Why is cultivating community in church so hard right now? In this Season 6 finale, hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm reflect on a full season of conversations with historians, theologians, pastors, and researchers who helped them understand the many layers underneath that question. From the formative power of late modern culture to the provisional nature of relationships today, they name what the church is genuinely up against — and why the tools the surrounding culture offers can't get us to the deep belonging the church is meant to provide.

But this isn't a conversation that ends in resignation. Dwight and Alicia also talk about what leaders can actually do: casting a bigger vision, getting off the hamster wheel of programs that aren't forming disciples, and starting small where community is already gathering. And they point to real signs of hope — a cultural shift away from cynicism and toward longing, and a growing number of people finding their way into Christian community precisely because the culture is offering so little. The soil, as Dwight puts it, is being prepared.

And so if community is not grounded in the depths of human experience, in the hard places of human experience, it will fall apart pretty quickly, right? And so if God meets us there and joins God's self to us there in Christ and the Spirit, then that's where we can actually join with others. So I think Christian communities should be places where the depth of our lives are open to one another, and that includes the hard places.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Alicia Granholm.

And I'm Dwight Zscheile Today we're wrapping up season six. We came into it asking a question that might have sounded simple on the surface. Why is it so hard to cultivate Christian community today? But the more we dug in, the more we realized how much is underneath that question.

That's right. And we have had some remarkable conversation partners along the way. We talked with historians and theologians and pastors and researchers, and each one added another layer to this picture. It feels like the right moment to kind of take a step back and take stock of what we've learned this season. So, Dwight, let's start with the definition of Christian community.

that we began with at the beginning of this season. And then what are some of your takeaways from this season?

So we talked about how God creates new community in Christ and the power of the Spirit that transcends lines of family, tribe, nation, class, et cetera, et And that Christian community is ultimately a belonging in the life of the divine community, the Trinity. And it's a community that's sent to love neighbors and to witness to new life in Jesus. So it's important, I think, that we have this conversation within a theological.

framework and grounding. But one of my takeaways is just how many layers there are to this challenge. It's not just one thing. So, you know, we're living in these deep stories in modern, the late modern West and the culture that are powerfully formative of us. There's lots of social changes going along, going on about us and around us ⁓ in our society. Technology is impacting us. It shapes how we

belong and connect and communicate. And so, so many things happening at once. And there's an acceleration of the pace of a lot of those changes, of course, that we're all experiencing. So it's layers. ⁓ But I want to circle back and dig in a bit on that formative power of culture. You know, we're all being catechized, if you will, all the time by the surrounding culture and its stories. And many of those stories are in deep.

know, contradiction of Christian teachings and the Christian story. So it's really hard to differentiate against that power, powerful formative series of stories and, and, and cultural influences. ⁓ and I just want to name that as, know, as leaders might be listening to this thinking about, well, you know, how do we, how do we enter into this challenge just to recognize that most churches have a very

small piece of people's lives in terms of actually the influence that the church is able to bring relative to all the other things that are going on in their lives that shape how they relate, how they think about belonging, about connection and where they're going to find it. So that means there's no easy fix. There aren't any easy answers in this sense, but I think one of my key takeaways is a call to simplicity.

So I don't think the solutions are going to emerge primarily within the predominant cultural framework of the late modern West. In fact, I've become very much convinced that we need as Christians to do a lot more differentiation and a lot more critical thinking about how late modern Western or even early modern Western cultural assumptions going back in the enlightenment have

reshaped our imagination for what it means to be human, what it means to belong and to connect in what community is. Because I think the foundations that were laid in the Enlightenment can't get us there, they can't get us back. I think part of the tension is people wondering, well, if we take as a given this post-Enlightenment Western cultural framework for thinking about what it means to be human, sovereign individuals, what it means to be kind of connected.

you know, people opting into communities that serve their sense of purpose and self fulfillment, et cetera, et Can you kind of find a space within that that somehow gets us back to a deeper sense of belonging? I'm not sure you can. So again, I'll just reaffirm, as we said earlier in this season, that shift in modern Western culture brought gifts that were, you know, real genuine gifts for human history. And it

brought a kind of fundamental undercutting of community, I think, that we're still living with today. So if we can't do it within the solutions the culture offers, it does push us back into our core theological stories, into scripture. to think about, Jesus is the one in whom humanity is renewed, human nature is reborn, the new Adam, if you will, how do we see what a good life looks like?

in him and in his community primarily as the place to begin. So discipleship of Jesus becomes really, really critical. So what about you? What caught your attention this season as you reflect back on it?

