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Embracing the Mixed Ecology: Dwight Zscheile and Blair Pogue on the Church’s Future · Future Christian

• 0:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (00:41)
• 0:04
  Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today, Loren Richmond Jr. is in conversation with the Reverend Canon Blair Pogue and the Reverend Dwight Zcheile Blair is the Canon for Innovation for the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. In that capacity, she helps congregations all over the state go deeper in their practice of the Christian faith and rethink how they form disciples and engage the communities surrounding their church.
• 0:08
  She also runs learning communities for Episcopalians wanting to learn how to form Christian community with neighbors where they live, work, and play. Before joining Bishop Craig Loya's staff, she was the rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in St. Paul for 16 and a half years. And before that, she served two churches in the Diocese of Virginia with a special focus on Christian formation. Dwight is professor of congregational mission and leadership.
• 0:12
  at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is editor, author, or co-author of many different books, including Embracing the Mixed Ecology, Inherited, and New Forms of Christian Community Flourishing Together with Blair Pogue, along with Leading Faithful Innovation, Following God into a Hopeful Future. He has served congregations in Minnesota and Virginia.
• 0:16
  Dwight's experience growing up in a secular home in California has shaped his commitment to helping the church cultivate Christian community with neighbors in today's changing world. A reminder before we start today's conversation, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and share Future Christian with a friend. Connect with Lauren, Martha, and Future Christian on Instagram. Shoot us an email at lauren at resonatemediapro.com.
• 0:20
  with comments, questions, or ideas for future episodes. Your support means a lot to us in making this podcast possible.
• 0:24
  Loren Richmond Jr (02:41)
• 0:28
  Hello, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren Richmond Jr. and today I am pleased to be joined by Dwight Zcheile and Blair Pogue. Hello and welcome to the show.
• 0:32
  Blair Pogue (02:52)
• 0:36
  Thank you, good to be with you.
• 0:40
  Dwight Zscheile (02:52)
• 0:44
  Hello,
• 0:48
  thanks for having us on.
• 0:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (02:56)
• 0:56
  Yeah, thanks so much for making this work. Here we are recording right after the new year. So it's what? January 2nd in our world. So I guess happy new year to everyone out there. Whatever time and place you find this and you find yourself listening to it. Hope this is a meaningful conversation for y'all. But before we get too far into the conversation, I would like to take a moment to introduce our guests and who they are and where they come from. Dwight, don't you begin just sharing about.
• 1:00
  yourself and your faith journey, what that's looked like in the past and what that looks like today.
• 1:04
  Dwight Zscheile (03:29)
• 1:08
  Yeah, so I grew up in a secular home on the California coast. I came to faith as a young adult and have kind of made my way through a variety of Christian traditions along the way. So ⁓ I like to think of myself as having a very ecumenical soul in that sense, but landed in the Anglican tradition. And ⁓ that's where my home is these days and have, you know, ⁓ again, taught at Luther Seminary for many years among the Lutherans and really appreciate their tradition.
• 1:12
  But yeah, so that's sort of a bit about my journey.
• 1:16
  Loren Richmond Jr (04:05)
• 1:20
  Blair, how about you?
• 1:24
  Blair Pogue (04:07)
• 1:28
  have a pretty similar story, also raised in a secular home, but one where my parents said, we want you to find the truth for yourself. So they really let me go out there and explore. And it was through a woman who met me on my high school campus when that was allowed. ⁓ And ⁓ I was introduced to the Christian faith through young life. And then over time,
• 1:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (04:28)
• 1:36
  Hmm
• 1:40
  Blair Pogue (04:35)
• 1:44
  ⁓ was involved with inner varsity, probably the most intellectual inner varsity chapter ever led by a person with a philosophy PhD. And it really saved my faith. Young life played a critical role, but I was interested in the intellectual side of faith and wrestling with tough questions. But again, like Dwight journeyed through many different Christian traditions and I'm thankful for each of them for their specific treasures.
• 1:48
  Loren Richmond Jr (04:44)
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:56
  Yeah, awesome. Thanks for sharing. Share if you would, kind of any spiritual practices you find meaningful or willing to share.
• 2:00
  Dwight Zscheile (05:12)
• 2:04
  Well, one of the ones I've been doing for the last year or so is ⁓ scripture before screens. So every morning when I wake up, before I turn on any of those devices, I spend time in the Word with an old school traditional printed Bible and in prayer as well as a way to kind of get rooted and stay sane and anchored in this digital world that we live in.
• 2:08
  Loren Richmond Jr (05:18)
• 2:12
  Hmm.
• 2:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:20
  Okay, Dwight, I need to ask a follow up question before Blair, we move on to you, because I tried to do this like six months, nine months ago, where I put like a physical Bible next to my bed, but I've not overcome that internal friction of like, it's always dark when I'm waking up. And I want to say, I want to wake up my life by turning on a light. And of course, you know, conversely, my alarm clock is on my phone. So Blair, have you, or excuse me, Blair, Dwight, have you overcome this? I want to hear this.
• 2:24
  Dwight Zscheile (06:07)
• 2:28
  So I have a different space, so I will do it in a different room of the house where I can turn a light on. We never keep our phones ⁓ in our bedroom. We always have them in a different room anyways, unless we really need the alarm for particular day. So we actually have old school plug-in alarm clocks as well. So having that different space is really important. And then after that, I can turn on the phone and see what's going
• 2:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (06:18)
• 2:36
  Okay. Mm-hmm.
• 2:40
  Okay.
