[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes Total Sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
Mark, we don't have to stay here for long because we have a lot to chat about. But how we entered our pre record is actually how I have entered many of these conversations. We're recording in April.
I don't remember when this is going to hit. It'll hit weeks from now. But springtime, come on. You are having an amazing spring in Vancouver as we are in Houston.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So good. We've got a blue sky, which is a miracle in Vancouver. And I'm sitting by the grand piano looking out our big window. So I'm going to play spring.
There's spring right there. Our little kids went off to school. They're 11 and 14. They went off to school on their scooters, very happy.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. My. I told you before, my boys are in school today. My girls are out. We're coming up on Easter weekend here. And so my husband took my daughters to the pool today because it is. It is the same. It's blue and sunny. It's like gonna be 80 something today. And so, yeah, it's beautiful. We're all in Houston. We're enjoying this now because in probably about three weeks, it will be miserable to even be outside.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Miserable. We call in Australia, we call that a stinker. It's a stinker.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: The problem is that Houston is a stinker from May through, like November or something ridiculous like that.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: It's quite stupid. Yeah.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: That feels like home to me. I miss that. That heat where you're so hot you got to jump in a pool.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: You have to. There's just. No, you can't be anywhere. You have to be either inside or in water.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Right? Right. Yeah. Oh, I miss that feeling.
Immigrating to Canada from Sydney, kind of a lot less stinkers.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yes. But I'm wondering. It's funny. My husband is from Colorado and so he has a context for it where he just kind of flips the switch. So he says in places like Colorado or places in the north, you can't be just outside for most of the year because it's too cold.
And so he's like in Houston, it's that way, but it's because it's too warm.
So it's not pleasant really, to be outside unless you're engaging in some sort of intentional outside activity like swimming or, you know, boating or something like that. And so in Colorado, it would be. You have to be intentional about being outside, like skiing or snowboarding or something like that. Otherwise it's just like, why would you be out? It's just. Anyway, it's just too cold, but here it's just too hot.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: That's so funny. Yeah.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm glad you're having a good spring.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: I love that parent at the pool with the kids. I love that. That's the best.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: It's going to be fantastic for them. I'm hoping to go later today, but right now I'm happy to be here with you.
We chatted. We just looked it up. It's been a little bit less than a year. About your previous book, Improvising church. You've already played a little bit on the piano, so. So this is your background.
One of your vocations as jazz musician informs how you write and think theologically, which is super fun and cool to me. And it comes out in your new book that we're going to talk about today.
Preaching in a new crafting expository sermons in post Christian communities. I want to say this up front before we get going.
This is a preaching textbook and I marked it up as a. As someone who preaches.
And we are going to have a conversation today that is going to be relevant for everyone, whether they're on the backside of the pulpit or the front side.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: We're going to do culture, going to do faith. We're going to do all sorts of stuff as people navigate faith and doubt in this very complex cultural moment.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And before we get there, there, I want to also. Yes, we're going to. We're going to talk about those things. We're going to talk about, I mean, the, the most.
The term in your subtitle that gets me is post Christian.
So I'm wondering.
I feel like I'm kind of going back and forth. So I'll say, as I sometimes do on the podcast, choose your own adventure.
What's our first stop, Mark? Because I'm wondering what would be best as we kind of build the foundation for this conversation and help build a frame as well, what would be the better first stop to talk about what is meant by post Christian or to kind of start by talking about people in General and our relationship to preaching.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Let's. I mean, let's do post Christian. Let's do culture and navigating faith in culture if it suits you. I grew up with choose your own adventure books. I remember the first one I ever so fun, so fun. It's like here.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: I choose left hand. Yeah, yeah, totally. So it's in my lifetime. I'm 51, can't believe it, but I am. And it's in my lifetime that the countries that I straddle in my life. I'm a citizen of Australia and of Canada and many friends in the US of course, and we have, you know, such close kind of mirroring of cultures with the U.S. it's in my lifetime that culture has essentially moved from being essentially a Christian culture to being a post Christian culture in my two countries. And that means like back in the 70s when I was born, most people went to church, definitely like a significant majority called themselves Christian.
Other religions were small minorities. And even more people's relationship with faith and scripture was vastly different. So people walk to church with the Bible under their arm. People walk to church with a Bible in their hand. That's Christian culture. By Christian culture, I mean that the assumptions and the values and the symbols of culture match more or less associate strongly with those values and symbols and cultural mores within the church, that there's a mirroring and a strong association, even structural associations.
So that's Christian culture. And it's in my lifetime that this has shifted in these last 51 years to being thoroughly post Christian in Canada and Australia such that in a country like Canada, Christianity just takes its place as one other, one other religion.
You know, Christianity is a bit more in the news because of colonial history, because of residential school history of first nations children and so on and so forth. But in terms of daily life, the church is just another religion now. I mean, on the one hand, you know, how the church reacts to that is a question. You know, some people fear the change. So much loss for myself, you know, as someone who is, who has pastored for many years in urban contexts, you know, I love the way that faith has. To be honest, I love the way that people have to navigate faith in a way where it's not scaffolded by culture, that Jesus can be kind of narrated to us in Scripture itself and not just what, you know, kind of Christian Christianity married to politics is saying about Jesus. But then, you know, not all countries are the same, not all cities are the same, not all neighborhoods are the same.
So If I would say in Vancouver, where I live, I grew up in Sydney, Australia, now live in Vancouver where I teach and study and work and play, play music.
