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Jason Byassee on Whether There is a Formula for Mainline Success · Future Christian

0:07
Welcome to the Future Christian podcast.
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I am your guest host today, Martha Tatarnik.
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And today I have with me Jason Biasy, who lives and serves just up the highway from
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me in Toronto, Ontario.
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Thanks for being on the podcast, Jason.
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Thanks.
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What else would you like to share about yourself and kind of your story and a few,
0:34
and a few...
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broad brush strokes.
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Sure.
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Well, I had a kind of evangelical conversion experience to Christ at a
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Baptist camp.
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It's something that I advise people both have and grow out of.
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They were willing to actually say the J word with me and tell me what they thought
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about Jesus.
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And then I realized I couldn't handle the politics and they were nuts.
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So I've tried ever since to kind of keep the Jesus bit and the strengths of
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evangelicalism.
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while trying to kind of back out of the parts that I see is not just wrong, but
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dehumanizing.
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And it's the same with my life in Mainland Christianity.
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I think they're treasures and glories that we have.
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And then there are also things that are not just wrong, but dehumanizing.
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So there we are.
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Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that.
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I think that's a really, you're in good company in the listenership of future
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Christian and someone who has been thoroughly raised in the mainline
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tradition.
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I take a lot from that evangelical witness to keep Jesus at the center.
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So yeah, it's a good balance to keep in mind.
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He's kind of the only thing we got going for us, right?
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So like all the other stuff is negotiable.
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He's at the center and he's luckily he's all we need.
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Yeah, yeah, totally.
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So I think that you're maybe kind of getting at these next two questions a
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little bit in that introductory word, but what do you think it has meant to be a
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Christian in the past and how is that maybe different from what it means to be a
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Christian today?
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Yeah.
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So where I studied Duke Divinity School, one of our rival schools says, Duke is the
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place where Evan...
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So there's uncomfortable, awkward accuracy in that.
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The Dean of Duke Divinity School in the 60s went to Vatican II and came back and
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was like, oh, dang, y 'all Catholics are Christians.
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This changes everything.
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And there was a similar process here in Canada too, of course.
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So former Dean of Emanuel College at the University of Toronto told me, look, I was
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basically trained to be a Catholic priest, to trust in the power of the sacraments,
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to trust the tradition.
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Now we wanted to open the priesthood.
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advanced rights for gay people, but basically the form of the ministry was a
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priesthood, right?
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And that'll be even more agreeable to your fellow Anglicans, Martha.
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But there is something we've lost there.
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I think we both have to keep our evangelical identity while we embrace
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Catholicity, that there's something in the tentative quality of the both and that's
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particularly compelling.
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Because, I mean, like the rival school to Duke implies, like if
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you could just go be Catholic.
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Like they're taking people, right?
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So like what piece of the Christian tradition do we have that's our charism
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that we're bringing that would be lost if we just join the rest of the Roman
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Catholic Church, which is a fine thing to do.
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There's nothing wrong with it.
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But if you're not called to that, okay, what are you fronting?
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Yeah, I mean, if you're not called to that or you're not included in that, there are
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lots of us.
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Yeah.
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list of invitees as a male wannabe priest, although being married would be a bit of
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challenge, I suppose.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, here's to the both and rather than the either or.
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I think that if it's an either or proposition, we're probably all in
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trouble.
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So.
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know that the best part of Anglicanism is the conjunctive quality, the both and
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right.
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I mean, if I may, the worst part of Anglicanism is if you're trying to be in
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the middle, often you kind of end up being neither thing.
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So I find a special amounts of hope in the kind of extreme forms of Anglicanism, the
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kinds that are
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There's not a lot of that because like people who started the Church of England
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were worried that like if you're on the wrong side of history, you lose a
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significant body part.
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So y 'all kind of chilled out.
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Yeah, you want that one.
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I mean, really, if you're choosing, you want to keep that one.
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So, but I think.
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Yeah, yeah, and probably the places where we need to pay attention.
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It's good.
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Is there a spiritual practice that is particularly helpful, meaningful to you
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right now at this juncture in life?
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and helpful to me.
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I've made a practice of going to Trappist monasteries and then bringing lay people
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with me.
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And I find that magical.
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I love that the Book of Common Prayer is basically trying to make monastic practice
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something that the rest of the church all engages in.
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The problem is it just doesn't seem to work.
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So trying to find a way of prayer that's communal, that's disciplined, that's
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It's also.
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That still seems to be the prize to me and the Book of Common Prayer seems to be the
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best effort to make it happen.
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I just haven't really seen it work.
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Yeah, what do you mean by you haven't seen it work?
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I mean, so there are Anglican communities that gather for morning and evening
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prayer, right?
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Just like there are throughout Catholic Christianity writ large.
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When I've tried to gather people regularly for things like morning and evening prayer
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in the Methodist and now United Church settings, I meant it hasn't really taken.
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Right, yeah, okay, I see what you mean.
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It does seem to be sort of a charism of particular churches that they're able to
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get that gathering momentum.
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I mean, I think a lot of communities practice that piece around the daily
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office, but in a more solitary way, you know, part of it.
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undo it to me, you know, I mean, Phyllis tickles amazing talking about sneaking off
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to the washroom, you know, for each of the seven hours to the point where her friends
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realized either you have the most regular bladder in history, or you're going to
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pray with the monks.
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But the whole point is that it's communal, right, that you're in the same physical
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space.
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So you can do it at a distance, but something is lost.
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Yeah, something is lost.
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Also, you know, as we say in the Anglican Church, like you are never praying in the
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office alone, even if you're by yourself.
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and saints.
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That's right.
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And, uh, and other prayers around.
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Yeah, good.
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Okay, so our main topic today is definitely one that sparks a lot of
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interest in my circle of friends and colleagues, and that is about how you grow
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a mainline or a traditionalist church.
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And I've been thinking about that word grow because I don't think that that's
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actually the most accurate word for what we're going to be talking about today.
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I think I might want to
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us sub in either the word like thriving or healthy or flourishing.
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I think the piece around numerical growth can be a part of it and certainly one that
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most of us really desire.
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But I think what you're going to help us explore today is more around health and
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flourishing.
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Is that fair?
