
a lot of the things I'm opposed to and that Christ kind
of teaches me to be opposed to. It's not like
tarot card reading or my Muslim neighbor.
(23:46):
It's more things like the
divide between the rich and the poor and how many
billionaires we have and.
>> Speaker E (23:54):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:56):
Uh, how we treat immigrant neighbors and all those kinds
of things. That's where I get rigid is around
those things.
>> Loren (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I think again I'm just going
to keep mentioning these kind of random things but because I
think again this is what so stood out to me from your book
because uh, of how anti cliche
it was for like a book that's written
as from a progressive lens. You write about the importance
(24:23):
of leadership. And again, I don't want to like
broad brush here but I feel like in progressive circles leadership
is seen as this like oh man, we can't have any
leaders. We can't have anybody like you know, an
authority. There's just this anathema toward leadership
or authority. And it becomes, I think like you said about
that UU church, we're just like rather than you can pick
(24:44):
whatever, just everybody just doing whatever because there's no one
like offering any kind of vision or leadership. What? Talk
more about that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (24:53):
Well, I think that my perspective on this
is shaped by my
commitment to
phenomenological realism.
>> Speaker E (25:03):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:05):
It just is the case that
leaders matter. You don't
see major movements
for change in the world that gather
significant energy behind them.
>> Loren (25:18):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:19):
That don't have a face of a person
at the front of it or it's very, very
rare.
>> Loren (25:25):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:26):
Every once in a while you'll get something like Black
Lives Matter, which is more like a team.
But most of the time it's a person.
Martin Luther King Jr. For civil rights.
>> Speaker E (25:38):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:38):
Donald Trump for MAGA.
Uh, who, who's everybody like me looking back
to and thinking, oh, man, we wish this would have happened eight years
ago? Bernie Sanders.
>> Speaker E (25:50):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:50):
Who's our last remaining light right now? Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez. You know, it's like, I mean, it's a
person. It really is a person. And in my
church, uh, I would say that if you talk
to people, they would be like, everybody feels super empowered.
They think it's very lay level. And if they, if
you really press them on it, they would be like, the church is like this
because of the way Clint has led it over 14 years.
>> Speaker E (26:13):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (26:14):
And for better or worse. And that
what I mean by the phenomenological realism is it
just functions that way. And so you can either try to deny
it or you can say
leadership really has a kind of charism to it
and try to handle that in
as, um, ethical a way as
(26:35):
possible.
>> Speaker E (26:37):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (26:38):
Which is what I would encourage.
>> Loren (26:40):
Yeah.
So talk more about what does that
leadership look like for you in
that context? What are some
kind of best practices? What are some ethics you
try to stand by? What are some
ways you try to empower others in leadership? What does that look
like, practically speaking?
>> Clint Schneckloth (27:01):
Um, I can tell you what a couple of my parishioners have
commented on about me. To me that I think are
hallmarks. Uh, one of my council members
recently said that I'm the most available,
uh, lead pastor they've ever
encountered.
>> Speaker E (27:16):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (27:17):
I don't separate myself off from
the congregation. I'm in the mix.
Um, and another
new member said that one of the things that had her
coming back was simply the fact that I am
not, I'm not, uh, avoidant
of helping in with whatever needs
(27:37):
done. You know, you're as likely
to find me in the kitchen doing the dishes as
preaching. And um,
um, I. So I think that part of this
spiritual practice that's different for me as a leader
maybe has, uh,
to do with
(27:59):
functioning in a lot of those grassroots
roles.
>> Speaker E (28:02):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (28:04):
While also serving as
the.
>> Speaker E (28:09):
Uh, the.
>> Clint Schneckloth (28:12):
Lead on things, you know, like, uh, queer
camp. I'm both responsible for
having started it and I
also entirely step back and
then behind the scenes just doing grunt work the week of
because I'm a straight white guy. And it's not really
ideal for me to be the main
face of the camp.
(28:34):
Uh, so I'm more likely to be like running
security or volunteering, uh,
to lead a DND session. Uh, or
you know, some other thing. And then there's other people who are actually the face
of the camp.
>> Loren (28:48):
I feel like it goes back to what you said earlier about the abuse of
something does not disallow its proper use. Because we could say
the same thing about leadership. Right. Like the abuse of leadership does not
disallow its proper use. Is that again, kind
of your argument here?
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:01):
Yeah, I think that's.
Yes. And I think there are
some communities that kind of pull this off,
um, in a different way. Probably
the most famous
would be like the Quakers.
>> Loren (29:20):
Sure. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:22):
So I think there are some emerging ways or some ways
we could explore that might be,
uh, leaderless movement
organizing. So I don't want to completely.
>> Loren (29:34):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:35):
Undermine, uh, like those as
a alternative. I just don't see
normal communities most of the time
sorting out how to do that.
Um, and, and I see,
you know, and you. I just see over and over again how like
a school that has a good principal runs better.
>> Speaker E (29:56):
Mm mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:58):
Uh, the, the police department's better
if the police chief is a. Is a good guy
or gal, you know, like that. That just is a
real frequent thing. I don't know how to get around.
>> Loren (30:10):
That country that has a good president.
>> Clint Schneckloth (30:14):
Yeah, yeah,
right.
>> Loren (30:17):
Um, I don't want to take this off the rails here.
I think one thing I really liked here is you
talked about place sharing as
a model for mission and evangelism. M. So
talk more about that because again, I feel like we're in
this context where like a.
Anything E word. Evangelism is
(30:37):
obviously very seen as problematic
and sometimes for good reason in progressive circles,
but so much so that again, it kind of like
they want to throw it all out. So I really was intrigued by
your idea here of place sharing. So talk more
about that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (30:55):
Well, like a good example of this, it's been
emerging at Good shepherd over the last number of
years is we are now the, um, location
where Food Not Bombs cooks meals.
Uh, Food Not Bombs is an organization
that
um, it's
a mutual aid organization. It's a group of people
(31:15):
who oftentimes they do food recovery
and sometimes they buy food and then they prep big meals
and they go down to like Walker park, which is where a lot of
our unsheltered people hang out when the weather is
okay. And they, so they, they go to where people
are and, and take meals and
um, they cook on Sunday mornings.
(31:37):
So our church smells like the meals they're preparing while
we're getting ready for church and they're around while I'm doing other
stuff and getting ready for worship. And so I've got to know them.
And um, now they've started having
like their organizing meetings there. And when the
cold weather shelter opened this winter,
um, there was a shortage of groups that were going to serve
(31:59):
breakfast. And I was talking with the executive director of
the
shelter org and they had a couple of breakfasts
that they needed served. And so I messaged the leader of
Food not Bombs and I was like, hey, we'll take a day. Do you guys want to
take a day? And so then we started
coordinating together.
(32:19):
And I would
say
in some levels they've started thinking of
themselves as a member org of Good shepherd.
Even though none of the people that are in that funat
bombs go to church at Good Shepherd.
>> Speaker E (32:36):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (32:39):
But
uh, when I serve the breakfast
with people from my church, half the people that
help volunteer for the breakfast are also people
who don't go to worship on Sunday morning even though they're
connected to the church. And I kind of ask
myself like, well, who's being more
religious here? The people who show up for worship on Sunday
(33:02):
morning or the people who make the biscuits and gravy on
Monday morning for the cold weather shelter? You know, but
the, the better way to describe it is
there's all these kind of like network effects.
>> Speaker E (33:13):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (33:14):
People are using their time in the way that they
believe has value and we're building
community together in these kind of loosely
affiliated ways that I think
preach, you know,
uh, and I think can have really good long
term impact in terms of if you want to talk about
evangelism, like I think that
(33:36):
shaped the perception that that group of people who are
largely irreligious, uh, their
perception of what church can be.
