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Worship and the Body: David Taylor on Why Physicality Matters in Worship · Future Christian

0:07
>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
0:10
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in
0:12
the 21st century. At the Future Christian
0:16
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
0:19
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
0:21
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
0:24
walk boldly into the future. Whether
0:27
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
0:30
of your faith community, this podcast is
0:33
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip
0:36
you with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
0:39
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.
0:43
>> Martha Tatarnic: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
0:46
Loren Richmond, Jr. Welcomes David Taylor
0:49
to the program. W. David O.
0:52
Taylor is Associate professor of Theology and
0:55
Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary
0:58
and the author of several books, including
1:01
Prayers for the Pilgrimage, A Body of
1:03
Praise, Open and Unafraid,
1:06
Glimpses of the New Creation, and
1:09
the Theater of God's Glory.
1:12
In addition to a range of scholarly and
1:15
popular essays, he has also edited
1:18
several books, including the Art of
1:20
New Creation, Contemporary Art and the
1:23
Church, and For the Beauty of the
1:26
Church, Casting a Vision for the Arts.
1:29
He serves on the advisory board for Duke
1:32
Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, as
1:35
well as IVP Academics
1:37
Series Studies in Theology and the
1:40
Arts. An ordained priest, he has lectured
1:43
widely on the arts from Thailand to South
1:45
Africa. In 2016, he produced a
1:48
short film on the Psalms with Bono and
1:51
Eugene Peterson. He lives in Austin,
1:54
Texas with his children and artist wife,
1:57
Phaedra, with whom he has produced three
1:59
sets of Illustrators prayer cards.
2:02
A reminder before we start today's conversation,
2:06
please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast,
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leave a review and share Future Christian with a
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Shoot us an
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email@laurensonatemediaprouh.com
2:22
with comments, questions or ideas for
2:25
future episodes. We appreciate your
2:27
voice in how we faithfully discern the future
2:30
of the church.
2:41
>> Loren: All right, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is
2:44
Loren Richmond Jr. And I am pleased to be
2:46
welcoming today David
2:49
Taylor. So thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.
2:52
>> David: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
2:54
>> Loren: Great, great, great share. Uh, if you want anything
2:57
about yourself, uh, we don't know already.
3:01
>> David: Well, let's see. Recently, uh, in recent
3:04
years, my wife and I,
3:06
um, purchased 21 acres just
3:09
east of Austin, and we have
3:12
only just recently finished the construction of the
3:15
house. And, um, my
3:18
wife comes from multiple generations of farmers.
3:21
I do not, uh, I
3:23
appreciate somebody like Wendell Berry, but I'm
3:26
not a fanatic. But I have found myself,
3:30
uh, coming alive, uh, in ways That I had
3:32
not imagined myself coming alive because so much
3:35
of my life now involves working uh,
3:38
the land and um,
3:41
yeah, it's very life giving. So we
3:44
live out here surrounded by
3:47
prairie. Well it used to be corn fields,
3:50
cotton fields, amaranth, uh,
3:52
fields. But this uh, we're part
3:55
of what's uh, an ecology called the Blackland prairie.
3:58
It kind of goes up, I think up into
4:01
North Texas, maybe southern Arkansas. And
4:04
my wife um, did what's called
4:07
a master naturalist certificate where she learned
4:10
everything that can be learned about the local ecology. And one of
4:13
her hopes is to return this land that has
4:15
been cultivated for decades and
4:18
centuries back to its original prairie condition.
4:21
And I uh, I'm, I'm happy to participate in that.
4:24
It's uh, it's quite wonderful.
4:25
>> Loren: Well that's a cool little thing. That's a cool little factoid. Thanks for
4:28
sharing that.
4:29
>> David: Yeah, yeah.
4:30
>> Loren: Share if you would about kind of your faith journey and
4:33
background and what that looks like today.
4:36
>> David: Yeah. So I was born and raised in
4:39
Guatemala City. Um, my parents were
4:41
missionaries there. Uh, my parents also put
4:44
us in a private ah, Austrian
4:47
school. So I spoke English at home, Spanish with friends at
4:50
church and German at school. And you know, from a
4:52
very age I found myself
4:55
wired uh,
4:58
to kind of the global world, um, kind of
5:01
global context, global church.
5:03
And I'm grateful for that formative experience.
5:06
Moved to the States when I was 13 but
5:09
still it just left a very deep impression on how I perceive the
5:12
world, how I perceive my place in the world. I am,
5:15
you know, technically I'm what's called a third culture, kid. I
5:18
would think of myself as amphibious,
5:21
um, you know, occupying
5:23
different kinds of uh, spaces as it
5:26
were. Um, and I'm,
5:29
and you know I was surrounded by people who
5:32
had a very genuine, sincere
5:36
faith. Uh, they felt that they had had these life
5:39
transforming encounters with God. And so it
5:42
was all very real to them. Like there was always
5:44
something at stake when we gathered on
5:47
Sundays. And I have not always found that to be the
5:50
case in my adult life here in the
5:52
um, eventually went to the University of Texas, lost
5:55
my faith, eventually recovered my faith
5:58
and then spent uh, five years in seminary and then ten
6:01
years as a pastor and then
6:06
five um, years in the PhD world and then I've been
6:09
teaching theology for ten years. And uh,
6:11
I would say um,
6:14
that one of the things that's very important to me
6:17
is this sense that I feel
6:21
called to the twin work of
6:24
pastoring and scholarship. Um,
6:27
so I would think of myself as a scholar priest
6:31
and I sincerely and
6:33
eagerly want both of those callings to
6:36
implicate the other. That my
6:39
ordination is not simply a certificate, but
6:42
that it not only invites me to be a certain kind
6:45
of professor, a certain kind of theologian, but it obligates me,
6:48
it inconveniences my
6:50
capacity to be, as it were, maximally efficient as an
6:53
academic. And so, uh, I try
6:56
to be very involved as much as possible
6:59
in our local congregation. Mostly I teach Sunday
7:02
school with children. Um, so yeah, so I find that
7:05
very formative.
7:06
>> Loren: For me, that's a brave spiritual practice,
7:09
teaching children.
7:12
>> David: It, it is, uh, it's
7:15
humbling, but not in a bad way humbling. It's like, it's
7:18
a wonderful, it's simplifying.
7:20
Right?
7:21
>> Loren: Mhm.
7:22
>> David: Um, things are, things are complicated in the child's
7:25
life in the way that children can sometimes feel very overwhelmed
7:28
by all the moving parts of life. But there's also
7:31
a kind of simplicity, a kind
7:33
of, um, they don't
7:35
dissimulate, uh, they
7:38
don't pretend usually to be something that they're not in the way that adults
7:41
can easily, you know,
7:44
um, present something
7:47
that is not maybe true to who they are deep, somewhere deep down inside.
7:50
So kids are not, um, afraid to ask
7:52
questions, not afraid to ask hard questions and not afraid to ask
7:55
theological questions. And so I love
7:58
the opportunity and the challenge to think
8:00
concretely. The Gospels are just full
8:03
of concrete things and the danger of an
8:06
academic life is it all sort of floats up
8:09
into abstractions.
8:10
>> Loren: Right, right.
8:11
>> David: Um, yeah, I love it.
8:13
>> Loren: Yeah. My son is 6 right now and he's really asking a lot
8:16
of those questions that again,
8:19
those kind of concrete, like, you know, he asked me about
8:21
heaven just the other day
8:25
and you know, he said, uh, this past
8:28
week or a few weeks ago, hey, my friends
8:30
at school, not a lot of them believe in God.
8:33
So it is really challenging.
