In this quarterly Q&A episode, our hosts tackle one of the most common struggles church leaders face: knowing what to focus on when everything seems important.

Listen as they explore why many churches describe themselves by their programs rather than their theological identity, and how this leads to burnout and confusion. You'll discover practical exercises to help your congregation reconnect with its unique story and calling.

Key insights include recognizing the warning signs of identity confusion, using your church's history to uncover God's ongoing work, and embracing the freedom that comes from focused calling rather than trying to solve every problem.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Identity and values go together so well. And I know for me over my lifetime, getting clear about my values and often that gets clarity by when I stray and I'm like, life feels not quite right. And I go, and I come back, right? And so I think in addition to themes, what are values that maybe have been present throughout? What are ones that are emerging?

Like I think there's many congregations I talk with have a different sense of valuing neighbors. They just assume people used to come and now there's like, don't want to be transactional, but I don't know how, how do I listen? Like there's a different wanting to show up differently, but an intentionality about the neighbors.

Welcome to Pivot, the podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Terri Elton, and today I'm joined with Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm.

It's time for our quarterly Q &A session, where we take up some of your questions and reflect on some of the things we're hearing and seeing around the church these days.

But before we jump in, we want to remind you to please email your questions to us at faithlead, one word, at luthersem.edu. We love hearing from you. OK, so here is our first question. One of the things that we hear very regularly from church leaders, even at the most senior level, are questions about what to focus on, what to do next. When we engage church leaders in this,

They often describe themselves sociologically, when pressed, about who is there and what their programs are focusing on today. But it isn't a story that is really relatable to people who are not there yet. Their churches aren't particularly clear about who they are theologically and spiritually. The reality is that our what must actually be grounded and rooted in our identity and calling.

So how do churches clarify and deepen their identity in a time when institutional churches are increasingly distrusted? And why does it matter?

I hate to say it, Alicia, but churches aren't the only ones struggling with us. I will just say in the last four to five years, especially coming out of COVID, that has been a problem for us too. And so I can kind of relate to, I think maybe we're patterned to talk about the what and assume everybody knows the why or has a clear sense about identity. And I will just say as a Dean,

And as a professor of leadership at a theological school, we are struggling to say, hey, no, we gotta take a step back and really say, who are we? And think about that identity theologically, and then what does that calling mean in this time? And then the what will follow. But I just wanna own that maybe they're not alone.

And not just theological schools, it's so many organizations and institutions in our world right now. Given the kind of dramatic change that's taking place, the upheaval, who are you becomes a really key question. So I think biblically, it's wonderful to think about this, and a couple of texts come to my mind around this. One is the wonderful Martha and Mary text in Luke 10, because I think many ministry leaders, they're so focused on tasks, and our churches can...

can just have this rhythm of we're just gonna do these things, you know, that we program and we do them. And it's very easy to become like Martha in that text, worried and distracted by many things. are many things to be worried and distracted about in this moment, for sure, within our churches and our world. And yet Jesus affirms Mary for having that kind of crystal clear presence and focus on him and his teachings. And there's something there for us to take. And again,

I've never read that text as a repudiation of Martha using her gifts of hospitality. I don't think that Jesus and disciples wanted to just starve and not eat anything that night, you know. And at the same time, there's something that Mary is living into in that moment that is really, really fundamental. Otherwise we missed the point.

I think of a podcast we did recently with Dave Zahl that talked about the theological importance of grace and what does it mean to be a community of grace. And I would guess that many congregations would see themselves as, we want to have an identity of grace and yet focus on all the things. And I think what at least that podcast reminded me of was Maybe a lot of the core things that were called to be and do.

aren't stuff you can plan at a task force meeting or that you can count on an Excel spreadsheet or look back at the end of the year and say, hey, aren't we good because we did this many things? I think it's more a sense of how are we to our neighbors? How are we attentive in this season of really hard things out in the world of listening to people's

anxieties, their longings, the thing that they're grieving. just being like living, that's an ongoing ministry activity, but you can't schedule it. You can't put it on a calendar. And I would guess, as we've talked about in some of our Faithful Innovation work, we've done this before. We've had other chapters of our life that we've responded differently. And maybe some of this work is getting a bigger perspective.

of who we're to be and what we're called to be and do. that takes us out of just what we did before COVID or five years ago, right?