>> Speaker E (33:44):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Loren (33:47):
And it seems like that's far
more likely to have an impact than folks working
alongside you, for example, rubbing shoulder to shoulder,
seeing how you live out your faith
is going to be far more appealing.
Then you know, again, imagine
walking up to like
(34:07):
someone in Walker park and being like,
hey, accept Jesus and come to church. Like that's going to be
a hard sell.
>> Speaker E (34:14):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:16):
Well, yeah. Not to mention the fact that really
most of the time when I go serve meals anywhere
like that, uh, they are more religious than I
am.
>> Loren (34:26):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:27):
And much better at preaching the Gospel to me than I am ever
preaching it to them. Yeah,
yeah. I served a meal the other day and one guy
came up and I was like, how are you? And he says,
uh, well, the world
isn't fair.
>> Speaker E (34:43):
Hm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:43):
But God is good.
And all the progressives would have just stopped
with the world isn't fair.
>> Loren (34:54):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:55):
You know, uh,
uh, so yeah,
so.
>> Loren (35:01):
Let me ask this question then. And I, I think
it's kind of like I'm kind of repeating the same question. So
forgive me if I'm, I'm beating the same horse. But again,
I feel like we're in this context, broadly speaking,
in progressive Christian circles where it's just
like we want to, we
want to like kind of push out any kind
of religiosity and worship and kind of
(35:24):
turn. I mean I literally saw this
the other day of like a church wants to be a food
pantry that worships rather than a church,
which feels like a whole other conversation.
But why, Just why. Again,
repeat this if anything for me.
Why should progressive leaning
(35:45):
Christians and faith groups like
retain, I'm not sure what the word is
ground themselves still in as a church,
as a worshiping community?
>> Clint Schneckloth (35:58):
Um,
yeah, I, I think I
have a complex and evolving
understanding of this, uh, that's developed over
time. Um, I have
one parishioner who
we were working on a grant and the way she
(36:21):
phrased it in the grant was that we are
a community center that
has a chapel.
>> Speaker E (36:27):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:30):
Describing Good Shepherd.
>> Loren (36:31):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:33):
Uh, because we do radically do way
more community, ah, center
type stuff than a lot of churches.
We're, you know, uh,
and because people are used to church
being almost exclusively church.
>> Loren (36:49):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:50):
Even doing some of that seems really large to
them. And then the amount that we do it is like next
level. And so you could see where people would come to that
perspective. But the
base, like the base of people who still support our
church like that, make it happen
with their donations and that kind of thing is still the
(37:10):
group that worships there, you know.
And I think that the part
that you're asking about that I haven't really talked much
about is the way in which having a
posture toward God.
>> Speaker E (37:25):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:27):
Is related to the posture that we have
toward uh, our fellow humans and
creation.
>> Speaker E (37:34):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:35):
And I do think that if we're
fully materialist in our
perspective as a church, uh, that the
one problem there is.
Well, one problem is I don't think that the world
is fully materialist.
>> Loren (37:50):
Yeah, yeah. And that's something that
you just kind of hint at your book Which I again was really
intrigued by. But go on.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:58):
Uh, even though that's my main posture, like I've been calling
the church back to prioritizing neighbor love and neighbor
care. I do think that there's much more
than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. You know, like
that's really true just on a scientific
level. But from a Christian perspective,
uh, Jesus's freedom towards his
(38:20):
neighbors in love was grounded
in the freedom that he felt
and experienced in relationship to his father.
Those mhm. Are related. At one point he even
says they're the same thing. You know, what's the greatest commandment?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and love your
(38:40):
neighbor as yourself. And the two
are essentially the same
commandment, you know, uh,
so I think that when we let go of
the worship side,
sometimes that can be a problem too,
because then it makes the neighbor without
remainder and never puts you in this,
(39:02):
uh, posture of the bigger. It can result in a number
of things that are probably problematic, maybe not the least of
which is, uh, perhaps
a good focus on God can remind us that neighbor
is not just the human, but all of creation.
M. You know, uh, that
somehow that uh, the ground of
(39:23):
being posture shapes how
big our perspective is in terms of our
values.
>> Loren (39:29):
Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting stuff. I really
want to recommend the book. There's a lot more in it that we
haven't really touched on, I think. So again,
the book is a guidebook to progressive
church, I think Clint, I
said this on social media. I think one of the things I really appreciate about
the book was just like, it was simple, but not in a
(39:50):
simplistic way. I found it quite
brilliant, but in a very digestible, readable
way. So I really encourage folks to go check it
out. Um, um, let's, uh, let's take a break.
We'll come back with some closing questions.
All right, we're back with Clint Schneckloth. Thank you,
thank you so much for your conversation. Really
(40:12):
appreciate, uh, your insights and points, uh,
here. So closing questions. We always tell folks you
can take these as seriously or not as you'd like
to. So first question, if you're Pope for a
day, what does that day look like
for you? What do you want to do?
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:30):
Hope for a day?
Does this take place in, uh, the
Vatican?
>> Loren (40:39):
I mean, I leave it open. We leave it
purposely ambiguous.
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:44):
Okay. Huh.
>> Speaker E (40:46):
Huh.
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:50):
I, uh, guess that
I have. I, I, I. All I can
think of is that I love Rome enough
that I Kind of just want to go have coffee
and some pastries.
Yeah. And I think I might get
distracted by being in Rome or
(41:10):
the Vatican and forget to like,
actually do anything serious or helpful.
>> Loren (41:17):
That's fair, that's fair, that's fair.
Um, a theologian or historical Christian figure you'd
want to meet or bring back to life.
>> Clint Schneckloth (41:30):
Oh, wow. Well,
I probably have to say Alan Eccleston
because I've been doing a lot of work around him
here the last couple of years. Uh,
Alan. I went to
England last
November and visited with some of his family.
Uh, Alan was a,
(41:53):
ah, Church of England clergy person who was
also a lifelong member of the Communist Party in
England and understood
those two to be directly related to each other.
>> Speaker E (42:05):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (42:05):
And uh, uh,
just had a very unique way of
leading, uh, parish life in, uh,
Sheffield, England, where he served. And,
um, I came as close as I could
actually in. By going there to, you know,
like, meeting him in person because I got to spend
time with his son and his wife. They're now
(42:28):
in their 80s. And then I went
and went back to London and spent a few days walking
around London with his granddaughter.
>> Speaker E (42:37):
Hmm.
>> Loren (42:38):
M. Wow.
All right. Another ambiguous question. What do
you think history will remember from our current time and
place?
>> Clint Schneckloth (42:49):
Wow. That we
allowed the, uh,
oligarchs to win.
>> Loren (42:57):
I mean, I hope. I hope they have not won, but it does
appear they are winning for
sure. Present tense.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:05):
Yeah.
Uh, well, and we
seem to. At least so far. One of the most
prescient novels I've
ever read around this whole thing is the
Circle.
>> Loren (43:19):
Okay.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:20):
Uh, by, um,
Dave Egger.
>> Loren (43:26):
Okay, I'm gonna check that out.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:31):
It's a. Ah. Basically the premise is that
like, Facebook buys Google and they become
the Circle. That's the company.
>> Loren (43:39):
Oh. Cause they did a TV show on this, didn't they?
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:42):
Maybe. I don't know.
>> Loren (43:44):
I feel like I. Or there's a movie. I feel like I saw
something could be.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:48):
But there's like the main character,
she infiltrates the company and she keeps introducing
really bad ideas because she thinks that'll tear it,
finally tear it down and every single one of them.