8:36
You know, I'm like thinking, I have so many years of theological
8:39
education, so many years of experience, how do I make
8:42
this, how do I answer this question
8:45
in a way that's gonna like make
8:48
sense to him?
8:49
>> David: Right, right.
8:50
>> Loren: And uh, not just be totally over his head.
8:54
>> David: That's really good. Yeah.
8:57
Actually, let, uh, me just say this just as like an aside, but
9:00
related to that, I have the possibility
9:02
of taking a sabbatical in a couple years and yesterday
9:05
I was working on my application and I have to
9:08
identify what I would like to do. And there's an academic
9:12
monograph that I like to do. But the other thing I really have been wanting to
9:14
do for quite a number of years, I'm wondering if I might
9:17
finally be able to pull it off is to
9:20
write a theology book for children. But that
9:23
would entail a partnership with artists so
9:26
very much.
9:27
>> Loren: Mhm.
9:28
>> David: Um, you know, like a visual
9:30
theology, uh, where the art is part of
9:33
the telling of the story, not merely illustrating, but part of the
9:36
telling of the story, showing obviously not just
9:38
telling. And I'm excited and terrified
9:41
about the project, but m m mostly
9:43
excited. Uh, and I want to
9:46
write it with the kids, so I'll just,
9:49
I'll probably spend several years workshopping it
9:52
with uh, kids. So we'll see how that works.
9:55
>> Loren: Yeah, I want to see that. I want to see that. Come m To be.
9:59
I want to see that. Come to be. Well, speaking of
10:01
books, uh, I'm excited to have this
10:03
conversation and I'm thinking already here about
10:06
some questions that have, have
10:09
percolated in my mind around curiosities, uh,
10:12
I've been wondering about. So David is the author
10:15
of the book A Body of Praise, Understanding the role of Our
10:18
Physical Bodies in Worship. Do you want
10:21
to just start out with a general like hey, how did this book
10:24
come to be? What inspired it?
10:26
>> David: Yeah, I mean I was raised in a tradition,
10:29
um, let's say a non denominational tradition
10:32
that at best thought of the body as
10:34
neutral, at worst as a problem
10:37
to be overcome, to be solved, to be
10:40
superseded, transcended, so on and so forth. When I was in seminary,
10:43
I did a THM in New Testament and wrote
10:46
a project investigating
10:48
the theological significance of Jesus, healing
10:51
miracles, particularly in the Gospel of Luke. And I
10:54
came away from that study with sort of the stark
10:56
realization that I in my
10:59
entire life had taken bodies much less
11:02
seriously than Jesus had taken.
11:05
And uh, there's a sense of excitement and
11:08
adventure. Uh, I've always loved sports, so I've always
11:11
used my body. I've been surrounded by artists, so I've had a sense
11:14
that artists, you know, are particularly attuned to
11:17
sensory things. Um,
11:20
but I think when I came out of that project
11:23
and then, you know, began years of pastoring,
11:26
I just kept being uh, haunted by well, what
11:29
does that mean? You know, what does it mean to live into
11:32
this reality? Uh, what does it mean to live
11:35
more holy? Uh, you know, W
11:37
H O L L Y And
11:40
um, and then I would find myself in
11:43
liturgical settings and uh,
11:46
uh, sometimes asking folks in these
11:48
liturgical settings, whether Catholic, Orthodox,
11:50
Episcopal, Lutheran or otherwise, you know, why do you do
11:53
what you do? And surprised by how few people were able to
11:56
articulate why they did all that they did with Their bodies.
11:59
So I wonder myself initially, well, what if I just produce a little
12:02
handbook? Yeah, handbook, you know, a little grammar of
12:05
the body at worship and little history, a little Bible,
12:08
a little theology, a little context, culture.
12:11
Well, I started writing that
12:14
and then I became curious about other things.
12:16
>> Loren: Right, right.
12:17
>> David: What might the sciences tell us and what are some ethical
12:20
questions we need to attend to, and,
12:23
uh, how my artists offer unique
12:25
perspectives and invitations to embody. And
12:28
so then it just kept getting bigger and big.
12:31
And, uh, originally was conceived as a lay
12:34
handbook, turned into an academic book. But
12:37
I tried to write it in a way that the English is
12:39
eminently accessible to anybody who would
12:42
be curious about this. And I wrote it right around Covid.
12:45
So I, along with all the humans.
12:48
Mhm. Was experiencing something that was
12:51
certainly unique to our generation, not unique to human history,
12:54
but something that confronted us with, uh, the
12:57
question of what are bodies for? So, yeah, that's
13:00
the book.
13:00
>> Loren: Yeah. So let's jump in because there's a lot
13:03
of interesting stuff, at least to me, I found
13:06
that I want to hear your perspectives on. So I think, I
13:09
think one thing for sure that stood out to me is you write about
13:13
posture and physical body movements in our
13:16
worship, impacting our faith.
13:18
So talk more about that.
13:20
>> David: Mhm. Yeah. Okay, so a few things come
13:23
to mind. Um, having been raised in a Latin American
13:26
culture, I. My
13:29
childhood was shaped by a world where
13:32
it was more easy for boys to cry.
13:35
That is a.
13:36
>> Loren: More easy than girls?
13:38
>> David: Uh, no, no, I'm sorry, than American.
13:40
>> Loren: Oh, gotcha.
13:41
>> David: Gotcha to the American.
13:43
>> Loren: Yeah.
13:43
>> David: And so when I moved to the States when I was 13, I discovered.
13:46
>> Loren: Uh, very clearly, boys don't cry.
13:49
>> David: How very uncool, uh, it was to
13:51
cry. Uh, and that's not so much a
13:54
posture or a movement, but it is an expression,
13:57
a way that God has made us, has hardwired
14:00
us physiologically, neurologically,
14:03
in order to become attuned to ourselves
14:06
and attuned to others, and others can be attuned to our
14:09
pain. Uh, it's a way for us to be
14:12
fully present to each other and so wonder to
14:14
myself, what is it that we are
14:17
losing if not in what ways are being malformed
14:20
by, for example, the fact that so many of
14:23
our social cultures, and then, therefore,
14:25
ecclesial liturgical cultures have no space,
14:29
uh, for crying and weeping and those forms
14:32
of grief. Uh, and yet they're profoundly,
14:34
you know, psalmic. Um, certainly Jesus
14:37
is, uh, unashamed
14:40
of those things. And how might our
14:43
grief be more, um, sweetly and
14:45
richly shared with one Another if we felt
14:48
free to cry
14:51
in public. Um, so that'd be like, one.
14:54
Um. I've often been curious about silence and
14:56
shouting. Two
14:59
extremes, but both are in the Psalms, right? And the
15:02
Psalms have functioned as this determinative
15:04
worship prayer book for Christians for hundreds
15:07
and hundreds of years. And yet we either pick and
15:10
choose our way through the Psalms or we have what I might call the canon within
15:13
the canon of the Psalter. And yet I think there
15:16
is something about God that we
15:19
cannot know except by way of silence and
15:22
likewise by way of shouting.
15:24
And we know that, right, when we find ourselves in certain places
15:27
in nature. And there's that. What we might call a holy
15:30
hush, right, that we're feeling and
15:33
sensing and knowing and being, you know,
15:36
regarded as it were by creation, in this
15:38
silence that makes us
15:41
feel, um,
15:43
simultaneously small in creation,
15:46
but also. But also, uh,
15:49
profoundly seen and grounded and
15:52
fully alive, right? Conversely, you
15:54
know, if you've ever been to a concert or a sporting event
15:57
and you find yourself swept up, willingly swept up,
16:00
right? Um, in this
16:04
roar of excitement, right? And your
16:06
whole body is just full.