• 2:44
  Blair Pogue (06:26)
• 2:48
  Hahaha
• 2:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (06:38)
• 2:56
  That's good. See, this is why, this is where I suppose working as an on-call chaplain makes it difficult because I have to have my phone there. But Blair, Sheriff, anything I can learn from I suppose there too for you.
• 3:00
  Blair Pogue (06:44)
• 3:04
  Sure.
• 3:08
  Sure, sure. The only challenge we have is competing for the same wonderful couch in the sun room, but Dwight's usually up earlier than me, so that really helps. Same thing as Dwight, I also, thanks to John Mark Comer in his Practicing the Way courses, ⁓ I've always loved silence. And when I first became a Christian, ⁓ there wasn't a lot of silence in the traditions I was in. Prayer was always verbal, pretty...
• 3:12
  Loren Richmond Jr (06:56)
• 3:16
  Ha ha ha ha!
• 3:20
  Blair Pogue (07:20)
• 3:24
  wordy, and I was interested in centering prayer and started doing that. But John Mark Comer talks about just sitting there, maybe starting out praying with a psalm and sharing my hopes and my struggles and what I want to pray about with God, and then moving into silence and, in his words, letting God love me for about 10 minutes each day. And that has been so powerful, just being still.
• 3:28
  being with God, but not saying anything often with my palms open in a posture of receptivity. So I've loved that and I'm amazed how fast those 10 minutes go by. ⁓ And then I also, I have about a 45 minute commute to my office each way. And so when I started my new job working for the Bishop of Minnesota,
• 3:32
  I really had to adjust because I used to have about a 45 minute period, just a real luxury of time where I'd have my coffee. I'd try to get on that couch I mentioned and I would journal and pray and read scripture. And that has been harder past reading a chapter of the Old and New Testament and that 10 minutes of silence. So I line up apps on my phone.
• 3:36
  And my two favorite are the Daily Office using Forward Day by Day's app that inserts the scriptures for the day in there. And then I love Pray As You Go. It's very Ignatian, so they'll have some music, they'll read a passage of scripture, and then they'll have a wondering question. So I think for all of your listeners who have commutes, it's really great to see what the app world
• 3:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (08:52)
• 3:44
  Okay.
• 3:48
  Blair Pogue (09:10)
• 3:52
  provides that could help you have that important formation time in the morning and at night.
• 3:56
  Loren Richmond Jr (09:17)
• 4:00
  Yeah, absolutely. They're both excellent. Thank you so much for sharing. If only for my edification, these are helpful. So let's get into the purpose of our conversation here. Dwight and Blair are both the authors of a book called Embracing the Mixed Ecology. And I suppose I didn't do this to begin with, so my apologies. I didn't even give you your proper title. So if you're Reverend or Doctor, my apologies. ⁓ Share if you would just the full... ⁓
• 4:04
  the full book title and what it's meant to be about.
• 4:08
  Dwight Zscheile (09:52)
• 4:12
  Yeah, so the book is called Embracing the Mixed Ecology, ⁓ New and Inherited Forms of Christian Community Flourishing Together. And it's a book that really takes from ⁓ the UK this concept of a mixed ecology of church that we need lots of different forms of Christian community working together in a particular context in order to reach all the people who are there. And that idea of mixed ecology is an adaptation of
• 4:16
  a phrase initially used by Rowan Williams when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, over 20 years ago when he talked about a mixed economy of church, recognizing that the inherited parish church system in the Church of England and in the UK was meaningfully engaging some people, but a lot of other people in the neighborhood were not being connected into it and reached by it. And so he really encouraged the development of a variety of forms of church.
• 4:20
  that could together ⁓ be able to embody the gospel and bring witness to the complexity of cultures and populations and generations present in a particular area. so we found this concept, this imagination for mixed ecology to be really helpful to think about the US context in particular, and that's really what the book's about.
• 4:24
  Loren Richmond Jr (11:14)
• 4:28
  Now Blair, both, in the build up to the book or in beginning of book, y'all spend a good bit of time talking about some underlying assumptions or foundations. think at least as I read the book, kind of highlight or undergird what you intend to do with the rest of the book. Do you mind taking a moment just to kind of talk through those foundational understandings you have?
• 4:32
  Blair Pogue (11:30)
• 4:36
  There are so many, and I was thinking again, I think it's really
• 4:40
  helpful that Dwight and I grew up not in Christian homes, and that's gonna be more and more people who don't know the Christian story. But I just think about ⁓ what that was like to grow up, but not have a story.
• 4:44
  that I was part of that was larger than me, the story of God and God's people. ⁓ And I find that I try to have a lot of friends who don't go to church. I play tennis with a lot of women who actually a lot of ex Catholics, but also women who have not gone to church. And ⁓ as you know, Loren, humans have to make spiritual meaning of their lives. It's kind of part of how we are made.
• 4:48
  Loren Richmond Jr (12:22)
• 4:52
  I believe so, yeah.
• 4:56
  Blair Pogue (12:23)
• 5:00
  And people are looking for places to do that. And some people will show up at our traditional churches, but more and more people won't be showing up. And they're trying to find and make meaning in different places, but often because of what's going on in our culture, ⁓ technology, deep loneliness, people working long hours.
• 5:04
  They can't find what they're actually looking for. So in this mixed ecology, we wanna see the institutional churches strengthen, but we also know that many of them don't know how to speak to new generations and to people who've never been to church and don't know all those 25 cent theological words and need a pathway.
• 5:08
  ⁓ into the Christian faith and need, need to be listened to and need to have their questions answered. So we're really trying to encourage Christians to, ⁓ reach people in many different places. The other thing I was thinking about is I know quite a few people who have to work on Sunday. And I even know a woman who connected with a Facebook church because she was curious and that was the only thing.
