Episode 19 - Searching For Sunday with Rachel Held Evans

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hey guys a quick announcement before we proceed with today's episode we're working on an event called belong it's going to be june 15th and 16th in atlanta georgia um and we're thinking about how we further the conversations we have on the podcast and all the things we're talking about in creating safe community and basically belong is a safe place to come have honest discussions about doubt and hope and fear and faith you know the kind of place where no question is off limits but you can find a community of people who will welcome you with all your strangeness and it's a place where the unlikely gather around a table and find a place to belong so we're going to talk about doubt we're going to talk about science and we're going to talk about how to create and sustain and foster safe spiritual communities now registration for the event will open may the 5th and there's only a hundred seats available you want to have a smaller event where people can actually share and there's discussion and there's dialogue and it's not just uh you know us talking to a crowd so it'll be michael and i michael gunger and i will be there this is science mike as well as some familiar voices from the podcast and our liturgies and you can find out more about the event at theliturgist.com belong again registration opens may 5th and there's only 100 seats so when they're gone they're gone and i hope to see you there [Music] so we're at this point where everyone's talking about the church and how it's dying or how it's changing and recently i was in a city called los angeles with my dear friend michael gunger and we saw a little indie film you may have heard of called selma and uh we sat in this like really powerful narrative that talked about oppression and and and the ways that people uh try to make progress in the world the way other people push back and you know who's really good and who's not and what does that mean and we get done and we're walking back to the car and we talk about justice and and and the narratives and how that happens and michael's like listen i got to read something for you so we sit in this car on the side of the street in los angeles and michael starts to read me this powerful and i mean incredibly powerful passage from a book and it talks about all the atrocities that the church has committed and right when i was ready to open the car and step out into traffic the the peace shifted and it started talking about the saints and the people who had stood up for justice who were also part of the church and in doing so told this more broad more beautiful more complete story of what the church is than i'd ever heard before and so if you can picture michael and i sitting in a car in los angeles crying together because we've read a book then you understand what our friend rachel held evans has done in her new book searching for sunday and we're not usually a uh here's a podcast about a product kind of uh program but michael and i both feel that this book is both incredibly important and covers exactly the topics that our audience and all you guys who do this with us are thinking about and talking about so really really excited to tell you guys rachel health evans is here with us this week to talk about the church and specifically searching for sunday welcome back rachel thanks for being back with us again oh it's such a pleasure this is one of my favorite things to do and um yeah i just always enjoy our conversations here so thanks for having me so tell me what what do you tell a person i mean i i know you have a whole book of what you would tell a person but for the sake of a podcast um and even just to remind me now it's been several weeks since i or a couple months maybe since i've read the book and honestly like i was so encouraged when i got done reading it like yeah church and then you go back to a church and it's like oh man there are people here and stuff so what do you why do you tell somebody or what maybe not even tell somebody why do you tell yourself like why why do you still bother right um after seeing i mean all of us have seen things in the church things done in the name of the church um that that we want nothing to do with that seems so contrary to what we love about jesus what we hope for with our faith um and then you see it how it gets done in the world and it's like what what are we doing why bother i'd rather go on a hike you know and where i'm at right now i most mostly up for the hike these days yeah honestly um but i still it's like this you know i'm haunted i'm haunted by the church yeah um so what what do you why do you hold on what do you why are you still there well and i'm like you i mean i don't always and i've been through seasons of life where i stayed home on sundays and watched meet the press and you know drank my coffee and filled out my crossword puzzles and it was great and and that was a time in my life when i needed to do that and i think some people have times in their lives where they need a break from the church especially when people have been deeply wounded by the church i don't think that um you know we have to i'm not in this effort to get people through the doors and worshiping on a sunday morning at 10 45 a.m uh i think church can be can look like a lot of different things and for some people that's not going on a sunday morning to a building with a steeple on top that might just be breaking bread together with other christians and confessing sins with other christians and walking through suffering with other christians i think the point is to be in community with other people in some way so you know i'm not the type to advocate for saying that people have to go to church i think church is a community and it can look like a lot of different things but what gets keeps me going in spite of my own cynicism which is pretty pretty pronounced at times and what that is i struggle with and i have a lot of doubts and i get really frustrated with the church but what keeps me going is are things like communion um you know i i don't really know what i would do without that shared meal together and that reminder each week that jesus christ feeds us and welcomes anyone who's hungry that it's not about being worthy or good it's about being hungry that gets me going to church and the practice of anointing the sick and really the sacraments which is kind of what i focus on in this book keep pulling me back to church because there's something about the sacraments you know the sacraments present us with a christ who can we can touch and taste and smell and feel in the company of other people and there's something just really powerful about that something that i can't extract myself from as much as i try at times i still just long to be a part of a community of people that gather together break bread share a meal and remind one another that they're beloved children of god and that that identity matters more than any other so yeah i guess you could just say it was the sacraments that kind of pulled me back after i'd given up on the church can crossword puzzles be sacramental i think they can especially if it's new york times and you do it like in a pen that's holy um but yeah but yeah i actually i mean i think so i think like chicken casseroles can be a sacrament i think and i don't know i mean i might get in trouble with my more liturgical friends for this but i think you know a sacrament is an outward sign of inward grace and so we practice the sacraments in all sorts of ways it's when something some everyday thing whether that's a meal whether that's a marriage whether that's um a song or time outside you know at a picnic [Music] it's when something normal becomes saturated with the holy when you really sense the presence of god and something important in a moment through everyday things everyday acts of kindness every day gifts of mercy so yeah absolutely i think uh just about anything can be sacramental when we um when it points us to christ when it uh and that's that's how i kind of think about especially the sacrament of marriage and and things like that it's when a marriage looks like christ when it reminds us of christ and brings us closer to christ then it becomes sacramental uh when a meal points us to christ and reminds us of christ and helps us see christ in one another it becomes