It's sorely post Christian. I would say that Vancouver in this post Christian turn is well ahead of every city in the United States and every neighborhood in the United States, I'm pretty sure.
So when I, you know, have proximity, say to even some of those kind of more kind of say liberal cities like New York or San Fran or Seattle in the United States, I would say that United States cities are more in the twilight of post Christian culture. And by twilight I mean that the significance of Christianity is fading. But Christianity is still in the news. You know, like I read the New York Times every day. Christianity is regularly in the news in the way it simply wouldn't be in Vancouver. Vancouver, Christianity is no more part of the conversation more or less than say, Hinduism or something like that. So I'd say in the twilight of Christian culture. And that means that there's some fascinating ironies there, like in Canada.
So when I was young and teaching people to evangelize and you know, we used to do door knocking and all that stuff that, that we used to do, you know, and that's. People would react, you know, we would knock on the door and say, oh no, they think Christians and they would react to these Christian evangelists. That's the twilight of Christian culture. People are reacting to Christianity. But right now in Vancouver and cities in Australia, people aren't even reacting to Christianity because there's no more part of the conversation than another faith. It's just. And there's this kind of assumption that we're going to dialogue about faith. You know, face, let's talk about faith. Let's share, we'll listen respectfully. That's the assumption and that's post Christian culture where a dialogue is just assumed. And that's rich. You know, that's really rich. I can just be myself in Christ and I just bring my faith to the table and listen well to other people's experience. And that's rich for preaching too, as we can talk about as well. So I think that that is something of the shift and I think what the last thing I'll say is that in post Christian culture, people's experience of faith is very different. I think that it can be very beautiful because faith is genuine and authentic and we really see the power of the gospel when someone comes to Jesus or grows in Jesus because it's not held. Faith isn't held by the scaffolding of Christian culture. And yet faith is profoundly, often mixed with doubt because it's like that faith in Jesus is.
Is more than ever outside of our plausibility structure because it's not held by the scaffolding of Christian culture. So it's a common experience for people to have faith mixed with doubt. So how do we live, you know, how do we nourish another's face in that context, you know, how do we live in our neighborhoods and at work and for preachers? How do we preach for listeners? How do we listen? So that. That's something about what I think. What do you think, Alexis? What have I missed? How would you add to that?
[00:10:40] Speaker A: No, I don't. I don't think you missed anything. I think what. Thank you for explaining that. I think what resonated with me when I read your book and you were having that discussion on post Christian culture was that exactly what you named, like, where the US Is, is different than some other Western countries. And then I would say Even within the U.S. i think we see maybe different. You know, if you talk about as a. As a twilight, kind of that sunset, as it's kind of moving in different places, as you mentioned, different cities, different neighborhoods, different regions look different. And so what came to my mind when I was reading in, when, when you were chatting about this was I grew up in the Bible Belt, right? As we call it in the US Of Central Oklahoma. I was in Southern and Central Oklahoma, now I'm in Texas. And this is very much Christian culture, as you mentioned. Like, faith is held by the scaffolding of Christian culture. And there's a lot of Christianity is assumed. A lot of Christian culture is assumed. And so we actually used to joke in college when I was in an evangelical ministry where evangelism was kind of a given.
We used to joke. And it's hard to evangelize in Oklahoma because everybody's saved. And we kind of put that quote in quotes, you know, like, everybody's saved, even though that's not the case. But it's just the culture is very Christian now. What I was thinking of was I had a very dear friend who also grew up in Oklahoma move it's 10 or 15 years ago to the east coast. And now this friend and her family are completely on the east, situated on the East Coast.
But coming from the Bible Belt, one of the things that she said to me reflects what you just mentioned in kind of the. Maybe the, the. I think you use the word, the honesty or kind of the genuineness where, where in other Words. What she told me of her experience is that it's not the norm. It's not expected that people would go to church.
So, for example, maybe even 15 years ago in Oklahoma, if you meet someone, one of the questions you might ask along with what do you do? Is where do you go to church?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: I mean, this is just, you know, it might be, and especially again, maybe 15 years ago, this might have been a common question, but this is not a question that's probably getting asked in the park, at play dates in Boston or in New York City or, you know, some of these places here. And so when someone just as an example, like a data point, when someone attends church, it's not because there's a cultural expectation that they attend church. It's because there is something at church that they want, need, desire. There's something about it because basically, since it's not a cultural expectation, they're not just going to show up to this and spend half of their day on Sunday there or Bible study or something like this. It's because it's meaningful to them in some way, which might be different in other parts of the U.S.
but I think even in the parts of the U.S. where, for example, church going is still common, we can see just from statistics and anecdotes that that is also shifting and changing where that's less common. And even folks, again as a data point, church going, even folks who might even pre pandemic, you know, may have said, I'm a regular church grower and that means I go three or four Sundays a month, might now say, oh, I regularly go to church, but it's only maybe once a month. And so, you know, I think Pew has some better stats on that. But, but anyway, so we're seeing kind of that shift. And so it was an interesting kind of just like an underlying thing to think about as I read the book, because as you mentioned, in a culture where you walk, the family walks to church in their dress clothes with the Bible under their hand is a very different, there's a very different experience of preaching in church in that context. But then there's also a different expectation on the preacher and the church inside of that, you know, inside of that culture.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Thanks so much, Alexis. As you were talking, I was just trying to think musically and I mean, I'm kind of talking, thinking on my feet here, if I may. But like, I feel like, like in Christian culture that we've both experienced and we experience still in different ways, it's. It's like in music, there's this thing that we call in jazz, overplaying. If someone's overplaying, they're playing too much, and it becomes cacophonous. It becomes a wall of, say, I mean, just for the musicians, I'll play in, say, C minor, let's say that, but I'll deliberately overplay. And you can imagine like a bass player, double bass player, or a drummer or saxophonist making some noise as well, and it becomes too much. Right?
