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Brian McLaren on Leading and Living after Doom · Future Christian

0:06
>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your source
0:09
for insights and ideas on how to lead your church
0:11
into the 21st century.
0:15
At the Future Christian podcast, we talk to
0:18
pastors, authors, and other faith leaders for helpful
0:21
advice and practical wisdom to help you and your
0:24
community of faith walk boldly into the future.
0:27
Now here's your host, Lauren Richmond, Junior.
0:35
>> Loren: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today,
0:38
we're welcoming Brian McLaren to the show.
0:41
Brian is an author, speaker, activist, and public
0:44
theologian. A former college english
0:47
teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate
0:50
for a new kind of Christianity, just,
0:53
generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common
0:56
good. He's a core faculty member and dean of
0:58
faculty for the center for Action and
1:01
Contemplation and a podcaster with learning how to
1:04
see. He is also an Auburn Senior
1:07
Fellow and is a co host of Southern
1:09
Lights. His newest book is
1:12
life after wisdom and courage for a
1:15
world falling apart. Born in
1:17
1956, he graduated from the University of Maryland
1:20
with degrees in English. His academic
1:23
interests include medieval drama, romantic
1:25
poets, modern philosophical
1:28
literature, and the novels of Doctor Walker
1:30
Percy. In 2004, he was awarded a
1:33
doctorate divinity degree from, uh, Carey
1:36
Theological Seminary in Vancouver, BC. And in
1:39
2010, he received a second honorary
1:41
doctorate from Virginia Theological
1:44
Seminary. Let's welcome Brian to the
1:46
show.
1:55
All right, welcome to the Future Christian podcast. This is Loren Richmond,
1:58
junior, and today I'm pleased to be joined by Brian
2:01
McLaren. So welcome to the show.
2:03
>> Brian McLaren: Great to be back here with you, Loren
2:06
>> Loren: Yeah, thanks. Uh, anything else you'd like our listeners
2:08
to know about you?
2:10
>> Brian McLaren: Well, uh, they probably know that I write
2:13
books and that I used to be a pastor. I'm a
2:16
father of four adult children and five
2:18
grandchildren. And,
2:21
um. Yeah, that's, um, probably the most
2:24
important thing.
2:26
>> Loren: Yeah. So I heard this joke the other day that it comes
2:29
to mind. I'm curious your thoughts. Um,
2:32
I forget the woman who said it first,
2:34
but parents, or, excuse me, grandparents and
2:37
children have a common enemy. I wonder if
2:40
that's true in your
2:42
observation.
2:44
>> Brian McLaren: Well, I think the humorous
2:47
point, uh, obviously puts that
2:50
word enemy, uh, in quotes, I'm
2:53
sure. But there is a certain
2:56
sense that for children,
2:58
one of their most challenging realities and greatest
3:01
necessities is their parents. And,
3:04
uh, their parents weaknesses are
3:07
very hard for parents to often admit to children.
3:11
But those parents parents knew the weaknesses.
3:14
So I think that would create, uh, a
3:17
certain alliance, uh, and
3:20
deep, uh, connection.
3:21
>> Loren: Well, as a parent of kids, I do appreciate.
3:24
Appreciate the support of grandparents. So thank you for your
3:27
support of your grandkids. I'm sure
3:30
your children appreciate it.
3:32
So uh, uh, you've been on the pod before,
3:35
so I'll link past episodes if people
3:38
are somehow unfamiliar with you.
3:41
Brian McLaren can hear your kind of backstory, but
3:44
I'm just kind of curious if you're willing to share just what has sustained
3:47
you, uh, these past year. Two
3:50
years.
3:51
>> Brian McLaren: Yes. Uh, one of the things that
3:54
sustains me, Loren, is some friends,
3:57
uh, and family members with whom I can be
4:00
completely honest, to just have the
4:03
space with people to say, hey, look, I need
4:06
to tell you what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. It
4:09
might not be true, it might not be real, it might not
4:12
be good, but I'll be better off if I can
4:15
just admit it to some other person. Um, those
4:18
sort of nonjudgmental friendships are super
4:21
important. Um, and then, I mean,
4:24
this sounds like a cliche, but I guess it's a cliche because
4:27
it's so true. But just about every morning,
4:30
I get up and take a walk a mile, two, 3
4:33
miles, and the act of
4:36
walking outdoors and seeing the sun rise
4:38
another day. And, uh, I have a little saying. I
4:41
repeat, uh, often to myself and anyone else who's
4:44
around. I'll say, human beings might be a mess,
4:47
but the birds are being awesome. Human
4:50
beings might be in trouble, but the trees are amazing.
4:53
And just to be reminded of the
4:55
stability and consistency and beauty and
4:58
brilliance of nature, that always does me good.
5:01
>> Loren: Yeah. And you live still in Florida, is that
5:04
correct?
5:04
>> Brian McLaren: I do, yes.
5:05
>> Loren: So obviously, you get to really
5:08
enjoy nature,
5:11
at, um, least, I guess, depends. Some people might enjoy the cold
5:14
and snow, but I don't particularly love
5:17
it. So you get to really enjoy it on a, on a
5:20
day to day basis, it sounds like. And I imagine that's
5:23
really what kind of informed this latest
5:26
book. Yeah.
5:27
>> Brian McLaren: Yeah, that's true. And I've been this way since I was a kid.
5:30
I was born in a very cold climate in the,
5:33
um, finger lakes region of upstate New York.
5:35
And, uh, one of my
5:38
earliest memories is, uh, trick or
5:41
treating in the snow.
5:44
Uh, but I always loved the outdoors.
5:47
And, uh, from flipping over
5:50
rocks in that little creek beside my house when I was a
5:52
kid, and virtually every rock was full
5:55
of fossils in that, uh, part of the
5:58
country.
5:58
>> Loren: Oh, wow.
5:59
>> Brian McLaren: And just gave me a sense not only for the
6:01
amazing nature that's alive today, but that
6:05
buried beneath our feet are the fossils telling us
6:08
of millions of years of life. So,
6:11
yeah, I think I've always, that's been
6:14
always very closely connected to my
6:17
sense of reverence and transcendence and
6:19
awe. And worship.