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Yeah, I mean, the nomenclature is contentious for a reason, right?
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I am committed to the claim.
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unhealthy things grow too, right?
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I mean tumors grow, schisms grow, dysfunctions grow.
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So not everything growing is healthy.
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But, you know, I think if you're someone who believes in Jesus and thinks he's good
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news for your neighbor, then you want to see more people get to know him.
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And that's going to mean new relationships in the body of Christ.
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So that's a kind of growth.
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And yeah.
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So many qualifications abound, I agree.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, and we're also going to have a part of our conversation around death and
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decline too.
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And I've heard you kind of gather that into the picture of health and life in
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Jesus.
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So yeah, we're going to unpack all of these different parts of this topic.
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OK, so let's start off, Jason, with...
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how you understand and describe the church because I think that's an important
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starting point.
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And certainly when I've heard you talk, I would say that you have a pretty high
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ecclesiology about the church and what it reflects about God.
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So over to you.
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So I think of the church as Jesus and all his weird friends.
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I wouldn't have any interest in the church if it wasn't for the church's heart, which
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is Jesus of Nazareth.
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And I really do have a high ecclesiology in the sense of, I mean, if you take the
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metaphor of the body of Christ, it's kind of a shocking metaphor.
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And Paul seems to take it so seriously, it's almost...
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non -metaphorical for him.
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That were kind of the liver, spleen, eyelashes, toenails, ribs, fleshy beating
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heart of the Jew from Nazareth, Mary's child.
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Someone noticed about me when I guest preach, which I do in a lot of different
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traditions, I almost always start with, here's why your church is so great.
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Mennonites, you're into peace.
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Anglicans, you're into sacraments.
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Catholics, you got Big Frank.
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evangelicals, you're zealous, like these are all gifts that God has given.
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And then God hasn't given all the gifts to any one of us, right?
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They seem to be scattered so that we kind of end up needing one another.
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I just see Jesus risen and reigning in all of these places where we don't necessarily
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call one another sister and brother yet.
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So there is something to the early 20th century ecumenical vision of the church
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that I still think is radical and interesting, and that my United Church of
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Canada was born.
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It just doesn't seem to have a very sharp edge anymore in our day, right?
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And it almost feels like yesteryear's project that's kind of failed.
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So I'll stop with this.
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GK Chesterton has this thing where he says, we would all agree that St.
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Francis is like Jesus.
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That seems easy enough.
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Is the reverse also true?
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Is Jesus like St.
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Francis?
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In other words, can you learn things about Jesus you wouldn't have known without the
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witness of St.
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Francis?
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And Chesterton wants to say, yeah.
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There's more to be learned about Jesus from this medieval Italian.
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I think that's correct that learning about God's weird friends, the saints,
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especially maybe those saints we don't recognize as such, is a way of learning
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about the God fleshed in Jesus and Nazareth.
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Yeah, I mean, that sounds really accurate to me, and I would certainly say that that
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is borne out in scripture as well.
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Like, it would be pretty hard to understand the story of Jesus without the
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characters that surround him, the weird f -
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We learn a lot about Jesus through Mary Magdalene and Mary of Nazareth and Peter
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and Thomas and, you know, sort of all of the people that don't get named.
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And there are crazy stories, too.
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wouldn't have these scriptures without them.
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Thank you.
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Yeah, a friend of mine visited the church I serve, Timothy Eaton Memorial, which is,
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beautiful building in Midtown Toronto.
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And she said, I was surprised.
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It seemed like there were needy people there.
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What do you mean?
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And she said, well, people who seem to sleep outside and people who seemed not to
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have all their act together financially.
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I thought this was a great compliment.
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She paid them.
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So I'm not sure where else in our culture is someone who doesn't know where they're
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gonna sleep and someone who has plenty of money sit beside each other and become
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friends.
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And I think our culture wants that.
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We just don't really know how to do it.
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And I don't know that the church knows how to do it.
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It's just that the Holy Spirit is always drawing all these surprising relationships
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where you wouldn't expect.
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I'm struck too that...
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Maybe the greatest miracle in the church in the last half millennium is the African
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-American church in the United States, that a religion that was used to impose
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and maintain slavery, segregation, and violence.
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African -American people said, okay, we don't like this white Christianity, but
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this Jesus, this one who was bruised for our transgressions, crushed for our
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iniquities, he's on our side.
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The heart of this story is someone who suffers and the heart of this story is a
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God who frees slaves in the Exodus.
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So y 'all are doing it wrong, but we're going to do it right.
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And I'm struck.
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I can't bring up an example from the African -American church where my people
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in Toronto don't lean in and say, yeah, there's something true about that.
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I want that.
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Age, I can't think of where people who are a hundred and people who are one sit down
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together and make their life together when they don't have the same last name.
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So I really am committed to, I mean, I think that church is a miracle.
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It's got all these horrible flaws that we see very quickly, those of us who are on
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the payroll, right?
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But then I just think we have to constantly say, yeah, and look at all this
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river of grace born to us through this flawed institution.
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That's lovely.
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like a bit unsettling.
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You know, you say that we kind of want this diversity and don't know how to get
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it.
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But I think in lots of ways, we're also sort of trained not to want it.
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Like we are we are trained to sort of edit out people and voices and opinions that
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don't.
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with our own and there is something grace -filled and totally unsettling about like
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we don't get to pick who's part of this thing like we're just stuck with each
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other.
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No.
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I mean, Nadia Bolz Weber says, like, I get why we want to be done with church because
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other people are disappointing.
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But then you realize, oh, wait, I'm the disappointing one and these others are
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sticking by me.
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So there's something about our constant failing one another that seems intrinsic
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to church life, right?
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, the flaws are kind of the point in some ways.
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So the way that we connected for our listeners, I'll just share that Jason was
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recently a speaker at Con Ed clergy day that I attended.
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And, you know, tough crowd, you get a group of
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clerics together of the same denomination for a mandatory con ed day and there can
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be quite a lot of grumpiness and cynicism that runs rampant.
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Yeah, totally.
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Yeah, we're in trouble.
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But you know, you really manage to capture the crowd and
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He sort of opened by talking about there not being a book, a manual on how to grow
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a traditionalist church.