16:09
Like, this is the expansion. Expansion of
16:12
excitement and joy and
16:15
erupts and shouting. Uh, it's that sense
16:18
of, like, yes, you know, there's some quality of our
16:21
humanity that we tap into and that we share with others.
16:24
And I wonder, are we missing out? Right? And the Psalms
16:27
are repeatedly saying, you know, roar, exalt,
16:30
shout. But we don't.
16:33
Like, why don't we? It's right there.
16:36
And then maybe the last is, uh, there was this artist named Grunvald,
16:39
early 1500s, was commissioned,
16:43
um, uh,
16:45
to create a painting for the
16:48
Monastery of St. Anthony, which had a very specific
16:51
call to serve those with skin diseases of some
16:54
kind or another. As he paints. It's very famous, uh,
16:57
this triptych, uh, of Jesus. And he
17:00
represents him with the same kind of skin lesions that
17:03
they have. And so what did it
17:05
mean, um, for
17:08
these individuals who found themselves in
17:11
various degrees of
17:13
pain on account of their skin, to be
17:16
able to see the Maker of heaven and
17:19
earth, to see the Savior and the
17:21
Redeemer in a way that it was so intimately familiar
17:24
to them, this Christ had come
17:27
so close that he identified
17:31
what, uh, are we missing when our spaces of worship
17:33
don't have something like that for us to behold with our
17:36
physical eyes that then might bear witness to our. The eyes of
17:39
our heart, you know, as the New Testament puts it, and then
17:42
enable us to see the world around us and
17:45
sort of transform transfigured Ways.
17:47
Um, all these things that we, you know,
17:50
see all our senses, all the things that we do, our
17:53
hands raised, our hands held open
17:57
hands, uh, that humility, hands in honor, postures of
18:00
honor, um, how might that
18:03
form our humanity? Uh, more
18:06
holy in both senses of the word. Holy.
18:08
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. I want to get into
18:11
this deeper because
18:14
this past week,
18:18
my wife and I, with our kids, we attend like this kind of
18:21
like family type small group that's like a
18:23
meal and conversation at church.
18:26
And I guess the church is involved
18:29
in a study through some organization
18:32
that's of course funded through Lilly, because Lilly,
18:35
you've probably seen this, is doing these, this shelling out
18:38
tons of money to try to study children's faith
18:41
formation. And
18:44
this was like a small group. You know, there's probably
18:47
15, 20, I don't remember in this kind
18:50
of group conversation. So the questions was being raised
18:53
about, like, you know, how do you help? How do you
18:56
foster faith in your own family? How do you
18:58
think we can help foster faith?
19:01
And it seemed to be like I was trying
19:04
to. I mean, I'm just a layperson there essentially
19:07
in that, in this church context space.
19:11
So I'm trying not to overstep my bounds. Um, but
19:14
it seemed to be like a lot of, like, what
19:17
I would call, like, performative in
19:20
from families of this, like,
19:24
you know, we. We kind of just make it up as we go type
19:26
thing. And. And maybe I was mishearing, but
19:29
almost like a limiting, uh, or
19:32
diminishing of practices.
19:35
So this is. I'm being long winded here, but
19:38
I'm thinking about what is the importance
19:41
of physical faith practices, Physical
19:44
spiritual practices of retaining
19:47
faith.
19:50
>> David: Like, how is what we do with our
19:53
bodies related directly or indirectly to
19:56
the formation of wealth, faith? Is that right?
19:59
>> Loren: Let me add another story if I can. So years ago, I was working
20:02
as a hospital chaplain as a CP intern,
20:05
and I walked into this. I got a page in the middle of night
20:08
and walked into this secure room
20:12
as a psych hold room. And they're literally sitting outside,
20:14
they're literally strapping this guy down who
20:17
was having some kind of overdose reaction, I don't know
20:20
exactly what. And he's flailing all over. I'm freaking out
20:23
internally, right, thinking, what the heck? Why did these people call
20:26
me? And I can't remember someone saying, like, he had supposedly
20:29
uttered the word chaplain or. I don't know. I'm like, I
20:32
cannot believe that this guy,
20:35
this guy really asked for chaplain.
20:38
But, uh, you know, I'm. I'm young. I don't know better. I'm like, this is
20:41
my job. So they finished getting him strapped down
20:44
and the security guards and kind of come out and take off their gloves
20:47
and take a deep breath. And I walk in with like a
20:49
Bible and I'm like, hey, my
20:52
name's Loren, I'm a chaplain and I have no idea what to do. And
20:55
I start reading some scripture from. I think it was
20:58
Psalms 90 or Psalm 91. I can't remember exactly which.
21:01
>> David: Right.
21:02
>> Loren: And then all of a sudden, like, I
21:04
recognize this guy starts to
21:07
pray in a
21:10
very broken manner. The
21:13
Lord's Prayer.
21:14
>> David: Yeah.
21:14
>> Loren: And I just, I was completely
21:17
struck. Like, that was 10, 15 years ago. I'm still
21:20
struck by that moment.
21:24
>> David: Yeah, I mean, that's really beautiful. And I
21:27
mean, our Catholic and Orthodox friends would say,
21:29
yes, quite
21:32
precisely, uh, that
21:35
the rituals of our body, when
21:38
matched to communal rituals, have a
21:41
capacity to form, ah, our
21:44
humanity, to orient our sense, ah,
21:47
of the world around us. Sort of as a parallel.
21:50
There's um, a book called After Image in
21:53
which this film scholar. I did a study
21:56
of, I don't know, it's like six or seven
21:59
very famous Catholic
22:01
filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Albert
22:04
Hitcock and Scorsese. And one of the things
22:07
that he was, the case that he was making to the reader is
22:10
that all these extraordinarily successful
22:12
filmmakers making really, really, uh,
22:15
important films over the course of the
22:17
last half century. They were all raised
22:20
Catholic, and
22:25
the Catholic sensorium, as it were, of the
22:28
liturgy had shaped how they
22:30
perceived their calling and their
22:32
work. And uh, so what we
22:35
do with our bodies from an
22:38
early age is
22:41
and can shape Christ
22:44
likeness in us. Uh, um,
22:47
one thing that our church started doing after Covid, when it
22:50
was safe to be in each other's
22:52
physical, proximate spaces was during the
22:55
Lord's. We say the Lord's Prayer every Sunday.
22:58
Uh, our senior minister,
23:01
our rector, invited us to hold hands.
23:05
And uh, holding hands is such a funny
23:07
thing. In some contexts it's the most natural thing in the world. Like
23:10
when NFL athletes at
23:13
national anthem or when somebody's injured, they'll hold hands.
23:16
>> Loren: Mhm.
23:17
>> David: But get them outside of the stadium is a different context.
23:19
>> Loren: Right.
23:20
>> David: It means something else and it causes maybe discomfort.
23:23
But our pastor was encouraging us
23:26
to lean into the actual
23:28
physicality of each other's presence. You
23:31
know, we have, you know, uh, people of all
23:34
ages. Maybe we have visitors. Um,
23:37
but the, but the act of
23:40
holding is a way to say, I
23:43
am bound to you.
23:46
You are not a. Take it or Leave it. Member of Christ's
23:48
body.
23:49
>> Loren: Right.