sacramental so all sorts of things uh can be sacraments i think i mean i think that's dead on um you know because i i've had this progression uh in my life where i started out like really really evangelical and today i'm pr i'm a mainliner and um contrary to making me like uh hate my spiritual roots it's actually made me appreciate them more because in their own way um southern baptists have liturgy uh and they and they you know you you haven't seen a sacrament until you've seen uh a southern baptist fall ill or a southern baptist die and a church respond to that i just they're incredible ain't that the truth oh my gosh it's so true it's like i mean it's a whole army of casseroles you know when somebody is sick and yeah absolutely it's like you know churches that might not even use the word sacrament uh will exhibit sacramental uh practices and and so you don't even have to say oh this is a sacrament for it to be one and i think that's one thing i one reason why i use the sacraments in this book was because i knew that that that's something that all christian traditions have in common whether or not they use the word sacrament to describe what they're doing churches that are our healthy churches are baptizing centers sharing meals together confessing their sins anointing the sick all of these things whether or not they call them that or identify them as sacramental they're doing those things and so it seems to be the tie that that kind of pulls us all together so would you say to somebody then that's inside the church um what do you say when the sacraments lose that they lose the grace for people because a lot of people have these experiences um and they're stuck there for you know in the circumstances they're in um and and the grace is gone from from their sacramental practices uh what do you do yeah yeah i mean i think you know grace will show up sometimes just in other places it's like i mean if so for instance um you know i know some i have friends who were forbidden in their churches from taking communion because they were gay uh and that's just awful and it's the worst thing in the world and their that sacrament will always be sort of tinged for them they'll always have that memory but it's like it also makes it all the more powerful when they're with a group of people where for instance they're asked to serve communion i had a great conversation with a gay friend of mine who was telling me about the first time he served communion to people and what a powerful experience that had been for him having been denied it in the past or if you're not ready to walk through the church doors i mean maybe it's just like eating chinese food with your friends and talking and um praying together in that moment you know that meal becomes more than a meal and and so christians would identify that as as a sacramental type of meal and so you know maybe it's not formally that you're practicing or taking communion but if you're sharing food with other people and you know remembering jesus together uh that's a sacrament so i mean grace will show up when it's been when you've been deprived of it i've just never known a more resilient thing than grace and a more surprising thing than grace it will show up maybe just in a different way i trust that and i've seen it happen many times in my life and in the lives of other people but in the meantime it can be really rough waiting around for that to happen again and i the last thing i ever want to do especially when people are suffering or i've had a bad experience with church the last thing i ever want to do is sort of gloss over that you know i felt like with this book it was really really important to me to just stare down the tough stuff and look at look at square in the eye and be like sometimes the church wounds incredibly but it can also heal so it was important to me to avoid you know cynicism on the one hand and sentimentality on the other i just wanted to tell the truth and so when people tell me about their very difficult church stories the last thing i want to do is try and like clean it up real quick and say oh it'll be fine just wait around grace will show up mostly i just want to be present with them and acknowledge that it sucks and that sometimes the church can be really horrible but i trust that christ is persistent and that grace will get through eventually hey mike i never asked you this but when you were when you were an atheist and you were in church what were the sacraments like for you uh well i went to a baptist church so they had a different list of sacraments uh the lord's supper was a sacrament uh baptism was a sack but you know i mean they don't call very sacrament's very special word in the baptist church it's reserved for just a few activities um and i viewed them as ritualistic reinforcements of a dogmatic belief system that i was trying to pretend to be a part of oh yeah totally well i'm not gonna blow my cover i'm not gonna be a deacon who doesn't eat the lord's supper that'd be pretty big red flag i didn't feel like convicted because there's not any god to judge me um i was just doing what i had to do in my own way to support people i cared about i i was trying to protect them by taking this meal but it's as a baptist it's not like the that was ever it was always kind of a ritualistic experience for me you know i would bow my head and people i admired who were christians seem to be getting a lot out of this experience and so i tried to model that and i i would have times a very intense prayer um but you know with the little tiny plastic cup and the tiny wafer passed around um you know it was mainly and then especially on my deacon and i'm serving that stuff it became very logistically oriented it wasn't actually until i became an atheist and found god again through the eucharist that i began to understand why this is such a powerful experience and then when i read that passage in in rachel's book about about serving the eucharist to all those uh youth it reminded me of when we first started doing liturgist events and um the first one we did was in nashville and i ended up because you guys were all playing serving everybody the eucharist and i remember that being such a powerful experience because this thing which had had made god real to me again suddenly here i am doing for others what was done for me and watching in their eyes this connection with christ and so it really is terrible that we ever tell anyone that they're not good enough for that experience the the experience with maybe more than any other um and i'm sure i'll get emails i'm wrong about that but but seems to be profoundly connected to knowing christ in this world today it just breaks my heart and and reading that passage now i cry a lot i cry really easily i get that i admit it um but this was an intense moment to read those words and interspace with the descriptions of the people um oh man serving the eucharist it's a powerful experience like and especially when it's your first time doing it and you feel completely unworthy to do it and but that's like the whole point it's just like it's this sensation that christ is present and christ is gonna show up and this is enough like you don't have to make it enough it's enough all on its own that was what was so liberating to me as somebody who's kind of a people pleaser and who in that context was feeling very out of her place trying to speak at a youth event just breaking that bread and handing it into those people's cupped hands was just a reminder that like i don't understand this i'm not i i can't explain what's happening you know but it's it's enough all on its own it's just it's enough and i believe christ is present in this moment and yeah it's it's a crazy it's like and that changed how i received communion too i don't know if you felt this way too mike but like after you've served it you receive it a little bit differently too because you realize a little bit more about the about the power of that moment and um and the and just how vulnerable you are when you're standing there with your hands cupped together ready to receive it's a very vulnerable physical position to be standing in or kneeling in in my case and uh yeah it's but it's something i have to i feel like is important for me to do on a pretty regular basis uh kneel down hands cup together and just receive something not something i've earned or worked really hard to get uh