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I would say that that would be a book that many of us would love if there were just
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kind of a ABCD manual of how you do this thing, like most of us, I think, would
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sign up for that.
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There isn't one.
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And you also kind of named a lot of the inadequacy that I think that those are the
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best serving in the traditionalist mainline church often feel, especially
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when we compare ourselves to like the mega church down the road that is equipped with
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all of the bells and whistles of modern ministry.
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So, you know, I think that you were reading the room well in terms of knowing
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who you were speaking to.
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People, people.
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related to that.
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Then you also shared a story about speaking to a pastor or mentor of yours
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who is in a thriving, traditionalist church, and you wondered with him whether
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there might be some takeaways that could be put into a book and shared.
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He pretty quickly dismissed that suggestion, saying,
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Right.
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But I understand you have a background in journalism and and your journalistic radar
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was on and you have been doing some research into whether there aren't in fact
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some takeaways that can be offered from your friend or from others who are leading
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flourishing churches.
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So...
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Yeah.
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Wow, Martha, you're a terrifyingly good listener.
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You just summarized all the good points I had in three hours in about 30 minutes.
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So bless you.
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Yeah, I mean, there's no formula because every place is unique and nothing can be
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kind of dropped one size fits all into a neighborhood where it doesn't fit.
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So I think this is why horticultural metaphors still have a kind of purchase,
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right?
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Like what people talk about planting, people talk about gardening.
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I don't, I, I,
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you can look at my hands, I am no good at this.
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I have no ability to actually dig in the dirt and make things live.
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I think it's a miracle.
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But people who do will talk about specific soil and what can grow there and what
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can't specific shade, specific weather.
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And, you know, if you don't know how to read those things, you're not doing it
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right.
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And actually, we all depend on someone doing it right to eat.
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We don't notice it because we're far enough down the food chain, right?
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So,
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So I guess you remind me for some reason as you tell the story of a story that I
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didn't tell that day to y 'all.
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A friend of mine took over a historic African -American church and the
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neighborhood had changed.
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So we hear this story a lot with white historic churches that a downtown core has
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changed.
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I don't hear it as often with African -American churches.
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So it had changed into a largely Latino neighborhood and suddenly had African
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-American church that was saying like, how do we learn how to talk to our Spanish
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speaking migrant neighbors?
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and not just become a drop -in church the way white people often do, right?
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That's an interesting question, I think.
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And it's almost enough to make you think, all right, maybe this is something that
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the church always experiences.
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One group of people starts a church, and then the people change, and then the
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church has to say, okay, the people who started us aren't here anymore, somebody
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else is here, what do we do now?
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So St.
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Cecilia's, the Irish Catholic Church,
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parish in my neighborhood here in the west side of Toronto is now a largely
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Vietnamese parish.
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That took some skill to say, okay, the soil has changed.
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What will grow here now?
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And it's not going to be Irish nuns who are going to make it happen.
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So I guess I'm increasingly convinced it's not that this is a unique circumstance
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that the people who planted this church have moved on and now there are other
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people.
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It may just be that that's what
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church leadership is, that that's always taking place.
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And you and I just need to be better gardeners.
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Yeah, I mean that definitely speaks to just the translation of the faith across
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generations as well, let alone across cultures or racial contexts or whatever.
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I think that's really good.
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if you're the Irish Catholics and you're like, yeah, we don't like Vietnamese
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people, we don't want them here.
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All right, cool.
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Then your building should be condos.
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Let's let's let's just like have that happen.
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And yet.
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So I tell this story a lot that Andrew Walls tells the great Scottish
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Missyologist who just died a few years ago in his hometown in Glasgow.
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He said there were four.
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historic cathedral churches in the main square.
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Three of them are now nightclubs.
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And he says, I got to tell you, a medieval cathedral makes a beautiful nightclub.
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He said, the fourth is an African immigrant church that's booming and that's
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asking itself questions like, how do we reach these lonely old white people?
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I just think that's how the Holy Spirit works.
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Yeah, that's beautiful.
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So we've got to be better gardeners.
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We've got to be attentive to the soil, the changing of the soil.
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I think that...
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that you did grab my colleague's attention by kind of naming the topic, again, a
23:07
topic that we all would love a formula for, but also gaining some credibility by
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making it clear that you weren't going to just try to sell us sort of one more magic
23:19
bullet that would like, if you do this, then everything will be fine.
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What has been the scope of your work?
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Yeah, so I really am a storyteller.
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There are really good sociology and data -driven studies about what grows in
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different places.
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It's just not how I'm trained.
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I'm trained to go around, find interesting stories, and tell them.
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And so I like to refer people on to someone who does proper numbers, because
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such people exist.
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They're just not me.
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So one of the things I do talk about though is fronting your weird, not being
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afraid of your weird.
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So this often works well in Anglican settings, because often Anglicans will
24:05
have a contingent in your midst who are Anglo -Catholic.
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And there's nothing weirder than chanting stuff, incense, sacraments, parading
24:15
around neighborhoods, carrying these things.
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Like what?
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Like in a kind of not religious age, seeing these things is befuddling.
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And...
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There was a day when Monty Python and the Holy Grail could make fun of such things
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and people knew what they were talking about.
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That was the early seventies.
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People don't know what they're talking about now because they don't see monks and
24:37
nuns.
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They don't see priests.
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They don't see people parading around neighborhoods doing religious things.
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It's, if anything, so foreign, they don't know how to make fun of it anymore.
24:46
Right?
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So, and I think Anglican Catholics are right to say God in this bread, God saving
24:53
through this water.
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That's magic.
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And our world is starving for magic, right?
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This is what you see in the Harry Potter phenomenon, right?
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Like we want the world to be alive.
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And I mean, as the poet says, the world is charged with the grandeur of God.
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So I think it would be a mistake to take an Anglo Catholic setting and say, okay,
25:12
what we need is guitars and praise courses.
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No, no, no, let them be their weird, cool selves.
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They're holding onto one of the treasures that Jesus entrusts the whole church with,
25:20
and they need to front that and not pretend there's something else.
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So in the whole ecosystem of churches, it would be a catastrophe if we all tried to
25:28
be the same.
