Tricia Lyons on Why Churches Should Be More Exclusive

Episode Transcript
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>> 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 (00:43):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Dr. Tricia
Lyons to the program. Dr. Lyons
currently teaches evangelism, works with the
Lifelong Learning Team, and serves as the
Senior Advisor to the Dean for Evangelism
Initiatives at uh, Virginia Theological
Seminary. She also directs the

(01:05):
Evangelism formation Lab at
VTS, a digital portal on
YouTube and Facebook offering original content
from the seminary as well as thoughtful curation of
resources in evangelism and formation
for the wider church. Dr. Lyons was
a lay chaplain and teacher of religion in
episcopal schools for 20 years before being

(01:27):
ordained a priest and then serving parishes in
Washington, D.C. eventually serving as
Canon for Evangelism in the Episcopal
Diocese of Washington. Currently,
Tricia serves as a non stipendary priest
at the Church of St. Clement in
Alexandria, Virginia.
Tricia is a member of the Presiding

(01:48):
Bishop's Strategic Cabinet on Evangelism
and one of the original writers of the Way
of Love. Tricia is an honors
graduate from Harvard College, the Harvard Divinity
School, and received her doctorate from the Virginia
Theological Seminary. She is the author of
four books on faith formation, the Soul of

(02:08):
Adolescence, Teaching Faith with Harry
Potter, what Is Evangelism?
And her most recent, the Evangelist's
Breviary. A, uh,
reminder, before we start today's conversation, please take
a moment to subscribe to the podcast, leave a
review and share Future Christmas with a
friend. Connect with Loren, Martha

(02:30):
and Future Christian on Instagram.
Shoot us an email at uh, laurensonatemediapro
uh.com
with comments, questions or ideas for
future episodes. We appreciate your
voice in how we faithfully discern the future
of the church.

>> Loren (02:57):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren Richmond
Jr. And I'm pleased to be joined today by Reverend
Dr. Tricia Lyons. Hello and welcome to the show.

>> Tricia Lyons (03:05):
Good morning. Good to see you.

>> Loren (03:07):
Yeah, thank you so much for being here. Anything, uh, else
you want to say about yourself?

Oh, uh, let's see. Beyond the bio.
Um, well, my
spouse And I, about two years ago bought a
farm, about 150 acres.
Uh, in northern New Jersey. I grew up in
New York, and let's just say I didn't grow up hearing great
things about New Jersey. So that was very much a God thing
that, uh, we'd always dreamed of. Um, we both

(03:35):
teach at Virginia Theological Seminary. So we both had always
dreamed about after that maybe living in
some kind of intentional, uh, community, something a little
more in nature. Um, and this family
farm opened up in New, uh, Jersey. So now we sort of live in
both places, um, uh, hoping
to finally settle here. So that's a long way

(03:55):
of saying I'm sort of a farmer,
which I never saw coming, uh, growing up just outside
New York City. Um, but it's
mostly. It's like the Hogwarts grounds,
if you read those stories. It's mostly deep woods
with trails. Um, but we do have some fields.
And just this last year we did a lot of donating of our food to

(04:15):
local food pantries. And we have rescue
dog organizations that train here and
hunters that donate their meat, uh, um, to
people, uh, who need it. Uh, so we've sort of stepped into
this whole agrarian ministry. So that's the kind of
thing I don't know how to put on a form. I don't want to call myself a
farmer. But, uh, so for those who are listening, who have,

(04:36):
um, no people like that, or who are people
like that who are thinking about the church kind of outside,
um, the walls, uh, and being
church to a community and sort of
opening up the. That you have for other people that
have skills, but they don't have land. Um, so
that's this interesting last, most recent

(04:57):
chapter I've stepped into. So I'm sure that's not listed,
um, on the bio, but just add farmer to
it.

>> Loren (05:04):
This is obviously an audio podcast, but for me,
and anyone who sees clips of this might see
your background looks like a little bit of a Hallmark movie
behind. Uh. So that's a nice image from.

I'm at the farm right now. So, um, uh,
I've got my stockings up and I've got my tree
up and, uh, yeah, over the mantle. I'm sure who are
listening, but I'm up for putting that stuff up
early and, uh, leaving it up to the feast of Candle
mass, which is February 2nd. So
we stretch out the season for as much of the
winter as possible here. So, yes,

(05:38):
lights are blinking and everything right behind me.
Yes, indeed.

>> Loren (05:41):
Yeah.
Share, if you would, kind of about your faith journey, what that's looked
like, uh, in the past and what that looks like today.

Yeah, um, like many
Episcopalians, um, the majority of
Episcopalians, actually I'm a former Roman Catholic.
Um, I was raised in, uh, the Catholic
Church, uh, an Irish Catholic in New York, which is sort
of its own denomination of Catholicism in some
ways. Um, I, uh, live right across the
street from a Catholic church. Uh, so it was sort of an

(06:11):
extension of our home. Um, and
I just loved the Catholic Church. Uh, I really wasn't aware of
many other kinds of churches. Um, but
I loved it. I went to Mass,
uh, every day when I was, uh, in high school. I went to a
public school, but I would sneak over to Mass at 6:45 and then
go down the street to my public school. I just couldn't believe

(06:32):
that, um, you could do church on Sunday. But then I found out you
can actually do church every day. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
Um, but also when I was a child, I was 8 years old
and, uh, my older sister, um, was killed in
a car accident. She, um, she was 12 years
older than me. So she, um, had a real
hard time in high school kind of finding herself. And I watched that

(06:53):
as a child, kind of at the top of the stairs, all the,
um, my brother and I. So this poor teenager
had these two young, um,
siblings. Uh, so she really struggled and eventually it
was, um, a drunk driver.
Um, but I just throw that out because that, um, I
would say at 8, 9, 10. Um,
that's where I really began asking what I would now call sort of theological

(07:15):
questions. Um, this God I'd already fallen in love
with at 5 years old. I thought going to church was the best thing in
the whole world. Um, so my parents, it took them
a few years to kind of even recover language for God. I
mean, your first child of course was a nightmare for
them. She graduated from high school and she was ready to start her
life. Um, so that was sort of my theological

(07:36):
curiosity. Um, and I think I came back to the church
in some ways before they did. We'd, uh, just go across the street
and just sit in the church. Um, so I loved my
Catholicism very strong. Went off
to, um, Harvard College, which was not
exactly a very religious place,
but it had always been my dream to go there. Um, and when I got

(07:56):
there I actually bumped into some evangelicals. And like
most environments, you know, the more sort of agnostic or atheist, the
major culture is kind of the more on fire, the
sort of parrot. So that the Jews who were there were
just, you know, a lot of them are just incredibly observant, joyful Jews.
And it went across the board. So I spent about four years
very involved with something called Campus Crusade.

(08:17):
Uh.
Hm. And boy did I learn the Bible. Oh my gosh, I had
no idea. I mean they all thought that I grew up with superstition and
accept Christ as my Lord and Savior, which I did my freshman year.
Wanted to cover all my bases.

>> Loren (08:27):
Hm.

Um, but I learned a lot about ministry and
now looking back, I learned a lot about what you'd call lay
ministry.

>> Loren (08:33):
Mhm.

Um, because as you know, so many of these groups, Navigators, intervarsity,
Campus Crusade, all those groups, yes
they have staff, but the whole notion of ordination, which
had been kind of the obsession of my Catholicism and
frankly on bad days can really be uh, a real hang up
in the Episcopal Church where I am now. I had a couple of
years where we were believers, we were disciples.

(08:54):
Um, there was definitely a hierarchy of teaching
in some sense who the teachers were. But I'll never
forget those four years of kind of
the pressure of being in such an agnostic.
An agnostic, uh, I mean an atheist, um,
learning and teaching environment to just bonding with these
other folks, knowing that um, being baptized was all you
needed. Um, and then after that,

(09:17):
uh, by the end of my twenties, I started um,
back in the Catholic Church and was um, now a mix
of all things like many American Christians are.
And uh, then actually realized that I was a gay person.
Which was a um, bit of an inconvenience at
the time.

>> Loren (09:34):
Yeah.

Um, as a Roman Catholic. And so I researched
and I um, was really drawn to the Episcopal Church which is
very similar in the sacramental life of the Catholic
Church. It was very hard then and frankly it's kind of hard now.
I'm sort of a theologically conservative person,
um, on scripture and tradition and authority.
Um, so uh, it was hard. It was

(09:55):
hard. I said I've never stopped loving the Catholic
Church. But um, the feeling wasn't
mutual. So it's very hard to be in a church where I
wasn't allowed to. I'd done graduate work and everything else and I was
already teaching Catholicism, um, and
moral theology was my main interest. So it's very hard when
you can't receive communion in your own church without lying. So
that was unsustainable. So then I um, came down to

(10:17):
Virginia, um, ah, from the Boston area
and started attending Virginia uh,
seminary to kind of get a new education for this ah,
new church. And that was 20 years ago and
I became ordained. Uh, so now I'm an Episcopal priest
and I still teach at Virginia Seminary.
But again, the Episcopal Church is well over 50% of it

(10:38):
is former Roman Catholic. So um, I sort of
left the Catholic Church and joined
the uh, Catholic, um, section in the pews,
you would say, of the Episcopal Church. So it's been a journey
of different faiths. But um, honestly that's my
experience of a lot of Christians now. Um, the whole notion of being
born into one church and if you do marry, marrying someone

(10:58):
of the same denomination, I just really don't meet
anyone like that anymore. And we all kind of have this
quilt that gets knit together.

>> Loren (11:06):
Yeah. I suppose that the
Episcopals are great at keeping
data. So is there data on that that
50% of episcopals are ex
Catholics?