Instead, they take it and they run with it and everybody loves it.
And I think this is the way. This is the big problem of
neoliberalism is it can take all of its
opposition and bring. Subsume it into
(44:10):
itself like the Borg, and just make it part of
itself. And that's what we're seeing over and over again.
>> Loren (44:18):
Yeah. Oh man. That's kind of.
What's the word of Dystopian. Uh, that's kind of
dystopian. Uh, how about something positive?
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:26):
Oh yeah.
>> Loren (44:27):
What do you hope for the future of Christianity?
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:31):
Um, well,
what do I hope for the future of Christianity? I think
that
we are seeing right now,
uh, on some level, some increased interest
in it.
>> Speaker E (44:51):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:52):
And I guess my hope is
that. My hope
this week is that the counterbalance we
saw that was so
shared so widely from that sermon
of uh, the bishop in dc.
>> Loren (45:09):
Yeah. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:11):
Will be understood to have
arisen out of the
grassroots life of the
church, uh, in progressive
communities. That that wasn't just
some vague, idealistic thing that
a woman in D.C. said, but arises
out of the culture and the community that has
(45:34):
lived out, practiced that enough that she was
free enough to say that there.
>> Speaker E (45:39):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:40):
And I've seen some of that in the media that's been following up where they
point out like, you know, this is
not just a one off. This is also the woman that
brought, uh.
>> Loren (45:51):
Yeah. Matthew Shepard.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:52):
Matthew Shepard's remains to the National
Cathedral. This is, you know, she's,
she's been in this.
>> Loren (45:58):
Yeah. This is not just hot takes by her.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:01):
Right.
>> Loren (46:01):
She's been practicing mercy her entire
career.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:05):
Right. There's still an issue, I
think there's still an issue that, that came from the
most elite of the,
uh, mainline denominations. There's a
lot of other, like, horror,
uh, less prominent. You know, the Episcopal
Church is a little bit the state church kind of thing.
>> Loren (46:26):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:26):
Uh, but so there's that issue
to deal with. I think we, we're gonna have to figure out how to
translate this into ways that make sense to people who
are poor and
uh, and country in ways
that we haven't figured out yet.
So I guess those are aspirational hopes of mine
too.
>> Loren (46:48):
Let me stay on this. Even though we're supposed to be wrapping up here, let me just
ask you, because I feel like this is a huge disconnect. Uh, we're
seeing it from data like Ryan Burge and others
about this huge class disconnect
where folks who are more wealthy and educated are more
likely to go to church. Folks who are less educated, less wealthy
are increasingly less likely to go to church, less likely to be
involved in community organizations, church, et cetera, et
(47:10):
cetera. Maybe closing
question this, like, how do we make this progressive
Christianity, especially as I,
uh, love the way you wrote about it throughout the book,
accessible in a way that really
resonates, communicates, impacts
folks who are low income, working class,
you know, struggling to pay their bills, less
(47:32):
educated Et cetera.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:34):
Well, that's interesting. I had, I, uh, just
thought of something. I, I, I would have to process whether
I, I'm going to agree later with what I'm going to say
right now.
>> Loren (47:44):
Sure, sure.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:46):
But a lot of times liberal elites are asking
me, what can we do to
overcome this divide?
>> Speaker E (47:53):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:55):
So is it really dumb of me to say
go to church?
I mean, if you want to like,
identify with the rural
poor.
>> Loren (48:08):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (48:10):
Or people on the other side of the
aisle, you could do a lot worse to
move toward them than to be as
religious as them in practice. So
that the way you live appears like the way that
they live in ways that they can kind of understand
and could cause some certain level of cognitive
dissonance. Yeah,
(48:32):
um, I'm always suspicious of saying that because it's maybe
self serving because I'm always wanting to grow the progressive
birch. It is an impulse I
have.
>> Loren (48:41):
I suppose it wouldn't be growing your church though. It'd be
growing Southern
Baptist, Independent Baptist type, these very
conservative churches. And I think that cognitive
dissonance is, if I can
soapbox from it, that's essential. We're going to have
to see each other not as these
evil caricatures, but
(49:02):
as human beings who have
many of the same wants and
needs and desires and cares as one
another. And I'm also again to bring it back to your book and what you said
earlier. I'm reminded of your point about place
sharing. What's more literal about place
sharing in evangelism than
going to meet your neighbors? I mean, it's kind
(49:25):
of like you said about going to Walker Park, Right. You're going to a
place to share in life with them.
>> Clint Schneckloth (49:32):
Yeah. Although I think I wouldn't go that
far. I don't think I would tell people to go to Southern Baptist
churches because I generally am not going to
encourage people to go to bigoted churches that don't allow women in
leadership or queer, uh, people to be
married. Um, so I was being selfish in the sense
of you should go to progressive churches. There's a meme right
now of like, if you're uh, hey guys, just so you
(49:55):
know, there's a church with a woke lady pastor within walking
distance of your house and if you're under
50, they're going to be super excited and they're going to give you free donuts,
you know, like. Yeah, so that's the meme I
have in the back of my mind. But I really identify
with that. But so what I mean is
it does make it Harder for,
(50:16):
I think, for the uh, for either
side to entirely dismiss
each other if a lot of their, ah,
practices and communal practices are the same.
I mean, it's not, it's not
inconsequential that the place where Donald
Trump heard that challenge have
Mercy was in a liberal church.
>> Loren (50:37):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (50:38):
You know, like that's, I think that's huge. He had to go
there. It was part of the
whole inauguration thing. And so like.
>> Loren (50:48):
Well, and this gets, gets me on my other
soapbox, which we don't have time for, which is the
essentialness of these institutions,
these liberal churches continuing to exist so that people
can go to them and hear these
have mercy messages. But we don't have time for that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:05):
Perhaps that's why
I'm a progressive pastor in
Arkansas.
>> Loren (51:11):
Yeah. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:12):
And it's hard to convince my colleagues to come here. It took
four years for the church to get a pastor.
All my, all my, all my liberal colleagues like to stay
where there's more Lutherans, you know, so Minnesota,
Iowa and.
>> Speaker E (51:26):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:26):
There's a lot of reasons for that, you know, family
and jobs and whatever.
>> Speaker E (51:30):
But m.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:34):
It's, it's, it's really crucial to, to
be a witness in some of these places.
>> Loren (51:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me do one last. I
think this is kind of a Lutheran thing too, right. Leave you with a word
of peace. You all do that, right?
Speaking of a shared practice. Well, let me leave you with a,
uh, word of peace.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:51):
May God's peace be with you and
also with you.
>> Loren Richmond (52:02):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
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(52:23):
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out to more people. People, thanks and go in peace.
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in
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Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors
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(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
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And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
>> Martha Tatarnic (00:44):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Clint
Schneckloth to the podcast. Clint
is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in
Fayetteville, Arkansas, a progressive church
in the South. He is the founder of
Canopy nwa, a
refugee resettlement agency and queer
(01:06):
camp, and is the author of a guidebook
to progressive church. He blogs
as Lutheran Confessions on
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with comments, questions or ideas for future
episodes. We appreciate your voice in
how we faithfully discern the future of the
church.
>> Loren (01:53):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren
Richmond Jr. And I am pleased to be joined today
by Clint Schneckloth.
Did I get that right?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:03):
You got that right.
>> Loren (02:06):
Thank you. Welcome to the show. Is there anything else you'd like
our listeners to know about you?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:11):
Huh, huh. Well, apparently we're both calling in
from cold locations this morning.
Colorado and Arkansas. It's
ah, kind of rough out there.
>> Speaker E (02:21):
Mhm.
>> Loren (02:22):
Mhm.