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We don't have to do that.
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There are plenty of other churches doing guitars and praise choruses.
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We can do this weird thing and see what happens with that.
25:37
Yeah, so embracing your weird, embracing your uniqueness, embracing your, your
25:44
context, your history, I guess, the the pieces of the tradition that have been
25:52
passed along to you being good stewards of that.
25:55
Is there an element of the weird that is about being countercultural?
25:58
Is there an element that is about resisting something about the current
26:03
cultural context?
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there is.
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I mean, someone said about community that people you can't this is an audio podcast,
26:10
you can't see my hands that but I got one hand that's holding up like a stop sign
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and another hand that's holding up like a come hither sign.
26:16
Like we're all like that with community, we both want it.
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And we don't like we would like community with people who we like, who don't ask
26:24
anything of us.
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I do think there's a deep desire for God.
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And there's also a kind of deep suspicion of God and especially God's weird friends.
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that I share, you share, right?
26:36
Like we are all a product of our age and that it's just you and I have happened to
26:39
got to have gotten a glimpse of church where we say, that's the thing, that's
26:42
life -giving.
26:43
I want that.
26:44
I want to share it with others.
26:45
So I think the right thing to do is to share that version of faith with others.
26:54
In other words, whatever it was that brought us to the place that says this is
26:58
worth spending your life for, don't hold that back.
27:03
So I mentioned before taking lay people to monasteries.
27:06
There was a moment where I didn't want to do this.
27:10
It was like I was afraid they were going to ruin it for me.
27:13
Like that's my place.
27:14
That's where I meet with Jesus.
27:15
Plus they'll think it's weird and probably fire me.
27:18
And then I finally thought, well, that's dumb.
27:20
Like I finding life there, let's bring them along and maybe they'll find life
27:24
there too.
27:24
And then we can discuss the problem together of how do we share this life more
27:27
broadly?
27:28
And that's what happened.
27:30
So taking...
27:31
lay people from North Carolina Methodist churches to this Trappist monastery,
27:35
they'd come back and be like, wow, that's the coolest thing I've ever done.
27:38
Why can't every Tuesday be like that?
27:40
That's an appropriate question.
27:42
I don't know why we can't, but let's work on it together.
27:48
Absolutely.
27:50
Yeah, I mean, I think that there are so many elements of what you have named kind
27:57
of around prayer and the gathering of community across fault lines and the
28:04
sacramentality and the embodiment of community that like literally where else
28:11
can you get that in our world today?
28:15
So like lean into that, like.
28:17
mean...
28:18
try to make it all just so accessible that you...
28:25
Yeah, let it be in this sort of big, mysterious, unexplainable, odd, difficult.
28:36
I mean, they're all at least quasi church institutions out there now, right?
28:40
Like I see people jogging when I'm driving to church and they're wearing hundreds of
28:45
dollars worth of jogging gear and clearly running shops have figured out.
28:48
If you get people in a community, they'll do something hard together.
28:51
Like that's just church.
28:53
without the God bit, right?
28:55
Like we have the advantage of being church with the God bit, which is actually the
28:58
only interesting thing.
29:00
So in some ways in the mainline church, we've made this mistake.
29:03
We've kind of said, don't talk about God too much.
29:05
Don't talk about Jesus.
29:06
Don't talk about the Holy, don't talk about sin.
29:09
Like we want to lower the bar of what people actually have to believe and then
29:13
like forklift them over it and say, Hey, you're already Christian.
29:16
You just didn't know it.
29:17
Like that's a failed strategy.
29:20
We've tried it for a few generations.
29:21
It doesn't work.
29:23
Instead, we should raise the bar, right?
29:26
Like, do I have to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary?
29:30
Yeah, you should.
29:30
Here's why it's amazing, right?
29:32
I mean, it's the kind of antithesis of the Boltman strategy of trying to drain all
29:37
the supernatural out.
29:38
I actually think people want something bigger than they can understand or trust.
29:43
Yeah, yeah.
29:45
thing about this is I take this from Ken Hood, and he takes it from a preaching
29:49
professor at Princeton Seminary who says, interested people are interesting.
29:54
Interested people are interesting.
29:57
So I sat under a preacher for a while who loved talking about flying this plane that
30:02
he'd learned how to fly.
30:04
And he'd go on to talk about flying for about 15 minutes.
30:06
And then he'd be like, all right, I guess it's time to say something about this
30:08
Bible passage because we're almost out of time.
30:10
He'd be like, yo, dude.
30:12
Time for a new job.
30:14
Like you and I as preachers have to stay interested in Jesus, in the new creation
30:19
he's bringing, in the sharp counter -cultural difficult witness to that, that
30:25
scripture is, is it great against our sensibilities.
30:28
That's the only thing worth being interested in.
30:31
They will notice what interests us.
30:34
They will not necessarily be interested in what interests us, but we have to, when
30:38
they notice what interests us, we have to make sure it's...
30:42
Jesus and the world of resurrection he's birthing, right?
30:46
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
30:48
The stories of the people in front of us and their witness, I mean, that's, you
30:54
want to keep lifting that up.
30:56
Yeah.
30:57
It is amazing what God is doing in the lives of the people listening to us and
31:03
lifting up that story from each of them is crucial or handing them the microphone so
31:08
they can tell it.
31:10
Yeah, totally.
31:11
Absolutely.
31:13
So we said at the beginning of this part of our conversation that we were
31:19
qualifying that word growth and that there's a lot of nuance to that word.
31:26
You talked about healthy things growing.
31:30
But you've also talked about what is good and healthy about living in a time of
31:38
institutional
31:39
religious decline.
31:41
You've talked about the importance of death in the church.
31:45
So let's get real here.
31:49
Let's talk about death decline.
31:51
so one of the ways I like to put this is I worry about churches that feel like we got
31:57
the future figured out.
31:58
We got a plan.
32:00
We know how we're going to grow from strength to strength.
32:03
We really don't even need Jesus because we got everything figured out.
32:06
We got plenty of money and people.
32:09
Though those are clearly already atheist institutions, right?
32:12
Whereas institutions that are like, yeah, we got no future, none that we can see.
32:17
The only future we got is the other side of a stone that's been rolled in front of
32:22
a tomb.