6:21
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. I've been hearing more and more of late
6:24
just about the importance of kids getting outside and
6:27
exploring, uh, both for their own
6:30
development. And then I think we could both add, certainly
6:33
for their connection to
6:35
transcendence and the world beyond,
6:38
both, uh, the physical world and then the
6:41
spiritual world. Yeah.
6:43
>> Brian McLaren: So. That's right. And let me just say
6:46
this is one of the reasons why, you know,
6:49
the obsession and addiction and
6:52
attachment we all have to, um,
6:54
screens just
6:57
makes it all the more valuable and important when we just
7:00
kind of look up from the screen, look to our left, look to our right,
7:03
look under our feet and reconnect, uh,
7:06
with this beautiful creation we're part of.
7:09
>> Loren: Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier
7:12
this week when I was at a conference
7:14
and I went for a run, kind
7:17
of around the block in the neighborhood and left
7:20
my smartphone. I was kind of like, oh
7:23
boy, if something happens, I'm in trouble. But also, humans
7:26
have been taking adventures without
7:28
smartphones for
7:31
hundreds and thousands of years and have somehow survived.
7:34
So I'll survive.
7:36
>> Brian McLaren: I might survive around the block once without it.
7:39
>> Loren: Right, right. Well,
7:42
we're here today to talk about, uh,
7:44
Brian's new book, life after
7:47
Wisdom and courage for a world
7:50
falling apart. So I've kind of teased it
7:53
here already, but do you want to just share kind of what
7:56
really inspired the book, brought it about?
7:59
>> Brian McLaren: Sure, Lauren? Well, um, more and more
8:02
of us are hearing and understanding terms like
8:05
multi crisis or poly crisis. We all
8:08
have the sense that nothing's ever perfect in the world of
8:11
humans. We always have our problems and arguments and
8:14
so on. But, um, a lot of us are
8:17
having the feeling that we have a constellation of very big
8:20
problems and each one is making it
8:23
harder for the others to be seen,
8:25
addressed and solved. And when we
8:28
face that kind of, ah, of trouble,
8:31
I think it raises our levels of anxiety,
8:35
um, it raises the levels of desperation for some
8:37
people to find a conspiracy theory
8:40
to explain things or a scapegoat to
8:43
blame, uh, or some, ah,
8:46
little, uh, cultic group
8:49
to help us be in denial about a reality that's
8:52
pressing in on all sides. So when
8:55
we have a sense that things,
8:57
um, ah, that we're
9:00
in water beyond our depth,
9:03
um, the word we have for that
9:06
feeling is doom. In the title, life after doom.
9:09
I'm not talking about life after the end of the world.
9:12
I'm not talking about some sort of literal
9:14
apocalypse. I am talking about a very
9:17
real emotion that we feel, um, more
9:20
and more of us feel our institutions that
9:23
evolved and have served us very well, for a long
9:26
time seem to be incapable of
9:29
helping, helping us face the realities,
9:32
uh, around us on many levels. So that
9:34
feeling, I felt it in myself,
9:38
um, and I felt it's
9:40
socially unacceptable to talk about.
9:43
And then when I have the courage to bring
9:46
it up and others say I've been feeling it
9:48
too, there's this sense of relief that comes when we
9:51
can create some space to
9:54
face this feeling that we have, and then we can
9:57
explore how real it is, how deep it is.
10:00
Uh, first we need a little space, and in a
10:03
way that's what I'm trying to do in the book, is create some
10:06
headspace and heart space to face that
10:09
feeling, that more and more of us feel.
10:11
>> Loren: Yeah, I think that's so important and so
10:14
helpful. So you kind of frame this,
10:17
the narrative, through the idea
10:19
of um, climate change, global
10:22
warming, the very real
10:26
danger we face both, uh,
10:29
collectively and individually through
10:32
um, the planet and the health
10:35
thereof of the planet. And
10:38
I spoke to you about this here before we start recording. But as
10:41
I read the book and began thinking about it more and
10:44
more, uh, I thought about it through what
10:47
you just said there, the idea of
10:50
the very real kind of collapse or
10:53
doom that we seem to be facing
10:55
societally. You certainly spoke
10:58
to the client of institutions,
11:01
and I think I'm glad you named what you
11:04
said there about this real sense of
11:07
danger, or that's not the right word. Um,
11:10
disillusionment, um,
11:13
I can't think of the right word to frame it.
11:15
Um, uncertainty.
11:18
>> Brian McLaren: Yeah, I think danger, disillusionment,
11:20
uncertainty, disappointment in some
11:22
ways that the institutions that we
11:25
thought were going to work,
11:28
uh, end up failing or at least
11:30
stumbling. Yeah, I think all of those words are
11:33
part of it.
11:34
>> Loren: So uh, I thought about this book in many ways
11:37
as like a pastoral
11:40
care book, and especially in the
11:43
context that I try to think and
11:46
be like with this podcast
11:49
around churches and pastors,
11:52
you lay out in the book four
11:54
scenarios around climate,
11:57
uh, change and the possibility of the
12:00
future of the earth and really society at large.
12:03
But I couldn't help but thinking about that. These kind of four scenarios
12:06
are very real possibilities
12:09
for our institutions, for
12:11
churches. Um, just
12:14
on a, a, ah, webinar this week about
12:17
denominational decline
12:20
as ah, churches individually and collectively,
12:23
trying to think about what is realistic to
12:26
plan for the future. So I wonder if you
12:29
can just talk about first, uh, just
12:32
name those four scenarios and then we'll kind of just talk through
12:35
um, the implications.
12:37
>> Brian McLaren: Sure, sure. Um, so let me first
12:40
say, Lauren, that um,
12:43
that I think we face this
12:46
multicrisis, a combination of problems,
12:49
each of which makes the others harder to
12:52
solve. But at the center of
12:54
them is this problem of overshoot. Global
12:57
warming is uh, maybe most
13:00
urgent example of it, but there are so many
13:03
dimensions to it we could look at. We haven't
13:06
cared for soil around the earth. We thought soil
13:08
was worthless as dirt, but soil, it
13:11
turns out, is a uh, precious,
13:14
amazing, glorious,
13:16
wondrous reality that we took for granted.