Well beyond the weather. Why don't you share just kind of about your faith
background, what that looked like in the past and what that looks like today?
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:30):
Oh, sure.
Well, I was born and raised and
still am, ah, in the
Lutheran tradition. Uh,
ELCA is the denomination.
>> Speaker E (02:43):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:44):
And so I grew up as a kind of a
Midwestern mainline kind of
guy.
>> Speaker E (02:50):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (02:50):
Uh, that's
got a whole kind of shape around it, I would say,
uh, you know, like, um, liturgical,
but also informal and campy.
And
um,
I've been thinking a lot about this lately too, just because
when I was growing up, I remember there being a pretty
(03:12):
broad spectrum of
politics and kind
of perspectives within the one denomination. There,
uh, was always the joke that they told, you know, that,
um, why are there altar rails in Episcopal
and Lutheran churches? It's to divide The Democrats from the
Republicans. But it was like a
(03:33):
60, 40 split. It'd be like 60%
of the clergy were Democrat and 40% of the
parish. And so I grew up in a
large church in Iowa,
St. Uh, Paul Lutheran. It was one of those that was kind of like
a big church before the mega churches.
And my grandpa was a state representative
(03:53):
Republican, uh, in the state of
Iowa. And so I had a lot of exposure to some,
some of that kind of stuff, kind um,
of the connection between care and
community and political decision making
at the state level.
Um, and then I went
(04:14):
to Luther College in Decorah,
Iowa. This is where I kind of
um, had a big transformative moment. Had
a lot of friends and colleagues who were queer
and I made a shift. I started
out college being uh,
literally anti lgbtq. Like I even
(04:36):
participated in campaigns, various uh,
sorts against
um, more full inclusion. And
I ended my college career
as the congregation president bringing
uh, Luther College in as a reconciling in Christ
congregation which is like the
movement for full inclusion in the denomination at that
(04:57):
time.
>> Speaker E (04:58):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (05:00):
And then I went to Luther Seminary,
that's up in the Twin Cities and did my
seminary and along the way I've just
always done church stuff. So I'm just a church guy
in a pretty significant way. I uh,
worked at a, and then was a camp director at a
Lutheran Bible camp in Iowa. My wife and
(05:20):
I served as missionaries in uh,
Slovakia with our denomination for about three
years. Did some youth director
gigs and stuff like that. And then I served some rural parishes
up in Minnesota and Iowa or excuse me, Minnesota
and Wisconsin before I came down to Arkansas.
>> Loren (05:38):
Yeah. Cool. I can only already hear like
in your background perhaps.
Hopefully. I'm not making assumptions, but it feels
like I can hear how your experience
has really shaped the book we're going to talk about
here.
Share if you can just about some spiritual
practices that are meaningful for you.
>> Clint Schneckloth (06:01):
I don't know if I'm very good at them to be honest.
Uh,
or I would say that the way that I think about
spiritual practices maybe is a little bit different than
the
um,
than than normal.
Um Like I
(06:23):
am not the get up in the morning and journal.
Mhm Kind uh of guy.
And um, I'm not very good at meditation.
Although when I do meditate or do those kinds of
things, I appreciate doing it.
Um, my spiritual
practices are more along the lines of
(06:43):
um, how can I pay attention to the world
and then um,
be annoying
in gospel centric ways.
M. Um. So a lot
of my spiritual practices are
around drawing attention to
injustice,
(07:05):
um,
using uh,
uh, platforms and
communication methods to draw
discourses in particular directions.
Um, and a lot of my spiritual
practice is really trying to be
embedded with and know the communities that I
(07:27):
especially advocate for. In particular
if I'm not part of that community. So
like, you know, we have residents who live at our church. We've
started taking in, uh, more and more
unsheltered people just into the church building.
So some of my spiritual practices are like, how do you build
reciprocity between providing
(07:50):
shelter for people and also having
them really think of themselves as
also, um, contributing something
to you? You know, one of our residents the other day had
gone and put a frozen pizza in the oven and then she was walking by
my office while I was working and she's like, brought
me a slice of pizza, you know,
(08:10):
um, and so how do I kind of, you
know, keep in mind that I'm hungry too.
>> Speaker E (08:15):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (08:16):
And um, that we're kind of all in
this together. That's a, that's a big part of my,
uh, spirituality, I would say.
>> Loren (08:24):
Yeah. Uh, the awareness, if I'm hearing
you right, the awareness of recognizing and
receiving the gifts folks are trying to make.
>> Clint Schneckloth (08:35):
Yeah. Or even not just gifts, but like
that we literally just are in community
together. And so you just shared stuff.
>> Loren (08:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks
for sharing that. So
I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Clint.
We're going to talk about Clint's book, A Guidebook
to Progressive Church. Is there a subtitle?
I'm not seeing a subtitle. There's not, I guess, no
subtitle. Okay. A Guidebook to Progressive Church.
(09:03):
Uh, it's out, it's available for folks. So I want to
start because I think this is the most interesting. When
I first talked to you, when I was first introduced to the book,
I want to start by why you chose to
write about progressive church rather than
progressive Christianity.
>> Clint Schneckloth (09:20):
Yeah,
because I'm committed, uh, my
whole life to
uh, church community. In spite of
the way in which, uh, a lot of the people
around me in their spiritual lives struggle
with or maybe have even been harmed by,
(09:41):
uh, prior Christian communities.
>> Speaker E (09:43):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (09:45):
Uh, there's a really,
um. There's a good
reason why many people have left
church and are never planning to come back. And I
totally, uh, like identify with that and
can see why some people would make the decision that for their
own, like, spiritual well being, personal
well being that they just can't cross the threshold of a
(10:06):
church.
But I've also seen repeatedly how
for many people it's coming back into church
community. That's been the way that they
heal.
>> Speaker E (10:19):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (10:20):
Um, I write about this in the book,
um, in some of the content around
religious trauma and church. You know, there's
some really good studies now coming out that show
how getting re engaged in ways that are
affirming of yourself can be incredibly spiritual healing for
people. Um, but I'm
also committed to the church because I'm simply not
(10:42):
willing to let
uh, the abuse of something disallow
its proper use.
>> Loren (10:49):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (10:51):
Which that's something I say often in the
book. You know, just because I mean
the analogy would be like so just because you don't
like McDonald's therefore you're not going to eat burgers.
You know, if somebody can make a really good burger, why are you going to
reject all the good burgers? Because McDonald's
make fakes, makes fake burgers. You know. And
(11:11):
the same goes for like church community.
Um, just because some people really abuse it or use it for the wrong
reasons doesn't mean that church rightly
organized.
>> Speaker E (11:21):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (11:21):
And practice isn't one of the most
incredibly impactful and powerful things in the
world. Um, so
that's why I wrote about progressive church. There's also a
thing in publishing. There's,
there are more books on progressive
values.
>> Loren (11:38):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (11:39):
For progressive. An understanding of
progressive Christianity. But there's a lot less out there just
about progressive church practiced as
community.
>> Loren (11:50):
So I think this kind of leads into. Again,
I don't want to get too,
too deep into this because I do want to talk about
the book but I really feel like this is a
philosophical point if even that's the right
word that really kind of undergirds the
overarching theme or philosophy of
your book. Uh, this, this kind of
(12:12):
willingness to accept
or work within
church and Christianity and not
kind of throw the baby out with a bathwater to use another
phrase. And
uh, I feel like that's a, I'm kind of
already getting off topic here in some ways but I feel like this is a trend
that I'm seeing at least again and again and again
(12:34):
in so called progressive Christian
circles. And I that
it, that it's almost like folks see, I mean
I'm literally like working on a substack on this. So
that's why I really appreciate your book that
it's like again it's kind of this throw the baby out with the bathwater like
it's all too corrupt. And I think you have a quote to that.