Yeah, well, even as you were sharing that, Dwight, I was thinking about, I just had this right picture of Jesus and the disciples and how they are the antithesis of echo chambers. And we live in a culture today in which, you know, we just opt into echo chambers. We have algorithms that opt us even unwillingly into echo chambers, and we often don't even recognize that.

That's what's happening, especially in the spaces that we occupy online. But then, you know, it's easy to be with people just like us. And so just this idea, really, of how countercultural Christian community is. And I just think that Jesus and the disciples depict that so clearly, right? Just the different.

socioeconomic groups that they came from, their different political persuasions, just everything about them, their lifestyles, everything about them was so diverse. And this was a group of people who, if not for Jesus, would never choose to spend time together. They wouldn't have even crossed paths. Or if they crossed paths, it would be in ways that really invited conflict for some of them, right?

And so what does that say today for our Christian communities and even what Christian community maybe should look like? It might be hard, know, really difficult for us ⁓ to recreate, if you will, that kind of diversity in our Christian communities. And yet... ⁓

I always think of Jesus's ways as being what Jesus is inviting us into. And so as hard as it might be, that that's actually the standard that we should be kind of working out, living into, trying to figure out how do we do that, ⁓ rather than where our culture has us that really invites us to continue to find the most comfortable option for us.

incredibly diverse group of disciples, do you want in? Our culture would say, don't, because that is gonna be really uncomfortable. Like, what do you even have in common with them? Like, what does life look like with them? And I just think that ⁓ Christian community really is, while it is the antithesis of ⁓ what we're invited to, especially in the West today, and

very particularly in United States today, ⁓ there is a gift in it that you cannot find by continuing to just say yes to the invitations that our culture has for us today.

Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about how scripture uses this kind of metaphor of extended family to describe the new community that's created. So, you know, people are sisters and brothers in Christ, who should never be sisters and brothers, right? No! Right! Certainly not by blood, certainly not by socioeconomic status, culture, like all these crazy things. And so that fundamental heterogeneity, if you will, of the Christian community

But family is a complicated word in the late modern West because it's been reduced in our imagination often to, it was the so-called nuclear family. But the so-called nuclear family is in some ways broken down right now. And so even if that carried a certain ⁓ imagination for what it meant to belong, it was pretty restrictive relative to the more expansive understanding of families that existed.

throughout most of history, but certainly in the ancient world where you had, you know, extended family and a household would have apprentices and slaves and all kinds of people living, sharing life together, right? And that kind of proximity and connection that was sociologically taken for granted and at the same time in the ancient world, very stratified and patriarchal households and hierarchical in all kinds of ways. And so,

For us to live into this sense of Christian community is about being an extended family, but unlike most of the families we think about, it's much bigger, includes lots of people who otherwise wouldn't be connected, and there are deep ties there that we can draw on and lean on in the same ways that one should do that with family. But of course, we live in this modern world, whereas Anthony Giddens talks about

He has this category of what he calls pure relationships, which is a lot of the relationships that we enter into in the late modern world are there purely for the kind of instrumental me, know, goods that they can give me. So like I will date someone or ⁓ be a friend with someone if it makes me feel better, if helps me pursue my true self. But then the moment that's not happening, then I'll break off the relationship or the divorce happens or whatever. ⁓

defriend someone on social media or whatever it might be, Unfollow, whatever, right? So there's that kind of ⁓ sense of relationships being always so provisional. And I think what's interesting about Christian community in scripture is it's not us, it's the Holy Spirit who's actually yoking us together with people who are unlike us. So it isn't about how I feel about that person or whether that person can meet my needs. It's actually, you know, we have been

joined in Christ, if we are in Christ, then we belong, and it isn't really up to us. And that is, I think, actually a really powerful counter-voice to the pure relationship culture that we live in right now.