And I think sometimes one of the clearest markers of when it's time to pause and say, okay, what is our identity? What are our priorities? Right? Is that telltale sign of being overly busy, being exhausted, feeling like you're spread too thin, whether that's people, financial resources, space, like whatever that thing is. And that sense of like, I just don't know what to do.

whether we start having questions around just being confused or not really feeling like we have a direction or stuck, just feeling stuck. often in any one of those, whenever we find ourselves kind of in any one of those circumstances, when we pause and say, like, okay, what is my identity? What are my priorities? It's often.

tricky to name it in that moment. And I think that's a real telltale sign of saying, okay, we need to make space for this because we don't actually know. We probably did at one point, but today it's clear that we either need an update on that or re-centering on that and refocusing on that. Whichever it is, we have to get back to it.

So I want to think about that in light of Christian leadership. So Our friend Scott Cormode talks about Christian leadership as primarily being about helping people make theological meaning, spiritual meaning of their experience. And I think that's a really brilliant way to talk about it because, this is about interpreting our life in God in a culture that certainly doesn't support that in any kind of faithful way, if it ever did.

in American society or Western cultures. So how do we amidst whatever tasks do need to get done, really live into that role of helping people interpret their life and God and make Christian meaning so that the story they're living out of personally and that we are living out of as a community is in fact a biblical and theological story of God and God's people following Jesus. and.

You might look at lot of congregations and how they've ordered their lives. And we say, yeah, there are moments when that's happening, certainly preaching, maybe in a Bible study. And yet there are a lot of assumptions being made for people that I think we should really examine and test whether they're actually adequate. For instance, even in preaching, how is it landing in people's lives to help them actually

behave differently as a result of this. And how is the biblical story, not just the kind of fragments that people get in the lectionary, but just more holistically, how are they actually entering and engaging and living it out in everything they do?

So back to our place. One of the ways I think that's been really helpful, at least for me and the teams that I work with, has been our going back to John 15 and the vine in the branches and saying, what does it mean to abide? And man, you dwell in that text and like how many million times does it say abide? If you do not get that out of the text, you are not listening. That's my sense. But the sense of when there's so many things coming at you,

The first thought is not, I'm gonna abide. And it's not, I'm a beloved child of God, or God is the source of all life. That's not the first thing that comes to my mind, unless there's some counterculture move, right? So I know that we have done many months in a variety of ways, continuing to go back to that John 15,

And not only looking at what are we abiding and where does our lifeline come from, but also looking at pruning. In my own life, and this has really happened since the pandemic, which forced me to do some different things, to say, what do I want to continue? My life is really busy and busyness is not the problem. It's what's...

the busyness around and is it part of drawing on the source of life or is it pulling me away from that? And I think what I have found anyway, I'll just say this both in my personal life and as a leader and as a personal life and in this place at Luther Seminary, I need space to see people. If I actually care about the longings that are with you or helping you make spiritual meaning, I need to have space to stop and listen.

Or to wonder, last night we marked our foreheads, both here at seminary and in the congregation with ashes, and to say to people struggling with cancer, remember you are dust and to dust you return. I'm like choked up, right? Thinking this is not a theoretical proclamation. This is actually tapping into the promise they're trying to hold on, or I'm trying to hold on in any given.

So I think some of it for me is doing practices that remind me of this identity, remind us as a community of our identity, and sometimes it's holding each other in that identity when we can't do it ourselves.