(12:54):
Uh, but yeah, what comes to mind
for you There.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:01):
Uh, I've got this neighbor
who recently went to Yale Divinity School. She
lived here in the northwest Arkansas and she just recently
moved to Yale.
>> Speaker E (13:11):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:13):
And we, uh, were in a running club together.
That's how I met her.
And she has never
really gone to church.
>> Speaker E (13:23):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:24):
But she's going to divinity school.
>> Loren (13:26):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:27):
And we were talking about. She was
asking me for like a guide,
guidance or advice on, you know,
like, what should I do when I'm going to divinity
school. What are your insights? Because
she, and she was asking me this because of how I
practice Christianity in our church. Even though she doesn't go to our
church.
>> Speaker E (13:47):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:49):
And I was like, well, when you get to Yale you should find a
church.
>> Loren (13:52):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (13:53):
And you should. And you should connect to a church because
that's going to be your incubator, uh,
for testing out whatever it is you're thinking about or
coming up with in seminary. And her
response was, well, is it okay if I, if I just
think of my garden as my church?
M. And
um, I, I'm not
(14:16):
at all dismissive of that. I think that there
are probably very spiritual people
for whom gardening is the
incubator for their
spirituality. And that's fine. You
know, that's like. I'm pretty respectful of lots of different
religious traditions. But if I
would argue that if you want to work
(14:38):
for uh, justice
and progressive values in the world
in the way that I do it.
>> Loren (14:46):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (14:47):
You have to do it in a community.
And um, it might be
that that community has very loose,
uh, porous boundaries with other kinds of
organizations. But to
ground it in the gospel of Jesus Christ
and to influence the world in the
(15:09):
ways that I think church uniquely does, you're going to
want to commit to a local church. That's
kind of a deep,
uh.
And that comes out of my lived experience,
you know, like, of uh, of how I've
seen. And there's like, there's so many
(15:29):
just practical examples like at ah. One
practical example would be
churches are third spaces.
>> Speaker E (15:38):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (15:39):
They're not a business and they're not the government.
And so they are able to provide this kind of
space and intersection that other
organizations can't do because like a business is trying to
make money so you can't look political because you
know that's. Politics is bad for business. You know, they always say,
right, so businesses are always going to
(16:00):
test the winds and see what's going to be most
marketable. Same with politics.
You know, politicians have to get elected.
Um, it's only the Church. And you
saw this illustrated super well last week with this Bishop
Budi, how to say her last name.
And in D.C. it's only the church that can
(16:20):
kind of whimsically step out and
do that. That she did with all the
attendant risks. I think
that's part of what I really deeply believe.
>> Loren (16:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm
reminded of this quote and I'll read it here.
Uh, you write this in the context of the importance of worship, which again I
think is interesting.
And I want to talk more about this, why worship
matters. Because I think this is a key aspect of
(16:53):
church in this kind
of progressive sphere that
seems to get diluted as either
unimportant or less important than the
so called work, justice, being on the streets,
whatever. So you're right. Progressive Christianity is much
more this worldly than other forms
of Christianity focused on the imminent frame and action in the
(17:15):
world. Worship, which is assumed to be primarily about
the transcendent frame and otherworldly focused,
is to those of this perspective simply
perceived as at best a waste of time and at
worst a distraction from the weightier matters of social
justice and love and love of
neighbor. So I want to stay on this point because this is something
(17:36):
I feel strongly about and this is one of the reasons I really resonated with the
book. Um,
I think that we are seeing this trend where
again, as you say, worship this kind of
gathered community to worship God is seen
as at best a waste of time or at worst a
distraction. So you argue
(17:57):
really in
these pages, from what I read, from what I understood
really
as the importance of grounding oneself in these
Christian and spiritual practices as a way to then go
forth and do justice. So talk more about
why this worship and such really
matters.
>> Clint Schneckloth (18:20):
Well, one thing I try to say to progressives
who aren't sure that they want to go to church every week
because this is a huge dynamic. I think this is a huge
split on the conservative, liberal Christian
side, You know, conservatives are all in
on weekly worship.
>> Speaker E (18:37):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (18:38):
Sometimes it's because of demand, like it's an actual
Roman Catholic law, right within canon law that
you're supposed to worship weekly and go to the Eucharist. And
I think a lot of fundamentalists and conservatives on the
Protestant side probably just have an internal legalism
around that similar.
>> Speaker E (18:54):
Yes, right.
>> Loren (18:56):
Uh, sometimes it's sometimes explicit legalism of
you better show up to church.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:01):
But on the more positive side, also a
lot of conservative Christianity, it takes place in
rural areas where people don't have a lot of other community
Right, right. So people are like, this is where they get
it. Progressive, uh,
liberal church tends to be,
uh, a little bit more on the,
oh, urban,
(19:24):
uh, diploma.
>> Speaker E (19:27):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:27):
Ah, busy.
>> Speaker E (19:28):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (19:29):
Side of the equation where they've got a lot of other social
connection and so they're uncertain whether church is even
necessary for their total social life.
And then, and then does it have any value
when so much of progression,
progressive Christianity is focused on love
neighbor. So my first
(19:49):
point to progressives is
you should show up to church for other
people. H m.
Uh, if you really think that progressive Christianity
is primarily about love of neighbor, what better way to
love your neighbor than to show up every week with other people and
check in with your fellow community
(20:10):
members? Um, that might mean that we need to
redesign worship so that there's more
capacity to do that because so much of worship in
our traditions is very passive.
>> Loren (20:22):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (20:23):
You can sneak megachurch, uh, you can like sneak
in and sneak out and not talk to anybody, you
know, um, so maybe that
needs some reshaping. But the point
is still valid. And when I raise that with people,
they're frequently surprised
because I think the majority of people that think that
worship is for you and your
(20:46):
spirituality. I go to get fed is like the most
common, um, thing that people say. And I kind of want to be
like, don't go to get fed. Like, go to like,
take care of somebody else. Somebody has
gone to church who's alone,
who's recently divorced,
who's traumatized by
(21:06):
the inauguration in this new regime,
whatever, go to church and,
and care for somebody. And you do it weekly
because that's about the rate that a lot of
communities care for each other. The German Stamtisch
or the, you know, whatever the
thing is that you do, that's, that's about the pace you need to keep
(21:26):
up. But man, that is a hard sell for progressive
Christians. Yeah, on average.
>> Loren (21:31):
Yeah, it is.
Um, I want to move on here to, to kind of
stay on this theme. You write about why a strong
Christology and theology really
matters. And I guess this really kind of ties into
something else. You wrote about the problem of Christian
progressives abandoning faith commitments.
Uh, and I think this, this broader trend, at least as I
(21:52):
understand it, of like, we want to be as
inclusive as possible. And being inclusive,
kind of that, uh, translation means like, let's just remove all
barriers and any kind of, I don't want to say
boundaries, but also kind of like
markers of who we are and what we're about. Does that make
sense? And in the book you really, as I understand
(22:13):
it, you really argue for, I wouldn't say
like firm or rigid but also pretty solid
theological foundations and groundings. Is that fair? Am
I understanding you correct?
>> Clint Schneckloth (22:24):
Yeah. Uh, I like
to joke that we're where people
come sometimes when they've been
going to the Unitarian Church and they need more Jesus.
>> Loren (22:37):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (22:38):
You know, our, our social perspective, our
values or whatever is very aligned with the Unitarians.
So um, I'm often um, showing up in spaces where there's
Unitarian leaders and we do similar things.