Yes, and it does require of us a level of vulnerability that I think so many of us get uncomfortable with today, right? I'm just thinking about a conversation. had my six-year-old last night as he was trying to fall asleep. And one thing led to another. And he was like, I don't think I'm going to get married. And I was like, well, why is that, buddy? He's like, well, it's just really stressful.

I was like, ⁓ well, what's stressful about it? Thinking like, my gosh, what kind of like stressful like relationship? And he just said something so profound that I think relates to this. He was like, well, I have to find somebody I like and they have to like me back. Right? And this, but what he's naming is this vulnerability of being in relationship with somebody who also wants to be in relationship with you. And so.

Yes, exactly right.

Right, but so yes, the Holy Spirit is at work and we have to be willing to be vulnerable enough to show up into Christian community. And I think that within our echo chamber culture right now, we're just not asked to do that, right? Because we're being pulled into just continue to go into and get sucked into what is most comfortable for you today in your identity.

It's not this, actually, we're gonna invite you to be vulnerable with people that you wouldn't otherwise be in community with. But because of Jesus, and this is where when we make it about Jesus and not about us, that's where I think that true Christian community can be formed with the most diverse people like Jesus' disciples.

Yeah, so just a quick story on that front. So the church that I attend is a bilingual congregation. ⁓ so one of our members was deported under duress back to Ecuador during the ICE occupation. ⁓ so now, because we're family in Christ with him, and because we have a whole number of Ecuadorian ⁓ members in the congregation who are here who's

many whom are families are still back in Ecuador. A couple of our church members just took a trip down to visit this brother Alex and to be with him, but also to connect with the families of all these members. so on Sunday at church, they gave kind of a, just a slideshow of pictures and pointing out all the connections now between our community and St. Paul and a bunch of ⁓

people in Ecuador who are all now connected somehow into one family. And I love the, you talk about vulnerability, I we're all learning, you know, we're all navigating different languages and cultures and all of the things, ⁓ including this one of the guys from the church who went down who was ⁓ introduced to Cui, which is the Ecuadorian delicacy of guinea pig, which is a really important

cuisine that he didn't really appreciate, know, ate, you know, but the vulnerability and think about the vulnerability of these, you know, Ecuadorians who came here fleeing a lot of ⁓ really real challenges in their home country and then had to deal with the ice occupation. So, what does it mean for us to share life and to walk alongside together?

One of the other things that I also picked up, I think, from this season really, right, is that hope that being part of true Christian community actually provides not just us, but also the spaces in which we inhabit, ⁓ right? Because as Catherine reminded us, you know, we are blessed to be a blessing, right? It's not just for us, but actually for the flourishing of our communities.

And I think when we are not only part of true Christian community and are cultivating that, but also living that out into and bringing that into the spaces in which we inhabit, then it's for the flourishing of our communities. that is so, and that provides hope, right, for not just us, but for the people that we have influence with in our everyday living.

Absolutely, yeah.

Okay, Dwight,

let's put on our leadership hats for a moment and think about next steps leaders might take. How do you understand that from this lens of Christian community?

So the first thing I would say is, don't be afraid to call people to something big and sacrificial. You know, when I first became a Christian, I was starting to read the Bible, reading the stories of Jesus, and I could pick up very quickly, like, this was a really hard and demanding and amazing vision for human life. I didn't expect it to be small and easy. And I think one of the mistakes that,

we can make in the church is to reduce it, to reduce Jesus' vision for life together to something small. And I think when we're in situations of crisis, politically, socially, culturally, in society, I think there are voices that retrieve that sense of what's at stake in this. I'm thinking about Bonhoeffer writing life together in his context, or even

where we began this episode talking about what it meant to be church here during the ice occupation. you know, cast a biblical vision of life together with Christ that, you know, talks about the sacrifices and the demands and the benefits of that. Don't reduce it down to just trying to get a little bit of someone's time to serve on a committee, right?