Yeah. Ah, it's probably over 60% now.

>> Loren (11:19):
Wow, that's. Wow.
Okay. Interesting.

Honestly, I would love to
believe one of the things I teach at seminary is evangelism.
Um, and I'd like to think that this was kind of an achievement
of evangelism, but it's not.
I mean the Episcopal Church, um, our desire is that people are
growing and having encounters with Christ. So I really don't know many
Episcopalians that would want someone who was encountering

(11:44):
Christ in the Baptist Church or the Catholic Church to pull them away from
that. That's not what I mean. The problem in the
Catholic Church is they are losing for
every baptism. I think they're losing about nine people
and not to death. Um, so they have the largest
kind of bleed out rate of any form of
Christianity in this country. I mean when I
grew up there were 90 million Catholics in

(12:06):
America. Um, they have a fraction of that
now. So what's happening is, and it's really over one
or two teachings, you know, that you can't use birth
control for any reason.
Abortion is um, wrong in
every setting.
Um, so with no exceptions. And that you can't receive communion

(12:26):
once you've been divorced.

>> Loren (12:27):
Yeah.

And I remember my mother was actually an orphan who was
raised by Catholic nuns. I mean I couldn't love the Catholic Church
more than I do. It really was a matter of, you know,
who I was, couldn't serve communion. But
I, um, have a great love for that church. But there's no question that
those um, kind of moral teachings,
um, is creating this exodus of people

(12:50):
leaving the Catholic Church, when you think about it, for
moral reasons, which is very different than church decline,
you know, they're leaving because of their love of someone
who's impacted by those teachings or their love
of themselves who's impacted by those teachings. So it's a very
Interesting group of people who are leaving the church because they
want more intimacy with God. They have a

(13:10):
stronger view of more maybe inclusive view,
you might say, of the moral life. So it's a wonderful place to
be in the Episcopal church because these 50 or
60% of our congregations, I mean, it changes
regionally, right?

>> Loren (13:22):
It depends.

The average is well over 50%. Um,
and it's really, frankly, it's American
Catholics who just don't want the divided conscience
anymore. They love the music, they love the sacraments,
but you have all that in the Episcopal Church. What you don't have is this kind of
secret you keep, uh, in the pews, that
there's a few things. So my great prayer
for the Catholic Church is that they listen to people's

(13:46):
experience of that and realize that they're not losing people
because the country is becoming more atheistic.

>> Loren (13:51):
Yeah.

They're losing people because their daughter is divorced
and she left a marriage that was abusive, and she now is
in a marriage that isn't. And she's coming fully
alive. Uh, and that family of all
generations is just looking for a version of Christianity
with the Eucharist and baptism that
loves her as much as they do. So that's my prayer.
My prayer is that they did it. But until then, I mean, if you go

(14:14):
into an Episcopal Church, I mean, you're gonna. If you look around, you're
gonna see a lot of people whose name is O'Malley
and Rivera, um, ah,
And Kozwalski. And basically, they're just all these
ethnic Catholics who found their way to a church that
affirms their moral, um, epic
struggles and doesn't sort of make decisions at the beginning.

>> Loren (14:34):
Yeah, that's such an interesting thing you share. I don't want to spend too much
time on this, but I'm remembering how I'd heard
this from an evangelical source, that there's a lot
of Catholics coming to evangelical churches.
Obviously, they're going to have similar views on abortion,
but they're going to be far more open on, you know,
communion and divorce. Obviously. I, uh,

(14:55):
mean evangelicals far more, I suppose,
ambiguous. Right. On birth control. Some
communities are more accepting than others, I guess. Right.
But interesting nonetheless.
Um, well, that's.

Let me say one thing about that. With the. These
statistics, I'm, um, one of the largest megachurches,
um, Willow Creek, right out of Chicago.
Um, years ago, um, I think
one of the times Bill Hybels came back after his first
retirement, they. They decided to do a
large study of the congregation, um,
because what they were Finding is, although they kept getting new

(15:28):
members, they, they finally were admitting that they were losing
about a third every few years out the door. They're
just so good at bringing in people.

>> Loren (15:36):
Right.

Um, but. And they did a huge study. A
couple of books have been written about it, and they published
their findings. And the risen people were leaving. You're ready for
this, Willow Creek, right? One of the, like, you know,
platonic forms of the megachurch. People
said they wanted to read more scripture, they
wanted to learn to pray, and

(15:57):
they wanted more time in silence. Uh,
yeah. Now Willow Creek, I mean, this was a,
ah, earth shattering finding for Willow Creek.
Um, they wanted a closer relationship with
Jesus, they wanted to learn to pray and read the scripture and
things like that. And what they realized is they'd become such a
presentation ministry, um, and

(16:17):
hadn't put as much, these are their words, not mine,
hadn't put as much ministry, um,
into forming people
who can form other Christians.
Which, uh, is very different than, uh, having people
accept Christ and then teaching them to have other people accept
Christ as their Lord and Savior. That's not a small thing.

(16:38):
Um, but that's different than forming
the whole life of the believer. Practices
of prayer, practices of repentance, practices of
fasting, practices of silence, and
forming them to help other people with words or
with, not without words, form other
people into people of practice and
hope. And they realize this sort of.

(17:00):
They had all the money in the.
World to have the professional everything, musicians, lighting,
set design. But that doesn't form
people, first of all, that when they leave the, you know, and
you can send them as many newsletters as you want, as many texts. And they've been very good
at that. They've been attracting the technology from the beginning. But they realize
that's really not the same as doing this ancient, what we used to
call the catechumenate in the church, which is coming

(17:22):
alongside people over the entire liturgical
year and rising up mentors around them and
having the chief goal that the
person literally live into every
dimension of their life to be lost in
Christ in all things. So that's what they weren't doing. But there's a
lesson there for all of us, um, which is that, you know,
when we take people into our communities,

(17:44):
um, it's America, right? We're so good at the
show. Um, and I'd rather great music than bad
music, right? So these are not bad things. I'd
rather feel welcome and see hospitality than not
see hospitality. But these things are not virtues.
Um, and the practice of hospitality is just that
it's practicing good manners, not

(18:04):
being rude, not being. Being a stumbling block to someone coming
back. Honestly, that's not forming a
Christian. Jews are hospitable. Muslims are hospitable.
And like most Christians, some of the most hospitable people I know
are atheists or agnostics precisely because
they're spiritual seekers who believe anything could be God
or something like it, or any piece of nature should be

(18:24):
respected as other people. So, um, hospitality is
not a spiritual virtue in that sense,
and it doesn't form Christians any more than the Boy.
Scouts that's, you know, forms Christians.
But we'll get to that, I'm sure.

>> Loren (18:36):
Yes. This is a great lead in to the
purpose of our conversation. What I want to explore
today with you, Tricia.
So I came across Tricia and
her, her enthusiasm for what we might
call exclusivity. And stay with
us listeners here. Uh, via.

It sounds like I'm pro root canals, but that's okay, keep
going.

>> Loren (18:58):
I'm with you via. Uh, what even is the
podcast? The, uh, Try Tank podcast, A podcast I
produce for, uh, Lorenzo Labrija
and the Tri Tank. What are they calling
themselves? Laboratory Think Tank. I don't even know anymore.

The Innovation Laboratory.

>> Loren (19:13):
Innovation Laboratory. They're a great resource. Lorenzo is doing
great work. Uh, I'll try to remember to leave a link to
this episode that I'm referencing in the
show notes. Um,
but anyway, as I was listening, I was like, holy
smokes. Tricia is talking about something that I feel like I
don't hear enough in
Mainline Circle.

(19:34):
So two things here that I want to kind of introduce the topic.
You said, talking about Willow Creek. You didn't use the
words, but certainly Willow Creek really trumpeted
what we'd call the seeker sensitive model. Like you said,
the lowering of the barriers, the easy
entry. I'm also thinking how
this. You said something to the effect of
hospitality not being formative.

(19:57):
Now it's, to me at least, mainliners
have taken the seeker sensitive model in a different
approach of becoming. We're going to be super
hospitable, welcoming to all people, you know, all are
welcome, everyone is welcome sort of thing.
And it seems like it's not
tracking. I mean, uh, we'd, uh, say, broadly speaking,
like the data is showing, like it's not tracking, like we're

(20:19):
losing people hand over fist.
So let's talk about this kind
of, I don't know,
approach to be everything to
everyone and why that's not. Why that doesn't
work.