But Unitarians are literally.
You get to pick and yes, yeah.
Progressive Christianity from my perspective is still
(22:59):
grounded in the theological
tradition that ah, comes out
of scripture and is grounded and centered in Christ.
And uh, I
do think that I like, I try to flip that
around and say like our openness comes out of
our groundedness.
>> Loren (23:19):
Mm.
>> Speaker E (23:19):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:21):
Uh, because I feel
secure.
>> Speaker E (23:24):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:25):
In Christ in the sense of who
Christ is. For me. It allows me to
be open in my stance toward a lot of
other things and also
a lot of the things I'm opposed to and that Christ kind
of teaches me to be opposed to. It's not like
tarot card reading or my Muslim neighbor.
(23:46):
It's more things like the
divide between the rich and the poor and how many
billionaires we have and.
>> Speaker E (23:54):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (23:56):
Uh, how we treat immigrant neighbors and all those kinds
of things. That's where I get rigid is around
those things.
>> Loren (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I think again I'm just going
to keep mentioning these kind of random things but because I
think again this is what so stood out to me from your book
because uh, of how anti cliche
it was for like a book that's written
as from a progressive lens. You write about the importance
(24:23):
of leadership. And again, I don't want to like
broad brush here but I feel like in progressive circles leadership
is seen as this like oh man, we can't have any
leaders. We can't have anybody like you know, an
authority. There's just this anathema toward leadership
or authority. And it becomes, I think like you said about
that UU church, we're just like rather than you can pick
(24:44):
whatever, just everybody just doing whatever because there's no one
like offering any kind of vision or leadership. What? Talk
more about that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (24:53):
Well, I think that my perspective on this
is shaped by my
commitment to
phenomenological realism.
>> Speaker E (25:03):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:05):
It just is the case that
leaders matter. You don't
see major movements
for change in the world that gather
significant energy behind them.
>> Loren (25:18):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:19):
That don't have a face of a person
at the front of it or it's very, very
rare.
>> Loren (25:25):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:26):
Every once in a while you'll get something like Black
Lives Matter, which is more like a team.
But most of the time it's a person.
Martin Luther King Jr. For civil rights.
>> Speaker E (25:38):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:38):
Donald Trump for MAGA.
Uh, who, who's everybody like me looking back
to and thinking, oh, man, we wish this would have happened eight years
ago? Bernie Sanders.
>> Speaker E (25:50):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (25:50):
Who's our last remaining light right now? Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez. You know, it's like, I mean, it's a
person. It really is a person. And in my
church, uh, I would say that if you talk
to people, they would be like, everybody feels super empowered.
They think it's very lay level. And if they, if
you really press them on it, they would be like, the church is like this
because of the way Clint has led it over 14 years.
>> Speaker E (26:13):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (26:14):
And for better or worse. And that
what I mean by the phenomenological realism is it
just functions that way. And so you can either try to deny
it or you can say
leadership really has a kind of charism to it
and try to handle that in
as, um, ethical a way as
(26:35):
possible.
>> Speaker E (26:37):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (26:38):
Which is what I would encourage.
>> Loren (26:40):
Yeah.
So talk more about what does that
leadership look like for you in
that context? What are some
kind of best practices? What are some ethics you
try to stand by? What are some
ways you try to empower others in leadership? What does that look
like, practically speaking?
>> Clint Schneckloth (27:01):
Um, I can tell you what a couple of my parishioners have
commented on about me. To me that I think are
hallmarks. Uh, one of my council members
recently said that I'm the most available,
uh, lead pastor they've ever
encountered.
>> Speaker E (27:16):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (27:17):
I don't separate myself off from
the congregation. I'm in the mix.
Um, and another
new member said that one of the things that had her
coming back was simply the fact that I am
not, I'm not, uh, avoidant
of helping in with whatever needs
(27:37):
done. You know, you're as likely
to find me in the kitchen doing the dishes as
preaching. And um,
um, I. So I think that part of this
spiritual practice that's different for me as a leader
maybe has, uh,
to do with
(27:59):
functioning in a lot of those grassroots
roles.
>> Speaker E (28:02):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (28:04):
While also serving as
the.
>> Speaker E (28:09):
Uh, the.
>> Clint Schneckloth (28:12):
Lead on things, you know, like, uh, queer
camp. I'm both responsible for
having started it and I
also entirely step back and
then behind the scenes just doing grunt work the week of
because I'm a straight white guy. And it's not really
ideal for me to be the main
face of the camp.
(28:34):
Uh, so I'm more likely to be like running
security or volunteering, uh,
to lead a DND session. Uh, or
you know, some other thing. And then there's other people who are actually the face
of the camp.
>> Loren (28:48):
I feel like it goes back to what you said earlier about the abuse of
something does not disallow its proper use. Because we could say
the same thing about leadership. Right. Like the abuse of leadership does not
disallow its proper use. Is that again, kind
of your argument here?
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:01):
Yeah, I think that's.
Yes. And I think there are
some communities that kind of pull this off,
um, in a different way. Probably
the most famous
would be like the Quakers.
>> Loren (29:20):
Sure. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:22):
So I think there are some emerging ways or some ways
we could explore that might be,
uh, leaderless movement
organizing. So I don't want to completely.
>> Loren (29:34):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:35):
Undermine, uh, like those as
a alternative. I just don't see
normal communities most of the time
sorting out how to do that.
Um, and, and I see,
you know, and you. I just see over and over again how like
a school that has a good principal runs better.
>> Speaker E (29:56):
Mm mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (29:58):
Uh, the, the police department's better
if the police chief is a. Is a good guy
or gal, you know, like that. That just is a
real frequent thing. I don't know how to get around.
>> Loren (30:10):
That country that has a good president.
>> Clint Schneckloth (30:14):
Yeah, yeah,
right.
>> Loren (30:17):
Um, I don't want to take this off the rails here.
I think one thing I really liked here is you
talked about place sharing as
a model for mission and evangelism. M. So
talk more about that because again, I feel like we're in
this context where like a.
Anything E word. Evangelism is
(30:37):
obviously very seen as problematic
and sometimes for good reason in progressive circles,
but so much so that again, it kind of like
they want to throw it all out. So I really was intrigued by
your idea here of place sharing. So talk more
about that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (30:55):
Well, like a good example of this, it's been
emerging at Good shepherd over the last number of
years is we are now the, um, location
where Food Not Bombs cooks meals.
Uh, Food Not Bombs is an organization
that
um, it's
a mutual aid organization. It's a group of people
(31:15):
who oftentimes they do food recovery
and sometimes they buy food and then they prep big meals
and they go down to like Walker park, which is where a lot of
our unsheltered people hang out when the weather is
okay. And they, so they, they go to where people
are and, and take meals and
um, they cook on Sunday mornings.
(31:37):
So our church smells like the meals they're preparing while
we're getting ready for church and they're around while I'm doing other
stuff and getting ready for worship. And so I've got to know them.
And um, now they've started having
like their organizing meetings there. And when the
cold weather shelter opened this winter,
um, there was a shortage of groups that were going to serve
(31:59):
breakfast. And I was talking with the executive director of
the
shelter org and they had a couple of breakfasts
that they needed served. And so I messaged the leader of
Food not Bombs and I was like, hey, we'll take a day. Do you guys want to
take a day? And so then we started
coordinating together.
(32:19):
And I would
say
in some levels they've started thinking of
themselves as a member org of Good shepherd.
Even though none of the people that are in that funat
bombs go to church at Good Shepherd.