32:23
Um, cause I think good, that's exactly where the God of Jesus wants you is where
32:28
you have no hope other than the resurrection from the dead.
32:31
Um, now I think that's true.
32:34
What does that mean?
32:35
And sort of point of fact in lots of denominations in places like where you and
32:40
I live, where real estate is like the gold mine.
32:46
the Holy Grail, the Golden Calf, whatever.
32:49
What it means is, okay, good, churches close and so then you can pulp them for
32:52
dollars to keep the denominational machine rolling, right?
32:56
I think what it has to mean instead is something like what the Bishop of London
33:00
did, which is, yeah, I'm not selling any more empty churches.
33:03
I'm gonna give them to somebody who knows how to fill them.
33:07
Now in his case, that meant lots of people from Holy Trinity Brompton who knew how to
33:10
replant churches.
33:12
I think it can also mean giving them to somebody who knows how to fill them from
33:15
another denomination, right?
33:17
From a church whose work you respect, but whose ethos is different from yours.
33:20
Now, that's hard because you're talking about giving away one of your prime
33:23
assets, right?
33:26
But Jesus has plenty of hard things to say about wealth and poverty and what all of
33:31
them mean.
33:32
So a teacher that my wife and I both had, he told this story to her.
33:37
She was complaining about...
33:39
the church he was serving, which I'm sure you would never do Martha, but you know,
33:43
some of us mere mortals do this.
33:45
I do plenty of it.
33:47
And, and he stopped her and said, look, there's only one thing that will help some
33:50
churches.
33:51
That's one blessed trip to glory land at a time.
33:55
Yeah.
33:56
I mean, death can mean new life.
33:58
And weirdly, I've done a fair number of funerals where people have gotten involved
34:01
with our church afterwards.
34:03
Like,
34:04
In a moment where people think what they want for their funeral is funny stories
34:09
and drinks and golf or whatever, like just another consumer opportunity.
34:14
Actually, the church has the heavy lifting to be able to say, here's what this life
34:19
means.
34:20
Here's what we learned from God through this life that we wouldn't have known
34:24
about God without this life.
34:26
Because that's kind of the only thing that matters, right?
34:30
And when people hear something from us that's like, oh, that's actually worth
34:34
saying.
34:35
They'll give us a listen.
34:37
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
34:40
I mean, I think the bottom line about sort of all of those points that you've just
34:46
made is that, like, surely as Christians, we don't have to fear death, right?
34:53
Like, surely as Christians, we don't have to fear living in a time of something
35:02
dying.
35:04
We...
35:05
this.
35:05
Yeah, like a lot, a lot of a lot of stuff to say about this.
35:11
And
35:12
a time of death might mean you and I don't have the pension plan we once thought, but
35:16
Jesus never promised us that, did he?
35:18
Yeah, well, and I think we're both of an age where like, we got into this with eyes
35:25
wide open about like what was and wasn't on the table.
35:30
Certainly nobody ever promised me a lifelong full time career with a gold
35:36
plated pension at the end of this.
35:38
Well, and in truth, right, like you and I are in the same position most jobs are in
35:43
now, right?
35:44
Like, I mean, there was a day sort of a post -war, middle -class dream of that
35:54
being guaranteed for all kinds of positions where it's not anymore.
35:58
So we're in the same boat with lots of our colleagues that way.
36:01
Oh, absolutely.
36:02
I mean, I was at a bridge tournament at the beginning of the new year and got into
36:09
a conversation with an editor for the Toronto Star.
36:12
And I mean, bridge tournaments and editors of paper newspapers are like both of a of
36:20
a different sort of era.
36:22
Right.
36:22
And, you know, the way that he was describing the challenges of his job were
36:27
just all too familiar in terms of.
36:30
similarity with print newspaper in our work because as someone wise said, can you
36:37
even have a city without a newspaper?
36:40
Like what actually holds a city together?
36:43
And like, can you have one without a newspaper that has that city name in the
36:48
title?
36:49
Like it's not clear to me.
36:51
Right, but this is the horizon that is unfolding.
36:57
Yeah.
36:57
So you know that famous thing that is usually attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr,
37:02
that the job of preaching is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the
37:05
comfortable.
37:07
That didn't come from Reinhold Niebuhr, that came from a newspaper editor named
37:10
Peter Finley Dunn in the kind of age of muck -racking journalism in the late 19th
37:15
century.
37:16
He said, that's what newspapers are for.
37:17
So I actually think you could pretty carefully chart the rise and fall of
37:21
mainline churches and print newspapers.
37:24
Someone needs to write that book anyway.
37:26
Yeah, no kidding.
37:29
And I had no idea that was where that quotation came from.
37:35
Amazing.
37:36
Now the problem with it is of course, ain't no Jesus in it.
37:40
So that's just the bit I want to add is like comfort the afflicted and afflict the
37:43
comfortable with the risen Jew from Nazareth.
37:46
But you know, Niebuhr is doing fine on his own.
37:48
He requires no supplementation from me.
37:51
Okay, noted.
37:55
Alright, so another piece that you talked about alongside of embracing the weird,
38:02
embracing your weird, is you talked about like, leaning into this idea that your
38:10
church has what people around you are desperate for.
38:15
And,
38:16
And part of that, I felt was like, you kind of use some examples that were almost
38:23
like manifesting, like, like, let's preach as if this these kinds of people were here
38:29
and see what happens.
38:30
Let's let's build a nursery and equip it and see what happens.
38:35
Like there was some of that manifestation piece.
38:40
But I also felt like there was a broader piece just around.
38:46
like knowing that that gathered community across all of those fault lines is what
38:54
people are desperate for, that Jesus is what people are desperate for.
38:58
Like, how would you sort of unpack that piece?
39:02
language from my mentor, James Howell, who got sent to what he called the ugliest
39:08
church building in Charlotte, North Carolina, the fastest declining church in
39:12
Charlotte, North Carolina.
39:13
And he started preaching that line everywhere.
39:16
We have what people are desperate for.
39:18
And you're right, some of that's aspirational.
39:22
Some of it is we get these zombie narratives in our head.
39:26
we are closing and there's nothing we can do about it.