Yeah, it doesn't um, let's
just begin with that. It doesn't. It's not working. It hasn't
worked. There are very few examples in Christian history
going back to Jesus that this view has ever
worked. Um, I'm just shocked at the
track record of failure of the low bar for
Christianity because it's a complete perversion of what
Christianity is. So I'm glad it hasn't

(20:57):
worked. I'm not cheering for it to
work, um, because it's not giving people, um,
abundant life. Um, it's like
a cruise that leaves, that has a cruise director who's the pastor
or the minister or the priest or whatever. And that's who you send
the emails to. If the food isn't hot enough, um,
you participate. But it's not what we call being

(21:17):
the body of Christ, being an actual, like a
corporal member. Um, a member.
Like I have members of fingers, they're
members of my hand. Um, and I
understand where it comes from. It's centuries of
Christians being in charge of the empires, um,
and the countries and the governments. Um,

(21:38):
and what comes with that is the kind of assumption
that your citizenship in France or your
citizenship in Ireland is what makes you a Christian. Yes,
baptism. But it's really cultural expressions. The
Orthodox Church has this too. If you're born in Moscow, you're a
Muscovite Christian. Um, uh, so
you have your own patriarch. And the problem when you become the
emperor, become the empire, is, uh,

(22:00):
joining the faith, um,
becomes a matter of sort of government and politics and things
like that. And as a result, then you sort of take on the cultural
matters of whatever the Catholic state is again.
France, Germany, what have you. So this is the got served as well, uh,
in the 1500 years after
Constantine turns this movement
of the first three centuries of the Church

(22:21):
into, um, a political identity. And he puts the
cross on the shield and he claims that the bit of his
horse was, you know, um, uh, the
nail that went into Jesus on the cross. And all of a sudden we get all
this mixed. Um. So I'm not for
some kind of ahistorical pre Constantinian Christianity,
but what I am saying is that we've reached a point now. We don't want to offend

(22:42):
people. That's important. That's kindness. But M.
Again, girl scouts, boy scouts, the united Way. You know,
there's plenty of organizations that you could join that could teach you to be kind
to people and not hurt people's feelings. Um, I think
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's autobiography, you know, the Cost
of Discipleship you open it up, first
quotation on the first page. The call to

(23:02):
follow Christ is the call to come and die.
Now, don't be wrong. I probably wouldn't lead with that, with a
seeker. Um, but, gosh, there's
something that's just. I find when you share that with
even teenagers and you talk to them about
it, um, there can be this kind of longing
in them. Why the Lord of the Rings, Narnia,

(23:23):
Harry Potter, Black Panther, if you add up all those
epics, you know, because Star wars, you know, goes back to, I
think, 78, May 26, 1978 was
when the first Star wars, you know.

>> Loren (23:33):
Better than I do.

Um, sounds right.
That was, I think.
I think it was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater. So I thought
that was a movie. And then I saw another one after it and I was really,
like, down that. They all don't work like Star Wars.
Um, but we're talking about
3 billion billion
people, um, who have engaged those narratives
either through film or through books or both.

(23:55):
And they all have such common elements, and none of them have
anything to do with hospitality. Yes,
hobbits are hospitable, but if you get
to the end of the Lord of the Rings series and think the lesson to be
learned from hobbits, right, is be
hospitable. I mean, it's like reading, you know,
um, Moby Dickens, thinking the whole thing is about a fish.

(24:15):
I mean, you've missed the point.
Hobbits save the world because they
are so committed to each other, to
friendship. No going back. Burn the
ships, vows to each other that they.
And their desire to die for each other
if need be, just sort of extends in
concentric circles into other communities in which they

(24:37):
wind up moving. They will die for
others. And, you know, Star Wars, I mean,
just go down the line and all these epics have,
have older people, right? It's like the hero's journey. You know,
Gandalf, there's a Dumbledore, there's Obi Wan
Kenobi. And they all teach the person about a, uh, tool
like a lightsaber or a wand or

(24:57):
so I don't care what anybody says about. Nobody
wants a high bar. People will. Won't join your church if
you ask them for money. People won't join your church if you ask them
for time. I don't know what movies and
books these people are reading because
3 billion people seem
very moved. When Frodo says,

(25:17):
I will take the ring, I will go. I
will give my life, I will Serve. It's like
marriage. As a minister, I
marry people. Um, and some people
use the phrase, others update it. Um,
I will take you and forsake all
others.
Now, someone could say, well, that's a.

(25:38):
Hard thing to say. Yes, it is. What the heck
would marriage, even a contract of any kind, be
if you.

>> Loren (25:44):
Said, sweetheart, until this gets
inconvenient.

Yeah.
Let's keep the bar low. So I'm gonna ask you to be
polite in this marriage. I'm gonna ask you to be forgiving. But
if you're not, it's fine. I'm not gonna leave you. And as for
forsaking all others, let's, like, try the monogamy thing.
But. But that gets hard. That's also
negotiable. Um, imagine if the college
accepted you, but, like, two weeks into your freshman year, you

(26:09):
didn't show up for a seminar, and they said, well, we accepted you,
but, you know, now we're just gonna tell you to leave. Not because you failed,
but, you know, we said you were one of us, but you're not. I
mean, so all around people,
culturally, um, organ
donation. I mean, I could just go on and on. There are so
many times when someone puts their name in ink.
They take a vow. They have an

(26:31):
understanding of trust.
Um, and yet in the church, we are afraid
to, um, say to people.
Here'S how the universe works.
There is a Creator. And in every world
religion that we've been able to find and read its
pictures, uh, and listen to its music and read its poetry,
if possible. If it was written down, maybe it's just

(26:53):
symbols we find in a cave. We notice that
there is a sense that life comes from
a creator and that life is about trying
to be in relationship with that creator. And
Christianity is. It's like the Sesame street song. One of these things
is not like the other. Christianity is not
that. That I just said it is not

(27:14):
that. It is not to try to
seek a relationship with the Creator. It is not
Simon says, to live like the Creator or any
emanation or incarnation of the Creator.
It is not that.
That's exhausting. We can't do
it. Christianity
says the Creator

(27:34):
becomes.
Becomes a creature.
So the creatures don't seek a relationship with the Creator.
The Creator incarnates the
Creator into the creature and lives out
the relationship between creator and
creature as one.

(27:55):
And through faith, a Christian is
allowed to join the body of
Christ that was
incarnate of all of God, the
triune God. And if we join that
body of Christ through faith, through the sacraments
and there's different ways you could define it. We
then by putting our lives into the life

(28:17):
and the body of Christ, then the triune
God who incarnated into the actual body, the
full human body of Christ, fills our life.
That is unlike any other seeking
religion that you, whether it's Greco Roman
mythology, whatever it is, that this notion is that
the creature is seeking a relationship

(28:37):
with the Creator, like a friendship or an affair or a
marriage that has nothing to do
with. But again, this is a formation thing. And different
branches of Christianity are better at some parts of it.
They nurture, uh, a connection with the Bible
itself and the Word and that's their intimacy. Other people, it's
the sacrament. But I do believe we've kind of lost this

(28:57):
idea that your whole
life is what you offer to be
grafted, as St. Paul says, grafted onto
the body of Christ. That is a huge life change. It's
not. Christianity is not an idea. It's
just not an idea that God loves us, we love
God. But no, I mean, it has the fruit of those
things. But Christianity is a physical experience

(29:20):
where your body is grafted onto
the body of Christ. And therefore when Christ
dies, when we die, Christ dies with
us. But because Christ rises,
our body has been grafted onto his,
we rise. So everything that when Christ is
transfigured, you know, in the Gospel of Matthew, um,
that's our future. So all of a sudden, when you join the body

(29:43):
of Christ, everything that happens to Christ, the suffering,
the betrayal, the loneliness, the
torture, the death on the cross, we will
share that. But the truth is we were going to share that anyway, right?
I mean, life has all that. But
because he rises, we rise
because nothing that happens to his body doesn't happen to
any body that is part of his body.

(30:05):
So that's a lot to say. On the other hand, because
we're not saying that Christianity has become a
membership organization like the Rotary, and like the
rotary, only 10% of people go
compared to 1980.

>> Loren (30:18):
Yeah.

So we're failing as, um, ah, a
voluntary association because we were never meant
to be that. It's meant to be this total experience
of your life joining the body of Christ on earth, which means joining the
church, which means our bar for membership at
the very least has to include what I just said. So people really
understand what they're being invited to. Because you know what,

(30:39):
they may not want to suffer with Christ. You become a Christian.
Dorothy Day, you know, um, great 20th century
Catholic social, um, justice
warrior, she talked about becoming a Christian, made her Sadder than
she'd ever been, because as soon as she became
part of the body of Christ, she could start to feel
things that other people were experiencing. She had this

(30:59):
solidarity with all of humanity that has joined the body of
Christ and she could literally feel it. So she kind of said, don't become a
Christian if you want to feel good. Because if
you take on the body of Christ, you are going to
mourn, you are going to, uh, grieve,
you are going to cry out for injustice because you are
going to feel it's not just your body. What's the verse?
It is no longer I who live.

>> Loren (31:21):
Right, but Christ in me.

The life I live in, the body I live by faith in the
Son of man who loved me and gave himself for me. So we should say
to people, not we dare you to be Christians, because this isn't some
kind of game, right? We have to present them with this
invitation. Are you ready for your life
to be brought into the life of Christ? Which means you are going to
hurt, you are going to suffer with the whole world, but

(31:43):
your tomb will be empty because his
was.

>> Loren (31:47):
You said so much good stuff here. I want to reflect and kind
of just highlight some of the key themes that I
heard. One is, I'm thinking of an episode
that just released. I'll make sure again
to put the link in the show notes. My co host, uh,
Martha Tatarnic, Canadian Anglican. I, uh,
don't know if you know her. You should connect with her.
Uh, she just released an interview with

(32:09):
Mike Cosper and I imagine you're somewhat familiar with Mike
Cosper from his Rise and Fall, the Mars Hill podcast.
He just put out a book, um, recommend the book.

I used to listen to the Mars Hill. Yeah, they were audio
tapes, right.

>> Loren (32:21):
What was so interesting about uh, the Mars
Hill story that he talks about in this conversation with
Martha is like it was a high bar
to entry like Mark
Driscoll for good or bad. And we can leave
that. Obviously there was some bad, but there was a high bar
of expectation. Um,
a. So, you know, I'm hearing that from what you said too.