You know, there's so much noise. And maybe we could liken that to, if I may, if I may, kind of offer a caricature Christian, the negative side of Christian culture, that everything is Christian, everything kind of somehow symbolizes what has become Christianity and culture. I won't say it's Christian, biblical Christianity, but it's become Christianity.
And so there is so much noise.
The name of Jesus is associated with anything and everything.
And therefore, when someone goes to church, it's almost like they're being American. When someone goes to church, it's almost like they're just kind of saying yes to a cultural script. Yes, I'm going to go to church because I believe in this thing. And this thing is almost everything, including a lot of harm, frankly.
And so that the pureness of the Gospel, the beauty of Jesus way, is maybe the notes are there, some of those notes are there. Maybe some of the notes aren't even played at all because I'm so busy playing everything. But the beauty of Jesus isn't visible, and we lose sight of Jesus way. So now let me simplify, and I'll stay in C minor. And let's just see what happens when we pare it back and we step out of Christian culture and now we go to church, not because it relates to culture at all. It might be quite hard to go to church, but with the Bible in our hand, we're finding Christ without the noise. So here's C minor with a couple of jazz chords.
There's that space kind of for some beauty.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: I mean, just. Just to illustrate this, you know, like Ten Commandments in Christian classrooms. You know, like, Texas has just passed a bill. As you know, Louisiana's just passed a bill. I wrote an article recently in Christian Century that's up there online. People can check it out. You know, this is an example of the noise, right? So now the Ten Commandments is in every public school classroom in Texas and Louisiana, right? And so the noise is that the people who've legislated that clearly have no idea what the Ten Commandments are saying. They interpret The Ten Commandments, individualistically, as if it's kind of personal piety. Don't be a thief, you know, don't get divorced. But actually, as I show in the article, and I'll just refer listeners to the article, Christian Century Online, you can find it easily. Google my name.
And it's. It's actually shaping society to be a society of mutual care.
That's in contradistinction to the oppression of Egypt that ancient Israel left two and a half months previous. Only two and a half months ago, they were slaves in Egypt. Now here they are at Sinai, getting this law that's shaping the community to be a community of mutual care, a community that brings the weakest among them into the center. And the way I finish the article is I say, are those. Those legislators on the Texas, those Texan senators who cherish the Ten Commandments enough to legislate it in Christian classrooms, actually going to live within that pathway that the Ten Commandments commands, that vision of the Ten Commandments of a place of mutual care, is that going to characterize politics in Texas and nationally? And of course, it's not. And that's an example of the noise.
So Jesus is lost in this context of Christian culture because it becomes profoundly distorted when it's caught up with nationalism and frankly, just a harmful ideology.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. Yeah, you're. You're 100% right. I appreciate the musical example, too. I'm not going to speak to it as much as the thoughts that are going to my head, because talking to think for this is not great. I don't have a lot of expertise in this area. But what came to my mind initially was, yes, that the first piece felt very overwhelming, but the second one, just my. Just kind of my. My instinct, it was like, oh, this feels like an accompaniment. And I didn't mean necessarily, like, to a soloist or something, but like just kind of to life, you know, like, this is something I could have playing, and it feels like it will kind of walk with me, carry with me. The first one.
You're kind of waiting for this. You know, it's too much, right? Like, it's kind of too much for it to kind of be just like a something, something that can be with you all of the time, which is, anyway, in that example, kind of disheartening.
So, anyways, but thank you for that.
I would love to go to the second adventure, let's do it, and. And talk about people's relationships to preaching. This.
This was.
I read your book kind of with two Mindsets. But it was, it was difficult because I was, I was really intrigued to read it as a preaching text and kind of add help that add to my current exegetical process and things like that. What, what things could I, could I bring in from this? But of course, I was also reading it in preparation for, for this conversation and thinking about how this affects just our Christian culture more broadly. What I know is in the US But I'll just start by saying everyone that I know who has either a church background or is currently going to church, I would say this. Whether they know it or not, they definitely have a relationship to preaching. So I'll just throw that out there. But some of the things that I've experienced most recently and just chatting with friends mostly is that the relationship to preaching is.
It is.
I didn't think about which word to use beforehand. I would say there's something that's kind of, it's, it's wearing on people maybe.
So I would give an example in Protestant, evangelical, especially white spaces here in the U.S. right. The preaching. And especially I would say, I would say non mainline settings. Let me see. And like Protestant non mainline settings.
I think if someone was describing church or church service to someone who's never been, it's music and preaching, right. You know, maybe there's 15 minutes of music oftentimes now with spotlights and fogs and you know, fog machines and all sorts of stuff.
And then there's maybe 35, maybe 45, maybe longer minutes of preaching. It's not that different than the SBC church I grew up in. We didn't have a fog machine and lights, but it was still really basic, basically just music and preaching. It was hymns, but it was really pretty much still just music and preaching.
