In this groundbreaking episode of the Pivot podcast, we turn the tables on our regular host, the Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile, to explore the revolutionary concept of Fresh Expressions of Church. Dwight, co-author of the forthcoming book "Embracing the Mixed Ecology," offers an exclusive preview of his research on innovative approaches to ministry in our rapidly changing world.

Discover how Fresh Expressions are breathing new life into the church landscape as part of a broader "mixed ecology" of ministry. From coffee shop gatherings to digital communities, learn how these innovative forms of church are reaching people that traditional models often miss. Dwight shares inspiring examples, practical insights, and a hopeful vision for the future of the church that embraces both tradition and innovation.

Whether you're leading a traditional congregation, exploring new forms of ministry, or simply curious about where the church is heading, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss. Join us for a conversation that could reshape your understanding of what it means to be and do church in the 21st century.

Discover how Fresh Expressions of Church are transforming the landscape of ministry in this eye-opening episode of the Pivot podcast. Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile, co-author of the upcoming book "Embracing the Mixed Ecology," shares groundbreaking insights on innovative approaches to church in our rapidly changing world. Learn about the "mixed ecology" model and how Fresh Expressions are reaching people traditional churches often miss. Whether you're a church leader, ministry innovator, or simply curious about the future of faith communities, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration for navigating the changing face of church in the 21st century.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Upcoming book: "Embracing the Mixed Ecology" by Dwight Zscheile and Blair Pogue (Spring 2025)
• FreshExpressions.com
• "Mission-shaped Church" report from the Church of England (2004)
• "Microchurches: A Smaller Way" by Brian Sanders
• Tampa Underground and KC Underground movements
• LifeChurch online ministry

Dwight: For the church to be authentically the body of Christ, to and to to live Jesus's way in community. And it is always embodied in community in a particular setting, context, neighborhood or network. Um, to do that in a way that that people who aren't yet Christian or aren't part of the church can encounter and engage and understand and be invited into. I mean, that is essential to being church. It's essential to mission. And we have many inherited, many inherited forms of church that really aren't focused on that, aren't designed for that. Um, it's not a priority. So. Um, so and that's fine. And we need more. So that's where it's like, okay, let's, you know, there are those people who are on the edges of the church's life figuring out how to do this in some creative ways. And I think it's really important within a framework of the mixed ecology to say that's legitimate and necessary.

Terri: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Pivot Podcast. This is the podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Terri Elton and today I'm joined with co-host Alicia Granholm. One of the pivots that we are exploring today in this podcast is the pivot. From a one size or shape church fits all to a mixed ecology of church, where inherited and emerging forms of Christian communities flourish together.

Alicia: That's right, Terri, which is why we are so excited to welcome the Reverend Doctor Dwight Zscheile on the show today. Dwight, we're turning the tables on you as you are usually one of our hosts.

Terri: In other words, we get to ask the questions.

Dwight: Uh oh. Okay.

Terri: Okay.

Alicia: So, Dwight, you and your wife, Blair Pogue are in the final stages of completing a new book called Embracing the Mixed Ecology, and we wanted to get the latest on your research and what you're seeing out and about in the church today, because no, being the Pivot podcast host isn't your only gig in town.

Dwight: True, true.

Alicia: Dwight specializes in church mission and leadership in a changing context, and their new book will be coming out in the spring of 2025, but we would love to get a preview on it today. So, Dwight, as two people who work very closely with you, we've noticed that you've been doing a lot of research lately. Can we start with the catalyst for your latest research interests of yours?

Dwight: Absolutely. So I think a couple of things. One is just, you know, I grew up in an unchurched home, secular home in California, and so much of my work is always just with a passion for how does the church connect with people outside of its doors? People who don't know the Christian story don't know the gospel. And so So my wife Blair and I, you know, we served a local church here in Saint Paul for 16 years. And it's one we've talked about a bit, you know, on this, this podcast in the past and amazing things that we that we were able to do with that community in terms of renewal. And at the end of the day, you know, if we're honest, um, that church and so many churches like it are simply not going to connect with so many people in the neighborhood. And so my interest in the mixed ecology is really about how do we think, in a broad way, about the variety of forms of Christian community that are necessary to connect with diverse neighbors in a diverse world, in a diverse society? And, and really, you know, again, out of that kind of imagination. So, so I've spent a lot of time working in the kind of inherited traditional church. And I'm also really passionate about the churches that are often on the margins of the established structures through whom the spirit is actually innovating new life.

Terri: So in addition to co-hosting the Pivot podcast with you, I'm also the dean. And part of what's been really interesting is you made a choice to do your sabbatical differently and to and to do research alongside the work you're already doing as the VP of innovation and in the courses that you're teaching here at Luther. And one of the reasons I heard you say about that is say so that this research, it's not like I do my research and then I tell it that it's an iterative kind of process and it kind of shapes and forms that. So we're going to join that iterative process right now and say like early on, what are the themes that you're hearing as specifically as we think about the educating of leaders. And then we're going to also ask more about the mixed ecology after. But just in general as we think about educating leaders and leading in the church today even more generally.