39:28
What we offer people don't want anymore.
39:32
I can't even get my own kids and grandkids to come here.
39:34
Why would anyone else come here, right?
39:35
Like we're all familiar with those narratives and they're not wrong.
39:40
They just have to be, I think, contained within a bigger narrative that says, yeah,
39:45
the thing we're longing for, namely Jesus and the new creation that he's bringing,
39:50
that's actually not only what we want, that's what everybody wants.
39:54
Even if...
39:55
They don't know it yet.
39:57
So it is a little bit of a kind of the hope we talk about is too small.
40:03
And.
40:08
Yeah.
40:12
So people who talk about advocacy for disabled people, for example, will say, we
40:17
think about that backwards.
40:19
We tend to think as a church, well, we don't have any people in wheelchairs, so
40:22
we don't need a ramp.
40:23
But it's actually the reverse of that.
40:25
Yeah, you don't have any people in wheelchairs, because you ain't got no
40:27
ramp.
40:28
So build a ramp, and then you can ask yourself, do we have any disabled people?
40:33
Why, lo and behold, things seem to have changed, right?
40:36
So.
40:37
Tim Keller used to talk about that with preaching for non -Christians.
40:41
If you preach as though non -Christians are present, they will be.
40:44
If you preach as though there are no non -Christians, you won't have any.
40:48
It feels backward.
40:49
So the way I try and talk about this is you want to preach for kind of one layer
40:54
beyond who you can presently see.
40:57
Like if the church is a series of circles nestled within each other, who's the
41:01
circle just beyond where you're at?
41:04
Who could conceivably come to be part of your...
41:07
community but aren't now.
41:09
Preach for them.
41:10
The ones who are already close, they're fine.
41:11
Let them take care of themselves.
41:13
If you need to at a key moment, you can tell them, hey, you guys are gonna pay my
41:16
salary so I can ignore you.
41:17
My job is to work the edges just beyond you.
41:21
Not the people who are five circles away, right?
41:23
But the people who know they want something, know that we might have it and
41:29
might be convencible to visit us once in a while.
41:32
Like, how can we posture ourselves so that we make...
41:36
clear, you're the center of our life.
41:38
We have no church without you.
41:40
And actually we think what we could come to share together makes your life more
41:44
beautiful that you want it.
41:46
Not all of them are going to come, but you want to aim for them.
41:51
Yeah, no, I appreciate that for a couple of reasons.
41:54
I think that it helps us to set our vision in the right place.
42:01
I think it also puts our confidence in the right place.
42:05
I think that I think we do want to be confident about what we have to offer as
42:11
long as we're clear that it's not ourselves, that it's Jesus.
42:17
Yeah.
42:18
And in fact, if we point to ourselves, it's pretty pitiful, right?
42:22
But that's kind of awesome.
42:24
Like all we got is a kind of screwed up community.
42:26
So, oh, you're a screwed up person?
42:28
That's great.
42:30
Yeah, we also have a building that's old and needs a lot of care.
42:37
And yeah, a lot of us have those buildings too.
42:41
Yeah, no, that's.
42:43
I think being clear, clearly modest about our own community and also immodest about
42:49
God who's always raising the dead are the two things to do in tandem.
42:54
Yeah, totally.
42:57
So there's no formula.
42:59
You've been really clear about that.
43:01
Every, I think every leader that you have talked to of thriving, traditionalist
43:09
churches have co -signed that.
43:11
There's no formula.
43:14
Yeah, they all want to be clear.
43:18
But there...
43:19
There's some patterns in common ground.
43:22
So what would be some of those places of common ground?
43:27
take this from a guy named George Lings in the church army in the UK, who I think I'm
43:33
sure he's getting it from somewhere else.
43:35
But it's a great phrase.
43:36
Churches that intend to grow tend to grow.
43:40
Churches that intend to grow tend to grow.
43:43
That is, if you make it an intention, and you try something to make it happen, it
43:48
will probably fail.
43:51
Because most things fail.
43:53
But what you gotta do like any good gardener is pulp that failure into
43:56
something that bears fruit, right?
43:59
And it's something that becomes mulch.
44:02
So I knew a sociologist who studied in Southern California at Fuller and he said,
44:09
all right, you mainliners start stuff wrong.
44:12
You'll start one thing and you'll overfund it and it'll fail because most things
44:17
fail.
44:17
And then for the next 50 years, you'll say, well, we tried that and it doesn't
44:20
work.
44:21
He says, meanwhile, we evangelicals try a hundred things.
44:24
We fund none of them.
44:25
90 of them fail because most things fail.
44:28
The 10 that don't fail, we then proceed to underfund.
44:31
Most of them will fail too.
44:33
Three or four will succeed and become amazing.
44:36
Then we dump money on those.
44:38
Right.
44:39
So I think that's correct.
44:42
We need a much higher tolerance for failure.
44:45
And usually the way things succeed is not what we expect.
44:49
So the Alpha course was designed to be a new members course for folks coming to
44:53
Holy Trinity Brompton who were part of another congregation.
44:56
And it succeeded as an outreach to non -Christians.
44:59
They say, we would never have designed it that way if we thought it was an outreach
45:03
to new Christians.
45:03
We wouldn't have started with who is Jesus, right?
45:07
We would have started with, can you believe in a God in a skeptical age,
45:10
whatever.
45:11
So usually the way things succeed is you're looking that way and God sneaks up
45:15
behind you and gives you a kiss on the cheek, right?
45:18
it succeeds in a way you didn't expect.
45:19
And then you say, oh, that's what the Holy Spirit wants.
45:22
Let's do that thing instead.
45:24
That accident.
45:25
So this is the way Jesus farms, right?
45:29
He takes a handful of seed and he doesn't very carefully plow the row and fertilize.
45:34
No, he just throws it everywhere.
45:36
And some of it gets in the bus and some of it gets in your hair and some of it goes
45:39
in the neighbor's place and most of it gets eaten up.
45:41
But lo and behold, they're in the sidewalk.
45:43
Something pops up.
45:44
Ooh, look.
45:46
That's the most beautiful squash I've ever seen.
45:48
Like, there's a reason he farms that way.
45:51
yeah.
45:52
Yeah, totally.