And so I'm saying that to say the preaching is the main thing in a lot of these settings, which can be problematic, especially if the relationship to that is, is I'm trying to figure out. I don't have the right word. Maybe it will come to me as we're talking.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: But there's, there's complex relationships with preaching as people sit in the peace sometimes have complex relationships.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Yes, it is. It is very complex. And I would say a good friend of mine, this was really, it was something I hope I carry with me, but it was, I was preaching my very, very first sermon ever when I was doing my M. Div. And it was, it was so much fun, but it was also a little nerve wracking.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: But it was good.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: I, I hope it was.
Thank you When a friend of mine I saw at a party afterwards, and she was kind of like, oh, my goodness, I didn't know you were, you know, because it was like, how's your weekend? And I was like, actually, I preached my first sermon this morning, you know, and she was excited for me and loved it and, oh, man, next time, please call me. I would love to come. Blah, blah, blah. It was wonderful. Felt very encouraged and affirmed and all that. And at the same time, she said something to the effect. I can't remember the exact word she said now, but she said something to the effect of all of that stuff, which was encouraging and affirming of me as a person, me as a. And as a budding preacher. And then she said something like, I mean, except for the fact that preaching really shouldn't be the main focus of any. You know. And so it was like, oh, okay, you know, like, let's talk about this. You know, like, what is. But that was. She was giving me a glimpse of her relationship to preaching because we all, you know, we all have one. And I think especially right now in the US we have a lot of, like, pastor scandals, you know, where you can see this. Like, someone is preaching this on a Sunday or has preached it 50 Sundays a year for 20 years in a row. And then maybe this person has a secret life. Maybe there's a scandal that comes out. Maybe this, you know, maybe this person has an inappropriate relationship with staff or, you know, whatever is. Maybe this person's abusive.
And so this makes it even more complex. And last thing I'll say is, even when you were talking about Christianity in the news, those kinds of stories in the US Are what is making the news.
And so there is a frustration among pastors and preachers to say we're not all like that, you know, but the pastor, I interviewed an author a couple years ago, he used to say, I pastor a regular sized church. You know, it was like under 100 people, you know, whatever. Like these kind of. These faithful guys who are just. And gals who are just doing this day in, day out, week in and week out.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: These.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: They're not making. They're not New York Times headliners. The New York Times headliners are the ones who. There's, you know, a break in that, a dissonance in that. So anyway, just throwing a lot of stuff, a lot of spaghetti at that wall for you, because you've thought about this, I mean, as a preacher, but also as a. As a pastor and as someone who, who interacts with folks daily, who have very, very complex relationships to protect preaching.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: What a great question. Yeah. And I mean, this is just a great question for those who listen to preaching, those who have left the church because they don't want to listen to preaching. And for preachers, and we're. We're on, you know, like, the kind of thing that you're describing, that. That kind of cultural. That experience of faith mixed with doubt you're describing. Alexis, it's in everyone's church more than we think. You know, it's. If it's not your experience, it's in the experience of people in your church more than you think.
I think the first thing we can start with is people's relationship with scripture has become complex for many people, not all. And then we could talk about people's relationship to preaching and to pastoring, to pastors. And you've explained that really well, I think, like 2020, the MeToo movement, a litany of pastoral moral failures.
It really does fragment people's relationship to the pastoral vocation and even to their pastor, even if their pastor is a good person, especially a good man. You know, I think that my wife is a lead pastor in Vancouver. She's a scholar pastor like I am. And I think it's different for female pastors. And that's a blessing right now. You know, that can be like a breath of fresh air for people who are worried about harm. So, first of all, let's just talk about relationship to scripture. So, I mean, we've already spoken about my friend who I call Kate Alexis, and I tell Kate's story in my book.
Kate is a kind of urban farmer type. She is someone who cares a lot about the creation, the health of the creation, about food systems. She's also an artist. And just like she grew up in the church, and yet with the harm that she saw in evangelicalism in Canada, but especially in the United States, the way she just got this sense that the church doesn't care about creation, like she strongly intuits the church, the creation matters. Why doesn't the church care about that? Why doesn't the church care about social justice?
And, you know, she knew that our church in Vancouver cared about those things. But nonetheless, the fact that the wider church didn't really rocked her faith. So Kate and I would meet up for coffees periodically. Every few months, we'd meet up for coffees, and we just talk about faith and Jesus. And of course, we would worship together on a Sunday. Then there was a Sunday where she said to me, you know, she felt terrible saying it, she said, I'm going to have time off church.
She said, I need to have time away from church in order to see if I can rescue my face. Kate earnestly wanted to believe. And that's one of the, one of the beautiful things about the 200 people like Kate that I've had these coffees with, you know, my friends that I've worshiped with, they earnestly want to believe. And a part of Kate's disruption, going to your great comments, was her relationship with the Bible. Why is there so much violence in the Bible? Why is there so much misogyny in the Bible?
So, and, and of course, she's right. From our cultural perspective, there is a lot of violence in the Bible. And we can talk about that violence and we can talk about that in our conversation. We have to be deliberate about preaching those texts. We have to find those resources so we can understand those texts. The reality is that humankind and society is violent. And understandably, there's profound violence in the Bible because the Bible's about real life.
And yet these texts can be very difficult to read and can disrupt people's faith.