13:19
We didn't understand. We literally tore it
13:22
up every year, not realizing that
13:25
soil is like a civilization in and of
13:28
itself. Um, what we've done to
13:31
our oceans, our rivers,
13:33
our ice. Who knew how important ice
13:36
was as a climate control center for the
13:39
planet? This problem that we're
13:41
sucking out more resources than the earth
13:44
can replenish and pumping out
13:47
more toxins than the earth can detoxify
13:50
and pollutants than the earth can neutralize,
13:53
that's what overshoot is.
13:55
And when you take that seriously,
13:58
you realize that um, we're
14:01
going to face a bumpy road ahead.
14:04
Um, because we uh, we've built,
14:07
ah, ah, an economy and a civilization
14:10
that is based on certain things that don't
14:13
fit with this environment. And as Charles Darwin
14:16
said, um, if you don't fit, survival
14:18
of the fittest means survival of those
14:21
that fit best. And so if we don't fit
14:24
well with our environment, then we're going to have real
14:27
trouble. And so, um, the four scenarios
14:30
that I tried to spell out after,
14:33
you know, immersing myself in the literature now
14:36
for something um, like 14 or
14:38
15 years, um, the four
14:41
scenarios are collapse avoidance is the
14:44
first. This is the idea that we can learn
14:47
what we need to learn quickly enough
14:50
that our civilization won't go through a
14:53
collapse. Uh, so that's collapse
14:56
avoidance. The second is collapse rebirth.
14:58
This says that no, we will not learn our
15:01
lessons and we will not have the political
15:04
and economic and social
15:06
capacity to make the changes
15:09
we need to make fast enough. And there will be
15:12
some kind of civilizational collapse, but
15:15
we'll learn enough on the way down that
15:18
we'll be able to have a new
15:21
ecological, sustainable, wiser
15:23
civilization be born. Um, from
15:26
the uh, aftermath of this one, the
15:29
third is a little more dire. We
15:32
could call it the collapse survival
15:34
scenario. That is where there will be
15:37
a collapse, but we uh,
15:40
will cause so much more damage in the process of
15:43
trying to stop the collapse from
15:45
happening or attacking each other on the way
15:48
down that we will
15:51
survive. Some number of us,
15:53
50%, 40%, 20%,
15:56
2% of us will survive, but we will not be able to
15:59
rebuild anything anytime soon like what
16:02
we currently enjoy. And then fourth is
16:05
collapse extinction, the possibility
16:08
that human beings could knock ourselves and a
16:11
significant part of, ah, Earth's
16:13
biosphere, uh, into extinction.
16:16
So, um, ah, those are the four
16:19
scenarios. Um, you might say, well, collapse avoidance,
16:22
that's the only optimistic one. But
16:24
even people who believe in collapse
16:27
avoidance, who are working their hearts out for
16:30
it and using their very best creativity for it,
16:33
none of them think it will be easy. So
16:35
I think we face challenges no matter
16:38
which scenario unfolds.
16:40
>> Loren: Right, right. And I think this is where again,
16:43
I found so much crossover
16:46
because like you said, like there's so
16:49
much, there's so much complexity and
16:51
crossover in these elements. Like we've built
16:54
systems and institutions that are kind of dependent
16:57
on this kind of growth at all costs
17:00
mentality.
17:02
>> Brian McLaren: Yes.
17:02
>> Loren: And I mean, we could say like, oh, that's not
17:05
so much, at least like in my context in the mainline world.
17:08
But I imagine, I mean, I think that was fair of
17:11
the mainline world like 30, 40, 50 years ago. And
17:14
we're certainly seeing that, we're certainly seeing this trend play out
17:17
right now in evangelicalism where
17:20
it's the mega church kind of growth at all costs
17:23
mentality which has costs.
17:26
And I think this is more so in the mainline
17:29
world now, where there is, I think there are
17:33
these different schools of thought
17:36
here is the mainline collapse,
17:39
is it avoidable? There are some people who would say it's
17:42
all over, but uh, there's some people saying we can learn and
17:45
we can try to avoid it. Um,
17:48
obviously as a Christian, we have some kind of hope
17:51
that rebirth, the second scenario is
17:54
possible. Um, but I think
17:57
there's still a good bit of
17:59
humanity, there's still a good bit of us,
18:02
uh, and musing abroad, us broad, we thinking like,
18:05
we can define what the rebirth will be, right?
18:07
>> Brian McLaren: Yes.
18:09
>> Loren: And then there's some of us who are thinking like, there's going to be
18:12
a collapse and there's only going to be a small
18:15
survival remnant. And then there's
18:18
certainly some who think like, the church is
18:20
dying and it's not going to come back. Like God is going to do it
18:24
a new thing. Um, so the
18:26
church in itself or the institution of church in itself
18:30
is all but gone. I mean, those
18:32
are pretty four heavy
18:35
things, whether we think about it through the lens of
18:38
a church or an institution or even
18:41
existentially, like our climate, the home we live
18:44
on. Um, I'm not even
18:47
sure where to go from that because it's so heavy. So why don't you
18:49
share?
18:51
>> Brian McLaren: Yes. Um, well, lauren, first, I
18:54
really appreciate the
18:56
direction you're going with this. First, I appreciate you
18:59
calling this book a pastoral book, because
19:02
I suppose the fact that I was a pastor for 24
19:05
years has left its permanent mark on me.
19:08
And I think that's just who I am.
19:10
If I could just tell a quick story that
19:14
I was participating in a march. It was
19:16
about in a protest, uh, several, uh,
19:19
years ago. I, uh, live in southwest Florida, and we
19:22
had some companies from Texas trying to come over and
19:25
frack the everglades. I mean, of all the.
19:28
>> Loren: Sounds like a great idea.
19:29
>> Brian McLaren: Oh, my gosh. It's just stupid and
19:32
idiotic of both the Texas
19:35
corporations and the Florida government that wanted to
19:37
welcome these companies in to make some money, no
19:40
doubt. Um, just idiotic. And so I
19:43
was participating in a march, and a
19:46
woman I respect a great deal, I don't know her
19:49
very well, but as we're marching together, she turns
19:52
to me and says, I don't think we're going to win this
19:54
one. And she said, um, in fact, I've
19:57
kind of lost hope. And
20:00
I think she's not a religious person, as far as I
20:03
know, but she knows that I'm a pastor when I show up for these
20:06
events. And I suppose she was making
20:09
a kind of confession to me, and I said, well, you're still
20:12
here. She says, yeah, I've kind of lost
20:14
hope. She said, the only reason I'm here is because of
20:17
love, that I love the earth, and I have
20:20
to show up for something I love. And
20:23
in that moment, I felt what she was going
20:26
through, described what so many of us are going through in
20:29
so many different areas.