Let's get really kind of practical for our viewers and listeners around as a leader, how do you help a community clarify its identity? Where do you turn around this? yeah, Alicia, do you have ideas on that in terms of some of the things that we've experimented with here in Faith Lead?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it kind of depends on the circumstances in which we find ourselves and how we're trying to clarify that. But I do really think about, like, Say we're thinking about, you know, a local church in a neighborhood. There are particular people that God has already brought together to that community, and they have very specific gifts and callings and...

you know, if the church really is the people and not the building, which we say it is, and sometimes I think we get confused about that, or actually it's very tempting to get confused about that, then we need to really pay attention to who God has gathered together. And as we focus on, you know, continuing to become like Christ individually and communally,

out of our communal calling, it can become clear, not instantly necessarily. I'm thinking about our friends at Mill City Church that took a long time to waiting to figure out, God, like, why have you called us together and why have you called us here? You called us to this very particular place and it is very unclear why we're here. And the amount of waiting that they did until it actually became quite clear that there was an invitation.

to step into a particular direction as a community. And sometimes I think we're, think Terry, kind of back to where you were saying about busyness is that it can be really easy for us to see ourselves as a church, as an organization that is limitless rather than a church of people that actually have limit and are called to Sabbath.

and are called to limitations and are called to have margin so that when God moments happen in our day, we can actually respond as people because maybe it's the Holy Spirit's invitation and not an interruption or a disruption. But when we're so busy, we miss it or we dismiss it. And it might be the very, it might actually be the Holy Spirit inviting us to respond.

But I do think, you know, really taking a moment to recognize that there are specific gifts and there are specific talents and skills and experiences that are already gathered for a particular reason. And it might be true that 20 years ago, the congregation or a church lived this out in a specific way for a neighborhood that existed in a particular way.

And the rate at which culture change in our communities have shifted over the last couple of decades, those needs that were present two decades ago may very well have changed dramatically. And if we're not listening and paying attention to our neighbors, we're unaware that we might be doing a lot of good things, but none of them are actually God things anymore. They're sacred cows that we have a hard time putting to rest because they're

you know, they have their life cycle came to an end. So I think paying attention to those is really important place to start.

So I think that's wonderful. And One of the things that comes to my mind is a practice that we've done with congregations called a chapters exercise, where we actually go back into that history. So In a chapters exercise, you just imagine that the history of your church is sort of like a book, and there are chapters for each different period. in the main periods. And you can work with your leadership team or any other. you can work with the whole congregation to identify if our life of our church was a book,

What would the main chapters be? And then What were the things going on? What was the neighborhood like? in those days? Who founded the church? What was their story? What were the people's stories over time? But then The key thing is to go back and ask God questions. What was God up to in that season? And you can begin to identify themes that will often point the way toward the next chapter that God wants to write with your church in this new season so that the

the story, if you will, the identity is informed by God's faithfulness in the past. I think People often are afraid of asking the identity question of who are we when they feel like that will mean a kind of forsaking or abandonment of the past. And rightly so. I think sometimes there can be disruptive change that takes us into a new era, but we always want to carry forward the best of the past and how God's been active in that past as we move into this next season.

Who are some people that joined around this time and why did you join or what was it about that? And sometimes, like I forget often different chapters and then somebody will go, well, that's when I entered. So I can pick the story up and I go, yeah. And there's things I'd forgotten that they bring to the forefront. they're like, hey, this is where I saw God at work and this is what drew me here. And I quit looking or I quit going anyplace else or this neighbor brought me or.

like there's powerful stories. I also think there's something, identity and values go together so well. And I know for me over my lifetime, getting clear about my values and often that gets clarity by when I stray. And I'm like, life feels not quite right. And I go, and I come back, right? And so I think,

In addition to themes, what are values that maybe have been present throughout? What are ones that are emerging? Like I think there's many congregations I talk with have a different sense of valuing neighbors. They just assume people used to come and now there's like, don't want to be transactional, but I don't know how, how do I listen? Like there's a different wanting to show up differently, but an intentionality about the neighbors.

right, as an example of a value that may have changed or risen up in a different way. So I think telling stories and looking for themes and values, I think, really help us put that identity together. Then we say, okay, if we value children, youth, and family, and those have been places where God has shown up in really remarkable ways, do we care if it's Sunday school or confirmation or the number?