23:50
>> David: And so how might those practices in a
23:52
liturgical setting then translate into the rest of our
23:55
lives? Um, I write about this in the book,
23:58
like, this question, which is not a simplistic question,
24:01
or it's not simple, uh, like, who's up front? Or what
24:04
testimonies are shared. Is it the testimony of the bold and
24:06
the beautiful and the brawny? Uh, or is it the
24:09
testimony, the witness of the broken and all kinds of brokenness
24:12
in our world, you know, physical, mental, emotional, relational, and so
24:15
on? Um, what is it that we
24:18
see? Um, what are the stories that are
24:21
told? And I don't mean just in art, just in our own
24:23
lives. And so. Well, in actual
24:26
fact, um, I'll say this, and then I'll
24:29
pause here, but, uh, in the chapter on ethics, which is the
24:32
most terrifying to write of the whole book, I truly wrote it
24:35
with a great deal of fear and trembling. But we
24:38
had a family in our congregation, have two children
24:41
with very specific disabilities, one
24:44
with down syndrome and the other with what's called a
24:46
swan, a syndrome without an name.
24:49
And, you know, different levels of intellectual and
24:52
physical disability. And so when I began writing this, and I
24:55
did, you know, a good deal of reading, but I wanted to talk to, you
24:58
know, real humans that dealt with this in real ways, not in,
25:01
like, bookish ways. So I asked the parents, like,
25:04
what's it like for you? I asked them, what would you want from us
25:07
as a congregation? Like, what forms of hospitality are you not
25:09
receiving? And that was wonderful. But the thing that was so
25:12
beautiful was to hear the parents talk
25:15
about how, inasmuch as our. Our worship
25:18
is, let's call it liturgical, is very sort of
25:20
ritualized. That their children, Henry, uh,
25:24
and Laila, have learned
25:27
the good news in their bodies
25:30
by standing, sitting, kneeling, prostrate,
25:33
you know, by walking. Um,
25:35
Layla, when she was 13, was
25:38
invited to be a crucifer. And we have different
25:41
weights of crosses. And so she could only
25:44
manage, you know, the. The lightest weight, wooden one. But
25:47
it was such a beautiful,
25:49
um, image of Christ's body to
25:52
see her fully engaged, joyfully, very
25:55
reverently engaged in her, in, you know, unique ways to
25:58
her. Um, and the things that
26:01
were said over and over were part of
26:03
the, you know, her spiritual
26:06
armature, as it were. Um, and so, I don't know,
26:09
just the things that, you know, as they say, caught, not taught,
26:12
are rather powerful.
26:14
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking again, I just
26:16
had on. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the book Worship, uh,
26:19
in an Age of Anxiety, J. Michael
26:22
Jordan, he's kind of an
26:24
evangelical.
26:25
>> David: Uh, yeah.
26:26
>> Loren: Okay. You're.
26:27
>> David: I am, Yeah. I have it, actually.
26:29
>> Loren: Yeah. I really like the book. I think his episode will
26:32
release here before this. And then, of course, I'm thinking of
26:35
the theologian. That's really resonated with me a lot.
26:38
Nandra Root, both who kind of talk about
26:41
the kind of performative nature of faith.
26:44
And I'm thinking of like, Michael, uh, Jordan
26:47
talks about this. Similarly,
26:50
you write about the value of communal
26:53
singing versus, like, again, as
26:56
Jordan in his context writes about, like,
26:59
the big band and the big production of
27:02
evangelical worship. And I don't want to just bang on,
27:05
you know, evangelical worship per se. But again, I'm thinking in this
27:08
context of, like, how, like Root would say we
27:11
have to, like, perform our faith has to be something like we
27:14
endeavor to produce within ourselves.
27:17
>> David: Right.
27:17
>> Loren: And again, I'm thinking from the context of, like,
27:21
how, like, I've been in church recently
27:23
where I did not want to say the words that were on
27:26
the screen. Like, my faith was not in a place where I was
27:29
like. Right. Full hearted. That.
27:32
But I felt like there was some benefit to me in repeating those
27:35
words.
27:35
>> David: Yeah. I mean, Loren, I'm just going to say
27:38
amen, and we've been there.
27:41
And I think if you're honest enough, you've been a Christian long enough,
27:44
you know, exactly that experience.
27:47
Having grown up in a. In a predominantly
27:50
Catholic country, I don't think
27:53
I bring to my, you know, adult academic
27:56
studies a, ah, romantic view
27:58
of how, uh, the liturgy, as it
28:01
were, forms us in magical ways. It
28:04
doesn't, uh. There's nothing magical or automatic
28:07
about doing any ritual. Right. And I would
28:09
likewise say no ecclesial liturgical
28:12
tradition has a corner on the market of mindless, heartless
28:15
worship. I mean, it could be a very simple,
28:18
you know, sort of.
28:19
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. And Jordan for sure talks about that.
28:22
>> David: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Baptist,
28:25
Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, anybody can be mindless and
28:28
heartless, no matter what they say or don't say.
28:30
Um, but I do think
28:33
again that there is a
28:36
unique power in being
28:39
formed and reformed by what we
28:42
perform. If I can put all those forms
28:45
side by side, um,
28:48
obviously, you know, to borrow language from,
28:51
you know, the second Vatican,
28:53
uh, gatherings in the 60s, we want our
28:56
worship somehow to be full, active and conscious,
28:59
um, all things being equal in the sense
29:02
that when you see the words on the screen
29:05
or on a piece of paper or in a book, and you think to
29:08
yourself, I don't Feel it. I think
29:12
that can become a really beautiful form of confession.
29:16
Humility to say in this moment, oh God, I
29:18
do not. And yet in humility,
29:22
uh, and in trust, with whatever trust I can
29:24
muster, um, I say these words
29:27
and what I tell our people, you know, whenever I have a
29:30
chance to preach or otherwise, is
29:33
it's okay to come on Sunday
29:36
morning and simply sit
29:39
and do nothing else. The fact that you've like put your body
29:42
in this place is already something that we can celebrate.
29:45
I also say maybe you can't even manage to come and
29:48
there's a grace for that as well.
29:50
>> Loren: Mhm.
29:51
>> David: Also there are inertias that take over, you know, like the
29:54
whole Covid post. Covid. You know, all these studies have been done of people
29:57
that got into the habit, Right. Of not leaving
30:00
their physical homes and gathering with other physical bodies
30:03
and physical spaces. And eventually that acquired an
30:06
inertia and that took over. Right. So there's a
30:08
positive inertia in us gathering, doing things in
30:11
our bodies, performing certain actions, saying certain
30:14
words and trusting that
30:17
um, the ritual
30:21
will um, form us in life giving
30:23
ways. And to my students I say, well, it's just,
30:26
I mean the simplest thing we can do is distinguish between ritual and
30:29
ritualistic form and
30:31
formalistic. You, uh, know, just, we just add
30:33
ism to anything we can say. Anything can be abused. And
30:36
of course Christians have been attention to that for hundreds of
30:39
years. Um, but I think there is
30:42
something decisive
30:45
in choosing to say, I mean
30:47
in our families, right. In our friendships we don't always feel
30:50
it, uh, we don't
30:53
always feel love. But
30:56
it is meet and right to use the language of the book
30:59
of Common Prayer to open my
31:02
body up to my wife. When we're, you know,
31:05
kind of grumpy at each other. Instead of closing myself off
31:08
to speak words that I know are my heart will
31:11
maybe eventually catch up. And I think that can
31:14
happen when we gather in worship.