20:32
If we could have gone back in time to
20:34
1960, which was the peak year
20:37
of mainline Protestantism, and
20:40
we could have sat down and said to the people, listen,
20:43
in the next 65
20:45
years, um, there will be less
20:48
than half as many people in mainline protestant
20:51
churches. There will be about
20:53
40% of the seminarians
20:56
m and a high percentage of them will not want to be
20:59
pastors. They'll be going to seminary for other
21:01
reasons. If we would have told them
21:04
those numbers, I don't think they could have imagined it to be
21:07
true, um, because they were right at their
21:09
peak. Right. And
21:12
I came from an evangelical background. In many ways, I
21:15
was like a refugee escaping a place where
21:18
my life was in danger. And so I've
21:21
been so grateful for the mainline world, and I had great
21:24
hope for the mainline world. But here's the thing I have to say.
21:27
65 years after the peak
21:29
and maybe 50 years after, just
21:32
about everybody knew that mainline protestantism was
21:35
in decline. I would have to say
21:38
that virtually nothing has changed. In other um, words,
21:41
some people are aware that there's decline,
21:44
but the liturgies are, are
21:46
virtually unchanged now, as we
21:49
speak, Methodists are in the process of making some
21:52
modest changes to their structure, but by and
21:55
large structures are intact.
21:57
Um, we've had to close down a whole lot of
22:00
seminaries, our concepts of
22:02
ordination haven't changed. And so what I would
22:05
say is, if
22:08
people normally don't change until the
22:11
pain gets great enough, I would just have to say,
22:14
yeah, the pain still isn't great enough. Um,
22:18
um, and here's the interesting comparison
22:21
to uh, issues of the environment. A lot of people
22:24
don't know this, but a couple of
22:26
scientists figured out before the
22:29
american civil war, they figured out global
22:32
warming, and in fact they made
22:34
incredibly accurate predictions about
22:37
what would happen if
22:40
people continued to burn fossil fuels before the
22:43
civil war. And so this was known among scientists,
22:46
scientists, but uh, it still
22:49
hasn't, even though more and more people
22:52
know about it, we still have huge numbers of
22:55
people, including the dominant party,
22:59
uh, in uh, at least one
23:02
house of Congress that
23:04
still deny it. And so uh,
23:08
it just reminds us that
23:11
some of us can wake up to what's going on
23:14
and change, and more and more of us can
23:17
know what's needed and yet change doesn't come,
23:20
and people in our situation
23:23
need pastoral care. I guess the circle back to what you
23:26
said, and we have to take care of each other
23:28
because we have to look and say, you're not
23:31
crazy, you see what's real
23:34
and you don't have to be
23:37
totally pushed into despondency.
23:40
Uh, and that's why that woman I was walking next to
23:43
in that protest m march, I felt like she gave me
23:46
a phenomenal gift when she said,
23:49
uh, I've given up hope, but I'm still here because
23:52
I haven't given up on love. And of course
23:55
her words, she probably didn't know it,
23:58
but they evoked one, uh, corinthians
24:01
13. There are three great lasting qualities, faith, hope and
24:04
love. And the greatest of these is love, which
24:07
Paul didn't say this, but I wonder if uh, a
24:10
relevant application would be when your faith
24:12
fails and when your hope fails, theres still
24:15
love. Hang on to love no matter what.
24:17
>> Loren: Yeah boy im kind of
24:20
worried about, like you said, people dont change until the pain is
24:23
great enough because boy the pain of climate
24:26
change, I dont think its great enough. Um,
24:29
so that is what it is. Im thinking about,
24:32
too. You mentioned
24:35
kind of, again, im tying this back
24:38
to church context. I'm thinking
24:41
about how you said, you're here
24:44
to, I can't remember. You said, or the woman
24:47
said, she's here to show up for something she
24:49
loves, even though these institutions
24:52
or structures around her have
24:55
failed in some ways, yes. Um,
24:58
and with that, I imagine there's some sense
25:01
that the opportunity she might have normally
25:04
had or one might recommend for, you
25:06
know, community, uh, organizing or,
25:09
um, uh, lobbying Congress
25:13
to do the proper channels that really has the power.
25:16
So I guess this is a long winded way of saying, like I'm thinking
25:18
about for churches and pastors, like the normal
25:21
kind of, like you mentioned, the normal kind of ways
25:24
of, you know, going to college
25:27
and then signing up for div school and, uh, getting
25:30
the ordination track and then going to serve a church. Like
25:33
those models are falling away,
25:36
uh, if not rapidly, ever so surely.
25:41
How does a faith leader, someone who's passionate about the
25:44
christian faith, living out both
25:47
in word and deed, how does one
25:50
be m. Because how does
25:53
one, I don't even know what the word to use is, whether it's the
25:55
pastor, whether it's the chaplain, whether it's a faith leader, because so many of
25:58
those words are attached to institutions. How does one be
26:01
that role as a leader in these new
26:04
contexts? Where to go back to
26:06
your woman? That's why I'm resonating
26:09
with, how do I even show up for something I
26:11
love?
26:12
>> Brian McLaren: Yes, yes, yes.
26:15
Well, so, uh, many things come to
26:18
mind. Let's see if I can untangle them, to say them in
26:21
some kind of useful way. Loren, the
26:24
first thing that comes to mind is when
26:26
Jesus, uh, said
26:29
words that we quote, but maybe now
26:32
we're in a position to understand their context. He said,
26:35
whenever two or three of you gather in my name there,
26:38
I'm in the midst. Let me take those words
26:41
from Jesus with another thing that Jesus said. When he
26:44
looked at the temple and he said,
26:47
1 st will not be left upon the
26:49
other, uh, he could
26:52
see, and by the way, I don't think you have to think that
26:55
Jesus had supernatural knowledge of the
26:58
future or that he was predicting something
27:01
that he was ready to make happen. In other words,
27:04
he was going to destroy or God was going to destroy the
27:07
temple. I think Jesus was smart, and he
27:09
knew that if,
27:12
uh, his fellow Jews
27:15
persisted in their current path, they would have another
27:18
revolution against the roman empire and it would
27:21
end catastrophically. He knew what the Romans would do to
27:24
the temple if the Jews tried another
27:27
rebellion. Uh, uh, and
27:29
so what he, I think is saying is, listen,
27:32
you can destroy the temple and still
27:35
survive. Um, it's going to
27:37
require two or three of you getting
27:40
together and remembering what this whole thing is
27:43
about and to live
27:45
out in a new way.