What we care about is that this kid or their family found us and this is opening up new opportunities for them. What does it mean to do more of that? However that embodies itself in that time and place. It just allows us, I think, to get off the what and to the why.

And I think it frees us too, especially if we're clear about our values and we might realize, you know, as we do a chapters exercise or just spend some intentional time thinking about our identity, that things that were values at one time may have shifted or maybe they are the same. Let's, think children, youth and family is a great example. And in a particular place in time, it looked like doing X, and Z.

Today, that still might be the case, and X, Y, and Z might look completely different because all the things, really, right? The neighborhood has changed. Technology advancements in the last 20 years are off the charts. But, and, you know, the longings and losses of youth in some way could be the same. It might be different. The longings and losses of parents 20 years ago today, very different.

In a lot of ways, I think there's some core things that are the same, when we really get clear on that why, then our hands can be a little bit more open about the what. And I feel like that, even to our neighbors, it's a lot easier for them to see and experience the church being present when we're committed to continuing to listen.

to them and their longings and losses and to be responsive to what God is already up to rather than clinging to the what that we did, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago.

So I wanna ask another question that's think related, but one that we are hearing a lot from people, which is, This seems like a pretty crazy moment in American life and in the life of the world.

Is that a question or is that a statement?

It's particularly kind of chaotic and contested and there's A lot of energy being unleashed for good or ill in different ways. And churches, I think, find themselves in the midst of this, caught, like everything is, everyone is, businesses, people, communities, and wondering, okay, how do we respond as the church and as leaders of the church?

Prescriptive or desciptive?

in such a moment as this, when so many of the scripts that have been written for us by the culture are actually very different from Jesus and his way. So what does discipleship look like and what does it mean to be a community of disciples in such a moment as this?

I think that's actually a great transition, and I just want to talk pragmatically from congregations. I think we used to think we could create discipleship programs. What?

And boy, the complexity of today's world and scripted theological answers and responses don't fit today. I think many people, even in the church, who are showing up have a theology that isn't equipped to handle the complexity of today. And that's on us, the church. It's on me, all my youth ministry people, I'm sorry.

Right? Like, I think we tried to say, if you just know the basics of the Bible, if you just understand, memorize these many Bible verses, if you have these kind of things, it'll be okay. And that's not enough. Right? So if we can't program it, I wonder if we might ask some different sets of questions. And I get back to things you've already said, both of you.

What are the things that keep you up at night? What are the things that are stressing you most out about executive orders or this person being in a role, a public role, or this person? What is the thing underneath that? And what is it about your faith that comes in or out of that? No matter where you are politically on the spectrum, I've had this conversation with friends, with parishioners, with colleagues.

Many of us have put our chips in: our salvation comes in the government to feed the poor, to take care of the immigrant, to whatever, fill in the blank. And nobody's happy. That's not how Everybody's upset, right? Like everybody loses on that. And so if indeed God is our salvation, then there's a different set of questions, right? And so how do we see God in this? And so one of the things that's been really fun

for me is it's opened up new kinds of ways to learn like, okay, what does Lutheran theology mean? Or what does scripture say about the poor? Or what does this mean? Like it's brought people, If you can think there's a different theological response than the cultural response, where might we go in history, church history, to learn about another time? Maybe it's not 10 years ago.

maybe it's back in the first or second century or in Reformation times. It opens up new curiosity to learn about what followers of Jesus have done over time, and what theologically we believe and how we might act. in that way.

You can't help but wonder if it's as simple as, don't hear me say easy, simple, two very different things, right? If discipleship is as simple as.

each of us following Jesus in our everyday lives. And I'm reminded of Matthew 11, where Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And I say this because I think that...