31:15
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. Let's shift gears a little bit because I do want
31:18
to explore the
31:21
conversation around seeing arrangements. You have this
31:24
really interesting conversation, uh, about midway through the
31:27
book where you talk about the three seating
31:30
arrangements. So I really kind
31:33
of got into church architecture
31:36
as I began to kind of just pay attention more. And I
31:38
was fascinated, especially with like
31:41
mainline context, especially at least
31:44
in my neck of the woods where
31:47
churches have like, they have kind of
31:50
the original sanctuary that was pretty
31:53
modest, often built
31:56
like in the 40s, early
31:58
50s and then kind of after like the post war
32:01
boom, these huge magnificent
32:04
sanctuaries were built, you know, like late 50s,
32:07
60s. And I
32:10
noticed this real, what I felt at least to be this
32:13
tension or contradiction of
32:17
what is often proclaimed in mainline churches of real,
32:20
progressive, inclusive, uh,
32:22
relational theology with these
32:25
sanctuary spaces that are, that are very,
32:28
uh, upward oriented
32:30
and separated.
32:34
Talk more about, uh, how worship
32:36
spaces shape our faith.
32:39
>> David: Right. Yeah. And
32:42
a book before a body of praise. One of the
32:45
books that I wrote is called Glimpses of the New Creation.
32:48
And in that book I explore how
32:51
the different media of arts form us. And the basic
32:54
argument I make in that book is that every practice of
32:57
art, whatever it may be, every incident of
33:00
art both opens up and closes down
33:02
possibilities to form,
33:06
to form our knowledge and love of God
33:09
in some fashion. And I try to be, uh, as
33:12
generous and hospitable in the book to be able to
33:15
say, you know, I'm not going to come down on the
33:17
Pentecostals. I'm not going to come down on, you know, the
33:20
High Church Lutherans. I simply want you to
33:23
understand that what you do is not neutral.
33:25
>> Loren: Yeah.
33:26
>> David: Uh, and you may be missing out on the
33:29
fullness of what God may have for you. It
33:31
doesn't mean you can, you know, build new
33:34
cathedrals.
33:36
Um, but be mindful of the fact that every
33:39
space retains associations. Every
33:42
space is generating a certain
33:45
way of being in the world individually
33:48
and corporately or communally. And so I talk about the
33:51
three spaces, one which we'll call them
33:53
longitudinal, sort of. You think of like the Gothic
33:56
cathedral, Neo Gothics, a long
33:59
nave and you have the transepts and the chancel and so on and so forth.
34:02
And the idea there is that the, uh, Christian
34:05
life is a pilgrimage and you're coming from the world,
34:09
the place of the profane, which is the, the Latin
34:12
for outside the temple. You enter in and there's a
34:15
baptismal font and you know, it's a pilgrimage. And then, you know, there's the New
34:18
Jerusalem, hopefully. And um, that's beautiful.
34:21
Um, that
34:24
kind of space resonates, uh,
34:26
architecturally with images of
34:30
God is majestic, God is holy, other, God is
34:33
sovereign. You know, those images that we find in Holy
34:36
Scripture. It's very difficult, however,
34:39
for people in that space to have any sense
34:41
or grasp or feel both in the literal and the
34:44
figurative senses of those terms. For the body, Christ
34:47
is a family. Mhm. It's just our
34:50
bodies are not oriented. No. Every generation of
34:53
Christians is reacting to these kinds of things.
34:56
And 20 years ago is the emergent church
35:00
that was, uh, very fired up about many things. And I
35:03
was in the middle of some of that fired upness. And they wanted
35:06
to return to a different idea,
35:09
idea of being the body of Christ, a
35:12
different way of worshiping. And therefore they all
35:15
found other spaces in which to do this.
35:17
Right. Many of them did in homes, which is a
35:20
very kind of natural place, you know, to explore
35:23
alternative ways of worshiping together. So there's a
35:25
longitudinal. There's
35:27
um, sort, uh, of what
35:30
I'll call sort of the semicircular, the uh, half
35:32
moon. And there's a wonderful,
35:35
um, C.R.C. ah, church up in
35:38
Grand Rapids that I visited and had a chance to talk
35:41
to some of them and to understand
35:43
how the half moon is a way to
35:46
gather around the table. So everybody has sort of
35:49
like an equal sight line.
35:52
Um, but it's not a full circle because as
35:55
reformed people, they wanted to underscore the fact
35:58
that we do not enclose or
36:00
master God in this sense.
36:03
Symbolically. At the table there's a window
36:06
and it opens up a way of saying,
36:09
hey, when we come to this table, we are
36:12
always recipients,
36:14
recipients. And then the last,
36:17
um, seating arrangement is, uh, the face to
36:20
face. Um, which I
36:22
say, well, we see in the upper room. Ah, many
36:25
places in the Gospels. A lot of house churches
36:28
have that very keen sense of like we
36:31
are beholding one another. It's very
36:34
intimate. Um, but conversely, it's
36:36
difficult to get
36:39
a feel for otherness and majesty
36:42
and so called transcendence in those kinds of spaces.
36:45
But, you know, not every church can change. But
36:48
maybe there are micro changes that enable people to
36:50
be, I don't know, um, more fully and
36:53
richly related to each other as. As the
36:56
body of Christ.
36:57
>> Loren: Yeah, I'm thinking of. There's a church in
37:00
Minneapolis. Well, I guess it's. Technically
37:03
there's three churches in one building. I'm not sure if you've heard
37:06
this one's a disciples church.
37:09
One's, I think ucc. I can't remember what the other one
37:11
is, but they have three worship spaces and
37:14
part of their practice is to rotate through
37:17
the worship spaces throughout the
37:20
year. On my. Again, I don't know what the
37:22
regularity is, but I've always found that
37:25
interesting to
37:28
that perspective of changing perspectives.
37:30
>> David: Yeah, there are ways that we can,
37:34
you could say, disrupt. Uh, it doesn't have to be
37:36
disruptive. It can just start to be creative.
37:40
And I think maybe one of the ways that the Catholic tradition
37:42
has creatively taken into account sort
37:45
of the fixity of. They're
37:48
usually their usual. Not like 2000
37:51
years worth, but you know, sort of a certain Style
37:54
of architecture is. Is all the feast
37:57
days are opportunities to become ambulatory, you
38:00
know, so there's. There can be an opportunity to walk around or to go
38:03
outside, you know, uh, uh, you
38:06
know, for, um, the triumphal entry, you
38:08
know, reenactment. Uh, and so getting out of
38:11
the space. And we do that in our church as well. Everybody. The
38:14
service starts outside in the parking lot, and we walk together. And it's
38:17
silly and it's goofy, and, you
38:20
know, uh, there's nothing terribly
38:22
orchestrated about all our voices, but there's something
38:24
convivial.
38:25
>> Loren: Right, right, right.
38:27
>> David: About that, um, that I think is, you
38:29
know, really. Ah, beautiful.
38:32
>> Loren: Yeah. I'm just thinking,
38:34
uh, I'll try to be generous with my words here, but I'm just
38:37
thinking about, you know, some traditions where it's like the doors are
38:40
closed, the lights are off, there's a countdown.
38:43
You know, you walk in in darkness, can't see
38:46
your neighbor.
38:46
>> David: Yes. No, that. That. I've seen that.
38:50
I mean, speaking of the emergent church, I remember
38:52
lots of, you know, folks, maybe
38:55
pastors, who had the authority and power to make these kinds of
38:58
changes. Removing pews and putting sofas and
39:01
chairs.
39:01
>> Loren: Right, right.
39:03
>> David: And, uh, that was their way maybe to swing to the
39:06
opposite end of the pendulum. Like, we want to be at home.
39:08
Come as you are. Nobody's the
39:11
boss of anybody. It's sort of all these things that sort
39:14
of collect into. Let's be a different people together.
39:17
Eventually, sofas and chairs start talking. You
39:20
know, they acquire a gravitational force field of their
39:23
own, and they move people in certain
39:26
directions that, you know, may fight other
39:28
things.