not something that i had to be popular for or worthy for just something that's given just a gift that's just given to me that's that that's an important mental thing practice for me to do uh at least a few times a month side note but i was just at a i was at this evangelical church recently and i i thought it was so funny how because they did the wafers with the plastic cup and stuff and now they have those where i think they're like wrapped into the plastic cup oh yeah i've got one of those they like come together and i i just i just realized like i thought it it's so funny how liberal uh evangelicals are about the eucharist it's like the bible says bread and wine yeah i mean cracker and some grape juice wrap it up that's cool see next time somebody gives you a hard time for not being a biblical literalist ask them if they actually use bread and wine oh man that'll be like your gotcha moment i don't need gotcha moments i don't know michael you might i have one of those in my medicine cabinet the little bread wine packets i'm not kidding are you saving it for a like a certain traumatic incident that you feel like well i might this might go beyond like advil i'm gonna need some no a kid handed it to me have you have you heard that hannibal bit where he talks about the lady with her back and he said and she says no he said i've got some viking if you want it she says no i don't need viking and i've got jesus he says you should try vicodin no it's in there because a kid handed it to me on the set of blue like jazz and uh that's my little that's my atheist uh my atheist communion wafer so it's there to remind me i look at it every time i brush my teeth oh yeah that was a weird time to remind you of what of what it was like to be an atheist on the set of blue-like jazz filming a movie about progressive christianity that's what it's for yeah that's got to be a complex emotion it was pretty weird yeah it was weird that only could be found in a yeah a plastic communion cup but that's like you should hang on like this ritual is like from the outside it seems crazy that we put so much stock in it like rachel's saying it's a thing i didn't earn and an atheist would go what a piece of bread and a little wine you can get more than that on free ice cream day at the you know you get a free slice of pie at village inn you know but like but the to do that is to ignore the deep meaning and mystery of this act um that means so much to so many and such a it's such a reflection of who we are and how we relate to god and how we relate to each other um yeah well we could do a whole episode on eucharist i bet oh we could for sure let's do that it is interesting that you cuz yeah you can't just i mean i guess you can try to just have a little bread and a little wine and and think of it as the eucharist but that's that's it's not quite the same you know it's like doing for me anyway the experience of my favorite eucharistic experiences are always when uh i can see the greatest diversity of people doing it they don't all look like me or to like think like me um that's always the most beautiful is when it's like why is that guy standing next to that lady though you never see you would never see those two in the same line usually for anything um and that's and being part of that grand thing and thinking about how that's been going for thousands of years um because that's i mean that's one of the is that part of why it's so powerful like what other what other sacraments you got baptism i guess that's what you go through in your your book these are the classic sacraments huh you have seven of them yeah and these are the seven that are recognized officially by the roman catholic church and orthodox church so that seemed like a good seven to me so that's what i like what are they again so there's baptism sick there's baptism and then communion confession and then holy orders that's uh a reference to people who have committed their lives to some sort of formal ministry so priests pastors that sort of thing and then marriage and confirmation and anointing of the sick i'm really glad i remembered all this because i have forgotten some in the past and it's a little embarrassing it's like when you forget one fruit of the spirit have you ever done this when you're like talking about the fruit of the spirit and you're like love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentle wait and then you forget that's the spot i always forget i always forget self-control even though it was like did you all memorize the fruit of the spirit by like actual fruit like pinned up on the wall in your church because that's how i remembered him like you know the orange of gentleness and it was always the banana of self-control of course it's a banana of course it's a banana because you have to like self-control is a long word so it always went on the banana but it's funny for a lot of reasons anyway it's it's like that sometimes i'm going through the list of sacraments and i forget one usually it's confirmation so i don't know if there's some deep meaning behind that but how come meekness is sometimes one and not other times well i think it's whether they turn translate gentleness as meekness or gentleness you're an expert on the fruit of the spirit rachel evans yeah i basically yeah i basically am i was like the person winning all of the sword drills and yeah i still have stuff memorized for moana did you all do awana i knew approved workmen are not ashamed i knew kids that didn't wanna yeah even my church i went to baptist churches that thought that was too far yeah that's like they thought i wanna was liberal oh no they thought it was like too far into bible land oh yeah that's crazy i was a royal ambassador i stayed away from you that didn't sound creepy at all i was a i was a pastor's kid and went to christian school i couldn't any extracurricular activities would have been just far too much we'll see you paid off i remember the fruit of the spirit and also a lot of passages about blood for some reason like the blood of christ being spilled for sins which my mom even when i was a kid said she thought it was a little creepy that i had all these verses about blood memorized so what are some of our questions mike what do we got we got some so this came on twitter uh from cold folds cold folds on twitter says the size of a church is inversely proportional to what is possible with worship discuss are small churches better is that what he's asking you think i don't know i mean that's what i think he's asking yeah i don't know i avoid any like big churches are bad like mega churches are horrible and small churches are the way to go or other people are like small churches are dying they're useless you know everybody's flocking to the mega church i don't i mean to me it's just like i don't know it seems like kind of pointless i mean i've seen and experienced very powerful worship and very powerful community in a big church and i've seen and experienced that in smaller church at churches and i've seen major dysfunction in mega churches and major dysfunction in small churches so i don't know i to me it's just like we're the fruit of this we're back to the fruit of the spirit where the fruit of the spirit is present to me that is a thriving and growing church the fruit of the spirit is not how big it is or how relevant you are or how many followers you have or how many you know what impact you're making it's the fruit of the spirit is lovejoy well we've been through it but that to me is what what signals a healthy church not not numbers uh i don't know but that's just maybe that's a little idealistic maybe it's harder to have a real authentic healthy community in a big church but i don't know i've seen some of them manage it it seems to me pretty well i think it's harder to innovate liturgy in a big church from my experience at least harder in so far as if you don't want to fight on your hands i mean i just know from from my experience with uh both the church i grew up in which was not that church wasn't small but you know i mean it was in the hundreds of people rather than the thousands of people um and then in in bloom the church that we started in denver i mean i just would come in and you know we'd have like i went on this on that assisi retreat that i've talked about on the podcast where we did you know this silent meditation and then we did we would do like these prayer