27:48
Um, and in fact, that's what happened,
27:51
ironically, when the Jews rebelled against the
27:54
Romans. The Romans came in and, and crushed the
27:56
temple. And ironically, it was
27:59
the pharisees that began to gather people.
28:02
It wasn't just two or three. They gathered people in a
28:05
quorum of ten. Um, and
28:08
those groups of ten would then become the
28:11
basis of the synagogue system that exists until
28:13
today. So after the collapse
28:16
of the institution, that they knew a
28:19
new way, uh, of living and gathering
28:22
would emerge that was far more flexible,
28:24
far more, uh, decentralized, far
28:27
harder to destroy, far more resilient.
28:31
Um, and something like that, it seems
28:34
to me, could be helpful for us to
28:36
imagine. If I would translate that into slightly
28:39
more abstract terms. Here's the way I'd say it.
28:42
I think we have to, at least for a time,
28:45
imagine the christian faith less as a
28:48
series of institutions and more as a series of
28:51
movements.
28:52
>> Loren: That's good. Yeah.
28:53
>> Brian McLaren: And we shift our confidence from the
28:56
institution to the movement. Now, for those of us who are
28:58
clergy, the institution
29:01
pays our salary, the institution pays
29:04
our health insurance, the institution pays
29:07
our pension. And so we've become highly
29:10
dependent on the institution.
29:13
But there are ways to be christian
29:18
that function in a movement mindset
29:21
rather than an institutional mindset. Uh,
29:23
and I mentioned I have a background in the
29:26
evangelical and fundamentalist and charismatic, charismatic
29:29
world. And, you know, for all
29:32
their serious problems and dangers and all the
29:35
rest, they have been operating as a movement for
29:37
100 years. And it's the
29:40
movement mentality. I don't think it's their
29:43
theology that was so great. I think
29:46
in a certain sense, they jumped ship
29:49
and started working as a movement, while others,
29:52
other parts of Christianity stayed
29:55
in an institutional mindset. So those would be
29:58
a couple of thoughts, and there's a lot more we could explore then, I'm
30:01
sure.
30:01
>> Loren: Yeah, that's good. Uh, and I think I can even bring this back
30:04
to the broader climate
30:06
topic. Thinking about, you
30:09
know, I feel like that's what's going to have to be is small
30:12
groups of people, two to three people, ten people,
30:15
like, saying, like, hey, life is not about just like
30:18
this ever. This never
30:21
ending pursuit of stuff and consumption
30:24
and the bigger house and the bigger car. Um,
30:28
it's going to have to be small groups of people saying,
30:31
hey, boy, isn't life more
30:34
simple and meaningful when we're sitting together
30:37
in conversation, enjoying the beauty of
30:40
nature, not hustling
30:42
here and there and everywhere.
30:46
>> Brian McLaren: As you say, that reminds me
30:48
of a story, something that
30:51
happened to me some years ago. I was in France, and I was at a
30:54
gathering that was, uh, called. That was convened
30:57
by catholics and evangelicals.
31:01
Uh, uh, and
31:05
I gave a few talks. They were translated into French.
31:08
My French is, uh,
31:11
bad enough that I should never inflict it upon
31:13
people, but good enough that I can usually
31:16
catch most of what goes on in a conversation. So we
31:19
open up for q and a. Uh,
31:22
and I had someone sitting beside me whispering in my
31:25
ear if I needed a translation.
31:28
Um, a woman stood up and she said,
31:31
uh, I'm a Baptist, and if I say my last
31:34
name, all the Baptists in the room will know it, because
31:37
my name is royalty in the baptist world.
31:40
In France, she said her name. Everybody shook their head.
31:43
She said, what will shock you is for you to know that for the
31:46
last seven years, I have not gone to church. I was a
31:49
leader in my church. My husband and I were on
31:52
every committee. We were the backbone of the church
31:55
in many ways, she said, but seven
31:57
years ago, I reached a point where I said,
32:00
uh, I'm totally burned out. I'm totally. I
32:03
remember she said, uh, complaisment fatigue. I'm
32:06
completely worn out.
32:09
Uh, and she said, so
32:12
we took a sabbatical from church, and after a
32:15
few months, my husband said to me, darling, we have a
32:18
problem. We still love Jesus Christ, but
32:21
we're not going to church. And he said, I have an
32:24
idea. He said, I love to cook. I will cook a
32:26
meal every week. And he said to his wife, you are a
32:29
wonderful hostess. He said, let's have a
32:32
meal, and we'll invite some of our friends who are not
32:35
religious, and we'll just see if over
32:38
some good soup and some good bread and some good
32:41
wine, that we could talk about things that really
32:44
matter. And so the woman said, I have not
32:47
been to church, uh, for these last seven years.
32:49
She said, but around my table, uh,
32:52
every Sunday night, we have a meal.
32:55
And she said, I think this is the greatest
32:58
experience of church I've had in my life. And then she
33:01
added, in all of my years of being a baptist
33:04
leader, um, I never really saw
33:07
people come to faith in Jesus Christ. She
33:10
said, but around my table, many people have
33:13
come to faith. And, uh, she said,
33:15
so she said, I don't know what you will do
33:18
with that. I don't know what you will say about me or if you
33:21
will judge me, but that's what's happened to me. Then
33:24
she sat down. And I just remembered at that moment,
33:27
I just thought, a wise woman has
33:30
spoken, and maybe we're all getting a little,
33:34
uh, message about even if our
33:36
institutions fail, it could
33:39
be not the worst thing that would happen by
33:41
any stretching.
33:42
>> Loren: Yeah, that's a beautiful story, because the same
33:45
principles could apply, whether it be
33:50
climate, uh, change, just making simple
33:52
changes together on, uh, a neighborhood
33:55
block amongst a family.
33:58
>> Brian McLaren: In fact, there's been a movement
34:00
among, um, people sort of on the
34:03
avant garde edge of christian ministry.