Again, we want to know, let me think back. I'm thinking back to, gosh, it's probably 15 or so years ago. And I very much wanted from God, right, like the bullet points of like, OK, here's what I need to do. How do I do it? Like, just give me the answer. And time and time and time again, and we see examples of this throughout scripture, but God's invitation isn't the right answer.

God's invitation is a relationship. And when we focus on our relationship with Jesus and we trust, not always easy, but we trust that God's gonna show up and we're gonna know what to do when the time comes because God's gonna show up, then this is very simple to live out. We come to Jesus.

I will say For me right now, I've been clinging to Jesus's feeding of the 5,000 plus. And for me right now, what that has meant is that...

Jesus was able to feed all of those people. And what Jesus did was Jesus asked the disciples, like, I want you to feed them. Well, and in fact, he wanted them to feed them by relying on him. And in that moment, Jesus had what he was necessary, Gracious little boy with his fish and his bread. Jesus can take it, multiply it, and then they've got more than enough. And what I felt in my own life lately has been just with the complexities of.

being a mom and a wife and a leader and just a lot of things going on, know, personally save everything else going on in the world right now, is Jesus's reminder to me that I have enough in every moment. So whatever it is that if I've invited you here, right, if it is my will that you are here and doing this thing and I'm asking you to do this or this or this, then I, Jesus,

enough for you to do the thing. But it's reliant on me, not on you. I'm not asking you to have all the right answers. I'm not asking you to know exactly what to do. I am inviting you though to partner with what I'm doing in what I have for them.

Well, so there are two books that I've read in the last year so that I found really helpful. The first to kind of understand what's going on and why it feels so crazy. And the second is to how do we respond as a church? So the first is James Davison Hunter's book, Democracy in Solidarity. He's a scholar at the University of Virginia, has written a lot of really wonderful things, but he basically argues that in American society, we've been unified. We've had solidarity around kind of two

cultural threads, if you will, two narratives. And one is a deep kind of Judeo-Christian, even if sort of watered down narrative, right? Set of assumptions and basic orientation to the world. And the second is the enlightenment liberalism with an emphasis on individual rights and equality and things like that. And he just points out that what's breaking down right now is precisely those two things.

that that consensus is now, you could say it's pretty much gone. What you're left with then is a kind of Nietzschean will to power, where in that vacuum, people are wanting to assert a kind of zero-sum power game, and you see it on the left and the right, and we kind of swing back and forth, depending on which party's in power. But...

if we've had for so much of American society in our history, even for our congregations, this sense of we're all in this together, it doesn't feel quite like that anymore. And thus, the stakes feel so much higher and it feels so much more unnerving and that the consequences of the other party being in power, whatever that is, seems so existential. So how do we respond to that? This is where the second book that I've read recently has been super helpful.

Depressed?

Yeah, so I did which is kind of where James Davidson hunters book and lands is sort of he ends kind of like I don't know what's gonna happen Well, I think the church for us as Christians. We have a vocation in this and that book is Steven Presley It's called cultural sanctification and he's a patristic scholar and he says We're in this kind of moment in Western culture, particularly in American life It's a less helpful to look to models such as Benedict

or even back into the kind of various forms of reforming Christendom that came later in church history. And it's better to look to the first two centuries and say, what was it like for those first Christians to live out of an alternative story and to practice an alternative way of life quite publicly in a surrounding pagan society? so his book just goes through all these great stories and resources from Justin Martyr and Blandina and all these people.