movements um and so i came back from that i'm like let's do this bloom i lead everybody like these prayer movements [Laughter] and i've been to the i've been to the big you know the big ones the big uh evangelical churches anyway in the in the united states and i just cannot imagine getting up at you know lakewood church on a sunday morning and being like all right everybody we're gonna do these prayer movements um you could do it it just it's not gonna probably go very well um but i don't know there's something about when it's a smaller group of people there's less there's less power um and so people there's like not territory i think a lot of times at bigger churches power starts happening um and so people get little realms of authority and little realms of this is my spot this is where i derive some sort of power from so people get pissy about their little areas um and so no that's not what we do here that's not you know it's like you're encroaching on something uh you start messing with power in some way and so people get angry quicker um when it bloom nobody had any power because there's no money there's no there's no so like if i'm gonna try some weird prayer moves they might laugh at me and be like that was weird michael but nobody's getting upset right so in my experience it is harder to lead a bunch of people just like it would be harder to like if there's blue 100 big church though bloom yeah a couple hundred people that that's the thing like megan mega church have so skewed our perspective of church size that we because i do that sometimes i call my church good sam a small church it's a small church but which over two services might have 350 or 400 people on a sunday morning and i say it's a small church and then some pastor will go that's not a small church stop saying that um and so you know what i mean like there's you know like there's really small churches 25 people 35 people 60 people that are actual sustainable communities uh who would who would look at bloom and say man look at that beast of a church nobody knows anybody well and it might but it might be harder even at bloom to innovate than liturgy than it would be for the 25 people 25 people like i'm gonna take my shirt off and do these prayer movements and then like next week you just have 10 people exactly [Laughter] maybe it's just because they're bad ideas but but i'd wha oh the the positive side about not because that that i mean who that's not to argue that we need to be doing all this liturgical innovation every week um i just think as somebody who plans liturgies are used to um on a regular basis um the size of the of the crowd does matter i think if you want people going with you so i you know it it would almost be like if there's a hundred people in a room and you say let's all we all have to leave right now and we all have to be holding hands while we do it versus there's four of us in the room you say we all have to be holding hands we have to get out of the room the four people are going to be able to just get out of the room so much faster than 100 people are going to be able to figure out how to get out of the room together um so there's like it's just more complex with more people and more systems and more organization and more you know if i decide to do we just did these that this easter set of services 10 services it's a big church here in california one service and 10 services of the same set and i could like that's a literal 10 that's not a figurative 10 where he's using hyperbole it's actual 10 because i asked was this on easter was this what your resurrection day looked like because that's terrible it was it was a lot easter week it was holy week okay but the um but if i decided like i normally would to like let's just do that again let's do that chorus again or i'm going to go into this other thing right now there are a hundred other people that have to like adjust somehow the lighting people the sound people and the choir and the band and everybody if i was just playing my guitar at bloom i can do whatever i want to do um there's no production whatsoever there's no with this place there was scrims and lights and all sorts of stuff going on uh so it's just you know moving moving a lot of people doing different things in worship which i think what's the question speaks to i do think it makes it it does make a difference on the size yeah that makes sense it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's better help help dot com slash liturgists okay uh this is uh from facebook um adam whose last name i will not attempt sorry adam asked what are some ways you can walk a healthy line of criticizing what is bad about the church while being open to the plank in your own eye it seems so easy to justify our own behavior or become individualistic but yet wanting to call out what is not good for the community yeah i mean i think for me at least in my experience it's been like do i have a few things in place do i have a community of people who actually really know me and will call me out when is necessary you know like people who support me and and love what i do and are cheerleaders for me but are like not that impressed you know with rachel i need you know having a community of people that will be that for you i think for me is a really crucial to knowing to seeing the planks in my own eye and to um seeing my own hypocrisy and um my own sins uh in a healthy way like not in a wallow in it sort of a way but in a oh yeah i need to i need to be aware of this and and also makes me more gentle in my calling out on the internet when i realized you know i've got people who are holding me accountable in my real life so people you know in your life who who are real life friends and family who know you well i think that's pretty important um and then you know having a i mean i i go through periods of time where i don't talk to god much and because i'm not really sure there is such a god and you know that's that's a pretty like regular part of my life um but uh it seems to me when you have a healthy or or somewhat active prayer life or when you're at least like meditating or spending some time being introspective and thinking about um your your life and your mistakes and your the joys and the sorrows you know then i'm in a better position to be critical and to know when it's right to do the call out and when it's not a good idea but i also feel like this is a question that in our culture of like call out culture is really pressing and really important and and really complicated and i would love to see more people writing and thinking about this because i mean the big tension i feel like i'm living in right now and that i don't really know if there is a road map through this but um is i really feel like we're called as christians to be prophetic witness and and sometimes that means like a prophetic call out like calling out injustice where we see it and saying this is an injustice this is wrong but i also really strongly believe in this notion of grace and that we extend grace to one another and that you know when i'm in a sort of liberal progressive circle sometimes i feel like that that grace can be lacking that that folks get treated almost as poorly as i saw them treated in fundamentalism for making a mistake you know so like i don't know i've been really struggling in my own heart with how do i find the right how do you know when a call out or a challenge is prophetic and necessary and how do you know when it's just you being an ass on the internet or uh or taking it too far or shaming somebody i don't know i feel like it's like case by case and i've spent a lot of time thinking about the times i think i might have gotten that wrong um so yeah that's oh you all should do a whole podcast on that like on um yeah you should do an episode on that on the prophetic yeah like when when are you being prophetically calling somebody out and when are you just being an ass like that is really interesting to me and i feel like i don't always know like when is it right to challenge people and when do you when does it turn into shaming that's really important to me because i feel like we have really crossed the threshold of becoming something of a shaming culture where people get piled on pretty mercilessly where one mistake that you happen to make on twitter one thing you say wrong can end up haunting you and costing you your job and your life like