39:29
>> Loren: Right.
39:30
>> David: That, uh, church leaders would like to form in,
39:33
folks. And so there's nothing neutral. That's the point of
39:36
that book that I wrote. There's nothing neutral. Uh,
39:39
every space, every practice of music, you know,
39:42
opens up and closes down. For example, ways of
39:44
knowing God. So, yeah, so in that book, I actually do a close
39:47
study of oceans by Hillsong.
39:50
>> Loren: Oh, yeah. Okay.
39:51
>> David: And, uh, In Christ Alone, sort of the
39:54
Reformed Baptist, you know, song.
39:56
>> Loren: And yes.
39:57
>> David: A, uh, a spiritual. And I sort of do a
40:00
close analysis of the music and the lyrics. And, um,
40:03
just a way to say, hey, if you unpack the engine
40:06
of all this stuff, it's
40:09
the difference between a blender engine and a Boeing engine.
40:12
They're both engines, but they're making different things possible in the
40:15
world.
40:16
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Let's do
40:19
one more question here before we take a break.
40:21
>> David: Okay.
40:21
>> Loren: I want to talk about. On page 154.
40:24
Um, I'm going to read a quote here. You write over against
40:27
the prevailing assumption of our contemporary world.
40:30
Our bodies are not ours to do with as we
40:33
please. Our bodies belong to Christ's
40:36
flesh and his flesh belongs to
40:38
us. So you kind of wrote about it
40:41
there and I kind of gave you a heads up. I want to ask this question.
40:44
>> David: Yeah.
40:45
>> Loren: I similarly recognize this dynamic,
40:48
I think in our. At least as I'm interpreting that
40:51
quote in our world today, where it's
40:54
very much like a bodily autonomy. Uh, you
40:56
know, I'm sort of,
40:59
I'm sort of flabbergasted. I don't know if you've seen this
41:02
on social media. These folks who are like anti
41:05
kids
41:07
and I have kids.
41:10
I recognize it's a huge commitment, a
41:13
lot of work, and
41:15
I've had an experience literally just
41:18
yesterday with my middle school daughter that's
41:20
terrifying, frankly.
41:22
>> David: Um, Right.
41:25
>> Loren: And I can't expand on that. So
41:28
I understand kids a lot. But I also think
41:31
this kind of time that we're focused on
41:34
where it's like it's me centered, essentially, I'm
41:37
the biggest thing. And I
41:40
guess my bias is I'm a believer that,
41:44
uh, believing in something bigger
41:47
than yourself or connecting with something bigger than
41:50
yourself and giving of yourself is the best way to find
41:52
yourself rather than this kind of inverse that I think
41:55
I see. And I'm assuming your quote relates
41:58
to that. Um, you know, taking
42:01
care of me and my body, you know, my, my
42:04
body's purpose is to serve me first and
42:06
foremost.
42:08
>> David: Yeah. I think obviously, you
42:11
know, that part of the chapter or
42:14
the book should be titled Handle with Care.
42:16
>> Loren: Yeah.
42:17
>> David: Ideas should be handled with care. People should be
42:20
handled with care. Our neighbors who irk
42:23
us should, ah, be handled with
42:26
care. All things should be handled with care.
42:28
Um, probably what I'm doing
42:31
there is attempting to
42:33
identify extremes. It's easier,
42:36
I think, to identify extremes than to identify
42:39
the middles in which we're attempting in fits
42:42
and starts. Right. Um, on one extreme
42:45
obviously is slavery. That's
42:48
the idea that my body wholly belongs
42:51
to someone else to do it as they
42:53
wish. That is to be rejected. On the other end,
42:56
perhaps more, um,
43:00
we identify it with greater difficulty because we're
43:03
Americans, is the idea that my body is
43:06
my property.
43:07
>> Loren: Mhm.
43:07
>> David: Which to Americans seems to be the
43:10
most normal way to think of my body.
43:14
Uh, perhaps because we have forgotten, you know, that
43:17
our three ideals
43:20
are not actually life liberty in the pursuit of
43:22
happiness. The original actually was life liberty in the
43:25
pursuit of property. Um, so as
43:28
Americans, property is Very important to us.
43:31
I have nothing wrong with property.
43:32
>> Loren: I have property.
43:34
>> David: But the extreme right is that all
43:37
the entire earth I'll
43:40
use this verb, is colonized as property. Everything
43:43
is perceived as property. Right.
43:46
Acquisition and retention of property. And then
43:49
bodies get caught up in this, you know,
43:52
philosophical way of perceiving the world.
43:55
And I think I'm pressing against that. To say, as
43:57
Christians, as people who want to be formed by
44:00
holy Scripture and by the life of Jesus, we
44:03
see that bodies in the beginning are a gift,
44:07
uh, in the middle are a gift, and at the end are gift.
44:10
And because they are a gift, they are to be handled
44:13
with care. They're handled with love.
44:15
Um, and there are things, yeah, that are
44:18
mined by God's grace to
44:21
enjoy fully. Um,
44:24
but my body's not something I own.
44:27
I think, uh, that's the wrong
44:30
verb. My body is something that is
44:33
entrusted to me, uh, and
44:36
therefore I love it. Well, I'm to love my neighbor as
44:39
I love myself. Um,
44:42
but it's not. It's not. I don't own it.
44:44
And therefore to do with as I please.
44:47
>> Loren: Yeah.
44:47
>> David: I think that just sends us in very, very dangerous places. I
44:50
mean, even with the best of intentions.
44:52
>> Loren: Right.
44:52
>> David: Property mindset, I think, gets us in trouble.
44:55
Because the moment I think of myself as property, and then I
44:58
see others, they have property. Well,
45:01
then we're in a commercial, you know,
45:03
um, frame of mind. This is
45:06
sort of a, you know, exchange of
45:09
services and goods, and bodies become part of the
45:12
thing that we exchange. And
45:15
I think, you know, like the Christian tradition
45:17
uses this language of the great exchange, the
45:20
mysterious, uh, exchange
45:23
of Christ's body for our bodies, like our bodies
45:25
become part of his so that our bodies can become
45:28
true, truly, you know, the bodies, the
45:30
beautiful, beloved bodies that God made them in
45:33
the beginning. And I think it's
45:37
a way of thinking, but I think it's a way of living that gets
45:39
us into trouble the moment we think of our
45:42
bodies as property, uh, that we
45:45
possess autonomously.
45:47
>> Loren: Um, yeah. Tell me if
45:50
this is tracking. If I'm following again. I'm
45:53
just thinking of my day yesterday where I was planning
45:55
to come home from work and. Or not come home,
45:58
but just head to the gym straight after work. Because
46:01
I like taking care of my body. Right.
46:04
Keeping my body fit, which we would say is
46:06
important, but
46:09
I'm thinking of it from your entrusted context. There was a
46:12
situation at home that I felt like my physical
46:15
presence would be
46:20
supportive. I don't know, uh, which adverb. Adjective to
46:22
use. There would be A benefit to my family
46:26
at home. So, I mean, does
46:29
that track with what you're saying? Like, if we're thinking purely like,
46:31
my body is my own, my first priority is to my body,
46:35
rather than my body is
46:37
entrusted to me to do good in the world,
46:40
to serve others, but also to serve. I
46:43
don't know if that makes sense.
46:44
>> David: I mean, I would say yes. Right. Uh, like,
46:47
if we think of our bodies as a gift that is entrusted to
46:50
us, um, and
46:53
then the primary lens or software that's
46:56
running inside of us is a gift economy,
47:00
that changes the way I relate to the earth,
47:03
way that I relate to my enemies.