>> Speaker E (32:36):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (32:39):
But
uh, when I serve the breakfast
with people from my church, half the people that
help volunteer for the breakfast are also people
who don't go to worship on Sunday morning even though they're
connected to the church. And I kind of ask
myself like, well, who's being more
religious here? The people who show up for worship on Sunday
(33:02):
morning or the people who make the biscuits and gravy on
Monday morning for the cold weather shelter? You know, but
the, the better way to describe it is
there's all these kind of like network effects.
>> Speaker E (33:13):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (33:14):
People are using their time in the way that they
believe has value and we're building
community together in these kind of loosely
affiliated ways that I think
preach, you know,
uh, and I think can have really good long
term impact in terms of if you want to talk about
evangelism, like I think that
(33:36):
shaped the perception that that group of people who are
largely irreligious, uh, their
perception of what church can be.
>> Speaker E (33:44):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Loren (33:47):
And it seems like that's far
more likely to have an impact than folks working
alongside you, for example, rubbing shoulder to shoulder,
seeing how you live out your faith
is going to be far more appealing.
Then you know, again, imagine
walking up to like
(34:07):
someone in Walker park and being like,
hey, accept Jesus and come to church. Like that's going to be
a hard sell.
>> Speaker E (34:14):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:16):
Well, yeah. Not to mention the fact that really
most of the time when I go serve meals anywhere
like that, uh, they are more religious than I
am.
>> Loren (34:26):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:27):
And much better at preaching the Gospel to me than I am ever
preaching it to them. Yeah,
yeah. I served a meal the other day and one guy
came up and I was like, how are you? And he says,
uh, well, the world
isn't fair.
>> Speaker E (34:43):
Hm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:43):
But God is good.
And all the progressives would have just stopped
with the world isn't fair.
>> Loren (34:54):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (34:55):
You know, uh,
uh, so yeah,
so.
>> Loren (35:01):
Let me ask this question then. And I, I think
it's kind of like I'm kind of repeating the same question. So
forgive me if I'm, I'm beating the same horse. But again,
I feel like we're in this context, broadly speaking,
in progressive Christian circles where it's just
like we want to, we
want to like kind of push out any kind
of religiosity and worship and kind of
(35:24):
turn. I mean I literally saw this
the other day of like a church wants to be a food
pantry that worships rather than a church,
which feels like a whole other conversation.
But why, Just why. Again,
repeat this if anything for me.
Why should progressive leaning
(35:45):
Christians and faith groups like
retain, I'm not sure what the word is
ground themselves still in as a church,
as a worshiping community?
>> Clint Schneckloth (35:58):
Um,
yeah, I, I think I
have a complex and evolving
understanding of this, uh, that's developed over
time. Um, I have
one parishioner who
we were working on a grant and the way she
(36:21):
phrased it in the grant was that we are
a community center that
has a chapel.
>> Speaker E (36:27):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:30):
Describing Good Shepherd.
>> Loren (36:31):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:33):
Uh, because we do radically do way
more community, ah, center
type stuff than a lot of churches.
We're, you know, uh,
and because people are used to church
being almost exclusively church.
>> Loren (36:49):
Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (36:50):
Even doing some of that seems really large to
them. And then the amount that we do it is like next
level. And so you could see where people would come to that
perspective. But the
base, like the base of people who still support our
church like that, make it happen
with their donations and that kind of thing is still the
(37:10):
group that worships there, you know.
And I think that the part
that you're asking about that I haven't really talked much
about is the way in which having a
posture toward God.
>> Speaker E (37:25):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:27):
Is related to the posture that we have
toward uh, our fellow humans and
creation.
>> Speaker E (37:34):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:35):
And I do think that if we're
fully materialist in our
perspective as a church, uh, that the
one problem there is.
Well, one problem is I don't think that the world
is fully materialist.
>> Loren (37:50):
Yeah, yeah. And that's something that
you just kind of hint at your book Which I again was really
intrigued by. But go on.
>> Clint Schneckloth (37:58):
Uh, even though that's my main posture, like I've been calling
the church back to prioritizing neighbor love and neighbor
care. I do think that there's much more
than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. You know, like
that's really true just on a scientific
level. But from a Christian perspective,
uh, Jesus's freedom towards his
(38:20):
neighbors in love was grounded
in the freedom that he felt
and experienced in relationship to his father.
Those mhm. Are related. At one point he even
says they're the same thing. You know, what's the greatest commandment?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and love your
(38:40):
neighbor as yourself. And the two
are essentially the same
commandment, you know, uh,
so I think that when we let go of
the worship side,
sometimes that can be a problem too,
because then it makes the neighbor without
remainder and never puts you in this,
(39:02):
uh, posture of the bigger. It can result in a number
of things that are probably problematic, maybe not the least of
which is, uh, perhaps
a good focus on God can remind us that neighbor
is not just the human, but all of creation.
M. You know, uh, that
somehow that uh, the ground of
(39:23):
being posture shapes how
big our perspective is in terms of our
values.
>> Loren (39:29):
Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting stuff. I really
want to recommend the book. There's a lot more in it that we
haven't really touched on, I think. So again,
the book is a guidebook to progressive
church, I think Clint, I
said this on social media. I think one of the things I really appreciate about
the book was just like, it was simple, but not in a
(39:50):
simplistic way. I found it quite
brilliant, but in a very digestible, readable
way. So I really encourage folks to go check it
out. Um, um, let's, uh, let's take a break.
We'll come back with some closing questions.
All right, we're back with Clint Schneckloth. Thank you,
thank you so much for your conversation. Really
(40:12):
appreciate, uh, your insights and points, uh,
here. So closing questions. We always tell folks you
can take these as seriously or not as you'd like
to. So first question, if you're Pope for a
day, what does that day look like
for you? What do you want to do?
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:30):
Hope for a day?
Does this take place in, uh, the
Vatican?
>> Loren (40:39):
I mean, I leave it open. We leave it
purposely ambiguous.
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:44):
Okay. Huh.
>> Speaker E (40:46):
Huh.
>> Clint Schneckloth (40:50):
I, uh, guess that
I have. I, I, I. All I can
think of is that I love Rome enough
that I Kind of just want to go have coffee
and some pastries.
Yeah. And I think I might get
distracted by being in Rome or
(41:10):
the Vatican and forget to like,
actually do anything serious or helpful.
>> Loren (41:17):
That's fair, that's fair, that's fair.
Um, a theologian or historical Christian figure you'd
want to meet or bring back to life.
>> Clint Schneckloth (41:30):
Oh, wow. Well,
I probably have to say Alan Eccleston
because I've been doing a lot of work around him
here the last couple of years. Uh,
Alan. I went to
England last
November and visited with some of his family.
Uh, Alan was a,
(41:53):
ah, Church of England clergy person who was
also a lifelong member of the Communist Party in
England and understood
those two to be directly related to each other.
>> Speaker E (42:05):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (42:05):
And uh, uh,
just had a very unique way of
leading, uh, parish life in, uh,
Sheffield, England, where he served. And,
um, I came as close as I could
actually in. By going there to, you know,
like, meeting him in person because I got to spend
time with his son and his wife. They're now
(42:28):
in their 80s. And then I went
and went back to London and spent a few days walking
around London with his granddaughter.
>> Speaker E (42:37):
Hmm.
>> Loren (42:38):
M. Wow.
All right. Another ambiguous question. What do
you think history will remember from our current time and
place?
>> Clint Schneckloth (42:49):
Wow. That we
allowed the, uh,
oligarchs to win.
>> Loren (42:57):
I mean, I hope. I hope they have not won, but it does
appear they are winning for
sure. Present tense.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:05):
Yeah.
Uh, well, and we
seem to. At least so far. One of the most
prescient novels I've
ever read around this whole thing is the
Circle.