i don't know i don't know i feel like it's a really complicated new world that i'm struggling to navigate myself well you guys heard it here first episode 20 of the liturgist podcast rachel will return for an episode called profit or ass that's a good one i don't think i should be on that one though because i want to just hear somebody else's opinion on it i really don't know i feel like i don't know i have no idea we'll bring we'll bring in a huge round table of profits and asses and let the readers decide who is which [Laughter] uh yeah i'd like to i i i probably skew towards the ladder of those too often me too sure i think i think i'm being a prophet i'm just being an ass trolls are truth tellers you can make it alliterative well okay this is that's a part of the church and part of church history that it doesn't exist much it doesn't seem right in in culture i mean if you look at the people that are yelling the loudest against the powers that be we mentioned rage against the machine on on the worship podcast we just did um you don't like why isn't that there's always been this history all the way i love some of those if there's anything i love about the old testament there's not that much that i can that i'm inspired by the old testament these days this is so crazy to me but i love the old testament prophets yeah they did crazy stuff like wearing the yolk around the neck like for weeks on end and i mean just like just being naked just being naked for months at a time or whatever like laying on laying on his side and and cooking his food on crap while everybody walked by and like this is you guys this is you just i married a hooker for you guys israel that's amazing can you imagine i mean can you imagine like yeah like joel osteen comes back out on a church on on a sunday morning lakewood church and he just walks out and just lays on his side [Laughter] and he just stays there for like two years that would be the greatest thing to ever happen oh my gosh all they got to do is rotate the book photo 90 degrees and it's already ready to sell but that's amazing so that i mean jesus jesus was a prophet right i mean he spoke when we speak of prophet not we're not speaking of future fortune tellers um but sort of the the the prophet the role of the prophet in the bible is this sort of has this imagination for um for what should be and what god god would say or what god you know how righteousness would come into a situation of justice and shalom after situation and calls out the powers that be and calls out the religious powers and the political powers and and says hard truth to to the systems and powers that be and that is so christian um and it's it's a weird thing when the christian you know that kind of when christian powers become the powers that be themselves in some level um how can they have a prophetic voice but then so we need we need i think we need more prophets more chris in the church within and there's a there is that line between just being an ass and being a prophet between being cynical and and having like a true voice of righteousness and justice within within power and authority that needs to be questioned yeah and i wonder i sometimes feel like we we use the word prophetic so too loosely now so that like everybody who you know writes a blog post or an open letter or something is called a prophet you know whereas seems to me like you're saying in the old testament the the prophets that took some serious commitment i mean that you were all fully committed that was not a tweet you know that was like you're in it i mean in jesus i mean it led to the cross i mean i don't know if i want to be a prophet it sounds nice but i mean really that's well you guys have fun with your prophecy yeah just enjoy that they get killed right i mean it's i think you can hold down a job you're not a prophet yeah right it'll cost you something and i wonder if maybe we're just like i don't know we're a little bit afraid of that and so we we sort of cheapen it a little bit and and call any act of calling out uh prophetic and i just don't know you know any act of calling out power or somebody in a powerful position as prophetic i don't know i don't know i i think that would be a really interesting topic to explore further because um i feel like it's such an important thing to preserve that prophetic witness in the church but i don't want to to sort of call every criticism or every challenge prophetic when um i don't know sometimes we're all just mad or maybe maybe we're we have every right to be mad or maybe it is but what does it look like to like faithfully practice prophetic challenge i don't know i think that'd be really interesting that's another podcast i'm just going to write these up for y'all and send them like your list of future podcasts we do have a list of future podcasts i wrote this uh in my notes like about a month ago just happened to write because i i was thinking about the prophets and i looked up what they did all right so ezekiel ezekiel's calling as a prophet began with him not speaking instead he drew jerusalem being attacked on a clay tablet then lay on his side with a pan between him and his art for 390 days then at the end he switched sides and did the whole thing over then after that he started a new diet of only barley cakes cooked on cow manure then he used a sword to shave off his beard a sword dividing his hairs into thirds he set one third on fire scattered another third around the city and stabbed it with his sword he re he threw the remaining hair into the wind and except for a few to sew into his clothes and then burn oh my god so you could never get a hipster to do that do that to their beard that is insane that's amazing wow oh that's amazing well man uh congratulations adam that might have been the uh the farthest-ranging answer in the history of the program pretty impressive i don't even remember what the question was [Music] that is great stuff on the profits that i mean that is did you get that from walter bruggeman or who like or you just found it yourself michael in your research about what they did yeah yeah i mean did you find all that in my book no i've just looked it up online like what did the pro like i remembered some of these stories yeah but i was like i wanted to remember all the crazy stuff that yeah like isaiah what like isaiah walked around naked for years you know micah apparently did too buzzfeed would say you won't believe what this major prophet did and then people would click and watch it on youtube i mean can you ima like chris tomlin walks out on on a huge christian festival and just walks out naked and like guys this is you this is you right now and that's the thing that's what you're saying just it's like it's so amazing it's so amazing i wish that's if that was christian music i would just market it like crazy i'm a christian beard's on fire beards on fire that's now the title of this episode yes [Music] okay another question that uh is awesome kyle butcher butcher5 uh asked should you continue going to church if you're losing faith um mike you should tackle that one they know what i think they listen to me all the time um but i i think well that ties me to something in the book that just like i took a picture of and put on instagram which i didn't know if i was allowed to do or not because it's an advanced copy but i did it anyway i don't think the publisher will come after you for that i think you're safe but you had all these quotes of what people told you when you were doubting and they found out and i laughed do you also have like an entire box of the case of christ or the case for christ that people gave you oh my god like a boxer full of the same book over and over again yes yeah everybody's like have you heard of lee strobel yeah i've heard at least trouble robbie zechariah should you go to church if you're doubting honestly my take maybe i think sometimes you don't need to keep going to church if it's like if it's making it harder for you to get out of bed in the morning consistently and you're in an environment where that just beats you down stay home for a while see how you feel um we went through a period in my family where we weren't church people um and about the time we got used to that was when i decided it was time for us to go back but um that period was necessary if i would have gone straight from the sort of traumatic parting of a church that i loved