34:06
And they've called the gatherings that they create
34:09
different things other than churches. Sometimes they call them
34:12
urban monasteries or, um, an
34:15
abbey, an urban abbey or something like
34:17
this. And it reminds me that
34:20
at the end of another civilizational era,
34:23
when the roman empire's relationship with
34:26
the Celts in Ireland and
34:29
Scotland, uh, and Wales, is a
34:32
complicated relationship. The roman
34:35
empire enforced their
34:37
control on the Celts right
34:40
as the roman empire was falling apart itself.
34:43
And so the Celts, in a sense, had to
34:46
submit. But then, in another sense, they
34:49
still carried on some of their own, uh,
34:52
independence. And that continued when the
34:54
roman empire was severely
34:57
weakened. And what happened
34:59
is these celtic
35:02
monasteries became the
35:04
basis, uh, around which people would build
35:07
little villages and towns. Many of the
35:10
really important towns that still exist in
35:13
Ireland and Wales and Scotland
35:16
are towns that grew up around
35:19
monasteries. And one of the attractions is
35:22
all around us is violence. All around us
35:25
is ignorance. Um,
35:27
but in the monastery, they preserve
35:30
wisdom. They're actually copying those
35:33
manuscripts that other people have been burning.
35:36
And of course, as someone who lives in Florida, when we talk about burning
35:39
manuscripts, that has an interesting
35:42
resonance for me. Ignorant people
35:45
want to burn books because they don't
35:48
want the past and they don't want other
35:51
people's knowledge to be preserved.
35:53
But here's an island of sanity, and in a
35:56
monastery, you couldn't bring your weapons
35:59
inside the monastery. It was a gun free zone, we
36:02
might say. It was a little island of
36:04
sanity and a little island of peace.
36:07
And it just strikes me that
36:11
that's a lesson from the past
36:14
that we could be involved with in the present
36:17
and in the future. Uh, and in some
36:20
ways, if our
36:22
decline continues in many of our religious
36:25
institutions, the people who
36:28
have nowhere to go or who drop out
36:31
will either just sort of
36:33
fade into the woodwork or they will
36:37
find ways to create those little islands of
36:39
sanity and peace and love and wisdom.
36:42
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Here, let me ask you
36:45
two more questions before we take a break.
36:47
One, as you're talking, is just as
36:50
I think about the realities both in church
36:53
and in what feels
36:56
like where our world is heading
37:00
as a climate and really, frankly, as a global economy,
37:03
I feel like collapse is inevitable in some regard.
37:06
So I'm wondering, do you think that humans in some
37:09
sense control the outcome? And
37:12
I mean that by humans have some measure of volition
37:15
about what can come about from that collapse?
37:18
And I love your example about the
37:20
monastery example. That's what I'm
37:23
thinking, yeah.
37:25
>> Brian McLaren: So my deepest
37:28
and most honest answer, Loren, is I don't
37:31
know what will happen. I don't have some,
37:33
some clear sense of what will happen.
37:36
It could be scenario one, two, three or four. I think
37:39
any of them are possible. And it's,
37:42
ah, human beings that are the unknown, because human
37:45
beings have
37:47
surprising, astounding
37:49
capacities for stupidity
37:52
and human beings have surprising,
37:55
awe inspiring capacities
37:58
for creativity and love. M
38:01
my most honest guess is that we should expect
38:04
both of those things to exist simultaneously.
38:07
I think we see right now levels
38:10
of stupidity that are, uh,
38:13
I mean, you would think it was a comedy or a movie
38:16
script, but it's reality that people are
38:18
acting this foolishly,
38:21
cravenly, pathetically, ridiculously,
38:24
uh, and at the same time,
38:27
the capacity is there and it's happening.
38:30
It's not happening enough, but it's happening where
38:33
people are saying, forget it. The
38:36
worst things get. I'm not just going to let that suck me
38:39
down, I'm going to stand up for something.
38:42
And, um. Yeah, my, and
38:45
so I suppose I dare to hope, and I
38:48
bet you feel this way too. It's the reason
38:51
I write books. I bet it's the reason you
38:54
do a podcast and the other good things you
38:56
do is we dare to hope that we could
38:59
together inspire one another to
39:02
stand up with that kind of creativity and love and,
39:05
uh. Joy.
39:07
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. So
39:10
one more question here before we take a break. I'm thinking about, and
39:12
I've heard this in some context,
39:15
where when we think about climate change,
39:18
there's this idea that like, we need a prophet
39:21
who's going to warn us of the impending doom, or we need a
39:24
wizard. So there's this idea we can either trust in the
39:27
prophet and respond to the prophet
39:30
and change our behaviors, or we need a wizard who's going
39:33
to magically, like, carbon capture and,
39:36
uh, renewable energies. It's, uh, kind of the
39:39
wizardry thing and we need to trust in the wizard and we
39:41
can don't really need to change our behaviors because we can trust
39:44
in the wizard. Um, so
39:48
I'm again, tie this back in the church. And I think the same kind
39:51
of thinking can go into church. There's the prophet
39:53
mentality that we need to
39:56
trust the prophet that everything is
39:58
collapsing and respond accordingly,
40:01
or trust in the
40:03
wizardry. And obviously there's some faith
40:06
aspect that God can and might
40:09
intervene, but still, sometimes this can look like in
40:11
churches, is trusting in a dynamic
40:14
personality or over an amazing, uh, new
40:17
system or structure that will save us. So
40:20
I'm curious whether it be in church world
40:23
or thinking about climate change. Do you like one
40:26
of those or the other or.
40:28
Certainly there's limitations to both. Do you think there's a
40:31
third or fourth, uh, mentality we need to think
40:34
about?
40:35
>> Brian McLaren: Yeah, I, uh, really
40:38
love that question. And, uh, maybe we could
40:41
come back tomorrow. Let me have 24 hours to think about that
40:44
because it's such a good question. I suppose the
40:47
first thing I'd say is we definitely need the profit.
40:50
Dear friend and colleague, Richard Rohr is writing,
40:53
just finishing up what he says will be his last
40:55
book.
40:56
>> Loren: I, um, hope not.
40:58
>> Brian McLaren: Uh, we all love him so much. Uh,
41:01
and he said this several times before, but Richard is getting
41:04
up there in years now and his health is frail. But the book is
41:07
called the tears of things. And it's about the prophet. It's
41:10
about the role of the prophet.