• 5:12
  that was working for her at that specific moment. Over time, she was able to shift her work schedule and join a church in person. But it's so important for us to be trying to share the gospel of Jesus in many different ways, again, beginning with listening to our neighbors and their hopes and concerns and longings.
• 5:16
  Loren Richmond Jr (14:13)
• 5:20
  Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. Dwight, I think one of things that was interesting to me about the book is it's not just sort of a cliche takedown of institutionalism and, you know, the church is dying and we need to write it off. ⁓ Talk to me about why I think I've heard this term from you all or others before, the inherited church model or the institution somewhat, whatever we want to call it, why that still matters, regardless.
• 5:24
  Dwight Zscheile (14:39)
• 5:28
  Yeah, well, so I'd like to think about this in terms of just ⁓ contextualization or incarnation, right? So the body of Christ being culturally embodied in particular moments and, you know, any movement, if it's going to survive intergenerationally, needs to take institutional form to pass its life on through generations. I want to make sure your listeners understand we are not at all anti-institutional or romantically naive about, you know, if we can just recover some primitive
• 5:32
  Pure Jesus Movement, will all be great. The challenge is that institutions are contextualized, they're birthed in and designed for normed around particular cultural moments. And as times change and the culture changes, it's really important that they continue to adapt. And so what we have today, we use the language of inherited church, partly because, know, inheritances are treasures. So the inherited church carries the riches of the tradition.
• 5:36
  And inheritances can also be complicated if you think about them within families and things like that, right? So I often speak to mainline audiences, which are composed of lots of baby boomers, right? And I'll ask them, how many of you have antiques? And like lots of hands will go up and I'll say, how many of your millennial children want your antiques? It's very few hands, right? And it can be kind of that way with church too. We have a lot of forms of institutional church that... ⁓
• 5:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (15:43)
• 5:44
  Yeah.
• 5:48
  Blair Pogue (15:57)
• 5:52
  Yeah.
• 5:56
  Dwight Zscheile (16:05)
• 6:00
  are really kind of antique in many ways. Like they're beautiful and they're not designed for contemporary culture. They're birthed in very different times. I always bend a lot of churches that are perfectly contextualized for the Victorian era, for instance. And so if the church is going to thrive in mission, it's got to do that adaptation. And so the mixed ecology idea says it's not an either, either or. We love inherited churches and that the fact that they're connecting with some people and they're meaningful.
• 6:04
  Loren Richmond Jr (16:20)
• 6:08
  Hmm hmm hmm.
• 6:12
  Dwight Zscheile (16:34)
• 6:16
  There are people who like antiques, right? And again, I wanna talk, I wanna distinguish here the sort of antique in the sense of a particular cultural vernacular, right? The substance of the faith, the traditional faith needs to stay no matter what form of church we have, right? And so it's not about reinventing the theology, it's really about how do we embody it, express it and communicate it so that it's accessible to our neighbors. Our friend Mike Moina says,
• 6:20
  Any time a church decides to meet at a particular time and place with a particular style of worship and language and all that, you're automatically going to exclude all kinds of people. That's just how it works, right? So the idea of a mixed ecology is to say, yes, and we need alongside these traditional inherited churches, lots of other forms of Christian community that are able to translate their life and the treasures of the Christian tradition and the gospel to connect with people today.
• 6:24
  Loren Richmond Jr (17:12)
• 6:28
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 6:32
  young clicking made a point about even in meeting at a certain time and place your even accidentally excluding people to think there is this tendency at least that i've seen in in person in some mainline context to try to be is open and friday for good measure for good reason like they want to be open but i don't know i'm not sure folks always understand that purposeful or not like there's some out of exclusion that's going to be bound to happen
• 6:36
  I'm glad you made that point. Blair, I'm thinking of too... y'all write about this in the book, this tendency within some mainline and progressive Christian circles to gain energy and vitality through political activism. And if I understand the book correctly, y'all, serious, that's not such a... I'm not sure the appropriate word would be... ⁓
• 6:40
  Blair Pogue (18:17)
• 6:44
  Yes. Yes.
• 6:48
  Loren Richmond Jr (18:28)
• 6:52
  Healthy approach, I guess we'll say.
• 6:56
  Blair Pogue (18:30)
• 7:00
  I'm so glad you brought that up. It's very important to me start with Jesus and go from there. So often it's people get excited about something, something is important to them.
• 7:04
  Loren Richmond Jr (18:36)
• 7:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:12
  Blair Pogue (18:44)
• 7:16
  but they don't start with Jesus. And then they start to think it's all up to them. They ignore God's agency. They're not listening, discerning how God might already be involved, say, with a specific population and how they might be called to join up. But one thing I think is, ⁓ in all the Christian traditions I've been in, ⁓
• 7:20
  Loren Richmond Jr (18:49)
• 7:24
  Right.
• 7:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:32
  Blair Pogue (19:13)
• 7:36
  except for really young life inner varsity, discipleship wasn't centered. that's, so I think that's why that is happening and something we're trying to correct for in Minnesota, that Jesus, apprenticing people into ⁓ relationship with him, into his way of life is absolutely critical and learning skills like how do you discern the Holy Spirit's leading? ⁓
• 7:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (19:42)
• 7:44
  Hmm
• 7:48
  Blair Pogue (19:42)
• 7:52
  And a lot of our people don't know how to do that, and it's not their fault. We have done a disservice to them. We have never taught them how to do that. So I think how we're trying to correct for this, ⁓ my bishop keeps saying, let's get past left and right. And what is the third way, the way of Jesus? ⁓
• 7:56
  Loren Richmond Jr (19:45)
• 8:00
  Yeah.