into a new church it would have been like the spiritual version of a rebound relationship i had to take the time to grieve now i know there's probably people who disagree with me strongly on that but i think there's some merit if you need the time off taking the time off um but ultimately and this is new for me i've gone from this sort of individualistic idea about salvation to ultimately our faith really only comes alive in community and if you're doubting and you want to believe if that's something that's important to you it's going to be much easier to believe in a community that supports you but that community has to be composed of believers um and there's good science behind that social identity is a tremendous driver of human belief and so if you're off on your own and you start to drop the label christian which is fine if you do that i do that most days myself um but then you isolate yourself from people who believe and most of your discussions about spirituality are with you know people who don't believe on the internet well your brain's gonna just start glomming along with your new tribe so if you want to believe believe with believers it's it's much much easier and i think even if if i mean there's inherent value in the things that a church and a faith community does i'm with you in that if if you especially for people who've had a traumatic church experience i think time away can be really really good and really healing and nourishing um but i think there's there's just such value in the church doing what the church does there's such value in just the practice of for example you know anointing the sick or i mean even if you don't do an official anointing that we're here for you when the family falls ill with the flu we're here for you to take you to chemo we're here for you to make food when you have a baby like you know there's just such incredible value beliefs aside um in having a community of people who love you and uh are are gonna stick with you through good times and bad imperfectly i mean there's no option to have a perfect community that's not gonna ever happen but even just having people love you the wrong way you know if those boxes full of the case for christ i realized that those are actually like those people were trying to love me they were kind of doing it wrong but i it represents a bunch of people who are really invested in my life and want me to be happy and whole and you know even though i'm not a part of that community anymore that church anymore there was value in having that for a while so i don't know even apart from how it affects your theology or your beliefs there's incredible value in sharing meals with other people and a value in um just having a community so yeah i think it's i think i still go in on days when i don't believe a word of the creed that i'm saying you know i don't believe a word of it but i hear the lady next to me you know like the 90 year old lady saying it next to me like reciting it by heart and it's almost like well she'll just be believing for me today like it carries me like all those other voices saying that creed together well you know what maybe i'm not feeling it today maybe i don't really believe this maybe it's i don't know uh but hey the people around me seem to believe it today and that's that's enough for today we're you know we're in this together so i don't know yeah that's kind of how i see it i think that coming to los angeles um you know not we came from a church in denver and um and left you know with some pain from some of that but uh you know we tried to look around a little bit here but it i i feel like i'm kind of in in that need to heal for a second space personally right now but i do keep thinking about like what does the church like why does it exist and even within our society like at this point of where we are in history what what does the church have to offer and it's interesting coming to a new city um there is something that the church does that no other sort of group or organizations or community groups do there is something unique about the church i mean where can you just be like where where can i go where a group of people want to assemble simply for the for the purpose of making the world better simply for the purpose of coming together to be together and to lay their souls bare and to find you know to become better themselves to serve each other to serve the world where does that exist like you can't it's not like a store that you go to you know let's go to the restaurant and then let's go to the ever let's make everything better place you know um so it has this really it's a strange place because that because there's so much of what the church does that you can that's totally needless to me at this point like i honestly where i'm at i don't i don't need to hear this same guy tell me what he thinks about the bible for an hour every week that's not really what i care about at this point um but you know i can listen to some ted talks i can listen to some podcasts if it's just about listening to cool music there's way better shows in town that i could just go watch or just listen to on my ipad or you know i can but there's something about the intention of all these people getting together and doing these things and going through these things that on their own you could probably find other better ways of getting inspired um but i don't know there's something about the intention and the community the history and the the long line and the long heritage and you get you you join you jump into this crazy story together and you talk about it and you imagine it and then you break this bread and this wine and there is something kind of magical about it um when it's done you know in a way that is as free from from baggage as possible for for you know that everything's going to have baggage for certain people but that's i'm just i'm waiting until i can go and and not be jaded if the guy gets up and tells me about what he thinks about the bible yes i just don't want to hear that right now i don't care what you think about that it's part of your detox it's good it's all good yeah and like you look at baptism like that's a good example of something that like no other community group does this thing where you you know where you splash water on a baby's head or you dunk somebody underneath the water and as they come up tell them that over and beyond any other label that the world might assign you you are a beloved child of god and nothing can change that like that's like where else does that happen uh i mean and it's it's this i mean and in the traditional liturgy and stuff around baptism there's a lot of good stuff in there about like evil and demons and satan stuff that i don't normally like jive with but it's this notion that like you know all the things that compete for our allegiance and identity uh if you think of those all of those things as almost having a demonic power to them you know what i mean it's this i don't know and in baptism you look at all that stuff and you say i'm a beloved child of god and that's the most important thing and in some traditions you they would literally spit in the face of evil after they came up out of the water i mean i think where else does that happen you know where you're like you know fu to the rest to all of the screwy labels that get assigned to me all of the expectations all of the the hateful things that people will say to me none of that matters uh more than my identity as a beloved child of god and as a member of this family that is the church i mean that's just crazy stuff and it's great though it's it's and it's totally unique to church you can't get that anywhere else this universal holy and dysfunctional family super dysfunctional like i loved in the book when you like uh put all the denominations in the room of a house and kind of painted this picture of what it could look like for us to have denominations but still ultimately work together um i'd gave me more hope than anything i've read in a long long time it's probably a little idealistic but that's kind of how i see it it can happen every cynic is a frustrated idealist right that's right yes i was just thinking about that quote today because i was feeling cynical it's like my default mode so i'm curious just to get your thoughts rachel maybe we shared some of this with you before but we get a lot of emails um about this this idea that