So here we go. People come and listen to a sermon and even before the pastor is up there talking about the Bible, people already have a complex relationship with scripture. They grew up loving the Bible and you know, Jesus loves me this and over the Bible tells me so. And they think, what about the book of Joshua? Where's the love there? And then the preacher gets up and he's a male preacher. And, and they've just seen what's happened with Rabbi Zacharias and they think, well, is my pastor going to do the same thing? Is he doing the same thing?
And so in a sense, for some people, but not all, they might even think to themselves, you know, I think my faith would be better off without this preaching. And some people said they're worried what the pastor is going to say. Is the pastor going to say something that, that, that confirms a harmful cultural script that we're seeing right now in my country. And if they do that, they're going to disrupt my faith even more.
So having said all of that, I mean, I'm problematizing it. But what we're doing that so that actually we can negotiate away as listeners and kind of understand what's happening in our own journey, our own relationship with preaching and also so that we can find a way that is life giving.
You know, I actually think that once we get rid of this cultural scaffolding with a Bible in our hands, you Know, we can find the beauty in Scripture, you know, like Jesus, Jesus said, you know, like in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five, you know, nothing from the Old Testament is going to pass away.
He said, it's fulfilled in me. And when he, when he says fulfilled in me, he's saying it reaches its full expression in me and in the people that are gathering around me. Sermon on the mount, Matthew 5, 7.
When he said it reaches its fulfillment in me. He's showing, I mean, you know, the beautiful life of Jesus.
You know, he is healing, he's restoring the creation. His compassion, the weakest are gathering around him, coming to him because knowing that there's life here, you know, he had a reputation with eating with tax collectors and sinners and befriending them. Luke 15:1 and 2, that's fulfilling. That's a fulfillment, full embodiment of the Old Testament. So the Old Testament is beautiful.
You know, Martin Luther used to say that Christ comes to us clothed in Scripture. That's how Christ is revealed to us in Scripture, all of scripture, not just the Gospels. But you know, sometimes it takes that intentionality and finding that scholarship that takes us back to kind of getting that kind of ancient background so that we can understand the kind of cultural, kind of mores that the church is engaging with, the cultural forms, the cultural genres, the literary genres that the Bible's written in. And we start to see that beauty and we start to see why Jesus said that this is for the life of the world.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: So now, okay, so I thank you for explaining all of that.
And now I'm wondering if you can elaborate because you, you alluded to it, but I'm wondering if you can elaborate now. So I would say, okay, you're jazz musician, pastor, preacher, but also Old Testament scholar. And so when you talk about Joshua, this, and you talked about the ten Commandments before, this is coming from places where you have, you've academically poured, poured into this. And I'm wondering if I would say as a pastor, yes, but I'm also curious for your scholar hat here to elaborate a bit on authority when it comes to scripture. And again, it's kind of, I don't need you necessarily to talk about things in my context, but I will mention a few things about my context that might be helpful because I am thinking about, I'm thinking about the Kate's in my life who look probably different than Canadian Kate in some ways. But, but definitely some similarities.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: I would think so.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Definitely some similarities.
So, you know, I'm thinking about language that Folks that I am familiar with and have grown up with and have been discipled with, we've been taught to use certain language when it comes to think, to talking about authority and scripture and things like this, which goes into preaching authority as well, which is really tough because sometimes there's not.
Well, I'll say sometimes there's not as much of a disconnect as I wish there was. But it's partially because I think all of this authority structure looks a certain way. And so then there's a continuation of this authority of scripture that goes into the pulpit in many contexts. And so it's kind of like we joke in the Bible Belt in the US that it's kind of some bumper sticker, theology of God said it or the Bible says it and that settles it, you know, kind of thing. And but that sometimes extends to the preacher, you know, brother, so and so said it and I believe it and that settles it, you know, and so there's that authority there. We also, you know, use wording and language like inerrancy and things like that. You know, we talk about. There's a lot of just anecdotes about people talking about what the Bible clearly says and what it clearly doesn't say and how it's been used in proof text to, you know, defend certain cultural positions. And, you know, there's all sorts of things, and those are people's relationship to Scripture, but there are also people's relationship to preaching and to church and to the relationship to faith and doubt.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Because all of this kind of gets intermingled in some, in some ways. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about what. Have you seen what is helpful, what may not be as helpful when we're thinking about. Because I would say, lastly, I would say when we're thinking about authority. But I think that's where I maybe want to end. My roundabout question is, I think part of it is we're not always consciously thinking about what type of authority or what role authority plays in this. I think it's more something that we, that we just come in with. It's like a.
Something inherent in many of us where we are coming in with some sorts of ideas about authority that we may not be vocalizing, we may not be consciously talking or thinking about, but they're still affecting how we operate relationally, you know, with, with God, with preachers, with our Christian community, with our non Christian community community.
Yeah. So anyway, if you can take and do something with that, which I know you can because you're a jazz musician, so you can take a, you can take a something and rip on it, you know, and rip it. But I'm hoping.
And if none of that's helpful, answer it in your own way.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: So, I mean, like, there's so much there, right? Like, I mean, this is a new thought. But someone could come in and think, I don't accept this preacher's authority, so I don't think I can have faith in Jesus. Like it can be that because you're showing that kind of cultural matrix where authority and faith like are deeply intermingled. And so if I don't, if I can't live into this script of the preacher's authority, I'm done. So yeah, I mean, let's kind of piece it together then from the start.