So ⁓ I think I see a lot of leaders caught trying to kind of bargain with people in almost transactional way for their time, treasure, right? To get like a sliver of someone's life rather than say, no, Jesus wants the whole of your life. And with Jesus as Lord, there's a reordering that takes place. And then let's think together about what that means for you, like for everyone. So.

that makes it concrete and practical, right? So on the one hand, an expansive, compelling vision. On the other hand, let's together figure out how to make this come to life in our daily lives and have those conversations, right? And then of course, as leaders, we need to model the dilemmas and talk about how this is hard for us too, right? What are the choices we're making with our own time, with our families, with our neighbors and things?

so that we're not sort of setting ourselves apart as somehow aloof from this, but we're actually in this struggle too. So that leads me to my second piece, which is, you know, get off the hamster wheel of programming that isn't connecting, making disciples, or forming deeper community. Like there's a lot of stuff that churches do that isn't actually doing, you know, this deeper work of forming Christian community.

But it takes a lot of time and energy. I think sometimes we feel like if we just keep it going, we're doing church. And yeah, kind of maybe, but it isn't really getting us very far. as some of those programmatic approaches begin to get more exhausted, I think there is an opening to rethink them in some deep ways. So that then leaves the question of what do we focus on if it isn't just getting people busy in church activities and programs?

That is, to have to take up the question of identity. Who are we as the church? What does it mean to be the church in our time? Ecclesiology is so underdeveloped, I think, in the conversation generally these days. We assume what it to be church, or we have certain maybe inherited confessional commitments from 500 years ago from a very different Christendom context often that are really rich and important and have a lot to speak to.

but they don't necessarily translate immediately to our time and our situation right now. So let's take up the question of identity. And then finally, let's figure out what the simple, ordinary, everyday practices are for sharing life together in Jesus in a culture that conspires against it. And then let's just train people in those and have conversations about how they get contextualized in people's lives.

What does it look like to ⁓ practice Sabbath and community and ⁓ simplicity and what can people say no to as well as say yes to and all of those things? So I think it's an opportunity to reorient and refocus in that sense in light of a much bigger vision than I think we often ⁓ cast in many of our churches. So what are some of your leadership lessons, Alicia?

Yeah, I think one that I was just reminded of this last weekend even was that having intentions of being Christian community is not the same as intentionally cultivating Christian community, right? Like, we can have the hopes and dreams and intentions that we name, but if we aren't actively being intentional about cultivating them, then really it's just a hope and it's not going to come to fruition.

Like we actually have to actively be intentional about it. It doesn't just happen in particular in a culture that is the antithesis of it. And so we do need to be intentional about it. And I think that kind of as you named right, just that the invitation back to discipleship as the primary work of our congregations today.

so that we can cultivate Christian community. And a lot of that really is a return to spiritual practices. And how do we incorporate them into our lives today that look very different than the lives of the early church 2,000 years ago, and yet they still bear fruit. And fruit comes from engaging those spiritual practices. But we need to recontextualize them for today for people.

We need to teach people how to do it. I think about ⁓ so many people who will ⁓ tell you that ⁓ reading scripture, praying, journaling, the first time they engage some of these practices, even praying aloud in a small group, it is very uncomfortable. I I remember the first time I was asked to pray aloud in a small group. I was in college my freshman year and I...

just broke into a cold sweat, right? And I grew up in the church, ⁓ but I had never.

I

been invited to pray aloud in a small group of people with whom I'm friends. This wasn't even like a, know, pray up front or something with this group of people you don't know. No, this was an invitation to pray in a small group with people I'm close to and friends with. And I froze and just started sweating because I didn't know, it was so uncomfortable. And so as leaders, we get to invite people and create

safe space, right? Space in which we can practice those things so that they become ⁓ comfortable in this enough for us to live them out in our everyday life. And I'm just thinking about how these are really muscles that if we do not ⁓ practice them, if we don't put them to use, they're like our physical muscles that just atrophy. But especially if you've never done it, it's gonna be awkward. I mean, there's no way around it. It will feel uncomfortable. But just because it feels uncomfortable doesn't mean that...