41:13
And we need.
41:15
And the good news is we have many
41:18
prophetic voices out there now. But as is
41:21
typical, prophetic voices are
41:24
usually listened to by a very small
41:26
minority. Mocked, rejected,
41:29
uh, excluded, maybe even crucified by the
41:32
majority. So there's
41:35
not a shortage of profits. We also
41:38
have a lot of people claiming to be
41:40
wizards. I'm thinking about a certain
41:43
presidential candidate who several years ago
41:46
said, only I can fix this.
41:49
That's the kind of thing that a person claiming
41:51
magical, supernatural powers
41:54
makes. And, uh, it's,
41:57
uh, the truth is nobody
42:00
has that power. Um,
42:02
and so I think the idea of a
42:05
wizard, in that sense, a magician,
42:08
the modern day, the term for that is an
42:10
authoritarian or a demagogue.
42:13
And I think authoritarian
42:16
demagogue con artists will have a very
42:19
profitable future for a significant
42:22
amount of time, because desperate people
42:25
always turn to con artists and
42:28
demagogues who give them someone to blame, someone
42:31
to hate, someone to fear,
42:34
and then they can cast themselves in the drama as
42:37
an innocent victim or as the
42:40
warriors who are going to take things back and
42:43
make everything right again. Um, and so what
42:46
I would say is, uh,
42:49
the thing we need right now is
42:52
the prophet. And then the thing we need,
42:56
uh, let me switch religions for a minute from
42:59
Christianity to Buddhism. Someone asked the
43:01
Dalai Lama, uh, I believe it was the
43:04
Dalai lama who will be the next,
43:08
um, Buddha or Bodhisattva to lead the way.
43:11
And he said, the next buddha will be the
43:14
sangha. And what he meant by that? The sangha means
43:17
the people. And I think what he was
43:20
saying is what we need now is not a great
43:22
individual. We need a movement of people.
43:26
And to come back to that theme of movement, what we
43:29
need are prophetic voices and then
43:32
people willing to
43:34
form, uh, movements that are
43:37
full of leaders. So there's not just one leader,
43:40
but many leaders who learn how to play as a team
43:43
and fly in formation, so to speak.
43:45
That's our great hope in every
43:48
different endeavor. And no matter how bad
43:51
things get.
43:53
>> Loren: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that's so helpful and really
43:56
tracks with what you've been saying here.
43:59
Before we move on, I just want to kind of.
44:02
I think this is a fair wrap up. Like, uh, I'm
44:05
still thinking back to the quote you shared about the woman showing up for
44:07
something I love. I feel like. I feel like
44:10
in our current context, there's just this temptation
44:13
to kind of be stuck in
44:16
the misery and awfulness. Um,
44:20
and there's not that this.
44:23
It's not untrue, right. There's plenty of bad stuff
44:26
happening. But I believe at least, like, if
44:29
we can show up for something we love and maybe
44:31
show up for love, that might be a good place
44:34
to start.
44:36
>> Brian McLaren: Yes. To be able to do that,
44:39
I think, requires a certain kind
44:41
of death within ourselves.
44:44
>> Loren: Mhm.
44:44
>> Brian McLaren: And it's a beautiful death. It's a needed and
44:47
good and life giving death. And it's the
44:50
death to the assumption that life is all about
44:53
me. Um, and
44:56
of course, we're all in pain. This
44:59
organization that I gave my life to might not be able to
45:01
pay my pension or might be able to pay
45:04
my pension, but can't do this and this and this. Right.
45:08
Um. Well, what that's really about is
45:10
I banked my efforts
45:13
on something and I'm disappointed that it didn't work
45:16
out for me. Um, well, that's
45:19
understandable. We feel that way. But eventually we need to get over
45:22
that. We need to grieve it,
45:24
acknowledge it. And then what we have to go through
45:27
is this death to where we say, oh, but life was
45:30
never about me. I'm about
45:32
life. And for us
45:35
to outgrow an obsession
45:38
with our own career and our own security and
45:41
all the rest but for us to say
45:44
I'm about life, I'm about something bigger than myself.
45:48
This might not get fixed. This
45:51
might not last through my lifetime. This might not get
45:53
fixed during my lifetime. But the things
45:56
I love, I love enough that I'm going to devote the
45:59
time and energy I have for
46:02
people who aren't even yet born to bear the fruits
46:05
of. And that to me, is a
46:08
beautiful kind of death and rebirth
46:11
that can happen within us.
46:12
>> Loren: Boy. And that's really applicable. That's
46:15
really applicable here to, again, the theme of your book.
46:19
There's going to need to be some death to the belief that life is all
46:22
about me, and there's going to
46:25
be some willingness to. I tried to write
46:28
it down here for people who are not. Say that again.
46:31
This idea that living for people who are
46:33
beyond me.
46:34
>> Brian McLaren: How do you say that? Yes. So life
46:37
is not about me. I am about life. And
46:40
that means I'm about the lives of people who haven't
46:43
even been born yet. Um, I want to
46:46
sow seeds, I want to create conditions
46:49
for a better life for people.
46:52
Generations yet to come.
46:54
>> Loren: Yeah, well, this is good stuff.
46:57
Um, let's just roll into here some final
47:00
questions. Since, um,
47:03
we're running long here. Let me
47:05
phrase the question this way.
47:07
>> Brian McLaren: Um.
47:10
>> Loren: If you were, I guess we spoke,
47:13
this is really antithetical to what you've been talking about here, so I'm
47:16
struggling to even answer. Ask the question,
47:19
as you already spoke, against authoritarianism,
47:22
but let's say you were an all benevolent, I don't know,
47:25
a ruler. Uh, or maybe you could say
47:28
one thing you want to change, whether about the church or
47:31
about humans, um, response to
47:34
living in our climate, what would that
47:36
be?
47:37
>> Brian McLaren: Okay, yeah, we'll get rid of all
47:40
benevolent dictator or anything like that since. Yeah. Uh,
47:43
but if. If I had the chance
47:46
to whisper something at everyone's.
47:47
>> Loren: There you go.
47:48
>> Brian McLaren: The hope that they would give it five minutes of
47:51
consideration. Uh, here's what it would
47:53
be. Um,
47:56
well, uh, let me say it in a
47:59
short version and then a slightly longer version. The short version
48:02
would be, many things need to
48:05
end for better things to begin.