Like I'll just say right now I've just written a pre. We're talking about a textbook I've written on preaching and it's called Preaching in a New Crafting Expository Sermons in Post Christian Communities. So I'm someone, you know, who take scripture deeply seriously. You know, I do think that scripture is authority infallible, reliable, sufficient and inspired.
You know, God breathed is what is what Paul says. I do think it's God breathed. But yeah, and how do I hold that out as a preacher and how do I experience that as a Christian at this time in post Christian context? What are ways to experience the authority of scripture that are life giving rather than kind of hegemonic and open to harm? Frankly, I think that what's really, really interesting is in Christian culture where I grew up, the authority of scripture was a cultural value. And the authority of the pastor and of the preacher therefore was a cultural value. And that then affected the authority, the posture that a preacher would take in the pulpit. So I kind of preached in kind of what I call large pulpit context. Not by, I don't mean by that large church. What I mean is kind of the context where the preacher has that authority because they're in the pulpit, that cultural author and people listen with a certain kind of humility and submission to what's this kind of enactment. And that's cool. I'm not kind of just like throwing that out in the garbage. But I just wanted to write that, that kind of big purple context, Reformed context, that's where I have my ordination and that's. They're the context where I learned to preach. So they loved that. I was a 6 foot 3 white male and I used, and I lived into that. I kind of used the deep voice and all that stuff that. Because it's a script that we all played right back then.
So now what happens is like that, of course, is still exactly what is expected in many contexts, including Canada and Australia, that still have their foot, one foot in that culture, in the church. It's still in the church in Canada and Australia and very much in the United States, of course.
But what do we do with that? I think it's interesting to bring that into that image of the authoritative preacher in that kind of symbolically large pulpit and just hold that image and just acknowledge that there's lots of good there. Like the Bible is absolutely wonderful and is the word of God and is God breathed, and this person is opening up the word of life, which is a sacred task. So let's just hold that. And then the other image, I think, is the post Christian culture image where people come with complex relationships with scripture and complex relationships with the pastoral vocation like we've described. So now this is the amazing thing like, like people are not convinced. A lot of people, like in a Vancouver church, aren't convinced that this is the authoritative word of God.
As someone preaches, they're worried that they're going to hear something actually that dislodges their faith. Not all people, not all people, but some that is actually part of what's going on. And so given that when someone actually is arrested by the Bible, is captured by the beauty of Jesus in the Bible, then this really is a work of the Spirit, because faith isn't held by the scaffolding of Christian culture. And so when a preacher has that relational and emotional nuance, that relational intelligence, that kind of emotional intelligence, and I hope I offer a pathway in my book for preaching like this to show, as Martin Luther said, how Christ really comes to us closed in Scripture.
And, you know, we said that people come to church, used to come to church when I was young with the Bible under their hand and still do in some places.
And that's Christian culture. And now people come to church with heartaches and also with big dreams and beautiful visions for society. And they might come with depression and anxiety, and they come into the pew. And if the preacher can show how Jesus coming close to us in scripture actually outdoes our best dreams, outdoes our best imaginings, what human beings can be together, together in community outdoes.
It offers a path of healing in Christ for the sadness that we've come in. You know, I often think there's a broken heart on every pew. And if we can show how the word of life ministers to us. And if we can receive that ministering as listeners to a sermon, then all of a sudden it's what I call the ironic wisdom of Scripture. It's like the ironic authority of wisdom.
It's not like an authority that comes from Christian culture. It's not like that authority that becomes, we have, that comes to us because we have a big preacher, big tall preacher who's kind of extolling from the pulpit. It's the authority, ironic authority of wisdom that even kind of decided despite ourselves, we've discovered Christ has encountered us in Scripture as we read it or as it's preached to us. So for preachers who are listening, you know, I hope that you can find that pathway. Maybe my book will help for opening up the Bible with that beautiful high emotional, relational intelligence. But I think, you know, for everyone as readers of Scripture, you know, know that Jesus comes to us closed in scripture and it is beautiful because Jesus is beautiful and we can find that beauty as we patiently, patiently read it.
So the ironic authority of wisdom, when scripture comes up and surprises us, this is an authority that's not held by Christian culture, but the spirit inspired Bible itself.
That's something that's really beautiful about this cultural moment.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: Yeah. When you talked about the large pulpit, I'm going to try to hone in on what I was thinking about as you were talking. And you have a section in your book where you talk about, I don't know if you exactly phrase it this way, but preaching as conversation, as a dialogue. And so there may or may not be talk back there, but asking questions of the community you have a friend who talks about. I never preach for more, more than 10 minutes without asking a question I don't know the answer to.
You know, but, but thinking about that, even in terms of, even if you're having a conversation, like, I think this large pulpit, it reminds me of kind of the, you know, when we think about 1950s America where it's kind of like us, where it's kind of like children are supposed to be seen and not heard. You know, it's like there's not, there's like a boss there for parents or other adults where the children, the kids are taught to not question that authority, that, and not to question the authority figure. You know, there's this, you don't tell your parents no. You know, this kind of thing. And, and a lot of that has evolved in, you know, intergenerationally of let's, let's have a conversation, maybe you know, like, that's not parents saying they're not the boss or the authority or whatever, but it's like more engaging. Right? Let's have it. Let's have a conversation. I am not equating preachers or this to, you know, parents and children, but I'm just kind of talking through this in terms of authority.
But. But to enter, bringing into the idea of a conversation.