• 8:04
  Yeah.
• 8:08
  Blair Pogue (20:05)
• 8:12
  And we're
• 8:16
  Loren Richmond Jr (20:05)
• 8:20
  Yeah.
• 8:24
  Blair Pogue (20:06)
• 8:28
  trying to apprentice people into simple spiritual practices, get them into scripture, which is something, get them to dwell imaginatively in scripture so they can truly be formed in the image of Christ. yeah, it's really hard right now with the polarization in our country to get people out of that polarized tribal mode.
• 8:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (20:12)
• 8:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:40
  Blair Pogue (20:34)
• 8:44
  and say, know, let's look again at Jesus and what did he say and do and how do we think he might deal with this situation? Let's look at the prophets. So we at least in the main line in the Episcopal Church and I think in many mainline traditions, and again I'm not faulting the people in the pews or even clergy, I was trained to be an academic. I was not trained
• 8:48
  Loren Richmond Jr (20:53)
• 8:52
  Yeah.
• 8:56
  Blair Pogue (21:03)
• 9:00
  to apprentice people into spiritual practices. And I value that academic training. I think it's important. I'm not belittling it, but I didn't really know leaving seminary ⁓ how to do the work that now feels most critical ⁓ to forming Christians, to helping them participate in God's life more fully every day.
• 9:04
  Loren Richmond Jr (21:29)
• 9:08
  I'm thinking of, I was just listening to an episode of, I think it's the Dispatch with Jonah Goldberg, had, and Russell Moore had made a point that I've noticed myself too, this tendency, Dwight, where when faith becomes, or when social activism or political activism becomes like a stand for faith, like Russell Moore made the point that I tried to make myself, like, it quickly becomes obvious, like, hey,
• 9:12
  Sunday morning is really not necessary. So I don't mean to belabor this point, but I think it's a worthwhile point that in that frame of reference that I think Blair is highlighting where it's our agency versus God's agency, like Sunday morning, I believe in that frame of mind just becomes sort of optional and unnecessary overhead.
• 9:16
  Blair Pogue (22:02)
• 9:20
  Hmm.
• 9:24
  Dwight Zscheile (22:19)
• 9:28
  Absolutely. mean, I think, you know, we're all living in a story and those stories shape our lives, give us meaning and purpose and energy. Right. And I think the challenge for the church, I think, see the crisis for the church in the West today is that our story was carried by the society, by the culture for so many generations in the framework of Christendom, that local churches didn't really have to pay that much attention to how do you form a people, a body of believers living an alternative way of life.
• 9:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (22:38)
• 9:36
  Yeah.
• 9:40
  Dwight Zscheile (22:49)
• 9:44
  shaped around the practices of Jesus in community together. And that is now the agenda, right? That every church has to figure out. And so it's no surprise then that some other narratives, whether it be left or right wing political activism, or any number or kind of therapeutic individualism, we're just here to help you feel better about yourself. Like all these other things that are there in the culture can take over, provide us a framework for meaning and purpose and identity.
• 9:48
  but those things are not deeply rooted and they're not actually distinctive from what the broader culture is offering. And so I hear a lot of mainline churches that will sometimes say like, well, we're just so inclusive in their own imagination of what they think that means, or we're just this, we do these good works. And I'm saying, I mean, look, the military is gonna be far better at diversity than most mainline churches, right? know, most corporations are better now, honestly, right?
• 9:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (23:27)
• 9:56
  Yeah.
• 10:00
  Right, right.
• 10:04
  Blair Pogue (23:34)
• 10:08
  Right.
• 10:12
  Loren Richmond Jr (23:36)
• 10:16
  wonderful community.
• 10:20
  Blair Pogue (23:38)
• 10:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:28
  Dwight Zscheile (23:47)
• 10:32
  Like the church is actually really bad at this relative to the biblical vision, the radical biblical vision of truly bringing people together across all cultures, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses into one body of believers, right? So there's a lot of ways in which the rest of the society looks and says, well, why would I need to join that community to have this other good that isn't actually intrinsic to
• 10:36
  to following Jesus in this way, like there are other institutions that are better at doing it. Now, of course, those values of equality and inclusion in the broader society come from Christianity originally, right? That we often forget that. ⁓ And the church, if it's not practicing a way of life together, that is a life characterized by hope, in a time of despair, by togetherness, in a time of isolation.
• 10:40
  by mutual service and unconditional love for one another in a time of such self-centeredness, a time of practice of abundance in a time of scarcity and fear, et cetera, et cetera. If it isn't practicing that way of life that Jesus was about, then it doesn't have much of a hope in a time in which people are generally not joining institutions, voluntary association institutions, generationally as they once did.
• 10:44
  Blair Pogue (24:59)
• 10:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (25:17)
• 10:56
  Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you made the point about the kind of the milk toast religion. I know as of the time of this recording, everybody is watching that Knives Out movie. I never have two and a half hours for my wife and I to watch a movie together, it feels like, but we've been watching a show on Netflix called Ripple, which has some very slight Christian undertones. But I kind of did a palm face, you know, face palm when the pastor gives this sort of really milk toast bland.
• 11:00
  you know, faith is just about humans loving other humans and to what I... I appreciate what you said. You know, that's what I was saying to my wife as much as I enjoyed the show. So this is, think, the hinge point is if Christianity is more than just, you know, a shined up version of our best human intentions of humans loving other humans, like Blair, then what is Christianity? What is the church? What should we be then? What...