(32:43):
I'm thinking of the. You said something to the effect of like
Christianity is not that. And I think there's been this
trend in
certainly mainline liberal progressive
circles. Like I remember doing this in seminary where
we take the multi faith cultural. I don't
remember what the class was. Where there's this kind of
like, because we want to bring down

(33:05):
this obviously not good
prejudice and bias and violence in uh, the name
of religion that we Kind of synchronize
our faith and religion to the point that it's just, like,
about hospitality and being nice to one
another. You know, I'm thinking
about the song we love to sing,

(33:26):
at least in circles. I'm a part of Draw the Circle. Draw
the circle wide. Like, we want to draw the circle. Uh,
but also, like, uh, I'm reflected recently. Like,
can we have, like, the circle. Can it be wide, but can we have lines
on what the circle is and is not?
And then finally, I think you're familiar with this.
I think it's Priya Parker who wrote the book the Art of

(33:47):
Gathering. And she wrote.
She wrote about how
for there to be
cohesion or not cohesion is not the right word. But,
um, really,
like, stickiness. For a group to have bonds or
stickiness, there has to be some high levels of

(34:08):
expectation. So all of this
sounds completely counterintuitive. It sounds
like an anathema. It sounds just completely
paradoxical to, whether
implicitly or explicitly, how
mainliners have been training pastors and church
leaders to do it for at least as long as I've been a part of
mainline Protestantism. Why is that?

Yeah, well, uh, you know, you say mainliners, I always call
them manner liners. Um, because I find a lot of
mainline Christianity is not Christianity. It doesn't make
martyrs. Yeah, that's for.

>> Loren (34:41):
Yeah. Mannered liners. I love
that.

Yeah. No, it's.
It's.
And again, manners help us
communicate in certain cultural
contexts and only in certain
cultural contexts. And it's important to know your cultural
context. So I'm not saying that there's anything noble
about being rude.

>> Loren (35:01):
Right, Right. I mean, that's certainly. That's a thing right now in the
right far right is, like, where it's gonna be rude to just be a
jerk. So we're not saying that, right?

No. Right. There's no nobility, um, in,
um, being iconoclastic.

>> Loren (35:14):
Yeah.

Which is to really take a very important word, icon. Uh,
to be iconoclastic, um, is
to really. To shatter norms. That
also is not an end in itself.

>> Loren (35:26):
Yes.

You want to stand in a room.
Of broken glass at the end of.

>> Loren (35:29):
The day, which, again, I'm trying to cut you off. But, like,
that's. There's these. These. These are. We're both
passionate about the subject. These are, like, the two moves right now in, like,
progressive Christianity. Either we're gonna be. We're gonna draw the circle
so wide that there are no limp boundaries, or we're just gonna
smash things. To smash things.

So when we think about something again like
marriage. They, that this, this notion that, that, that
Christians, mainliners, um, or manner liners
basically as we were saying, um, have taken on that
that the more you draw the circle out the
more and here's the words that are used and these are not
unvaluable. Like these are values to be,
to, to present yourself to people as

(36:07):
inclusive. Remember, um, for generations
now we live in a society of deceit and
divorce and division. So
people have trauma from that. We have sort of a collective
trauma about being just dropped
um, by uh, people we care about. You know, so people
don't want to take the risk. You know, we have cortisol and
adrenaline. I mean there are chemicals on the side

(36:30):
of not wanting to make yourself vulnerable to a
community, um, especially if you study any
kind of Christianity in the 20th century alone, um,
with the abuse of leaders and of money and of
cultural. And so to actually look at people and say why don't
you want to join something? Is just
not taking seriously how much damage. Any

(36:50):
kind of religious community. It could be the Girl Scouts or the Boy
Scouts, I mean just name it, um, the
Amish, um, uh, uh, Boys
and Girls Clubs. I mean no one has been free
um, from the abuse, um, of vulnerable members
of communities. So anyone whose community
shy is not
withdrawn, um, or over

(37:11):
anxious. I mean that's just someone who's aware
of the danger of any kind of community,
any kind of marriage, any kind of friendship. Right? So we have
to respect that. But what's our answer to that?
Do we form the convictions of our community
based on the fears of those who might join
it? I don't think that's the answer. You know, I

(37:32):
think the answer is that the community has to
live up, up to a rustable
organization. And that's hard. It's a lot
easier to say we will take everyone and we won't
trigger anyone's concern by
having no ask, no high
bar because we don't want to turn people

(37:53):
away. The truth is then what we're offering,
which is what the especially people under 50 that I
know, I mean from age 5 to 50
are saying, what is it about
who you are that is an invitation not to another
thing. The Internet will always have more things than
we can offer our people. The United Way will always be

(38:13):
better at social justice and the
um, defamation leagues around us will always be better at fighting
anti Semitism. So when mainline churches fall
into social service or even social justice
organizations, quite frankly our coffee
isn't as good as Starbucks. Our community organizing
you know, is rarely ah, as good as

(38:34):
organizations that are aimed at uh, community. It's
an insult to people who are getting doctorates or have spent 50
years without any education at all. You know, migrant
workers, farm workers. We're gonna, we're gonna do community
organizing better than like them.
No, there's a conceit to that. We have
to say what does Christianity offer the world? And

(38:54):
I go back to what I said before. It offers
the individual person an
opportunity to the extent
that they can. I mean whenever someone has an understanding of
ministry and it doesn't include a non verbal autistic teenager in
your, in your faith community, your understanding and
your invitation to the Christian faith is shallow.

(39:14):
It, there has to be room for every created
being, whatever, however
they present, define, whatever their abilities
are, whatever their charisms are. We have to have this
view that Christianity is an invitation
to take your life and to merge
it not by coercion.

(39:34):
This is why, you know, predestination, double
predestination, um, are to me like disgusting
ideas. Sorry. The Calvinists who are out there, um,
those of you reformed theology. I don't know what was up with Calvin. I know at
26 he wrote the institutes of the Christian religion. I wish
Calvinism had, as Calvinism culturally had as much mystery
and interesting um, and sacramentality as

(39:54):
that original work. Thomas Aquinas actually really started on
the Summa when he was 26. Um, so you know, young
people can have great ideas, um, but this idea that the
human person, um, according to Calvinism,
is totally depraved, that we are
somehow not able as people as we
are right now. Whoever you are listening, not listening,

(40:14):
um, uh, in a coma.
The idea that we cannot as people as we
are, enter into the life of
Christ on earth through the body of Christ on earth.
So how does the person who's bed bound, who's a non verbal
autistic, let's uh, say in bed, how do they interact
with the body of Christ? The people around them part of the

(40:35):
body? Better darn well get over there
and pray and sing or sit in
silence and be a presence and give these
opportunities for people to be grafted on
to the body of Christ. And remember, God doesn't need any of us to
go into that room. Whether it's a hospital room or an apartment
or a jail. That's the colonialism, right,

(40:56):
that we bring Christ to people. What happens is we have
the opportunity to be part of Christ coming
to a person. So we have to start saying to people, this
is what Christianity is It costs you
everything. It requires
everything. It
encompasses everything. CS Lewis
said a phrase that people probably seen on

(41:18):
mouse pads. Um, I do not believe in Christ.
I believe in Christianity, as I believe the
sun has risen, and that not only
do I see it, but by it,
I see everything else. So,
again, it's not just an idea among many. Like, some of your
head thinks about capitalism, some of your head thinks about,

(41:38):
um, veganism, and then some of your head thinks about
Christianity. If you're thinking of it like that, we've already lost.
Um, and of course, if you think of it like that,
then having a high bar is
pull away and express your view somewhere else. But Christianity
is not a moral enterprise. We fail it as a moral
enterprise. That's why it hasn't worked to invite people to, I don't
know, be better people. CS Lewis said, you know,

(42:01):
Christianity makes you a new person, not a
good person. We've, uh, had plenty, uh, of
wicked Christians. So the offer is not to
join a moral life. The author is to do this incredible
thing, which is to go into the font and
drown. The font is really just
the tomb turned on its side. We're invited
to die to the individual that we

(42:23):
are, and the burden of all of creation that
crushes us with choice and guilt,
collective guilt. Um, and you watch
a, um, story about the Holocaust, um,
and you could be crushed just by your participation in
humanity. What would you have done then? What are you doing now?
So all that crushes the individual, let
it crush it. Go into the tomb

(42:46):
with the water baptism. We call it the font, and come
out as a resurrected person, which means you can be beaten
and abused, um, and martyred, uh,
but Christ's destiny is your own. When you come out of the font, his destiny
is yours. So I think it's a long way of saying
what you and I clearly are agreeing on, which is
that when we offer people a

(43:06):
shallow cultural,
um, polite Christianity,
I don't even know why we're using the term. Uh, there are many things that
are that, but it's not Christianity. And it also, if
you look at people's longing for epic
stories in every culture of
sacrifice and of. Of friendship,
um,

(43:29):
it doesn't meet the longing. It just doesn't
meet the longing. We long for a life
in the creator, not chasing a
creator, hoping to be, um, a kid who gets
an A from God. Um, we want to know
God in our breathing, as the Bible says,
through whom we live and move and have our being. And what you got to say
to people is this community is here to help you understand that

(43:51):
and to help you shed some things.
That's what fasting is about. Um, and
not to reward yourself for getting a fasting badge
like the Boy Scouts or something, but to realize, my
gosh, my iPhone is
tearing me apart of relationships
with other people. So I need help. I need to be in a community that
helps me. Not as an end in itself, because remember, the end is not to put your phone

(44:14):
down.
The end is to have a relationship with the
triune God. That is to, like, hang out in
the hammock of God. Um, and
to do that in your daily life. And that's a
high ask, because you're asking people to learn. You're asking
people to care for others, to take the burden of
solidarity, to help each other with their hope

(44:34):
when their hope is weak. So there's a lot to
ask of people. But I work on
LILY grants, uh, and research here at Virginia
Seminary. We're on our fifth Lilly grant now.
Um, and there are three or four years and they're over a million dollars
each.
And.
But the truth is, it's all just research. And I'll tell you, from
Guam M to Cuba to
Europe, which is the breath of the Episcopal Church,

(44:57):
this is a data driven conviction I have. The
higher the bar is, the deeper the focus
on helping people understand the faith, helping
them understand the scripture, helping them have encounters with God.
The quote, harder versions of the faith.
Those are the communities that are growing, whether growing from two
people to four or 400 to
800. This idea that the comfort

(45:20):
Christianity is how you bring people in and keep them.
The only problem with that is data.