>> Loren (43:19):
Okay.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:20):
Uh, by, um,
Dave Egger.
>> Loren (43:26):
Okay, I'm gonna check that out.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:31):
It's a. Ah. Basically the premise is that
like, Facebook buys Google and they become
the Circle. That's the company.
>> Loren (43:39):
Oh. Cause they did a TV show on this, didn't they?
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:42):
Maybe. I don't know.
>> Loren (43:44):
I feel like I. Or there's a movie. I feel like I saw
something could be.
>> Clint Schneckloth (43:48):
But there's like the main character,
she infiltrates the company and she keeps introducing
really bad ideas because she thinks that'll tear it,
finally tear it down and every single one of them.
Instead, they take it and they run with it and everybody loves it.
And I think this is the way. This is the big problem of
neoliberalism is it can take all of its
opposition and bring. Subsume it into
(44:10):
itself like the Borg, and just make it part of
itself. And that's what we're seeing over and over again.
>> Loren (44:18):
Yeah. Oh man. That's kind of.
What's the word of Dystopian. Uh, that's kind of
dystopian. Uh, how about something positive?
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:26):
Oh yeah.
>> Loren (44:27):
What do you hope for the future of Christianity?
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:31):
Um, well,
what do I hope for the future of Christianity? I think
that
we are seeing right now,
uh, on some level, some increased interest
in it.
>> Speaker E (44:51):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (44:52):
And I guess my hope is
that. My hope
this week is that the counterbalance we
saw that was so
shared so widely from that sermon
of uh, the bishop in dc.
>> Loren (45:09):
Yeah. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:11):
Will be understood to have
arisen out of the
grassroots life of the
church, uh, in progressive
communities. That that wasn't just
some vague, idealistic thing that
a woman in D.C. said, but arises
out of the culture and the community that has
(45:34):
lived out, practiced that enough that she was
free enough to say that there.
>> Speaker E (45:39):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:40):
And I've seen some of that in the media that's been following up where they
point out like, you know, this is
not just a one off. This is also the woman that
brought, uh.
>> Loren (45:51):
Yeah. Matthew Shepard.
>> Clint Schneckloth (45:52):
Matthew Shepard's remains to the National
Cathedral. This is, you know, she's,
she's been in this.
>> Loren (45:58):
Yeah. This is not just hot takes by her.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:01):
Right.
>> Loren (46:01):
She's been practicing mercy her entire
career.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:05):
Right. There's still an issue, I
think there's still an issue that, that came from the
most elite of the,
uh, mainline denominations. There's a
lot of other, like, horror,
uh, less prominent. You know, the Episcopal
Church is a little bit the state church kind of thing.
>> Loren (46:26):
Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth (46:26):
Uh, but so there's that issue
to deal with. I think we, we're gonna have to figure out how to
translate this into ways that make sense to people who
are poor and
uh, and country in ways
that we haven't figured out yet.
So I guess those are aspirational hopes of mine
too.
>> Loren (46:48):
Let me stay on this. Even though we're supposed to be wrapping up here, let me just
ask you, because I feel like this is a huge disconnect. Uh, we're
seeing it from data like Ryan Burge and others
about this huge class disconnect
where folks who are more wealthy and educated are more
likely to go to church. Folks who are less educated, less wealthy
are increasingly less likely to go to church, less likely to be
involved in community organizations, church, et cetera, et
(47:10):
cetera. Maybe closing
question this, like, how do we make this progressive
Christianity, especially as I,
uh, love the way you wrote about it throughout the book,
accessible in a way that really
resonates, communicates, impacts
folks who are low income, working class,
you know, struggling to pay their bills, less
(47:32):
educated Et cetera.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:34):
Well, that's interesting. I had, I, uh, just
thought of something. I, I, I would have to process whether
I, I'm going to agree later with what I'm going to say
right now.
>> Loren (47:44):
Sure, sure.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:46):
But a lot of times liberal elites are asking
me, what can we do to
overcome this divide?
>> Speaker E (47:53):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (47:55):
So is it really dumb of me to say
go to church?
I mean, if you want to like,
identify with the rural
poor.
>> Loren (48:08):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (48:10):
Or people on the other side of the
aisle, you could do a lot worse to
move toward them than to be as
religious as them in practice. So
that the way you live appears like the way that
they live in ways that they can kind of understand
and could cause some certain level of cognitive
dissonance. Yeah,
(48:32):
um, I'm always suspicious of saying that because it's maybe
self serving because I'm always wanting to grow the progressive
birch. It is an impulse I
have.
>> Loren (48:41):
I suppose it wouldn't be growing your church though. It'd be
growing Southern
Baptist, Independent Baptist type, these very
conservative churches. And I think that cognitive
dissonance is, if I can
soapbox from it, that's essential. We're going to have
to see each other not as these
evil caricatures, but
(49:02):
as human beings who have
many of the same wants and
needs and desires and cares as one
another. And I'm also again to bring it back to your book and what you said
earlier. I'm reminded of your point about place
sharing. What's more literal about place
sharing in evangelism than
going to meet your neighbors? I mean, it's kind
(49:25):
of like you said about going to Walker Park, Right. You're going to a
place to share in life with them.
>> Clint Schneckloth (49:32):
Yeah. Although I think I wouldn't go that
far. I don't think I would tell people to go to Southern Baptist
churches because I generally am not going to
encourage people to go to bigoted churches that don't allow women in
leadership or queer, uh, people to be
married. Um, so I was being selfish in the sense
of you should go to progressive churches. There's a meme right
now of like, if you're uh, hey guys, just so you
(49:55):
know, there's a church with a woke lady pastor within walking
distance of your house and if you're under
50, they're going to be super excited and they're going to give you free donuts,
you know, like. Yeah, so that's the meme I
have in the back of my mind. But I really identify
with that. But so what I mean is
it does make it Harder for,
(50:16):
I think, for the uh, for either
side to entirely dismiss
each other if a lot of their, ah,
practices and communal practices are the same.
I mean, it's not, it's not
inconsequential that the place where Donald
Trump heard that challenge have
Mercy was in a liberal church.
>> Loren (50:37):
Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (50:38):
You know, like that's, I think that's huge. He had to go
there. It was part of the
whole inauguration thing. And so like.
>> Loren (50:48):
Well, and this gets, gets me on my other
soapbox, which we don't have time for, which is the
essentialness of these institutions,
these liberal churches continuing to exist so that people
can go to them and hear these
have mercy messages. But we don't have time for that.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:05):
Perhaps that's why
I'm a progressive pastor in
Arkansas.
>> Loren (51:11):
Yeah. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:12):
And it's hard to convince my colleagues to come here. It took
four years for the church to get a pastor.
All my, all my, all my liberal colleagues like to stay
where there's more Lutherans, you know, so Minnesota,
Iowa and.
>> Speaker E (51:26):
Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:26):
There's a lot of reasons for that, you know, family
and jobs and whatever.
>> Speaker E (51:30):
But m.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:34):
It's, it's, it's really crucial to, to
be a witness in some of these places.
>> Loren (51:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me do one last. I
think this is kind of a Lutheran thing too, right. Leave you with a word
of peace. You all do that, right?
Speaking of a shared practice. Well, let me leave you with a,
uh, word of peace.
>> Clint Schneckloth (51:51):
May God's peace be with you and
also with you.
>> Loren Richmond (52:02):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with
questions, comments and ideas for future
episodes. Visit our
website@future-christian.com and
find the Connect with Us form at the bottom of the
page to get in touch with Martha or Loren. But
(52:23):
before you go, do us a favor. Subscribe to the
POD to leave a review. It really helps us get this
out to more people. People, thanks and go in peace.
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