• 11:04
  Blair Pogue (25:51)
• 11:08
  Yes.
• 11:12
  Loren Richmond Jr (26:16)
• 11:16
  what y'all suggest the church is aspired to be.
• 11:20
  Blair Pogue (26:19)
• 11:24
  think we should be a radical countercultural ⁓ community focused on Jesus. We are a community that is, I love Craig Van Gelder who said the church should be like a demonstration plot, a sign, witness and foretaste of God's reign ⁓ in deep relationship with neighbors, but in a posture of humble listeners. Again, listening for what God is already up to.
• 11:28
  in the lives of the neighbors of ⁓ the church. And I think if we really lived into that vision of being an eschatological community that is experiencing God's restoration, the human condition, everything Dwight talked about, I also thought about in an age of cancellation, forgiveness, reconciliation, that is powerful. I think that's what people are looking for. And I know we're human.
• 11:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (27:11)
• 11:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:40
  Blair Pogue (27:19)
• 11:44
  ⁓ But ⁓ I just think that that witness will be incredible. And again, ⁓ starting with discipleship ⁓ and whole life discipleship, not just my quiet time in the morning or I go to church on Sunday and I stay for the Bible study afterward, but that... ⁓
• 11:48
  We are, our whole life is impacted and the love of Jesus is shining through us in every place we go. That makes such a difference. And being trustworthy people ⁓ in a time where there is so little trust, I just, see the people that I work with, they inspire me because I see them showing up in hospitals and classrooms and ⁓ banks and.
• 11:52
  courtrooms, as Jesus' followers, and making a profound difference, and people asking them, why are you making, why have you made those tough ethical choices? Why did you respond in that way? So I think just our living the gospel and daily life is critical and helping people, enabling the people in trusted arcure to be able to show up in those ways.
• 11:56
  Loren Richmond Jr (28:38)
• 12:00
  Yeah, I can't help it. I'm rereading again ⁓ Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination, and he doesn't use the word, he uses God's freedom, but I certainly hear, at least if I'm understanding his writings correctly, similar sense of God's agency. And it certainly seems in today's context, we have, speaking, such a tendency to try to control God or ⁓ act on, I think that we're acting on God's behalf rather than God's.
• 12:04
  Blair Pogue (28:49)
• 12:08
  and
• 12:12
  Loren Richmond Jr (29:08)
• 12:16
  act on us, and I think that solves so many of these problems is, like you said, listening, being humble, responding to where we recognize God is already at work. So, let's talk practically speaking then. Dwight, you give some in the book, some practical examples of ways this might be lived out through fresh expressions, new church. ⁓ Talk about some of those real practical ⁓ concepts.
• 12:20
  Dwight Zscheile (29:38)
• 12:24
  Yeah, so the mixed ecology has a variety of components in it. One way to imagine it would be almost like a garden, right? That you have some really tall rooted old oak trees. Maybe those are inherited congregations that have been around for hundreds of years, right? But also some ⁓ plants that are popping up, strawberry runners, or sort of things that are maybe a little more experimental along the way. so in the book, we try to map out those different components.
• 12:28
  And one of them is church plants. church plants are new Christian communities, often ⁓ focused on worship that intend to become congregations. And we need a lot of them. We need way more than we have right now in the West, right? So the things, the questions you get to ask when you're doing a church plant of what should church look like in this place among these people? What language culturally should
• 12:32
  languages should we speak, how do we communicate the gospel? Those creative questions are really, really important to ask, and they're much harder to ask in an inherited congregation, as our listeners I'm sure know, much harder to change in inherited congregation. So we think church plants are really important, and we need lots of them, lots of different versions of them that are contextualized in different ways to reach different people.
• 12:36
  And there's lots of different models for doing that, but I think it's something that is a really important element in the mixed ecology. I'm going to let Blair talk about fresh expressions in a minute, but let me just touch on digital ministry, because that is again, something that just, again, we live in this digital culture now, and so the church needs to be embedded there. I think part of ⁓ the way we think about that is it's best when it's digital ministry has both physical and
• 12:40
  digital dimension, right? So we're incarnational people. I think there's no replacement for actually sharing life together in our bodies, in places. And I know that some people find that have a hard time access, you for health reasons or other, able to be present. So I think it's wonderful that we have digital entry points and options and ways in for church. And there's a lot of creative work going on around that. ⁓ We also think that there's a space for mega churches.
• 12:44
  Loren Richmond Jr (31:40)
• 12:48
  Yeah.
• 12:52
  Dwight Zscheile (32:01)
• 12:56
  and micro churches. So mega churches, know, 2000 or more on a weekend, can, they can, they're continued to be more of them in American culture. They're very different kinds of mega churches, often different from what people often imagine. And a lot of them are doing really powerful and effective ministry. You know, and so I think we think there's a real space for that. And micro churches would be the kind of, you know, other side to that, which is, you know, neighborhood based lay led.
• 13:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (32:19)
• 13:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:08
  Dwight Zscheile (32:29)
• 13:12
  small forms of Christian community, just doing simple things gathered around tables rather than stages. ⁓ And there's a space for that as well. But Blair, would you want to talk about fresh expressions?
• 13:16
  Blair Pogue (32:41)
• 13:20
  Sure, and I just wanted to mention in the megachurches and microchurches, I think they're doing a great job of addressing the core questions people have and the real daily questions, and they've done that often better than the main line. ⁓ So fresh expressions, that's, Loren, largely what I'm working with in the Diocese of Minnesota. And what, again, I think I can't state this enough.