>> Loren (45:26):
Yeah, you said so much good stuff there. I want to
respond to or at least reflect on.
Um, I'm thinking of the book. I'm trying
to find it on my stack here.
Sustaining While Disrupting by Weems and
Doug Poe. I don't remember the first name of the Weems,
but, um, I'm remembering Doug Poe. Shout out to Doug

(45:47):
Poe, new incoming president of Phillips Seminary, my
alma mater. Um, but they write in the book
about the problem of the SO that I think is the
terminology. Like the. So that people often say, like the.
So that we want to be
welcoming so that youth,
even LGBT youth, will have a place to
be. And they make the point like, that's not. That's

(46:10):
not the ultimate so that you need. So that needs to be
like, you know, you can have the welcoming so that
LGBTQ youth will have a home. But then
this, that we skipped like the last. So that is so
that they'll know and become, uh, you
know, followers of Christ kind of thing.

Exactly right.
Because again, even feeling
included in a human
community, to me that's just not
the depth of longing that I meet in other people. Just like you
can meet someone who's happily married, even,
um, who themself is still searching or
seeking or the number one sign to

(46:48):
me that people have not been, I'll use this formal word
catechized, you know, into the Christian
faith. Um, the depth of it, the invitation to the
depth of it is that quite often the Christians I know are
just as afraid of death as anyone in the world. Now, I
think any of the ancient. I mean, we're talking about the first
century. These are people who are still, you know, food for lions in the
coliseum, were just professing

(47:10):
Christianity. And, um, of course, there are places like that across
the world. I mean, I remember during the war, um,
in Iraq, you know, um, the Episcopal Church had an Anglican
priest in Baghdad. You know, he would baptize people
and those children and their parents
would be beheaded in public the next week. Um,
so you don't have to go back to the ancient world to find where being

(47:31):
a Christian could cost you your life. Um,
but that kind of seriousness to me
does meet the longing of people.
So again, if someone came up to me and said, you know, I just think you're being too
exclusive. And not as even that isn't in itself,
but what they're saying is, you know, you're asking too much. People don't have
a lot of time. Their kids are on travel, soccer

(47:51):
teams. Um, you have people taking care of their parents,
and because of the economy, they have their young adults living
with them. So I get all of this, um,
very true testimonies of the
complexity of modern life. Student
loans, private, um, uh, the debt
that comes from credit cards, which is always the way we make the difference
between how much we make and the cost of actual

(48:13):
living. So I don't even shame credit card debt that literally
want to measure the space between the cost of living and
wages. That's what your credit card bills are.
Um, so all that being true, that's what I want to say to
people. That's why there is no
yoga group, pilates,
um, ah, CrossFit. Those are

(48:33):
all communities. And we learned in Covid not to shame those communities.
I know some CrossFit groups that stayed more connected during
COVID and smaller churches and faith communities
that collapsed under Covid. It. So we're not saying that
you're not going to get a casserole when your mother dies from your CrossFit
group, you are. But I believe the deep
longing of people is so much
deeper than that. Saint, um, Irenaeus, right,

(48:56):
um, 120 AD, you know, first, second century
has this beautiful phrase. This is 200 years before we even have
a Bible. This is 200 years before
Chalcedon and Nicaea and these other, before we even actually
figure out the Trinity. What is this dude
saying? Ah, the glory of
God is the human person

(49:16):
fully alive. Think
about it. He could have said, the glory of God is the person who follows Christ, or the glory
of God is Christ. He could have said stuff. I mean, this is like, you know, 80
years after the death of Christ. The
glory of God is the human person
fully alive.
So when someone comes to me and says, you know, I want a church where I feel

(49:37):
welcome, where, you know, it's easy to join and, and I
feel comfortable, I, I, you don't shame that. Especially
if people don't have any other. They only know about the
Rotary or the bridge club or the, you know, the
after school group. Um, so they just want it to be as kind or maybe
even kinder than that. But we need to
answer and say, no, no, no. Deep in you. This is why

(49:57):
I love being Episcopalian. This is why I'm not a
Calvinist. I do not believe that deep in the person is a
depraved creation. No. God said in
Genesis, it is good. Creation is good.
Creepy crawly animals are good. Crazy winged birds in the sky
are good. And what does he say on day six when humans are created.
Very good. That's who we are. No
sin, no decision, no orientation.

(50:19):
Nothing can separate us from being in the
image of God. So what we say to a person is, your
longing is planted in you. It
is planted. I don't have to put it there. That was the
colonialism that, that has killed half the world.
That I had to go to Beijing or Boston or Bangor
and actually put Christ into people's lives. That
conceit is murderous and has been a war crime from the

(50:42):
beginning because, and it also put a lot of stress,
frankly, on the conquistador or the missionary
who actually thought they could do that. So just like
racism hurts people of all races, colonialism
hurt everybody because the burden is enough to crush you. The white
man's burden, as they used to call it. But, but this
idea that when you go up to another person,
you are encountering the image of God you are

(51:05):
encountering. Now you might say, oh, wait a Minute, is this person on the
podcast a universalist? Is she saying it doesn't matter what
religion? Of course I'm not saying that.
Our call is to be fully alive and what we
believe Christ has done, which is by coming into the
human being from, from God
and make, remaking us on the inside

(51:25):
that we, then it's through Christ we are fully
alive. You can be alive. Everyone is
right. Um, who's walking around so you can be
alive. But our conviction as Christians is that it is
through Christ that we are fully alive. Uh,
that, that is the full. Now someone would say that's pretty
controversial. Now I sit on a lot of panels as someone who
teaches at a seminary with people who are Muslim and Jewish and things like

(51:47):
that. And you know what's always funny to watch is how the
Muslim often or Jewish imam or
rabbi or layperson in either faith
unapologetically explains that Muslims believe or
Jews believe, uh, and everybody
nods politely.

>> Loren (52:02):
And when Christians say something like the
horror.

And they just get the hell out of here. Um, so meanwhile the Muslim
says, well, Muslim doctrine,
um, and the Quran is a beautiful collection of poetry. If anyone hasn't read
it, you should. In fact, it has great stuff about Mary. If you're a Mary
freak. There's like more on Mary in the Quran than there is in the
New Testament. It's beautiful.
Um, but we tend to just nod when the,
when the Muslim says the whole universe is

(52:27):
Muslim, right? Which you know to be Muslim
is to Islam means to be submitted to God. And um,
then some people connect as Muslims and some don't. But
basically the person stands up and declares the whole universe Muslim
and everyone just nods. And then the Christian
says, in accepting the life of Christ
into your life, you are connected with the

(52:48):
Creator for eternity. Your eternal life doesn't begin when
you die, get hit by a bus or something. Your eternal life
begins when you enter into the triune life of God through the waters of
baptism.
That's when you went into the tomb.
And you came out of it. And the idea for Christians is we
quickly figure out, well, you can't say that
now. Here's the thing. I don't want to say that, um, oh, that's
all political correctness. And I think Christians should just say what they want to

(53:10):
say. We have got to take, especially with
Jews, we've got to take responsibility for the fact
that speaking and acting as a Christian empire
has almost removed Jews from the earth.
So it is true that we have to think
about how we talk about,
um, this idea that Christian ideas

(53:31):
that are exclusive ideas. And I've always taught
this. Someone says, how can you be an evangelist? I have some good
friends who are rabbis who, you know. I say to them, what's it like when you tell
your friends that you've got a good friend who's a. Not just a Christian,
not just someone who teaches at seminary, but someone who's, you know, who's
written books about evangelism? I have a book called what Is
Evangelism? So I say to my Jewish friends, what are you doing hanging around with
me? Um, are you not sort of nervous or

(53:53):
embarrassed? Um, but it's because I've
communicated them this phrase. And if your listeners
have a pen, I hope they could write it down.
Um, the former archbishop of Canterbury,
a guy named Rowan Williams. Um,
he is not the current archbishop, but he was the former one.
And it just means you're the kind of symbol. He's not like a pope, but he's the

(54:13):
symbolic head of all Anglicans in the world, which is
about 80 million. There's only 2 million
Episcopalians, and, uh, there's 78 million of our
siblings. So we're the small minority of the Anglican
Church. But this is what he said. Someone asked him,
um, he was in Washington, D.C. a couple years ago, what's the purpose
of the church? Now, Ron Williams is a scholar. He's got
over 50 books. And by the way, he's not one of these guys that writes

(54:35):
the same book five times. Like, these are, like, literally 50 different
books. He writes about poetry and semiology and stuff. He.
No one even understands. He's a genius. And you look at the
person when they said, what's the purpose of the church? This guy,
kind of off the street, you know, off a bus stop, that came to a lecture and just
said, what's the purpose of the church? And Ron Williams, without a beat, looks at him
and says, the purpose of the church is to

(54:56):
form people into
the kinds of people
who can receive the gifts that God
wants to give. Now, that's
wordy, right? Because he didn't have an editor. It was just a verbal.
But that idea for me is an
Episcopalian, um, because I substitute all
kinds of words. When someone says, what's the purpose of evangelism? I quote

(55:18):
Ron Williams. I say, the purpose of evangelism, I just switch out
of it. Church is to form
people or to, say, support people. However you teach
people, support people into the kinds of
people not who are Christian,
because all I can form someone in is my
Christianity. Or I could have Some theoretical
view of some orthodox Christianity that I never practiced. That's pretty

(55:41):
shallow. But even if I tried to convince someone of that, that's
still just not really real. That's just what I think it is. And I
probably am wrong. Half the time, I don't even know what I want for lunch.
Right. So how am I going to say that my version of
Christianity. But Rowan says, don't do that. Don't form
people into that. Was colonialism into the kind
of Christian you are? Form people into
the kinds of people who can receive

(56:04):
all that God wants to give them. Um, faith in
Christ, generosity, healing for their
cancer. I don't know.