47:06
Uh, it changes the way that I relate to the people closest
47:09
to me who perhaps see all the ways
47:12
in which I fail in bodily acts of
47:15
love, you know, um, and,
47:18
you know, the primal, uh,
47:20
sin led to the primal temptation, which is to
47:23
hide. Um, hide, fight, and run.
47:25
>> Loren: Yeah.
47:26
>> David: Um, and, uh, so we hide in our
47:29
bodies, we fight with our bodies. Right. And ultimately we're doing
47:32
violence to our bodies and the bodies of others. But if my
47:35
body is fundamentally a gift, graced by God in Christ,
47:38
empowered by the spirit, uh, to
47:40
be a vehicle, an instrument
47:43
of healing, uh,
47:46
and all the other goods of
47:49
God's reign, then,
47:50
um, it changes.
47:53
I mean, okay, I'm going to say this, and I hope I don't get too in trouble, but
47:56
I remember not long after Covid, we were driving
47:58
somewhere like a year
48:00
after M. And, uh, driving through a small
48:03
town, and, uh,
48:06
it was like, by like a little shopping center, and
48:09
I saw these people, and I first thought it was,
48:11
um. Uh, it was like
48:14
a car wash, you know, like a bunch of questions in a car wash.
48:18
But they had big cardboard signs up. I couldn't see them. And
48:21
then drove by and looked back. I was like, oh, oh, they're
48:23
protesting the vaccine.
48:26
>> Loren: Interesting.
48:27
>> David: Uh, and on their. All their cardboards was my body,
48:30
my choice.
48:30
>> Loren: Right.
48:31
>> David: And I thought, oh, this is so fascinating. It's just like a
48:34
quintessentially American. And I don't want to get into. Into the politics of it
48:37
all, but just sort of like that was the most natural phrase,
48:40
as it were, the most natural way for Americans to think of these
48:42
things. And I guess I'm one would say, I think for followers of
48:45
Jesus there is not just the better. Like, it's like
48:48
an upgrade. I think it's just like
48:50
ontologically radically
48:53
better. Um, and if I can.
48:56
>> Loren: If I can take this step further as I'm thinking about
48:58
this, like,
49:01
I'm sure you've seen the news, right, that
49:04
young men are increasingly moving,
49:07
conservative, moving into church
49:10
spaces. And it seems like I don't want to make
49:13
too broad a judgment here
49:16
that there's this kind of like,
49:18
encouragement of young masculinity as, like,
49:22
celebrating them and their bodies. And I think,
49:24
uh, I want to like, echo what you're
49:27
saying here. I was having
49:30
a conversation on this with one of my good friends who also
49:33
has a son, about teaching your
49:36
sons that manliness is about.
49:39
He didn't use this word, but I think your word here fits with what
49:41
he's saying. This kind of gift economy, like men
49:44
have privilege
49:47
and we're supposed to use that privilege or
49:50
that what has been entrusted to us
49:53
to serve others.
49:55
>> David: Yeah, I mean, I would say
49:58
yes. And, uh,
50:00
um,
50:04
I wrote a book of prayers that came out recently,
50:06
Prayers for the Pilgrimage. One of the prayers that I had
50:09
included there was. I had originally titled
50:12
it. It was like something like For Being Jesus. Y.
50:15
And then the publisher's like, well,
50:18
maybe you can come up with a better. And I was like, well, I think
50:21
what I'm trying to do is to. Is to name in
50:24
this prayer all the things that Jesus. All the ways
50:27
that Jesus handles other people's bodies with care.
50:31
Uh, and saying, you know, to myself
50:34
and to my son, let's do that.
50:38
You do that
50:40
and, um, that'll
50:43
generate life. That'll be life giving,
50:46
uh, to your mother, to your sister, to your friends,
50:50
um, you know, to be in the
50:53
world as Jesus was in the world.
50:55
Um, and,
50:58
uh, I mean, I think I saw this, this article that
51:01
you're referencing. And I mean, we just live in such
51:03
catastrophically messed up times,
51:07
but, um, you know, in terms just get us in
51:10
trouble or they are trouble.
51:13
Um, and so I guess maybe what I'm
51:16
trying to do with myself, you know, um, and
51:19
in this book is to
51:22
say,
51:25
what if we simply
51:28
tracked how it is that Jesus handles people's
51:31
bodies. And in fact, uh, the point that I make in the book is
51:34
not only does he handle others with care. He himself, for
51:37
nine months in his mother's womb, was handled with
51:39
supreme care. He was totally
51:42
enveloped in this care
51:45
filled place, uh, of, uh,
51:48
comprehensive loving touch.
51:51
Um, and I suggest that that can be like
51:54
a metaphor for then he
51:57
emerges and then, uh,
51:59
offers his body as the life of the world and
52:02
offers comprehensive care,
52:05
uh, in and through his body and that we are now his body
52:08
in our own places.
52:09
>> Loren: So, yeah, well, well, let's leave it
52:12
there for the sake of time. This is good conversation Again,
52:15
the book is that we discussed today, A Body of Praise.
52:18
Understanding the role of our physical bodies in worship.
52:21
David, let's make sure. Send me a link for the other book
52:24
so I can include that in the show notes. Let's take a
52:27
quick break and we'll come back with some closing
52:29
questions.
52:33
>> David: All right.
52:33
>> Loren: We're back with David Taylor and really, uh, enjoyed
52:36
the conversation. Appreciate your time. Hopefully
52:39
it's helpful for our listeners. Let's talk,
52:42
uh, about some of these closing questions.
52:45
You're welcome to take these as seriously or not as you'd like
52:47
to. Some folks get tripped
52:50
up over the Pope question, but
52:55
what would you do with your, uh, if you're a Pope for a
52:57
day?
52:58
>> David: Okay, so I thought about this again. I grew up in a Catholic country,
53:01
so, you know, there's a lot of talk of the, uh, of the Pope amongst my
53:04
friends. Friends, uh, El Papa, as they would call
53:07
it. Uh, if, uh, I were Pope for the day, I
53:10
would tell, uh, my secretary
53:12
that, uh, I'm going to spend the entire day looking at all the
53:15
art, ah, in the Vatican
53:18
collection. Alternatively,
53:21
I would tell my secretary that I'm going to disguise
53:24
myself and go for
53:27
morning prayer or whatever, morning Mass in some small
53:30
church in Rome. Disguise and just kind of
53:33
slip into the pew, uh, and, and
53:36
experience, uh, life that way. Just
53:39
kind of like, take a peek.
53:41
>> Loren: Um.
53:43
>> David: Um. I imagine that the Pope
53:46
does not get many opportunities just to
53:49
chill out.
53:50
>> Loren: Yeah, Yeah.
53:52
>> David: I think kind of fun.
53:54
>> Loren: A theologian or historical Christian figure
53:57
you'd want to meet or bring back to life.
54:00
>> David: Okay, so I did think about this, and I
54:03
apologize in advance. I'm going to cheat.
54:05
>> Loren: Yeah.
54:05
>> David: I would like a dinner party.
54:07
>> Loren: Okay.
54:08
>> David: And, uh, it's going to be a dinner party for six, myself
54:10
included. And I'm going to invite five
54:13
musicians. And I would love to
54:16
see the conversation that unfolded. I'm going to
54:19
invite Ephraim, the Syriac, the Syrian,
54:22
uh, who's very profoundly influential, uh,
54:25
in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Hildegarde, uh,
54:28
Bingen, uh,
54:30
Palestrina, a very influential and,
54:33
um, polyphonic Renaissance music, Bach and
54:36
Fanny Crosby. And I just
54:39
want to ask them what was it
54:42
like? Uh, you know, because you guys all made
54:45
new music, you know, in your time, and
54:48
we have worship wars in our time. Did you guys. I mean, I know
54:51
they actually had worship wars in their time. I just want to hear them talk
54:54
about it. I think it'd be so fun.