How are they doing that? And one of the key points he makes is that, you know, it was really hard to become a Christian. Like the formation was really intensive. There were really strong, you know, identity markers, if you will, around what it meant to follow Jesus in community. And there were strong ethical components of that. But there was a hope that Christians had that was very attractive to pagans whose society was very much like what we see in our

American society right now, hedonistic, exploitative, all these things. So this is where I think Renewing our identity is about story and it's about embodied practices and community, all of which are about a different way of life that is quite in tension with the surrounding culture. If we have inherited congregations that are designed to be in kind of

cultural harmony, if you will, with the surrounding environment. They find themselves particularly caught off guard because they don't know how to do this other work, which is actually the core work of being church and certainly being leaders, helping people do this in this season. So I just want to name how big of a shift that is and why it can seem so hard. then also why just doing the tasks we've always done and the ministry activities seems to kind of fall flat because

the challenge is actually so much deeper in this moment. So thus, I think the abiding and the trusting in Jesus that you're both talking about, like that is, there's no other alternative. And I think there is rest for our souls in that, and there is peace and the ability to tap into a much deeper root.

That leads us well into this next question, but I want to say something as we enter. think some congregations aren't going to make the shift.

And that breaks my heart, especially as a person at a later end of their ministry life, having invested in the church all of my adult life, right? It's just sad. And I think there's some grief that will have to come with that or mourning the loss, but also a belief that if this is God's church, then God is gonna do God's thing. And God has throughout history,

done all kinds of crazy things. And so it also puts my will in check and leans into that. And then it says, God, how are going to do some new things? And we've spent a lot of time over this last season, the last grouping of podcasts, talking about this mixed ecology of how inherited churches or traditional kind of embodiment of church are renewing themselves.

and finding new ways forward, and that there are fresh expressions of ministries that are bubbling up, like doing laundry, that are awakening people of faith and neighbors into new kinds of life in really margins and places that would maybe never see themselves in congregations. I would just like for each of you or for us to talk a little bit about what's

might faithfulness look like as we think about leaning into following Jesus, right, in this time, in the midst of these big things around this new identity that we're kind of embracing and or remembering really in this time? What do you guys think?

Well, one place my mind goes as we think about what does faithfulness look like is for those of us in the majority culture in the US, kind of the dominant culture, you the white church, there have of course been minority communities who have been, who've always had to figure this out all along. And there's so much we can learn from, you know, the historic witness of the black church of,

various immigrant churches of minority communities that have always had to wrestle with these identity questions and not expect that the surrounding culture would be favorable necessarily to them. So I do think that God is doing something powerful through those communities and particularly through the immigrant churches that are bringing forms of Christianity into the life of Western societies that are animated by

the power of God's spirit in different ways. And so that is one place I'd say. And then the second is to recognize how contextual every form of church is. It's not optional, right? So every form of church is designed for a particular cultural moment. Churches that thrive are able to continue to adapt faithfully, carrying forward their treasures. And when churches die, it's often because they've just...

They've not learned how to keep doing that. They don't have energy for it or they lost their identity in their story. So I think once we are clear on what's our story, what's the core thing that we're about actually practicing Jesus's way in a surrounding maybe pagan society, then how, you know, or what, which is the question you started with for us, Alicia, we can actually claim the freedom we have in the gospel to try all kinds of

different ways to embody that because what is sacred is in fact God's presence in the midst of the church and the leadership of the Holy Spirit and following Jesus. It's not particular organizational forms or particular cultural forms. And so I think that's actually really exciting and gives me a lot of hope rather than despairing on the fact that some particular cultural forms of church are not actually going to make it.

Yeah, I agree with you, Dwight. I can't help but get excited. I just, think it brings to mind to me, right, an identity piece of God that we often forget, I think particularly in the main line and particularly when we have actually built buildings for our churches to gather because

God is a sending God. And when we really, when we actually believe that, not to say it, I think it's easy for us as Christians to say things because we know that they're right, but our lives actually demonstrate we don't genuinely believe them. But when we, if we really believe that, then that frees us up to experiment and partner and try out.

know, partnering with what the Holy Spirit might be up to in the neighborhood without this fear of failure. And it really does, to me, really does empower and bring back to the forefront the priesthood of all believers and that reality that God has an intended purpose for each of us in our context.