>> Loren (56:11):
Uh-huh.

That's not my job. And now I realize that's not even my
responsibility. The reason I love going into
completely pluralistic environments, which just means all kinds
of religion are none. And I absolutely
have no shame at all telling people about my relationship with
God is because ultimately I'm not trying to get them to accept
my relationship with God. Because, you

(56:32):
know, on any given Tuesday, it's not even a good story. I mean, I'm
trying.

>> Loren (56:36):
Yeah.

But imagine if my goal instead is
that people whose hands, uh, are in
fists. It's something I
do, something I sing, something I pray, silence
I share with them. Them grieving, I admit with
them, even though we're different races or
classes, if they can just
open their hands or hearts or minds

(56:59):
just a little bit more. I want what God
wants to give them, not what I want to give them. That's not
just colonialism, you know, I mean, I eat too
much chocolate. So what do I think?
I'm going to get someone to believe in Jesus like me? Who knows? They might wind up with the
chocolate thing, too. And then they're going to have no teeth in their. Your mouth is going to
look like an Irish Catholic Stonehenge, like a lot of people I know who were

(57:20):
raised eating this much sugar. So we don't want any of
that. What we want.
And I just wish we could centralize this, uh, and take
the manner liners out there and
say, I know you're shy about evangelism
because the evangelism you're worried about was a disaster.
Of course you don't want to go to Thanksgiving and try to get your Uncle Buck
to become a Christian, because you know what? We weren't called

(57:42):
to do that. What we're called to do is go to
Thanksgiving, sit next to him, despite the how he drinks and how
he smells. And you pray and find out what
God is asking. You to do to make Buck with his
free will more open to what God wants to
give him. That's evangelism. And the truth is
that God could give him salvation.

(58:02):
God could give him, you know, some kind of purgation. I don't
know, better ideas. Um,
how dare we guess? So this is why I'm not a
universalist, for two reasons.
Reasons.
One, I believe we have to participate. God has allowed us,
right? So it's not all Seth in the beginning. And the other
reason is I don't believe that everyone is going to be forced to
go. And every time someone says to me, I'm a universalist, I believe we're all

(58:23):
going the same place, I want to say to them, so there's
no consent to use a common word in our culture right
now I'm like, what kind of God is going to
stick you somewhere where you don't want to be worshiping God
forever? That's ridiculous. So, of course, I'm not a
universalist. I believe the invitation is to. To is
to the person if they want to be with God.

(58:44):
Which is kind of crazy, right? That God gives you a choice.
But universalism says it doesn't matter how you live your life. We're all going to
wind up at the same dinner party. And I just take human
choice more seriously than that. I don't know that everyone wants
that. It may be the case that everyone
who's given the option at death or during life,
um, chooses it. And hell is the place
where C.S. lewis said, it's possible that hell is

(59:06):
empty. That Calvin might be right
about one thing. He's a jerk about a lot of things,
but he might be right in this thing called
irresistible grace. That as the Bible says
in Corinthians that now we see through a glass dimly, but
then we would see face to face. Now we know in part, then
we will know fully as we are fully known. It is

(59:26):
possible that upon the vision
of who God truly is and who we truly are,
hell might be empty. But anyone that doesn't
believe in some way
that the human can express that they do or
don't want to gaze at God forever. I mean, when I call that hell,
I mean, don't do the medieval art. It's a big, you know,
hibachi. And we're like, toasting people on

(59:49):
sticks forever. Um, that's art. That's not theology.
The theology is, I. I do hold that God is loving
enough, which is crazy, right? But God is loving enough
stuff that our consent, however it's
given Even if it's a developmentally delayed person who we don't,
we don't understand the communication that they do. I
believe that, that God will communicate and does communicate

(01:00:09):
and that no one will be forced to be somewhere forever doing
something like worshiping God in community that they don't want to do.
So two reasons why we're not universalists. One, humans
participate in one another's salvation.

>> Loren (01:00:20):
Mhm.

>> Tricia Lyons (01:00:20):
Clearly. I don't know why. I think that's a crazy hire for
God to do, to give us work to do like that, but we get it. And
the second is, um, God's relationship in the
Trinity is of consent. Jesus has given an out in the
garden of Gethsemane and he doesn't take it. He consents once
again, um, that I and the Father are one. So I
believe that that consent will be granted.

>> Loren (01:00:39):
Well, this is so good. You've gone through so much
stuff here. Before we take a break, I want to do
this. I want to talk about kind of practical things
because like, I'm thinking about, you know, some
of the things you said about, you know,
people are too busy because they got kids, soccer and book
club and whatever. And there's this assumption that like, oh,

(01:01:00):
well, a. Like uh, we want to
make space for people's busy lives. Two,
there's this kind of fear that, oh, we'll lose people if we ask
too much. Um, so I want you
to just name off like some of the things you see
that like, churches need to stop doing
and then some things you think you should start
doing.

Yeah,
okay. Churches need to stop trying to
figure out how to get between people and their
activities, you
know, to talk them out of a couple of book groups and
a couple of, um. And truth is, most of the
work that is stressing people out that I know is actually not book groups and
it's actually not driving their kids to essay

(01:01:43):
prep classes. Um, my experience is that
the average American, um, who has so much
personal credit card and student debt
is they are working and they are picking
up the fact that we don't live as in some
European societies in I'm m not saying we should or shouldn't, but
it's a fact that we do not live, that there's a social
safety net that will protect people who have

(01:02:06):
children but have to work anyway, um, who have aging
parents. Um, so to be
honest, I think people insult people
when they say the reason that you're not coming to church.
Um, and that also lets them off the hook as a
church. When we say the reason you're not coming is
sum total of book groups,

(01:02:26):
um, Uber driving and taking care of
kids or your parents. That's an insult. That's not why
people aren't coming to church. That puts the problem
as a misapprehension of people of how important, important we.

>> Loren (01:02:37):
Are as a church.

In my experience, people make time. See, if
everyone was so busy, they.

>> Loren (01:02:44):
Wouldn'T be in like people make time for what they care
about, what matters to them.

Exactly, exactly. So the reason people are
quote, so busy is, is they've either found or
they're searching.

>> Loren (01:02:56):
Searching.

Which is what? Searching, searching. So we've decided,
oh shoot, how do we have them search with us instead
of Pilates? And again, these are all class based things.
I'm saying, um, the average person, uh, in this
country now who makes less than $50,000 a year and is raising
both children and parents at home,
um, whose wages haven't kept up with inflation for

(01:03:16):
the last 70 years, um, uh, they
are not, not near church because they're, uh, in a year, big
group.

>> Loren (01:03:23):
I mean, Ryan Burge has not age,
right?

Mhm.
Yeah.
So this is crazy. I mean, the
average American has more than one job now, according to the labor
department. And a lot of people will say, well, how does that possible? And it's
just 40 hours a week. I mean, you can't live on 40 hours a week.
Um, so unless you're part of the top 5%.
Um, so what we've got to start saying
is there's one thing

(01:03:47):
that the church, which is the body of Christ offers
and it is life in Christ again,
Starbucks coffee is better. And especially if you go buy the
Starbucks and bring it over to your church, well then it's just, you know, not as
hot as it was at Starbucks. So don't even tell me that. Oh, we do serve Starbucks.
I've been out to churches on the Pacific, you know, Northwest, and they have people that
make their own coffee. Better than peace than Starbucks.

(01:04:08):
Why are we competing like that?
Um, let the people, you know, let
people, you know, bring their own Starbucks.
That's not. Christ died and
rose again. And to, to quote a
philosopher probably has come up on your podcast,
Canadian Charles Taylor.
Um, but we don't want to be like all npr, you

(01:04:30):
know, snooty here and say like, go ready?

>> Loren (01:04:32):
Read his second read, Nandra Rood. He's my favorite
interpreter of Charles Taylor.