• 13:24
  Loren Richmond Jr (32:52)
• 13:28
  Yeah.
• 13:32
  Yes.
• 13:36
  Blair Pogue (33:10)
• 13:40
  ⁓ The operative theology here is God is already up to something in people's lives. We have to learn what God is up to by listening. And Fresh Expressions involves going to where people live, work, and play, meeting them where they are. ⁓ There is a whole missional journey that we follow. I've got a group of about 30, mostly lay leaders, in a group called Mustard Seed.
• 13:44
  Loren Richmond Jr (33:17)
• 13:48
  Hmm.
• 13:52
  Blair Pogue (33:38)
• 13:56
  And we start with listening. Listening, loving. ⁓ This is long-term work. We're not doing it to manipulate people. more often than not, people start asking questions over time. then ⁓ from there, when there is spiritual curiosity,
• 14:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (33:42)
• 14:04
  Yeah.
• 14:08
  Hmm.
• 14:12
  Blair Pogue (34:04)
• 14:16
  We're learning how to share Jesus and his way of life in accessible ways. That is a learning curve for all of us in the main line, at least, where I live urgently. ⁓ And then sometimes a church even forms. But one thing I want to make sure to say is all of our fresh expressions, or in Minnesota we're calling them new Christian communities, even though they're not all Christian, they're kind of on that pathway.
• 14:20
  Loren Richmond Jr (34:20)
• 14:24
  Yeah.
• 14:28
  Blair Pogue (34:33)
• 14:32
  but they're all connected to an inherited church because the goal is to learn how to share the treasures. There are so many from inherited churches in accessible ways with people outside the institutional church. And then to feed back to the inherited church what we're learning. What are the questions that are coming up? What's the language people are using to talk about God, to talk about faith?
• 14:36
  Loren Richmond Jr (34:42)
• 14:40
  Hmm.
• 14:44
  Blair Pogue (35:02)
• 14:48
  I have to just quickly share this with you because I'm so excited about it. I have a woman in a suburb of ⁓ St. Paul doing something called spiritual practices in nature. And she put it on Meetup and a bunch of people signed up. And one of the people who came said, what is God? And this woman was so excited. She's also a teacher. So she said, my gosh, I have to build scaffolding around God. And I said, what does that mean?
• 14:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (35:05)
• 14:56
  Yeah.
• 15:00
  Wow.
• 15:04
  Blair Pogue (35:32)
• 15:08
  And she said, that's what we say ⁓ as teachers when we have to learn how to explain something. So that was such a great challenge. I think we're going to see more and more of that ⁓ as we become more post-Christian. But again, it's really important to me, it's important to my bishop, that these fresh expressions that can take so many forms from ⁓ you name it, a knitting group that then over time,
• 15:12
  Loren Richmond Jr (35:38)
• 15:16
  Hmm.
• 15:20
  Yeah.
• 15:24
  Blair Pogue (36:01)
• 15:28
  starts to ask important questions where people start to share their lives to biking groups, canoeing groups, photography groups. We always say, do something in a hobby or something you love to do and that connects you with people. And if you just listen to and love them, that is good in and of itself. But it is again amazing how often over time, often a long period of time,
• 15:32
  Loren Richmond Jr (36:15)
• 15:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:40
  Right.
• 15:44
  Blair Pogue (36:31)
• 15:48
  People then start asking spiritual questions when there's enough trust. So we're trying to do this and I'm so inspired by these people I'm working with and they're really, we're learning together. I'm learning with them ⁓ how to do this, but we're trying to get out there and these are people who would largely never come to church. It wouldn't even cross their radar screen to think of coming, but we're trying to meet them where they are.
• 15:52
  Loren Richmond Jr (36:37)
• 15:56
  Yeah.
• 16:00
  Blair Pogue (37:00)
• 16:04
  in something they love to do or Dwight just did a lot of work in Wisconsin with Lutherans and quite a few of the folks he worked with and the lay leaders he worked with ⁓ found communities of people with children with special needs who just couldn't go to church because their kids were autistic and church wasn't working for them. it's really again based in deep listening and love.
• 16:08
  Loren Richmond Jr (37:21)
• 16:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:16
  Blair Pogue (37:27)
• 16:20
  true love of the neighbor, not manipulation.
• 16:24
  Loren Richmond Jr (37:31)
• 16:28
  Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, the thing that's always a struggle here is the unspokenness time is the challenge. We want these quick fixes, and I think something, there's this conversation happening, broadly speaking, especially in evangelical circles of this quiet revival, ⁓ and having just read the Christian Smith book on the, what is it, the obsolete book, like it's going to take time, and Dwight, this leads me to a practical question. When we think about
• 16:32
  Blair Pogue (37:52)
• 16:36
  Yeah, I feel it.
• 16:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (38:00)
• 16:44
  Judicatories and denominations. You all write in the book about things needing to become more networked. Like, I'm thinking like practical questions. How do we balance this understanding that's going to take time? Like, I want to ask you too, like this bugaboo of mine that I'm tired of seeing, like, when do we need to close churches and be like, can we stop giving away the money for the church and save it for new ministry expressions rather than giving it to a nonprofit? That's my thing.
• 16:48
  Blair Pogue (38:29)
• 16:52
  Okay.
• 16:56
  Loren Richmond Jr (38:29)
• 17:00
  I gave you a lot there, so respond to whatever you want to.