48:09
Um, my dear friend Valerie Kaur,
48:12
a Sikh activist, says,
48:14
uh, that the darkness of
48:17
the womb can become the darkness.
48:20
I'm sorry. The darkness of the tomb can become the
48:23
darkness of the womb. What feels
48:26
like death could actually be,
48:29
uh, what's necessary for something new to be
48:31
born. And it's so funny. This has been in the
48:34
Bible my whole entire life, and I never
48:37
really noticed it until recently, but in
48:40
one of those apocalyptic passages where Jesus,
48:43
we, I think, grossly, foolishly
48:46
misinterpreted that he was talking about the end of the
48:49
world. He was really talking about the end of his
48:52
civilization, um, of his
48:54
society. Mhm. Um, it wasn't the end of the world.
48:57
It was the end of the world as his
49:00
contemporaries knew it. But here's what he said. He said, look, things
49:03
are going to get bad, and then they're going to get worse, and then they're
49:06
going to get worse, and this still isn't the end. They're going to get
49:09
worse. But then he said, these are
49:12
only the beginning of birth
49:14
pangs.
49:15
>> Loren: Mhm.
49:16
>> Brian McLaren: What's so interesting? He didn't say, these are the final
49:19
death throes. These are what's
49:21
necessary for something else to be born. And
49:24
what I could whisper to people is they're going to
49:27
be grieving about what
49:30
beautiful things that are being lost
49:33
in a
49:35
destabilized, turbulent time.
49:38
But at the end of the day,
49:41
our lives will either be about doom or they'll be about
49:44
a dream. And the dream is for what
49:47
can be born in a time of doom.
49:50
And, um, so that's what I would
49:53
want to whisper in people's ears.
49:56
>> Loren: How about a word of. Again, I'm going to phrase it this way.
49:58
Pastoral wisdom or
50:01
encouragement to. Whether it be
50:04
pastors leading struggling
50:06
churches, institutions, whether it be
50:09
climate activists, leaders,
50:11
whether it be, um, folks
50:14
seeking justice, causes in their
50:17
communities, um, a
50:19
word of wisdom to them when
50:22
they're just struggling with so much of this
50:25
doom.
50:26
>> Brian McLaren: So I just
50:29
had a conversation recently with a woman about
50:32
my age grandmother, who
50:36
first her stepson
50:39
and then her stepdaughter
50:41
abandoned their children because
50:44
of mental illness and drug addiction.
50:47
And so at an age around
50:49
70, she and her husband
50:53
found themselves having to take
50:55
in their grandchildren, and they
50:58
had a very happy retirement and a very
51:01
happy retirement plan. And that was
51:04
interrupted by a
51:07
sudden need, driven by love,
51:10
to make sure that their grandchildren have the best
51:13
life they can possibly have in a horrible situation
51:16
nobody would ever choose for them. Right
51:20
as we were talking, I said to her,
51:24
people, in your situation, you first
51:27
have to, in private and for a few
51:30
moments, congratulate yourself
51:33
for taking on a tough assignment.
51:36
Um, you could have walked away when
51:39
social services called. You could have just said, well,
51:42
I can't help you. Um, but
51:44
you heard the call and you responded.
51:47
And so part of what I want to do to every activist and every
51:50
pastor is I want to put my arms around him and
51:53
say, God bless you for hearing the call. God
51:56
bless you for hanging in there. You don't have
51:59
to do this, but to the degree you continue to.
52:02
And, uh, you do it out of love. I love you,
52:05
and I appreciate you, and I hope you
52:08
feel that deeply. The second thing I said
52:11
to her is that you
52:14
have to take care of yourself so that you'll
52:17
be in good enough shape to take care of
52:20
these children.
52:22
And part of taking care of yourself
52:25
means processing your own
52:28
feelings. And to circle back to
52:31
this book, one of the things I
52:33
think all of us who are in leadership in these times
52:36
feel is this feeling like, am I wasting
52:39
my time? What do I do, uh,
52:42
if things aren't getting better on my
52:44
timetable? And so
52:47
being able to process those feelings,
52:51
uh, that becomes really, really important. And the
52:54
thing, I guess, the promise I'd want to make to
52:57
people is that I think if we go through the process
52:59
in a careful
53:02
way, not alone in isolation,
53:06
I, um, think we will find some deeper wisdom
53:09
and some deeper and wider perspectives
53:12
that will need. And I
53:15
would want to say to a person, you're worth it
53:18
to go through that kind of deepening of perspectives.
53:21
>> Loren: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I hope our
53:24
listeners appreciate it. Again, the book is life
53:26
after wisdom and courage for a world falling
53:29
apart. Brian, I think this is out for purchase.
53:32
Yes, yes.
53:34
>> Brian McLaren: And it soon here. It started arriving. It started
53:37
arriving in people's mailboxes already.
53:41
>> Loren: This episode should hear release soon, so
53:44
I think it's available for purchase. Brian, how can people
53:47
connect with you? Uh, otherwise, sure.
53:50
>> Brian McLaren: My website is just my name,
53:51
brianmclaren.net
53:53
brianmclaren.net
53:56
dot. And there's links there for the book. And I
53:59
have a podcast and other resources they might be interested
54:02
in. So, yeah, that's the one stop place to make the
54:05
connection, Brian.
54:06
>> Loren: So thank you so much for your time and for
54:09
your wisdom. And, uh, I wish
54:12
God's peace be with you.
54:14
>> Brian McLaren: Thank you. And Lauren, I say that to you as well. And
54:17
thank you for the good work you do of,
54:19
uh, providing this context for
54:22
conversation. God bless you and all the listeners.
54:24
>> Loren: Thank you.
54:26
>> Paul: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
54:29
To learn more about Lauren or the podcast,
54:32
visit future dash christian.com.
54:35
One more thing before you go. Do us a
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54:40
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review. It really helps us get the word out to more
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54:49
The Future Christian podcast is a production of torn
54:52
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54:55
episodes were mixed by Danny Burton and the production support
54:58
is provided by Paul Romaglevitt.
55:00
Thanks.
55:01
>> Brian McLaren: Mhm.
55:01
>> Paul: And go in peace.
55:02
>> Brian McLaren: It's.