Therefore, we just avoid them. No, it's an invitation. It means we actually have to practice them more. ⁓ And so I think as leaders, we get to cultivate and facilitate spaces where practicing spiritual disciplines ⁓ is safe for people to do within our Christian community, but then also in our everyday living and lives, because it's those practices that are going to anchor us and root us to God and what God is up to today.

as we are sent out, right, into our families, into our work, into our communities, into our neighborhoods. But as leaders, we need to be the ones to help facilitate that for people.

All right, Dwight, what is the research and the theology suggest about what actually builds community? What are those conditions that can make it possible?

Yeah, so I think we need to begin with story and that's partly the vision common to me earlier, but what story are we living in? What is the primary way in which we make meaning of our lives and experience? And this is where scripture has to be foundational. It has to be the primary story that we're living in is the story of God and God's people in scripture. So we have to begin there, engage scripture creatively, help people, you know, as a spiritual practice be

engaging scripture daily. And a second takeaway that I had from this season is thinking about suffering and vulnerability. And know, places of loss and longing as the very places that God meets us, as we heard so beautifully from Ralph Jacobson, but also places then where we meet one another. And so if community is not grounded in the depths of human experience, in the hard places of human experience,

it will fall apart pretty quickly, right? And so if God meets us there and joins God's self to us there in Christ and the Spirit, then that's where we actually join with others. So I think Christian communities should be places where the depth of our lives are open to one another and that includes the hard places. And then, you the other piece that I wanna just name is the idea of inhabiting the edges.

for today's church to learn how to be the church first. And I think there's still coming out of the era of Christendom when the church was socially and culturally established in the West, a lot of energy around, we need to remake the society in a Christian image, which I think is a great impulse. And I don't think we can do that without first learning how to be the church.

And so I hear often versions of trying to make the society more Christian that don't involve Jesus or Jesus's people, the church. it becomes kind of reduced to a certain set of moral principles, which is sort of what the Enlightenment did for us. You don't really need church for that. You don't need Jesus for that. You don't need a community.

that is embodying Jesus' witness in the world. And it's so important to say that Jesus has a body of Christ that is the community because you can't do it on your own. The witness to Jesus' gospel is through us together. And the very fact that there are unlike people joined together into that community is integral to the witness. And that it-

practice as a certain way of life is also integral to that witness. And so to me, the energy for leaders and for the church right now can be better spent learning how to be the church in a very difficult time. And that is realizing that we are more and more on the edges. So the kind of grasping for power that we see happening from different parts of the church today, political power, various kinds of social power.

institutional power as well, to me is misdirected. We need to figure out how to be the church. And honestly, this is where I see a lot of faithfulness emerging from communities that are on the margins that have never had the illusion of being in control of society. And they have been doing this, of course, their whole history. And so those of us in the dominant culture who have this kind of Christendom hangover, we think we should be in charge.

And I realized, no, actually the culture has become, you know, neo-pagan, it's become, ⁓ it's something very different from a Christian culture. It's not going back easily. It's morphed into something different and we need to recognize that and reckon with it. But if we are not inhabiting and embodying Christian community in Jesus' way ourselves together in community,

we won't be able to share much of a value to our neighbors in the broader society. So Alicia, what would you say to the church leader who's maybe heard all of this before and still not sure where to begin? Like, what do I actually do?