• 17:04
  Dwight Zscheile (38:34)
• 17:08
  Sure. So again, within a mixed ecology, ⁓ we have to take the long view, you know, that oak tree took a long time to get planted and to grow. The strawberry runner may be short lived for a season, right? And so part of it, I think, is to have an imagination for. We're going to have lots of different things. Some of them are experimental. ⁓ Our current systems are not designed to support experimentation. They're designed really often for
• 17:12
  to be regulatory agencies or just to kind of manage from the center, that doesn't help so much. Not that we don't need good safeguarding policies, for instance, and things like that. Absolutely we do. But there has to be space that's made. And one of the things that the Church of England has done, I think, pretty well the last two decades is to figure out a bit about how to do that. And so in the Church of England,
• 17:16
  Loren Richmond Jr (39:02)
• 17:20
  Yeah.
• 17:24
  accountability.
• 17:28
  Dwight Zscheile (39:25)
• 17:32
  Their vision for this decade is that one of the elements of it is the mixed ecology is normative. And so they've had to create things like what they call bishops mission orders, which is a kind of category of Christian community that can be a lot of different things, different from a traditional congregation. And it gets the blessing of the bishop and it makes space for it. So we need some new categories, some flexibility with certain policies. We have to have different assumptions around, I think, lay and clergy leadership.
• 17:36
  If we expect all these new communities to be led by professional clergy, they're going to be too expensive. If we expect them to own their own dedicated buildings, they're going to be too expensive. So things like fresh expressions are best typically when they're lay led. ⁓ And, know, by someone who isn't a professional staff person, because, you know, just the business model doesn't work. They can take easily five years to mature. You know, a lot of church planting, particularly in the mainline is okay.
• 17:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (39:59)
• 17:44
  Yeah.
• 17:48
  Yeah.
• 17:52
  Right.
• 17:56
  Dwight Zscheile (40:23)
• 18:00
  put in a professional pastor three years, you've got to have 50 or 75 or 100 people who can pay your salary. And like those expectations aren't realistic for a lot of these kinds of communities. so, you know, think churches, planting churches, ⁓ resource churches where you have like a big group of leaders and they can pour resources in, like that can be great in some places. And you can see mega churches doing multi-site and planting in ways that is working.
• 18:04
  Loren Richmond Jr (40:34)
• 18:08
  No. No.
• 18:12
  Dwight Zscheile (40:53)
• 18:16
  And a lot of the experimental work is going to be on the edges. It needs to be given different kind of permission, not the same expectations, and have a different business model. So part of this is also things like social enterprise, missional businesses, non-stipendary clergy, teams leading things. We need to break open the kind of
• 18:20
  Loren Richmond Jr (41:07)
• 18:24
  Yeah.
• 18:28
  Dwight Zscheile (41:19)
• 18:32
  clericalized Christendom professionalized models of ministry that we have inherited because while they have a place, an important place, they shouldn't be exclusive for the situation we're in. So we talk a lot at Luther Seminary and our team about lay-led clergy-supported ministry rather than clergy-led lay-supported ministry. And I think that's a shift we're seeing in a lot of places as well.
• 18:36
  Loren Richmond Jr (41:46)
• 18:40
  So last question here. What's coming to mind, and I'm curious what y'all think of this, having a group of conservative Baptists, like missionary work was big ethos. there was this understanding that certainly the goal of a missionary was to go play in a church eventually. But there's also some assumptions and understandings, like a missionary going to, again, there were words, like an unchurched or unreached people group. There was this idea that it may take generational efforts. And I'm wondering, like,
• 18:44
  Should we think about some of these fresh expressions efforts rather than thinking that's church, almost more as a missionary?
• 18:48
  Blair Pogue (42:24)
• 18:52
  Yeah, good question. think in a way both and. ⁓ And ⁓ sometimes this becomes, you know, we've seen it in the UK, not so much in this is really pretty new in the US, but sometimes you really get a powerful, small, almost more like a microchurch worshipping community that is ⁓ demonstrating, that is embodying all the different ways you would think of
• 18:56
  as being a church, plus I think it's super important that the smaller communities are connected to a larger structure and also have all the accountability ⁓ Dwight mentioned. ⁓ In fact, I try, I'm working mostly with lay leaders and.
• 19:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (43:05)
• 19:04
  Yeah.
• 19:08
  Blair Pogue (43:12)
• 19:12
  They're all working with Episcopal priests who are on board and who are working with coaching them, who they're checking in with. So there's co-learning going on. But I think that some of the fresh expressions are definitely in the area of what we would have called mission work or maybe even doing that now, part of God's mission. ⁓ But sometimes these communities can become a church on their own. And we're just seeing everything
• 19:16
  under the sun and that's exciting. And I think also with what Dwight was mentioning, what I really love, especially about the lay leaders, is they're embedded in communities already. I hate to admit it, but in 20 years as a priest, I spent way too much time returning emails in my office, in the church, instead of being out and about just listening to neighbors.
• 19:20
  Loren Richmond Jr (44:01)
• 19:24
  Yeah
• 19:28
  Yeah.
• 19:32
  Blair Pogue (44:08)
• 19:36
  I'm horrified by that, but that was a big part of my job. ⁓ And so the lay leaders are out there, they're embedded, but the institution always wants to, even maybe like the mission agencies say, how many people have accepted Christ? And again, this is how many people are coming? This is really long-term slow work, but.
• 19:40
  The fresh expressions, I could spend hours talking about them because they take about every incarnational form you can think of. But again, they're just highly contextual. And so it's neat to see there's a real spectrum from ⁓ just creating trustworthy relationships, listening, ⁓ walking with neighbors, being involved with them, to actually becoming a small.