45:53
So that's a pretty big commonality that you experience is like a willingness to
46:01
throw noodles at the wall and see what sticks, like try a lot of things.
46:05
try a lot of things knowing most won't and don't overspend on them.
46:11
So it sort of depends on a kind of willingness of people, not just clergy,
46:15
but of people writ large to use their own networks to reach out, right?
46:22
I think we already know this.
46:24
Most of us got involved in a church because someone we trusted invited us.
46:27
It's pretty simple.
46:30
So like,
46:32
You and I have to make church such that when someone is brave enough to invite a
46:36
friend, it like speaks to them.
46:40
Anyway, yeah.
46:43
It's almost unbearably intimate.
46:44
Like someone I trust who doesn't now have this in their life, I'm going to pick them
46:47
up and bring them there.
46:49
Most of the time they'll say, thanks, that was fun.
46:50
I'm not coming again.
46:51
Right?
46:52
You have to be willing to suffer a kind of rejection there from someone you care
46:56
about.
46:57
yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
47:01
I think that those kind of different levels of being able to tolerate so
47:08
-called failure allow a lot of bravery that's important in ministry.
47:17
Right.
47:18
And, you know, I don't know about you, but like, I kind of feel like, you know, I was
47:22
in a youth group in an evangelical church, which means getting humiliated over and
47:26
over again, as you ask people out, like you learn to be the fool and you learn a
47:30
high tolerance for being refused.
47:32
So like I worked as a salesperson for YellowPage advertising when we still had
47:37
YellowPages.
47:38
And most of the time people say, no, you don't take it personally, you move on to
47:41
the next place.
47:42
Right.
47:43
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
47:46
What do you think would surprise people the most about the commonalities that you
47:52
found across the people you talk to?
47:54
really loved learning is that people who lead growing places are not usually the
48:00
kind of charismatic extroverts that you expect.
48:02
That's a kind of myth.
48:04
Yeah, I find that very hopeful and surprising.
48:09
So the sort of skinny jeaned, expensively shod ironic facial hair with the beautiful
48:16
family.
48:16
Like, it seems like that gets a lot of media attention, but it's a kind of lie.
48:22
I don't know too many people who want someone that annoying in their life.
48:26
But I've met a lot of pretty underwhelming, under charismatic people
48:32
who've seen churches that have done really, really well and
48:36
So Tim DeKal in Vancouver puts it this way, it used to be that to lead a mainline
48:43
church, what you had to be was competent.
48:46
And like, you know, after World War II, if you were in a Canadian church, like people
48:50
would turn up, like you didn't have to do much other than be competent.
48:55
That's not good enough anymore.
48:56
Now you also have to be, he says, creative and committed.
49:00
Creative in the sense of actually making alliances with people that will bring
49:04
energy and strength to you and to the neighborhood.
49:07
committed, it's gonna take a while.
49:08
So Tim likes to say when he got to this dying church in East Van, he was like,
49:15
yeah, I'm gonna turn this thing around a couple years.
49:17
But he had heard it would take 10 years to get a dysfunctional place healthy.
49:20
He looked around at year 10 and said, yeah, that's how long it took.
49:25
So you're not gonna blow through town and do it in a minute, right?
49:29
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
49:31
I'm at year 10 in my church actually and yeah, it's actually quite amazing the
49:40
things that start to bubble up and become possible after a longer tenure, which, you
49:46
know, until this point I haven't experienced.
49:48
So.
49:49
used to say, we see our most fruitfulness from our clergy in year 12.
49:56
I know, we're too impatient for that.
49:58
I know.
49:59
I met a pastor and an associate who'd been in place 23 and 25 years.
50:05
And the associate, the 25 year said to me, I think they're starting to trust us.
50:09
There you go.
50:13
I love that.
50:15
Yeah.
50:15
church is just trying to learn how to be a human being.
50:19
So like the trust will be hard one.
50:21
Church has failed so many people so many times.
50:24
So like, presumably it's going to take more than charisma.
50:27
So my buddy, Matt Meowsky, who pastors a flourishing church in St.
50:30
Louis says, mainliners fixate on charisma.
50:33
And we think that's the secret.
50:35
It is not.
50:37
People who've been burned by a charismatic church planter know that they will walk
50:41
off.
50:41
with the money and a different spouse.
50:44
Like that is not the thing to trust.
50:46
The thing that smart church planters bear down on is character.
50:51
So like among smart evangelicals, they'll like interview your friends from grade
50:56
school.
50:56
Like, is this a trustworthy person?
50:58
They'll pretend you're interviewing to be in the CIA or in CESA, I guess it is here
51:02
in Canada, right?
51:03
Like they will find out everything about you because they want to know, is this a
51:06
person of character?
51:06
And that's actually what you want to grow a community.
51:10
Yeah, character rather than charisma.
51:12
no formula.
51:14
All you have to do is like be a better human, which is actually the hardest thing
51:19
there is to do.
51:22
Right.
51:24
So what would you most want pastors to hear from your research?
51:29
What would you want the takeaway to be?
51:31
Yeah, there is no lack of reason to be discouraged.
51:37
I don't need to tell you that.
51:38
And yet we serve a God who raises the dead.
51:43
I'm thinking here about Romans 417, Paul's talking about Abraham.
51:47
He's like, look, Abraham was as good as dead.
51:49
And this is all God does is bring life to the dead and call worlds into existence
51:54
that do not exist.
51:57
If you're facing death,
51:58
That's like the only word worth speaking.
52:04
That's a good takeaway.
52:06
It doesn't get more solid than that.
52:10
Well, on that note, we're going to take a break and come back for our closing rapid
52:14
fire questions.
52:16
fire, bring it.
52:20
Do you need a break?
52:22
All right.
52:25
You're ready to rapid fire?
52:27
OK, so again, we'll just have like five seconds of silence and then I'll say
52:36
gathering.
52:39
Oh, yeah, this is fantastic.
52:41
Yeah, this is going to really be great.
52:43
Thank you so much.
52:46
Yeah, I'm very pleased.
52:49
I.
52:50
I just appreciate, well, I said to you in my email, like, by no means did people
52:57
come in with, like, good attitudes to that clergy day that you were leading.