And so, and so, you know, we have complex relationships with authority in general. Then how do we view the authority of the Bible? How do we view the authority of pastors? All of these things are questions, but some of those things can be explored differently when we embrace this idea of dialogue or, or conversation.
One of the things that was formative for me when I started preaching and realized I'm going to need kind of a theology of preaching, I'm going to need some things that I'm. I'm kind of constantly thinking about as I'm preparing. At least that was kind of my take. And there's an author, M. Craig Barnes, who talks about the sermon being a conversation between the text and the congregation and that the pastor somehow can facilitate, help facilitate that conversation. And that was a really helpful image for me. And it's been something that's been, like I said, formative in my preaching. But I also. Just. Because I thought. I don't know. I've been hosting a podcast for a long time, and I kind of got into hosting podcasts because I enjoy having conversations. And if I think about the sermon as a facilitated conversation, that's helpful, you know, but it. But it's also one of those things where it's not just. And this gets into another point from your book, it's not just the preacher kind of pressing or imparting something. It is an experience with the community as well. So one thing that I think the way that you phrase it is you talk about the sermon being something that it happens over time.
So maybe it's written down, but you're not just you. I think. I think you relate it to. It's different. You then like waving your sheet music rather than like playing the piece, you know, and so this happens over time. But. And maybe this wasn't exactly from you, but then I thought, well, what if it happens over time? Then this gives the congregation the community. We're engaging with it also over time, and we're thinking about it instead of it just being maybe a list of rules at the swimming pool. You know, this is the do's and don'ts. It's not A sign or a poster, it's an opportunity to, to engage. And so even if the dialogue isn't verbal, that, that helps frame it. Of this is intended to be a dialogue or spark conversation or, you know, these kinds of things in which I think if that's the invitation, if that's a known invitation, then we encounter whatever kind of authority might be there, whether it's really there or just in there, in our own experiences, we, we encounter those differently.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. I. I think so. I mean, coming back to music, if one person is preaching without that sense of dialogue, and as you said, we can think of dialogue very, very broadly, it doesn't mean we're having a conversation constantly in the pulpit. By dialogue, in my mind, I mean that everyone has something to do.
That's kind of what I think.
But we could talk about the details. But it's like the difference between. You could play a beautiful melody with one, one note melody. So here is, let's go to F. This time we've done C. We've done C. This is F.
So there's just a simple little melody and it's beautiful. And in a sermon that isn't thinking dialogically can be beautiful. But if we add that opportunity of adding kind of, kind of some aspect of participation or this sense of participation, all of a sudden there can be a different level of beauty.
And this is a level of beauty that can't be attained just by. With one melody as beautiful as a single melody line is.
And like the way that you described it, I think of participation as just my conviction. Like in 1 Corinthians 12, as Paul says, if anyone has a word, if anyone has a prophecy.
So I think we can preach with this sense that people have something to do, people have something to contribute. So for myself, when I preach, I just try and make sure that there's a moment in each sermon where people can do something. It might be a moment when people can, perhaps two minutes for people to pray in silent contemplative prayer at the end. Or it might be an opportunity for people to look at the verse that we're studying in this moment in the sermon and to make some interpretive comment about it. I might say, well, interpreters think this and other. Other interpreters think this. What do you think?
I spoke on Jesus, one of Jesus feasts in Luke 14 a couple of weeks ago.
And what's very much in Luke's mind is this hierarchical seating of that 1st century Greco Roman Jewish context, the hierarchy where there was negotiated hierarchy between people at meals. And so I actually put a picture of the seating arrangement there up on, up on the projector. And I said, where do you think Jesus sat?
And then people discussed that among themselves and then offered their thoughts, and they were great thoughts. And I don't think it's a simple question. Maybe Jesus didn't sit at all. Maybe he waited to be seated. Maybe he just sat in the lowest place. You know, who knows?
Jesus was creative and obviously often in what he didn't said very, very deeply challenging to the unashamed kind of system.
So that was really fun. And it gets people engaged and we learn from one another and it gets my mind going and I learn from others. And I think that's that 1 Corinthians 12, the body of Christ and everyone having gifts, that spirit. You know, another thing that Erin and I both do is we might get people to write down prayers. We might get them to post prayers on the sanctuary wall. Then during the Eucharist, people can read one another's prayers and coming out of the Word and pray those prayers as we kind of wander around the sanctuary line up for the Eucharist and that kind of thing. So dialogical preaching is almost like an attitude or that fundamental kind of understanding that crisis speaking to us through the Word, from. Through one another.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I want to go.
I want to go back to the Bible.
We'll, we'll start to land the plane. But this can be a long descent here because, because this is, this is something that we've, we've talked about it and kind of around it.
And I'm going back to thinking about your discussion on the Ten Commandments earlier and how this was, you know, for the community.
How can the community behave in, in these ways?
I had another conversation for the podcast where it was a book, I think it was called Redemptive Service. I'll. I'll link it where the, the believe. Also an Old Testament systematic theologian was talking about how, you know, maybe these things that are listed in the Scriptures, they're not necessarily one to one of contextually, like what. What can we do where the expectations for us today. But there's a framework built as you were mentioning, like this is what the community of God. This is the anticipation. This is what God was. Was, was framing and how can we think. Think about or. And, and how can we serve those who are vulnerable and marginalized and you know, these community values that, that God wanted to instill in God's people.