Yeah, yeah, but you know, I'm from, you know, a family who
didn't have.
A lot of formal education in that.
Historically, uh, so, you know, I, I hate when people
just think Emmanuel Kant just explains it all. Just go, go
read it. Um, that's not what I'm saying. But this
particular Canadian dude, um, who was a
philosopher, um, did point out something that I think is very
true. And he's talking about what he calls the disenchantment

(01:04:59):
of culture, that we don't really
believe in stories anymore because
of, um, the. The market has failed the country more than
once. Free market capitalism has failed most of the
country. Um, we still have the American dream. But remember, the
American dream just means that I somehow want to escape what is actually my
reality, which is the American daily life. So people

(01:05:19):
continue to believe in the American dream, but it, you know, and I see
myself as someone. I mean, you know, my mother got married when she was 18. My
dad got back from the Korean War and he got married. He
was kind of a kid too. And rather than start their lives with college
or something like that, they started with a family. Um, and I
just decided I was going to go to Harvard as a young kid, um,
because I thought I saw it on the Cosby show, to be honest. That's how I knew what

(01:05:40):
Harvard was. And the guy in the Cosby show that went to Harvard seemed to
be happy and have money to pay his bills. So I decided
and then I went. So I'm an example, um, in
many ways of the American dream. And yet I realized so much of that.
I was Christian, I was white, I spoke English, I was a citizen,
I.
Had two parents at home.
You know, so there's a hundred reasons why I succeeded, um, at
the lottery or the roulette, actually. That is the American

(01:06:02):
dreams. So when you have people who are that stressed,
we've got to take a step back and say, we are not
primarily a social organization. We're not a
morality cult. Um, we're not as kind
of a cultural. You know, a lot of the evangelicals.
I knew in the 80s, like, I.
Felt like if you were a guy and you didn't have on like, khaki pants and a
denim, um, oxford button down with a

(01:06:23):
leather belt and leather shoes, like you weren't a preacher. You
know, we get these, like, cultural norms, um, that
we mistake as the face. And yet they're just cultural norms in
certain parts of the country. Um, but when
we stick to our distinctive, to use business school
language, which is that we are telling people,
don't stop going to the things you go

(01:06:43):
to, and we wish we could help you, but you may not ever
get out of Being the only child who could take care of your parents.
Parents. Or your special needs child. I mean, get to know someone like
that in your congregation who's trying to get everywhere in the world that
you are. But they've got one kid with a wheelchair, if not more kids with them
as well. Um, and what about all the, you know,
yeah, sure, you're on Medicaid or you've got insurance, but I don't know.

(01:07:04):
I have Crohn's disease, for example. Um, and I
can't tell you how much I pay for out of pocket. And I have, like,
fancy Episcopal Church insurance.
But you know what? It never covers what it costs to be
disabled in the world. Um, so we look at
all these people, and we shouldn't offer them anything that
Christ didn't offer us.
Christ never offered comfort, never

(01:07:26):
offered a group that meets once a week.
He said, come and see. Taste and
see. Follow me. Zacchaeus in the tree, the woman
at the well, the woman bleeding in the crowd. He just
walked around and said to people, come, follow me.
You're living your life. I want you to come and live. Live
not near me, but in me.

(01:07:46):
Right?
So that.
That's his last words. This is my body given
for you when you eat it,
like, literally. That's why, you know, Episcopalians and Catholics.
Take this so literally. Is.
Again, he's not saying, keep the idea of
me because I have ideas about Pilates and
everything else. He's saying, don't you
understand? When you take my

(01:08:08):
life into your life,
I will bring my resurrection into your
life. So I want everything. I
want it. Uh, was Augustine that said, you know, anything not
included is not redeemed. There's different translations,
but what he means is the more of your life that you give
to be bonded with Christ, then Christ's destiny
affects more of your life. So if you only want your hands to

(01:08:31):
be redeemed, then just do Christian.
Things with your hands, you know, to help people.
Bind some. But do you want your heart redeemed? Well, then give your heart
to Christ. Share his heart. And now your heart's redeemed. So anything
not included is not redeemed. Is a pretty powerful teaching.
But then what you say to the person is so that now go to yoga.
Different.
Go to yoga and know death is off the
table. Off the table.

(01:08:54):
The thing that makes you anxious in yoga, that makes you want to go
to Pilates, the reason you guys are paying for things like
water and silence, which is crazy,
is because it's not working. What I mean by it's not working, no offense to
your yoga class. It's because what's in you is a fear
of death. And, and being able to roll around
on a mat may or may it

(01:09:15):
may kind of distract you from the. This is what Sigmund Freud, he
called it the painful riddle of death.
That it's part of everything we do. We don't want our friendships
to die, we don't want this summer to die. Some of you don't want the winter
to die. You know, we don't want our health to die. And yet it will. My
gosh, I was a big shot putter in college. Like,
you know, big division one athletic stuff.
Um, because when I get up and walk across the room now it sounds like a

(01:09:38):
chorus of like joint cracking and I'm
not that old, so it's coming and I,
but you know what I'm afraid of
dying. I'll be honest. Like I've seen enough in ministry, people
dying and it's so horrible. But pain, the
isolation, the failure of medicine, I
have, have fear of the, of uh, dying, but
I do not have a fear of death.

(01:10:01):
And when I meet Christians who, who that, that's
probably where I lead with people. If they said I don't have time for church, I would sit
down and say, what do you got two kids over there? You know, one's five, one, seven. I'll
suddenly, you know what, I'm not trying to scare you, but at some point at 18, they're
either going to go into the military, they're going to go into independent life, or they're going to go to
college. They're going to be sitting on their bed at the end of the week, they're going to have a
roommate or a friend who's tried to kill themselves. They're going to have addicts around

(01:10:21):
them. They might be one themselves.
Where are they going to find peace? You're not going to be
there and you're a wonderful parent. I don't shame helicopter
parents. I mean, look at the way I treat my
dog, my beagle, my God. Of course, if I were a
parent, I can't even imagine, um, I would be a helicopter
parent, um, in this culture because of all the things

(01:10:41):
I'd be afraid of. But there's this part of me that says
we should say to people, we don't have better coffee, we don't have
better exercise classes. We do get together for a
pretty good march and we all get T shirts. I mean, sometimes we all fly to
Washington D.C. and represent justice issues. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what? The
thing that besets human creativity,
healing, forgiveness,

(01:11:04):
um, innovation, uh,
uh, the ability to breathe, um,
is when death loses its sting,
even for someone who then five minutes later dies in the bed. I
have been there in the sacrament of the
sick, as we call it in my tradition. And a
person releases their fear of death in
life. And even if they only

(01:11:27):
live four more minutes, I'm telling you, I have seen
it change their life. That now is only four
minutes long and change the people around
them. It wasn't the cancer, it wasn't the
cystic fibrosis of the 8 year old who I've also seen die on the
table for the people
around them, uh, it was death itself.
And to have one person standing there and say, I and the

(01:11:49):
resurrection. This is what say at the funeral,
I am the resurrection and the life. And you
just recite the words of Jesus and you realize the key to
the story of Lazarus. Because think about it, if
I were Lazarus, I feel like I got screwed. Not because I
was risen from the dead, but because that poor son of
God has to die again.
But what doesn't get preached often enough in the church

(01:12:12):
is, so why does Jesus do this? Remember, he does it
Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday.
So in the Catholic and the Anakin church, actually we call it Lazarus
Saturday, the Saturday before. And what we believe is, it's,
it's not just a foreshadowing of how the next week is going to
end. It's to remind us,
and I hope Lazarus, you know, when I meet
him, you know, uh, for eternity, I want

(01:12:35):
to just thank him for allowing his body to be a lesson because it meant
he had to go back and form like a yo yo. But what
we learn in Lazarus is you can be resurrected.
Here's the power in
this life.
Lazarus is not meant to be a pre Christ kind
of the week before because Christ is going to do it all the next week.

(01:12:56):
So Christ doesn't need a human to be
resurrected. It kind of undermines his own story.
That's not what that's about. What that's about is
what he's saying is, this thing I'm going to do for you next week,
it can happen in this
life.
Lazarus come forward. And what does Jesus say? He then tells
his friends, um, he doesn't take all the rivets off. He

(01:13:17):
tells the friends to do it. And he's showing us that each one of
us can go into the grave.
Our fears can literally kill
us. But
if, when Jesus says, lazarus, come
out when Christ calls us, because everyone
around us, remember, has formed us into the kind of people who
can receive the gifts God wants to give. We know how to answer the

(01:13:39):
shepherd's voice. Lazarus comes out to show us.
Wait a minute. I mean, next week, Jesus is going to show
us, when you die, you can be resurrected. Lazarus is going to say, I can be
resurrected into my life. All of a sudden, we're
not competing with yoga. And
by the way, it sounds like I'm very anti yoga. I'm not anti yoga
stuff. I'm just not a particularly. Every time I go to

(01:14:00):
yoga, I kind of roll around the mat. I told you, as a shot
putter, everyone you can imagine, I'm not exactly a distance
runner. And I feel like one of those beached whales where all the Girl Scouts
have to come and push them back into the water. So that's how I move
around a yoga mat. So, um, I do have thoughts about yoga. But my
point is, when the Christian church says what we are, we
believe life is almost killing you. The pace you're keeping is

(01:14:20):
killing you. You are just about Lazarus with a foot into the grave.
Grave.
You're sleep deprived, you're dehydrated. The number of people
we have medicated for, um, and not people
who have classically always been medicated for psychological, um,
distress, but the number of people, look at the commercials on TV
just for general anxiety disorder. These are people who have a foot in the
grave. And we got to say, you know what Jesus says,

(01:14:41):
Come, come to me, all you who labor.
You know, my yoke is easy. My burden is like,
even, you know, that
invitation, I feel like people would give
anything for it. They might skip a yoga class or
better. They find a way to have this encounter with Christ that
actually lets them be a better home health care worker with

(01:15:01):
their mom. That actually gives them the energy with their
autistic child, because you're not
giving them activities. You're giving them, let me just
say it, eternal life. Charles Taylor is
right. I think our culture has become disenchanted. But you
know what I'm worried about? No offense to Charles Taylor, the
church is disenchanted.

>> Loren (01:15:20):
It is.