Yeah, that is a great question, Dwight. And one that we know, you know, there are church leaders who are wondering that and asking that today. And I have a couple of thoughts, and I'd love to hear what you think as well. But I would say I would start with taking a step back and just spending 10, 20 minutes reflecting on your own, about your own experience in Christian community and when you have ⁓ experienced it in deep ways and ⁓

what was going on, how was it facilitated, right? It didn't just happen. ⁓ But what were the conditions that made it possible for you to experience it ⁓ in your ⁓ journey with Jesus and really remember what it was like? ⁓ Because when I stop and think about it, I can name some very specific.

in my life where I've experienced and been part of intentional Christian communities that were very impactful, ⁓ not only in my own life and ⁓ relationship with God, but that then allowed me to show up ⁓ in my spheres of influence as a disciple of Jesus in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise. And so I think by first pausing and really reflecting on your own life and experience with Christian community,

And then to experiment on the side. ⁓ We would never say, just blow up the whole thing and start over. So don't do that. No, we would say, right, ⁓ start on the side, start small, and ideally start where community is actually already gathering. And the people in your congregation, the people in your church can tell you. They're already very likely part of other communities.

be they tennis clubs or soccer parents or volunteers cleaning up parks or they go to a certain coffee shop every day or they start their work day there three times a day or three times a day, three times a week. But they are likely already part of other communities outside your congregation. And so start there.

because community is already gathering there. And a simple invitation of inviting people into learning more about Jesus's way or even just simply starting with some accessible questions, right, around their spirituality and where they're at. As we know, the research tells us that the majority, and I think right now the latest numbers are around 90 % of people in the United States.

⁓ believe in God. And so this is not a foreign concept, but people don't know how to talk about spirituality, though they deeply want to engage their spirituality and they are longing to ⁓ connect with God and they might not be able to put it in that language, but that is their longing. And so this is not a foreign concept to most people.

But we do have to be intentional about inviting them into these kinds of conversations in communities. And so I would say start small, start on the side, start as an experiment, right? Experiments allow for failure because all learning is simply feedback. You can't really do it wrong. Sure, there are ways you can be harmful, but I think ⁓ most of us are more hedging toward ⁓ simply being uncomfortable starting.

rather than being ⁓ forceful and coercive and starting something in a manipulative kind of way. ⁓ And so I think just inviting your people in your congregation that are already part of communities to get curious about what this might look like ⁓ for them and their spheres of influence because they have them. What would you say, Dwight? Would you add?

Well, I love that. So I think where you began with, was start with for yourself as a leader, what are your own powerful experiences firsthand of the power of Christian community? And then do that with people in your context, invite them to name and to reflect on and name those experiences as a way to build out from there. I always love to begin with a particular and then build out and kind of have those conversations around when has church meant something important to you?

Whenever you experience the life-giving power of God through Christian community. And when you tell those stories publicly, whether it be even a small group or medium-sized or even up on Sunday morning or something, people giving testimonies, this will create a new sense of energy in my experience and of connection to people. So you're building out of how God has already been active in someone's life. So it's not, I just need to come and bring a better theory of how to be church. It's let's start with,

with the people entrusted to my care as a leader, how is God actually already working in giving them experiences of the power of Christian community.

I love that Dwight. Dwight, what would you say gives you hope as you look at what the church is navigating right now?

Yeah, so a number of things. ⁓ One is ⁓ the phenomenon of Gen Z, which is the most pre-Christian generation we've had in American history probably, more and more of them growing up without any real experience of church. think a lot of millennials had experiences of church, Gen X somewhat as well, boomers, it was pretty normative. ⁓ But I think with Gen Z, many of them, it's just all new.

And so the phenomenon of people showing up in church, we're hearing a lot of, again, it's anecdotal still of people coming in the UK. They talk about this as the quiet revival and it's sort of contested how much is happening. But it is, there's enough stories now that in enough places that there are people without any Christian background finding their way into Christian community. And the Holy Spirit seems to be leading that. It's not because we had

just the greatest evangelism program or strategy or something like that. It's a lot of stories of people just being led and kind of being at a loss because the culture is giving them so little. And because of the experience of the pandemic and all of this, like, you know, the norm is not community that we're rebelling against. The norm is isolation and loneliness and loss and disconnection.

often from unlikely places. And so there's something of that going on that's early, it's early days and I don't know what form it's gonna take, that's pretty interesting to pay attention to.