53:04
But, you know, you were, like, speaking in ways that I think allowed us to feel seen
53:12
and to feel hopeful without...
53:18
having to kind of check our brains at the door and just like give ourselves over to
53:25
a bunch of magical thinking which is often sort of what is presented at.
53:31
Yes.
53:32
I mean, I realized at some point, okay, there are all these seminars at Willow
53:37
Creek where you're supposed to go learn and come back and start a new Willow
53:40
Creek.
53:41
That never happens.
53:43
Like, or else there would be Willow Creek sized churches everywhere.
53:48
Like, no, this is more like a mutant than it is like a model.
53:51
Right.
53:52
Um, which doesn't mean they don't have good things to say.
53:54
Of course they do.
53:55
Right.
53:55
Like, uh, you should have a better parking lot.
53:58
That'd be great.
54:00
Yeah, yeah, you have space for a parking lot.
54:03
Great.
54:05
Yeah, no, I think the patterns rather than the formula is pretty important for sure.
54:16
OK, we'll take a few seconds and come back.
54:27
Welcome back to our Future Christian podcast for today.
54:32
And Jason, I am going to throw a few closing questions your way.
54:40
We call these sort of rapid fire questions.
54:42
We always encourage our guests to know that they can take them as seriously or
54:47
not as the spirit moves you to do.
54:51
So Jason, if you were Pope for a day, what would that day look like?
54:58
I mean, you got all these cool vehicles, right?
55:01
Like, wouldn't you ride around in the Pope Mobile and like, doesn't he have a
55:04
helicopter at his disposal and all kinds of like cool summer resonances and stuff?
55:08
I mean, there'd be a lot to motor around and see, don't you figure?
55:12
I guess I also like, I mean, I don't know, Benedict wore those $500 shoes.
55:20
What would they cost now?
55:21
$800?
55:22
Like I'd go put some on my tab, you know?
55:24
So shoes and vehicles, and a automobile.
55:30
Yeah, I hadn't thought about the helicopter.
55:32
I think that's worth throwing into the mix, for sure.
55:35
It'd be cool, like, chopping around Rome.
55:39
I mean, you know, I think as a kid, there are all these like shows you watch where
55:44
you think, okay, airplanes are in my future, boats are in my future, and
55:47
helicopters are in my future.
55:48
Like every movie has a helicopter in it.
55:50
I still never been in one.
55:51
Have you?
55:53
I was in one once I really liked it though.
55:55
It's very cool.
55:56
cool.
55:56
I mean, usually you had neither like life threatening emergency illness to get in
55:59
one of those things.
56:00
So, yeah, trying to avoid.
56:05
That's it.
56:08
What theologian or historical Christian figure would you want to meet, bring back
56:15
to life, have a conversation with?
56:18
Yeah, I wish I could be more interesting than I'm about to be, but Dietrich
56:22
Bonhoeffer is the answer for me.
56:24
I just, well, I just feel like he left all these scraps that he didn't know what they
56:29
meant and we don't know what they mean.
56:31
And I would love to hear them, hear him flesh them out.
56:34
And you just wonder what kind of voice would he have been in the church in Europe
56:41
as it tried to heal and rethink who are we going to be post -Showa and post -Nazism?
56:48
Yeah, love to hear from him on that.
56:53
that's not uninteresting for sure.
56:56
pious, you know, I mean, who would be a better answer?
56:59
I don't know.
57:00
That's who I got.
57:02
Yeah, I wanted something more clever.
57:06
All right, well, if something comes to you, you can always add a PS.
57:13
What will history remember from our current time and place?
57:17
Yeah, uh...
57:21
I mean, we've got an election coming up in the US that everybody around the world is
57:24
dreading, not least Canadians over the border.
57:27
And I just wonder what the history of democracy will look like, you know, a
57:32
generation from now.
57:34
Were we seeing a kind of decline or were we seeing a kind of interruption?
57:41
But whatever we're seeing, it's pretty ghastly.
57:47
It's one thing I think church has going for us.
57:49
I think all the stories of our world and its direction are dismal.
57:54
You and I actually have a story that's not dismal, that actually says your greatest
57:58
hope isn't great enough yet.
58:00
And it's not unaware of the things that are making most people dismal.
58:06
Yeah, yeah.
58:07
Well, it kind of speaks actually right to the heart of that, doesn't it?
58:10
It does.
58:14
What are your hopes for the future of Christianity?
58:17
I'm impressed by Rowan Williams saying, for all we know, we might still be in the
58:22
days of the early church.
58:24
I mean, we're a faith that's been looking for Jesus's return like tomorrow for like
58:28
a long time.
58:29
But what's the church look like in 10 ,000 years?
58:33
If the Lord tarries, as we used to say.
58:37
I mean, you know, like St.
58:39
Augustine might be among us.
58:40
It just might be.
58:43
woman from Asia who's just now coming to faith and struggling with her pain in the
58:47
neck dad.
58:48
Right?
58:49
I'd love to know who that person's going to be, but God loves raising up unlikely
58:53
and unexpected witnesses.
58:56
Yeah, God's really good at that.
58:58
Seems to be a specialty.
59:00
Right.
59:01
Yeah.
59:02
I like that for all we know.
59:06
Jason, where can people find more about you?
59:09
Yeah, jasonbiasee .com will do the trick.
59:12
That's got my books and various other things.
59:16
TEMC .ca, the church website where I serve, that's got the ways I preach.
59:23
So yeah, that should do.
59:25
I worked for Christian Century Magazine for a long time, so a lot of my writing is
59:29
there.
59:29
And that's a great resource also, christiansentury .org.
59:33
Oh great, yeah, I interviewed Amy Frick home a couple of months ago.
59:38
me some aims.
59:39
Yeah, we worked together for years.
59:40
Great sister.
59:41
Bless her.
59:41
Yeah, she is wonderful.
59:43
Absolutely.
59:45
Well, thank you so much, Jason.
59:46
It has been such a pleasure and there are so many takeaways in what you have offered
59:52
this afternoon.
59:53
We always wrap up with a word of peace.
59:56
So Jason, the peace of Christ be always with you.
59:59
You too dear Martha, thank you so much.