54:55
>> Loren: That is a broad. That's a broad spectrum.
54:59
I guess you could make it seven and maybe invite Chris,
55:01
Tomlin, just see what happens.
55:05
>> David: I mean, I could, um.
55:07
>> Loren: Yeah.
55:07
>> David: I mean, uh, Yeah,
55:10
I mean, uh, sure, let's listen.
55:13
>> Loren: I'll take them.
55:14
>> David: Uh, Chris, I don't
55:17
know.
55:17
>> Loren: Is that. Am I making assumptions? Who would be, like, the
55:20
definitive, like, worship guy?
55:22
>> David: No, no, Chris is, you know, certainly in, you know,
55:25
the. The kind of, like, contemporary worship world.
55:27
>> Loren: Right.
55:27
>> David: Yeah. You know, nobody really cares about
55:30
him more. Kind of classical, you know, conservatory kind of music.
55:33
>> Loren: Yeah.
55:34
>> David: Um, it'd be that or like, I once hung out with
55:37
the Hillsong London. Uh,
55:40
folks.
55:40
>> Loren: Uh, okay.
55:41
>> David: M. David Crowder organized this
55:44
crazy worship conference, invited me, and I found
55:47
myself in the green room surrounded by all unusual
55:50
bedfellows, including Hillsong. They were, uh.
55:53
I don't know how, uh. How much you can
55:55
capitalize bold and italicize. Cool. They
55:58
were so cool. And I was like,
56:01
yeah, nope, I'm not cool. Uh, I'm not cool. I'm
56:04
okay. But I, uh, don't know.
56:06
Hillsong, you know, they're pretty big.
56:08
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah.
56:10
>> David: But, you know, who's.
56:11
>> Loren: Like, the. We're getting way into the weeds here. But I'm like, who's the
56:14
one? Is it, like, Darlene Sheck, maybe? She.
56:17
She gets in there.
56:19
>> David: I mean, she's Certainly, like, the 90s, you know,
56:21
forerunner,
56:23
um, of. Of this
56:25
whole, you know, era.
56:28
Um, I mean, Chris. Yeah. I mean, he's. He's. I
56:31
mean, he's pretty influential. Uh, I mean, like,
56:34
he. He changed. But these days, you know,
56:37
they talk about the big four. Hillsong, Right.
56:39
Ethel, Passion and Elevation.
56:42
>> Loren: Yeah.
56:43
>> David: Ones that show up on the Christian stations. Um,
56:46
but, like, a singular figure. Sure. I'll go.
56:49
So, yeah, Chris is just always, like, you know, top
56:52
five.
56:52
>> Loren: As long as it's, uh, not. Who's the
56:55
Elevation guy?
56:58
As long as it's not him. Right? No offense to
57:00
my.
57:01
>> David: No, I don't know. I mean, I will tell you. I'm friends with Matt
57:04
Redmond, who is another figure in that world,
57:07
and he very, like, wonderfully, kindly, humbly
57:10
reached out a year ago and said, I'd love
57:13
to partner with a theologian, and I'd love all the
57:15
songwriters that I know to have opportunities
57:18
to partner with pastors and theologians, because I think that
57:21
church's music is not good. M.
57:23
Better, and it's only going to get better if we have better
57:26
relationships.
57:27
>> Loren: Let me say this. Uh, I won't say
57:30
his name, but elevations. Pastor maybe could do well
57:33
to.
57:34
>> David: Okay, wow.
57:38
>> Loren: Moving on. Uh, what do you think history will
57:41
remember from our current time and place?
57:45
>> David: Um.
57:48
I mean, gosh, I mean, I, I don't
57:51
know. Um, really I'll be curious to
57:54
know. Uh, I mean the
57:57
thing that comes to mind is that no generation
57:59
is exempt from corruptibility.
58:05
I, I and the truth of the matter is I
58:08
really would like to not excuse myself from that judgment.
58:11
Judgment. Um, I'd like
58:13
to, I like for everybody else to be
58:16
corruptible by their, you know, cultural, uh,
58:19
context. But I'm sure I am.
58:21
Um,
58:24
I mean this is the thing that I've wondered, you know, for the past
58:27
eight years and counting.
58:30
>> Loren: Mhm.
58:31
>> David: Uh, has there been
58:33
a massive failure of
58:36
discipleship in our churches at the
58:39
local kind of, you know, ho hum, um,
58:41
ordinary, you know, shape of our
58:44
lives that makes it possible for things
58:47
to now surface so
58:49
egregiously. Um, like that stuff doesn't
58:52
happen overnight, right?
58:54
Um,
58:57
I don't know. I mean,
58:59
yeah.
59:00
>> Loren: Well, how about this? What do you hope then for the future?
59:03
Christianity.
59:05
>> David: Uh, that's, Yeah, I think it's
59:08
like my hope is related to sort of the
59:10
lament. But I think I would hope
59:13
that we in this country, I'll just speak for
59:16
us, might become more fully
59:19
attuned, related with
59:22
and accountable to the global church.
59:26
I think we get in trouble more quickly
59:29
when um, we get
59:32
sucked under our own echo chambers.
59:36
And uh, wherever we may find ourselves
59:39
theologically, ecclesially, politically, we all
59:42
have echo chambers. And I think Leslie Newbegin,
59:45
um, the wonderful missionary
59:47
theologian, wrote a book called Foolishness to the Greeks. And he talks
59:50
about how one of the practices that the global church should
59:53
take on is members, uh, of Christ's body around the
59:56
globe should just continuously hold mirrors up to one another
59:59
to show where it is that the good news
1:00:02
is being corrupted, you know, um, where
1:00:05
we are being malformed in ways that we just cannot
1:00:07
perceive. So I think if we were able to find
1:00:10
ourselves not just on,
1:00:13
you know, social media, reading about things, but
1:00:16
traveling, uh, if possible,
1:00:18
inviting and participating in
1:00:21
meals and worship together and mission
1:00:23
together. I think that would,
1:00:26
I think it could be very powerful.
1:00:29
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your time,
1:00:32
really appreciate the conversation. Again, uh, want to
1:00:35
recommend the book and your work. Uh, tell
1:00:37
folks where they can connect with you, all that
1:00:40
stuff.
1:00:41
>> David: Yeah. So, uh, formerly
1:00:44
called Twitter.
1:00:45
>> Loren: Yeah.
1:00:46
>> David: Uh, which we'll still call Twitter. Uh,
1:00:49
it's kind of the name that usually shows up on books W. David
1:00:52
O. Taylor. On Instagram, somebody actually
1:00:55
had that collection of letters. I was surprised, but they had one
1:00:58
follower on Instagram, so there's no way I could
1:01:01
recover it. Uh, so it's David
1:01:04
taylortheologian so
1:01:07
Instagram is kind of more personal. Twitter is just more
1:01:09
ideas. Then I have a website w. David O.
1:01:12
Taylor
1:01:15
um, yeah, you know, I try to be
1:01:18
a gracious presence. I wrote a, uh, series
1:01:21
of Beatitudes for being on social media. So I try to
1:01:24
abide by those Beatitudes.
1:01:28
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah, great. Well, always, uh, leave folks with a word
1:01:31
of peace. Speaking of, uh, rituals and practices here.
1:01:33
So may God's peace be with you.
1:01:36
>> David: And also with you.
1:01:44
>> Loren Richmond: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
1:01:47
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
1:01:50
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