One thing I want to highlight about that too, another thing that I think we're starting to see, you know, again, quietly, the shift from cynicism culturally to there has to be something better, right? Like, and I think one of the, friend of mine named that, ⁓ even just the popularity of the movie, Project Hail Mary, is a depiction of this cultural turning

of actually we're really tired of the cynicism and just the despair and just the road that that leads down. I want a hopeful story. Like there has to be something better than this. And so I'm seeing that culturally as well. It's not really being named quite that at such yet, but I think that adds to that as well.

Yeah, the crazier the surrounding society gets. And the more more nakedly idolatrous, like more unashamedly idolatrous in all kinds of ways, the more I think people are gonna be looking for alternatives. So, so then that leads me to my second point, which is, you know, this exhaustion of like, a certain kind of managerial sort of program model of church, which, you know, was in the 20th century. Well, let me just say it didn't exist really before

maybe the parts of the late 19th and really the 20th century, it was a ⁓ pretty new model in Christian history. And it seems to be exhausted in a lot of places, still going in some, but it's breaking down. People don't have the volunteer time, they're overstretched, they're working different hours. There's just all kinds of reasons why sociologically and culturally it's breaking down. But I do think that opens the space for something new to emerge and to release

certain ways of being church that may have worked, again, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s even, but are now pretty much beyond their sell-by date. And so then the question becomes, well, what then do we do? And that does ⁓ provide a kind of liminal threshold kind of space where we can pause, really listen to God, to each other's stories, to our neighbors, and to the Christian tradition.

to say what does it mean to be church in our time? And that might feel like a really challenging space to inhabit as a leader because there's a lot of loss if you were formed particularly to simply run effective programs and administer them. And now it's like that's not working anymore. What do I do? There's a different kind of leadership that's involved in this, but it also opens a space for something interesting. And what it opens a space for, I think, is for the agency of God.

So if modernity's wager, to use Adam Seligman's language, was that you can live a good life without God, ⁓ we're seeing that that's actually not working very well, right? A lot of people are discovering that actually, you know, at least collectively, ⁓ it's pretty rough. So how might we as the church relearn how to be led by God and to trust the agency of God? And that, I think, is

really exciting and hopeful for me because my hope is not in the church, it's in the Lord of the church, it's in Jesus, of course, and the power of the Spirit. I think that's where we're seeing some grassroots experiments around that, people choosing to simplify, not to over control and manage these kind of idols, if you will, of modernity.

and to trust in God's leading. And until we learn how to do that as church, I don't see a way forward for faithfulness and for vitality for our churches either. So that's kind of core to the agenda. And I think it's really exciting work to learn how to do to be entrusted with that sacred responsibility as church leaders, to help the people of God, the people entrusted to our care, to deepen their life in God as the first order of business.

It helps me, it reminds me really about, ⁓ so I just took up tennis like three months ago, okay? So, yep. And as I'm learning a new sport, right, I am remembering what it's like to learn something brand new. Tried tennis growing up, didn't like it, but I'm ready for, I'm in a season where I'm ready. I have time and capacity for new hobby, so I I'd try tennis again and I am loving it.

I'm also remembering what it is like to learn something brand new as an adult. And even something as simple as hobbies is really helpful, right? Of this relearning how to begin again. And that's really the space that we're in right now for most church leaders, especially if they were trained and equipped for the inherited church model ⁓ that runs programs and manages programs and manages a church. And as we're moving out of that,

into this really exciting space of, okay, God, what are you up to? Here we are, let's go. Right, but that is a muscle that for a lot of church leaders today, it hasn't been practiced and ⁓ really used much, but I think it's really exciting. So to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. We always love to hear from our listeners and viewers.

Please send your thoughts or suggestions to pivot at faithly.org. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend.

See you for season 7, where we'll explore the theme of making the ancient new today. This is a time of re-rooting in the treasures of Christian faith and practice, but also of creatively translating how we express those treasures for today. That'll be the focus of our next season. Stay tuned.

The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith Lead. Faith Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.