You talk about miracles and people think you hit your
head. You talk about believing in the
resurrection of the body. Any of you who are no Catholics, you know, they cross
themselves. And Episcopalians, when we say the creed, we say the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body, and you'll see them actually
cross themselves. You know, what we do that is to Actually
punctuate that line in the creed, and you
touch your own body. So you're saying, I don't just believe

(01:15:42):
theoretically that somebody's body would be resurrected. You
say, um, this one. And then they go, you know, up, down,
right, left. This body will be
resurrected. And people are like, well, how is that even possible? What if a
shark bites off your leg? So when you get resurrected, you've only got
one leg. You want to try to remind people the God that made all
things can actually bring your body together, whether or not part of it is

(01:16:03):
in a shark halfway across the Atlantic.

>> Loren (01:16:06):
Yeah.

You know, so we. But I don't need to tell you
that if when you go to a funeral and someone stands up there and
says, this person now rests in peace.
And our phrase, though, in the church is, rest in peace, rise in
glory, those are not at the same time
we rest in peace. There's no moment in death that we are
not held in God. Like I always say, the hammock. That is

(01:16:27):
God trying on life. But there will
be a time where we will be resurrected
in that body. And people look at me like I'm crazy, and then I look at them and
say, so then death really does win.
If death has torn your soul from your body permanently, then why are
you walking around saying, death has lost its thing, it wins,
and we believe it doesn't. I mean, Christ didn't, you know, just

(01:16:48):
have this ethereal spirit that just kind of wandered around
that body with the. So you and I and my
Crohn's disease and anything you've struggled, these are not for
nothing. We are going to be redeemed and
resurrected in the strength, uh, that we fought
in this body and this body, this crazy body we have right
now. Very few people look in the mirror, get excited about
it. Um, many people look in the mirror and think too much about

(01:17:10):
it. Um, whether it's idolatry or shame, either
one of those things, just know that there will be a time when our
body is redeemed and is
reunited with the soul that God gave us.
And I wish Charles Taylor, um, gave us
more help in the church, but his goal
was to say that the whole culture has been. But
you and I and your wonderful podcast, um,

(01:17:32):
are, um, I think, attempts to re.
Enchant the search. Um, we are not that
interesting as a social organization, and we're not even that skilled as
a community organizing, but we are the people meant to
say the things that, uh, St. Paul said would make us sound like
fools.

>> Loren (01:17:50):
And I hate to bring it back because I feel like
this is kind of undergirding this entire conversation. Many of the
conversations that I have on this podcast, this kind of
idea that I was certainly
introduced to through Nandra Root, but Charles Taylor,
but this is like the undergirding that we're talking
about. Is this the idea that church really
doesn't matter? It doesn't really have any

(01:18:13):
implications beyond this life.
And I hate to cut this off because we're running out of
time and we could go on to that for another 15,
20 minutes. But
share with people, uh, we'll have to end this
year because I got a heart cut off here. But share with people
how they can connect with you, get more in touch with what you're doing.

(01:18:34):
Learn about this so much more refreshing
idea of, uh, evangelism and
um, having some passion for your
faith.

Yeah. Um, well, two things. One, I did write
a book called, um, what, ah, is Evangelism?
Um, and there's a whole chapter on
wizards, um, uh, Jedi and hobbits.
Um, so it's. I, uh, was asked by the Episcopal
Church to write this book because so many of the books about
evangelism are very technical. To use

(01:19:04):
the Ron Heifetz language. Like
there's a technical problem. Like if your sink is, you know,
leaking, fixing it is a technical, um. But as
it's leaking, if you looked at it and said, what if we
don't use sinks indoors anymore? That's
an adaptive response. Um, so,
um, I don't do much of the technical, uh, talking. And what is

(01:19:24):
evangelism? I talk more about the things you and I have talked about on this,
on this podcast, which is if you
have, um, a life giving understanding of the whole
universe, that God has put a black box in
every being that we call the image of God. And it is
just sounding, um, uh, to be,
um, for the person to hear
and then be able to follow like we do with the black box. That's how you know how

(01:19:47):
to get to it, is the closer you get to it, the louder the sound is and the
closer. So we've just got to help people. What does it mean
to form people into the kinds of people who can receive the gift?
Think of it as we help people listen to the black box
that's beeping within them and if we can help them take
out other sounds, um, take out other parts of their life and
burdens that literally, like if you're in public and a woman has three children,
one is crying, say, can I hold your bag for you? I mean, there are

(01:20:10):
literal ways you can help people be
able to receive more. So, um, so
that book, I think is a good read for people because it
relieves people of the burden of thinking that we have to
plant black boxes in people, we have to make Christians,
we have to introduce people to God. Um,
that ping at the bottom of the ocean of that black

(01:20:30):
box that's buried. Um, the sound it makes is
the breath of God from the beginning of creation as God hovered over
the waters. Um, so,
you know, we just have to go out in the world and do everything we can do to help people
hear it. Um, the other thing is, um, I did write
a 30 day, um, devotional.
Um, there are so many devotionals out there. Um,

(01:20:51):
but I'm, you know, I love church fathers and mothers,
so I love writers from the first three centuries. Um, I'm
also a big, obviously epic, um, fan of
Black Panther and other things. So, um, it's called
30 days, um, is the name of the
devotional. And I hope it
kind of introduces a kind of epic narrative,
uh, Christianity. Um, so every day,

(01:21:14):
um, there's quotations from movies, um, like Star
wars or Narnia or Lord of the Rings, and there's also
quotes from saints, you know, Joan of Arc or things like
that. Um, and there's some reflection questions. And I'm hoping that it's like
a 30 day, like refresher into this larger
view, um, that Christians aren't called to be
saviors. Um, Christians are called to
look at yourself and admit the need and the

(01:21:37):
excitement, um, of there
being a savior. Um, and once you realize
that job is already filled, um, my gosh, what can
you do with your energy? Especially when death,
um, I mean, I even say the word death now and part of
me just smiles because, uh, I know
I'll end with this. We have, uh, wooden

(01:21:58):
altars in some churches and we have stone altars in others
churches. And there's a wonderful history of both that the wood altar is
really assigned to help believers believe that this
altar that we have, this remembrance meal
is actually like your altar at home. So that image
helps people, like, think of their whole Christian life as
holy, not just the church. So that's the benefit of the wood

(01:22:18):
altar. The stone altars have a different history. They are
older from the ancient world. And what it is is Christians
used to have their Eucharist when Jesus says, do this in
remembrance of me. So don't think you have to be Catholic. I just mean this is what
the church did for a couple hundred years. And they would Go into
graveyards. And they would have. I love this. They.
I hate Screwtape M. Screwtape letters. So

(01:22:38):
when you say Satan, it makes people nervous, and it should. Um, But
I say screw tape because, you know, that does a little better with online Christians. I
don't think I'm so crazy, but I'm talking about the same person. So
Screwtape hates this. And so I get excited. And whenever you're
pissing off Screwtape, you know, you're on the right practice. They would
go into graveyards and
celebrate the Last

(01:22:58):
Supper on top of.

>> Loren (01:23:01):
Oh, wow, I did not know that.

So that's where we get the long stone altar from. It's. It's a
tomb. And it's meant at the time to m.
Mock death. This idea
that the bones of the body is sort of in the ground and was had been,
like, reclaimed by, quote, reality. You know, there's
none of this pie in the sky. You're food for worms.
And they would go to these places because they didn't have churches,

(01:23:24):
because they were, you know, um, a faith that was on the
run. And they would celebrate as if to.
And then that's why they would lift up. You ever seen a priest lift up the
bread and the wine is. They literally had this
hand motion where you would lift up
above, uh, as if to say, this tomb will
not hold this body
forever. So stone

(01:23:47):
Eucharist were held at, uh, the Holy
Communion to literally go in. I love
it. Into the graveyard, mock
death, spit it in the faith, and
actually have the Feast of the Resurrection on
top of a grave. I love that.
So that's the.
Again. Say to someone, you know, I know you're busy. You

(01:24:08):
don't have a lot of time. Um, we've got to find ways to meet
people off Sunday morning. According to the Labor Department now,
close to 62% of Americans
work on Sunday. Not all day, but have work
on Sunday. So if your church only does something on Sunday, even
Sunday night, you're writing off 62% of the whole
country. We were not given the authority to do

(01:24:29):
that. Go ye there for Judea Samaria
and go out into all and preach. So you've got to
find a different way. It's not always about money to find
people where they are during the week, because you can't do Christianity
alone. God was right in Genesis when he saw says, it's not good for you to be
alone. You can't do it alone because you're joining a body of other
people. And that's the first step, which is to get
people involved with other people who are then teaching

(01:24:52):
the faith as we've been talking about it now, and teaching
them that we can't keep you from being hurt,
we can't keep you from mental illness, from eating
disorders. Christianity, again, is not that
kind of band aid. But
we can give you as a community, because
that's who we are. We can invite you to graft
yourself onto the body of Christ. And then anything

(01:25:14):
you face, the eating disorder, you know, you
have a teenager who's a cutter. You know, whatever it is,
um, you have in you, it is no
longer they who live, um, but Christ who lives in
them, which means even if they
die, they will share the
destiny of Christ.
And you know what?
I don't know anyone at yoga that's telling you.

>> Loren (01:25:36):
Well, that's a great way to end it. So, Tricia, uh, I really
appreciate this conversation. Really appreciate your passion
for the faith and for the church. And folks,
please, you know, this is not just
kooky Loren here saying this. This is someone with real
cred, credential experience. Like, listen to
Tricia, please. So, uh, Tricia,

(01:25:56):
I really hope, uh, more pastors and church leaders get
this message. So, uh, but I always leave folks with a word of
peace. Uh, so may God's peace be with you.

And also with you, my brother. What I love
is CS Lewis says there's no such thing as saying goodbye.
There's only see you later.

>> Loren Richmond (01:26:20):
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.

(01:26:41):
But before you go, do us a favor. Subscribe to
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