as individuals and as communities. when we really begin to reclaim the reality that God is a sending God, I think that that frees us up to wonder and imagine and get, especially allows people who are really creative and maybe some of those more risk takers to step outside the box and get curious about,

You know, I go to this dog park every weekend and I have this community there. I wonder what God might be up to in my neighbors that I have been hanging out with for six months at the dog park or the laundromat or the CrossFit gym that I go. There are pockets of community that many of us are already embedded in outside of our, you know, more traditional legacy congregations.

that God might be already up to something and is inviting us to take that next step.

So this is the time in the podcast for the word. And some of you, if you haven't listened to it before, and is my favorite word. And I think we've lived in times when it's had to be either or. And we're living in an end time, in a time when inherited traditional church structures don't have to be fearful of fresh expressions or dog park churches or cross fit ministry that's happening.

And I think the beauty of this time is we are better together, really, to learn together. What are you hearing from the people at the dog park or at the CrossFit gym that might help us preach the gospel in a traditional setting in a different way that actually touches the longings and losses of the people that are gathered on an Ash Wednesday service or during a traditional kind of practice that we have in the congregation? So I think

For me, that's one thing I would say. I love that this is an end time. I think the other thing that I would say with this is, for those of you that are fresh expressions, new people, I think we've sold the world something that hasn't been helpful, that you have to be paid to be minister. And to your point of the priesthood of all believers, first of all,

I would say to people that care about immigrants, we can all care about immigrants and do something about it at all kinds of levels, right? All of these things that have us upset might also be, sorry, might also be the points where we're to lean in. Who are the people that God has put on your heart that you might share the gospel with, that you might witness to, that you might care for?

And so first of all, we don't have to be full-time paid people to be ministers. And there are gifts of being full-time in ministry that also are liabilities that you can't always lean into fresh expressions. How do all these things fit together in a way that it's God's church and it's one thing? And so how do we talk to each other and learn together?

And Terri just, something that you just talked about that I want to come back to because I can't help but wonder if one of the reasons so many really Christian leaders and Christians are tired today is because there's this idea, myth, I don't know what to call it, but that I actually have to care about and do something about all the problems that exist in the world.

And I wouldn't even say that's limited to just Christians. I think a lot of Americans are stuck or overly exhausted because we feel this, we're compelled to try and solve every single problem. And I don't think that's what God intends. I'm a firm believer that God is not about stretching us beyond our actual capacity. Yes, for growth.

But like God genuinely wants us to have a vibrant life. And so what you are called to and what Dwight is called to and what I am called to is likely going to look different because of our contexts, the way that we're wired, the gifts that we have, the experiences that we have. And as a church body, like the whole body.

then yes, like each of those things does get addressed and attended to, but not if we each think that we're called to like solve each one of these problems and address them. I mean, it's just impossible, but I'm not sure that we understand that collectively.

Yeah, I mean, so you're speaking to, I think, a deep spiritual lesson that if you go back through scripture, it is over and over, they're over and over again, which is the core work is trusting and obeying God and trusting God to be our leader, God to be the ultimate authority. And it's so hard for God's people to do that. We just say, you know, we always want a king.

or a priest or someone to do all this stuff for us and Well, that went. Yeah, and it's such a classic biblical pattern. So I think the good news, I think we wanna leave you with an encouraging word as we wrap this up today, is that God is big enough, more powerful enough to hold all of this. God is at work in the world, creating new things even amidst the decline.

and the disruption of the old. And our work is really to be focused there like Mary at Jesus' feet, paying attention, not being distracted, abiding in that presence of Jesus, and then following Jesus' call to join in God's healing of the world.

And if you need one practice to get started, have people share stories of where God's been active in their life. And I think that brings it back down to one story, one person, one day at a time. So to our audience, this has been great to have you with us for another episode of the Pivot Podcast. You can help spread the word about Pivot.

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