And sometimes that's, that's hard. I would say it's. It's easy to miss. Especially I'm imagining a post Christian, but I'm also imagining, just in my context, how that's easy to miss. But you have a. A sentence where you talk about God's work as record of redempt or God's Word. I'm sorry, as record of redemptive work and as tool of redemptive work.
And this phrase, that phrase together felt very powerful to me because.
I don't know, especially in my context, the Bible feels really messy. I mean, we've talked about violent texts. We've talked about 10 Commandments being being posted in classrooms and all this. And it's very complex and it feels very messy.
But, you know, how can we, whether we're preachers or not, maybe thinking about God's Word as record of redemptive work and tool of redemptive work, but also for. For those who are preachers and those who aren't, I'm specifically thinking of.
Of Christians who are bearing witness like this. These are our sacred texts, what we find in the scripture. These are our sacred texts as a people.
How are we bearing witness to what that text is? How are we bearing witness in the ways that the text and God call us to.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. I think one fundamental shift that kind of encapsulates the great things you said is just to understand that, you know, while in our culture, which is a hyper, individualistic Western culture, as cultural anthropologists repeatedly tell us, you know, we, in our culture, we tend to preach as hyper individuals. We. We tend to preach to the individual for their kind of individual sanctification. That's the way we were trained, that since the Enlightenment, I think that's increasingly been the way that people think.
You even kind of read the Puritans, and that's the way that they were writing. So it really isn't a kind of enlightenment phenomenon. I think preaching is highly individualistic. But think of the way the Bible is written. Every book of the Bible, whether Old Testament or New Testament, was actually written to shape the beloved community. It was shaping the people that went before the. Before the writer, before the text, in front of the writer, in front of the text, shaping that community to be beautiful, to be people who showed the beauty of God, the justice of God, the grace of God to those who are watching. And whether it's Old Testament, whether it's Paul writing to those. Those house churches in the urban centers of the Roman Empire, whether it was the Gospels which were profoundly shaping communities. I mean, I've been in Matthew's gospel recently. And the way that it's shaping these house churches to work through that kind of Jewish, Gentile kind of salvation historical shift.
I mean, it's written to shape communities. And then I'm an Old Testament scholar, and everything from the Pentateuch to the prophets was shaping the beloved community.
I mean, picture Sinai. It's not sanct in the first place. It's not trying to sanctify individuals. As I said, it's shaping a community that's living in contradistinction to the oppression of Egypt, a community that, because of the presence of Yahweh in their midst, is that kind of community that shows Yahweh's grace brings the weakest into the center and worships Yahweh aright. And so justice and worship go together in that way. And so I think if we understand that, if that's why the Bible was written, that's the way that we have to preach it, we have to receive it, whether we're preachers, whether we're Bible readers, it's shaping the beloved community.
Of course, it's also addressing individuals within that frame, definitely. But in the first place, shaping the beloved community. And once we understand that, of course, then as you said, we're not just reading the Bible as a record of what God did, but we're actually a part of that story. We're playing our part in this story of God's kind of redemptive work in the world of renewing God's world in love.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: You're right. From my perspective, that that is lost. That is lost. So often in our individualistic culture, we don't think as much about shaping communities. I don't think it's. That's. I don't think it's specific to Christian communities. I think we just don't think about things communally as much.
Yeah. In our current settings, Mark, you are a.
We've named. I've named. I've been naming some of your vocations because I love to think about the. The variety of things that you do.
Right now, I'm thinking about you as a professor and as a podcaster and thinking if I could. And as a musician, that one won't leave. But I'm wondering if I could invite you to close this out and I will say again, choose your own adventure where we started, but you can choose as many of the adventures as you want.
So sometimes I like to ask professors, if we were closing class, what would you leave us with? You know, before our next Monday session? So that's one adventure.
The other one is I occasionally do this where I'll ask pastors if they'd like to pray. You know, a word of encouragement over listeners as we're trying to navigate some of the things that we've talked about.
And then as a musician, I'll also ask you if you want to play us out in our last few moments together. So again, choose your own adventure, but you don't have to choose just one.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: Or bring a lovely invitation. Yeah, I'm going to play.
I think that beauty is a glimpse of God, and I think that beauty is so solely needed in the church. And I think that my music, it's a prayer, you know.
Yeah, music is different from words, but it's also not different from words. You know, psychologists tell us that we appreciated music before we learned to talk. So music can be a communication. Music can be a prayer. Kids respond to music before they begin to respond with kind of intelligence to verbal. So I offer this.
I hope it's a glimpse of God, and I offer this as an invitation to create beauty in the name of Jesus and to find the beauty of Jesus when we're struggling with faith and doubt and as. As we struggle, some of us in our complex relationships with scripture, to just to persevere with trust that the text grants in the end.
Because in the text, we find the beauty of Jesus and Jesus fulfills these complex ancient stories.
[00:57:59] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: This is a tune that I wrote that kind of feels like related to life.
It's called My Trolley, but it's kind of like the journey of life.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much. That was beautiful.
Again, conversation today has been with Mark Glanville on his new book, Preaching in a New Key, Crafting Expository Sermons in a Post Christian Communities. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mark, for joining me. This has been such a.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: You're one of my favorite podcasters to hang out with.
[01:00:32] Speaker A: That's so much fun. Thank you so much. You are one of my favorite interviewees, conversation partners. So good to have you.
The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit
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