you know people long for community they long for a place to be able to find sacraments these signs of grace these rituals these ways of intentionally coming together to experience the divine and to you know give ourselves to something bigger together but the only thing they can find in their community is they just they can't find safe churches they can't find churches where they can be free to be who they are with all their their questions and all their doubts and all their you know uh ideas and and um and we really you know we really feel feel that and it is a big part of the reason that we started the liturgists in the first place was to try to give some some meaningful spiritual work to some people that are thirsty and don't know where else to get it that maybe feel a little spiritually homeless or uh frustrated and because we know we long for that ourselves sometimes as well and so we're making it for ourselves and for others who are in the same boat and who have gone are going through some of the stuff we have gone through and um so one of the things that's always been kind of for a while now under the radar is trying to figure out ways of joining together because we live in a new world now where you know we have community these weird like pseudo communities online and with people all over the world and it's just a different like space and time is all becoming different you know like we're all just uh existing in this new space and so just we've been thinking like how can we be more connected in this present world um and have there's all these people that are communicating with us that they feel lonely and feel alone and so one of the things we're working on is this um sort of way of equipping people to do this in their own with no matter how if it's just a couple of them if it's a little house church thing um but kind of figuring out how to equip them to do to do community in church if they can't find something um that's working for them to to help them not be alone because there really are people that would be into the same like have a space that's safe for them with all their doubts and all their and and just don't want all the they don't need a show they don't need a big you know uh they don't need a big preacher to rile them up for an hour um they just want some bread and some wine and another believer or another person on the journey to to be there with so um we're looking at putting together some little house churches around the the uh the internet and the world um where where we can kind of as and find some community with locally and and then with one another and then uh so that's something we're just kind of working on and and [Music] seeking to roll out mike again it's probably it's too premature probably to talk about it no i think that was good okay we tend to announce things just when we think about them and then not deliver for months or years because here's the thing rachel like you get this because you've got a cool uh community that follows your blog like really amazing interesting people listen to this program yeah and we don't really think of them as an audience as much as like people we'd like to hang out with yeah um and so we just try we try to be good friends by not building up their hopes needlessly right oh yeah i know that feeling too yeah yeah no it's great i mean i feel the same way about the blog it's like this little community of people that you know i've come to care about and yeah it would be so great to be able to all actually be in the same physical space together um but that's that's a hard thing to pull off yeah i mean that's something we could use when we we tried a little house church that failed but um it wasn't well we met in a funeral home so why did it fail we ran out of money well we were trying to have a full-time pastor i think that's that i mean which was great because it was his idea and his vision and i mean he was a great guy and is a great guy um but i think maybe we there's a lot of reasons it failed i think it would have been a little better if we had been connected with the denomination trying to do what we're doing also we were like i know let's have a super inclusive somewhat progressive church in dayton tennessee um so like within like a few months we were known as the gay church and we didn't even have any gay people in attendance like it was just like we wouldn't turn them away and somehow that got out and it was like oh they're just a bunch of gay people who drink a lot at that church like that somehow it just so yeah so that's so don't let my story now i feel like i'm already discouraging people no no no that was my favorite part of the book really it was really yes but no because you like tried this thing like you really gave it your all we sure didn't it still didn't work but then it did work and i thought that was oh such a good message um and just the way that kind of was part of the trajectory from where you were to where you ended up that whole thing that that i mean that was the arc of the book for me um even it was like the ark that glued the sacraments together oh well i'm glad that was that was a somewhat difficult chapter to write because it was like how do i talk about this as being a complete i mean on the surface it was a failure but at the same time like it was a really cool community that we had together that really did some cool stuff and and meant a lot to me so how do you i don't know how do you talk about something like that but my point is we probably could have used such materials it might have helped um us and moving along so i'm sure there's other communities just like that that are struggling along uh and could really use a little bit of help or you know a bigger community to sort of report to and get ideas from i think that would be great if y'all could figure out a way to you know make a little hub online where people could exchange ideas uh so they don't feel like they're just out there on their own um that would be immensely helpful uh you know since we didn't have a denomination supporting us financially or with ideas or accountability or anything it was a little bit like we were just kind of out there uh on our own so something like that would be incredibly helpful i think well that sounds interesting to you oh listener just go to the liturgists.com community and we'll have a little email sign up you can look for and we have no idea when we'll actually have an email to send you but we'll at least see who's interested and start working towards some of those ideas so a listener on facebook asked how can one go about leaving their church responsibly should you write a letter thanking them for all they've done but explain why you feel you can no longer stay should you leave quietly without too much of explanation for your reasons or should you meet with the pastor elders or whoever to talk things out what do you think rachel oh that's that's a great question because it's something that like i tried to just kind of leave quietly from the church that we uh have been attending for that i've been going to since high school um and i just thought you know things had just reached a point and the people at that church were wonderful kind people and i they were the people who knew and loved me best in the world and yet the hour that i sat in church was probably the loneliest hour of the week for me because i was just so out of sync with uh what was believed at that church and it was tough for me to there there were no women women were not allowed to preach or teach or lead in any way and um obviously lgbt people weren't weren't really included in a meaningful way so i mean but in spite of that these were really good people who had invested quite a lot of time in my life and um a lot of care in my life and so i thought the thing to do would be to just kind of slip out the back door not make a big deal i was trying to just avoid a conflict really um which in hindsight i realized was not the best idea i i owed these people i think a conversation at least and so you know our pastor who is the kindest guy in the world i mean just such a good person um you know had noticed that we who had once been very very involved in this church just suddenly weren't there anymore and so he initiated a conversation with us and it went really well you know we talked about just some of the the issues that we had and it wasn't like a complaining thing basically