• 19:44
  church that is ideally connected to a larger institution or a larger church.
• 19:48
  Loren Richmond Jr (45:10)
• 19:52
  Yeah. I know I said last question, Dwight, I've got to ask you this, because I'm thinking of a book that I just read, and my co-host Martha Tatarnic had him on William Harrison. William Harrison had a chapter in his book where he talked about the necessity of closing churches. I mean, this is like a bugaboo, certainly in some context, something I'll be honest, like I hate to see a church close.
• 19:56
  Blair Pogue (45:32)
• 20:00
  Hmm.
• 20:04
  Loren Richmond Jr (45:34)
• 20:08
  What do you think?
• 20:12
  Dwight Zscheile (45:36)
• 20:16
  Yeah, well, so, you know, the church is an organic phenomenon. It's an organic entity and every local church has a life cycle, right? I mean, if you go and try to find the churches named in the New Testament today, you're to have a hard time, right? So, this is a normal, I think it's a normal part of Christian history that churches, local churches, any particular local expression of church will have a life cycle. And when churches kind of get to the end of their life cycle, which in the case of the main line is actually
• 20:20
  Loren Richmond Jr (45:48)
• 20:24
  the
• 20:28
  Blair Pogue (45:48)
• 20:32
  Yeah, it's so true. Yeah.
• 20:36
  Dwight Zscheile (46:06)
• 20:40
  there's a lot of congregations that are at the end of their life cycle right now. I mean, if you just do the math and look who's there. So they either can be their historic legacy, their assets, their building can be ⁓ replanted or re-imagined with permission from the people who are there or in different ways. And they can re-textualize and have a new life or those assets.
• 20:44
  Loren Richmond Jr (46:09)
• 20:48
  Yeah.
• 20:52
  Dwight Zscheile (46:32)
• 20:56
  should be repurposed for some other form of Christian community. think generally I see a lot of ⁓ resources actually being kind of drained away and ⁓ just to keep open something that's already kind of zombie, honestly, that's it's pretty dead, you know, in its current form. And ⁓ I think when we have communities of disciples following Jesus who are, you know, depending upon the Spirit's leadership and practicing Jesus's way,
• 21:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (46:42)
• 21:04
  Yeah.
• 21:08
  Dwight Zscheile (47:01)
• 21:12
  right, as the main thing, right, that we're about. It's much easier to say, look, hey, we've got 12 people. This is a house church. It's not, doesn't need a building and a pastor, right? So let's move it, you know, into a house or let's move it into a cafe or a community center or something like that. And then is there an immigrant congregation or some new, generational, you know, ⁓ youth-focused ministry that could use that historic building or, ⁓
• 21:16
  Loren Richmond Jr (47:17)
• 21:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:24
  Blair Pogue (47:28)
• 21:28
  and
• 21:32
  Dwight Zscheile (47:30)
• 21:36
  you know, how might it just be repurposed? And I think we need to be much bolder about that, honestly, than most mostly what I see. I think a lot of leaders in the systems, bishops and others are have a real pastoral heart and really want to care for people and, you know, ⁓ and don't want to kind of rock the boat. And I don't blame them for that. And there's a lot of, you know, kingdom resources that we're stewarding, I think, sometimes in ways that aren't particularly faithful, given the opportunity we have.
• 21:40
  Loren Richmond Jr (47:50)
• 21:44
  Yeah.
• 21:48
  Dwight Zscheile (48:00)
• 21:52
  to redeploy them, to reimagine and to recreate in all kinds of ways. so, my friend Michael Binder, he says it's always easier ⁓ in a hospital when the, to deal with the kind of hospice wing when the maternity wing is full ⁓ of new births, right? But all we have is sort of these deaths, it's harder. So to think about how do these resources funnel into the planting of new communities and.
• 21:56
  And to have the elders in those congregations to be say, like, do that with our blessing. You know, we have a heritage to give away. We don't want it to end with us. Like, that's my prayer for those communities. And my fear is that so many of them aren't actually shaped around discipleship to the point that they're able to have the spiritual freedom to do that.
• 22:00
  Loren Richmond Jr (48:34)
• 22:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:08
  Yeah. Well, thank you so much both for your time. I chose to ask that question rather than lead into our closing questions because I really wanted to get your thoughts on that. Before we do close though, share if you would just how folks can connect with you, how they can get a copy of the book, all that stuff.
• 22:12
  Dwight Zscheile (49:09)
• 22:16
  Absolutely. So I have a personal website. It's just DwightShiley.com, D-W-I-G-H-T-Z-S-C-H-E-I-L-E.com. And that has information about ⁓ all my books and there's a contact form and things like that. And I love to hear from people.
• 22:20
  Blair Pogue (49:28)
• 22:24
  Great, and if you're interested in working with fresh expressions and specifically learning communities, running them, ⁓ how to set them up, you could reach me at blair.p at episcopalmn.org at the Diocese of Minnesota.
• 22:28
  Dwight Zscheile (49:46)
• 22:32
  And the book is, again, embracing the mixed ecology and it can be found, it's published by Seabury Books, can be found ⁓ on the church publishing website or Amazon or anywhere else books are sold.
• 22:36
  Loren Richmond Jr (49:59)
• 22:40
  Yeah, well again, thank you so much for time. Really appreciate the conversation and we'll easily folks with a word of peace. So may God's peace be with you.
• 22:44
  Blair Pogue (50:06)
• 22:48
  Thank you.
• 22:52
  Dwight Zscheile (50:07)
• 22:56
  Amen. Thanks.