we went through the doctrinal statement that you had to sign to be a member and said well we don't believe any of this so i don't know how it's going to work so um and that was that was just kind of a way of having the conversation even though i mean the the reasons were so much more complicated and and um emotional and personal you know it it's it's hard to explain to somebody in a few sentences or even in a conversation why you can't go to their church anymore or uh so but i do feel like it kind of depends on the nature of the relationship i guess is is a better way to say this if it's the kind of church that you know is is pushing people out because they got divorced or because they're gay or you know for all the wrong reasons um you know i don't know that you owe those people that group a conversation if it's been very very dysfunctional and painful if there's been abusive leadership or whatever i don't know that you owe anybody a conversation for that but if it's been if you've been on good terms with everybody and you're just slipping away and not feeling like it's right for you to go or be you know be complicit in whatever political activities might be happening or whatever it is i do think people owe it to the the other people in their community that are most important to them and they've built relationships with to explain or at least try to have a conversation about it maybe that's bad advice because maybe it won't go as well as the conversation that our we had with my pastor went but ours went pretty well we kind of just agreed to disagree and he recognized that sometimes when your faith changes your church changes with it and uh was kind about it now of course after i left there was plenty of gossip to go around that church and uh you know there were people who just basically staged interventions and uh you know it got a little rough but um i don't know i'm glad i feel really glad that we ended up having the conversation with my pastor it felt like closure to me so i recommend it if if you're on good terms with everybody and uh if it's a community that's meant a lot to you i kind of think you should have a i agree i've um been on both sides of that now and when we were pastoring the church um in denver yeah i remember one time like we had some friends that stopped coming and never really talked with us about it and it was even at a place like where i mean we were not this sort of like controlling wherever you've been sort of church anyway so like we didn't even hardly talk about it we didn't even like from our side but it became this just kind of awkward like i guess you don't come anymore did something happen um and us not wanting to say anything because we didn't want to be weird and controlling and expect that you should be there um but also just why why did you wanting to know like if something happened or um so it's just kind of awkward it's just kind of awkward to not know if if if you are connected with the life of the church and there has been any health again i totally agree with if there's like been abuse and uh too much darkness just get out of there um brush the the dirt off your sandals or whatever um but yeah just just as a decent human to human interaction a little communication can go a long way i think and then but then from the other side sometimes it's it's because when you're leaving a lot of times probably i know there are there are reasons there are reasons and you don't want to hurt feelings right and if it's not straight out abusive but it's like but i think you guys are close-minded or i think that you've made it all about your pastor and you've made it this whatever there's reasons that you are leaving it's become so handling that gracefully can be a challenge as well on the other side of it where i know we left a lot of things unspoken leaving uh because to try to just be graceful um and that was hard for me as somebody that wants to call things out and tell the truth um and you know knowing when to just shut your mouth and smile and say thank you you know it's been fun or when to when to call stuff out and i don't know let's leave it to you and sometimes you don't even know sorting your own feelings out about it can be really tough that was hard for me to figure out exactly why i couldn't i just could not go anymore you know like i was hard for me to put my finger on it and so that can make it challenging too like sometimes you don't really even know how to explain it i can tell you what you don't do you don't write a blog post about lgbt equality on chick-fil-a day and then follow that up with a blog post on why genesis should not be read literally still serving as a deacon in the baptist church that's not the proper way and i'm i make light here but i'm serious i should not have done that because in trying to discover who i was and how i was going to follow god now um i actually just hurt a lot of people needlessly and part of i think being in community i don't know is maybe having some awareness of of timing and other people's feelings like maybe i should have figured out i i shouldn't be at this church first [Laughter] instead of like trying to convince everyone they should come along to where i am now oh i made that mistake too mike that is like that's a classic like when your faith is changing or you're doubting everything it's just like you realize that you're gonna be really lonely in the journey so you just try and force everybody along with you that is a classic mistake like i did the very same thing and like learned the hard way that a baby shower is like not the place to bring up eternal damnation [Laughter] but it's just something that you do because you're like you're so desperate to have some companionship in this you're like well maybe if i can just convince everybody to agree with me well it's sort of like too you know in an evangelical world it's like what brings everybody together is shared belief or at least that's what i thought um and so i thought well i guess i won't have a community unless we all agree so i have to convince everybody to agree with me which made me a really annoying friend for like a year like let's go to dinner and a movie and then have a side of existential crisis as i talk about the holocaust and the problem of evil like that was like a normal occurrence like dinner movie a conversation about the problem of evil see i do i wish i would have been there though i would have enjoyed it everybody was just like looking at me like really rachel now it was bothering me you know i realized that god exists again because of the beach thing or whatever and i come back to tallahassee and like i'm so excited and i realize i bet there's other people that don't believe too how can i help them and so i emailed my best friend who's our worship leader at church at this point i'm like can i stand up and say something at choir and he's like he's like what do you want to say and i was like well you know i was an atheist but i'm not anymore and uh i met god on the beach and he was like um uh well let's talk more about that he's like my best friend and he was just he was like this is really wait when were you an atheist it's that evangelical 20-page email it's that evangelical spirit of like i see things this way now everybody has to you know i'm gonna go evangelize everyone with my belief or my doubt or my whatever it is by politics go tell it on the mountain oh man what a good conversation yeah this was really fun i enjoyed myself so much it's just fun talking with y'all likewise i gotta say my favorite episodes are the rachel episodes oh um it's just good it is good well thanks for thinking of me i wish you were just our co-host yes well we have really enjoyed talking to you rachel thanks for coming and being a part of the program this week uh all of you listeners searching for sunday is amazing we'll have a link to it in the show notes at the liturgist.com or you can just click and go right to buy the book highly recommend it uh you would love to hear your comments on this program what you've learned what you liked all that kind of stuff you can do that at the liturgist.com podcast you can connect to us on facebook at the facebook.com liturgist or on twitter with uh at the liturgist basically just type the liturgists on whatever site you're on and you'll get to us this is science mike i'm michael gunger i'm rachel evans thanks for listening everybody you