Dwight: Mhm. Yeah.

Dwight: Well, so um, so one of the things that I'm really curious about and have been trying to dig into in this research and some other projects that are on the horizon, is to think about the relationship of gospel and culture and how the local church or even the, you know, broader church is embodied in particular cultural situations. And so for me, as a scholar of Christian mission or a theologian of mission, um, you know, I always think about the incarnation as, you know, the body of Christ enfleshed in the world, in local culture. And that's very much how Jesus comes to us speaking local language and engaged in daily life. And the church, when it has thrived throughout church history, has been able to do that faithfully. It's been able to be both speaking the local language, Accessible in forms that make sense to people that they can engage with, and at the same time critical and differentiated from the culture in some important ways. Right. So Lesslie Newbigin, the great, um, you know, Anglo-Indian missiologist and church leader said that, you know, you can never have a culture-free gospel. The gospel is always embodied from beginning to end in culture, but it always calls into question the presuppositions of every culture, including the original one that was embodied in in the first century. And so, so part of what I think a lot of the churches in the West are wrestling with right now is we have inherited a certain certain forms of contextualization, or ways in which the church is embodied, both in terms of structure, terms of language, liturgy, worship, all kinds of things, practices of church life that may have been appropriate for an earlier period or some specific period, and that may not be appropriate for today. And so I think about, you know, I use a metaphor of I think about a road with two ditches on either side. And if the road is sort of incarnation, faithful embodiment of the church, the ditches would be on the one side under contextualization, where the church isn't actually enfleshed in local culture enough that it speaks the language. So the ask to neighbors who aren't yet Christian would be you have to actually migrate out of your native culture, your local culture, in order to to join the church. Right? And you can think of lots of examples in mission history, colonialism and things like that, where, you know, Africans are being told to leave their drums at the door and to worship with pipe organs. Right? Right. Not helpful. Right. Um, the other ditch is over contextualization, where the church so embraces local culture that it loses its distinctive identity. And the thing about this is that it's possible for the church to fall into both ditches simultaneously. And I think that's happened a lot. So on the one hand, we might say so a number of mainline churches might be culturally under-contextualized in maybe the way they do worship using, you know, hymns from centuries ago and, you know, Gothic church buildings that, you know, are medieval and all of that is beautiful. But it's not the music people listen to in their cars or the the local language today. On the other hand, you know, their theology can be over contextualized and it can just be an uncritical embrace of modernity. Right? Or there can be a kind of conservative, evangelical flip version of that where the worship can be over-contextualized in the sense of it's like a rock concert and Jesus is my boyfriend lyrics and all this kind of thing, you know? And on the other hand, the theology could be under contextualized because it's fundamentalist or literalist in ways that don't make sense. So so this is a hard thing for the church to get right? You know, we can look back and say lots of places where the church gets this wrong. So, so one of the reasons why I got curious about this idea of a mixed ecology is to think about how does the church faithfully embody Christian witness in this cultural moment where there are many cultures present in our context, both generationally, ethnically, racially, etc., where the church should should actually take take that form. And there's a wonderful quote from one of the bishops in the Church of England, Rick Thorpe, who's the bishop for church planting, which is the coolest thing, that they have a bishop for church planting. But he says to reach everyone, we need everything. Yeah. So we love the traditional inherited church. Those are beautiful. We want to insofar as they're connecting with people, that's great. We want to uphold them and sustain them and they will not reach everyone. Um, and one of the key learnings that they've they've found certainly in Western Europe. But I think it's true here is that if you think about worship being the entry point for people who aren't already part of your church, that really only works for people who are already Christian and maybe detached from church or maybe looking for a new church. But for people like I grew up, not at all Christian and not at all connected to the church. Didn't know anything about Jesus. Showing up at Sunday worship is not going to be the entry point. So in other words, we need to have other ways of forming Christian community with people that are in neighborhood spaces that meet them where they are. So so I think that's the kind of spirit of the incarnation, right? The word became flesh and I love the message. Translation. Moved into the neighborhood, moved right. Moved in the neighborhood. Yeah, exactly.

Terri: Well, and I've heard you talk about another piece of this. So I just want to invite you to say a word about this. I think, uh, our many of our mainline churches, I'll just start with that. Are designed to foster like formation for a family that's Christian for their newborn child and not for the convert. Right. That is asking different kinds of questions. And so what's the role of discipleship or formation of faith around this Christian identity? What have you found out about that?

Dwight: Yeah. So I think one of the legacies of Christendom, the the ideal that emerged in, in Europe, in which Christianity became a kind of territorial and tribal faith, that if you were in Europe, with the exception of a small group of persecuted Jews, essentially you were a Christian by nature, of just being a European, that the church kind of got out of the business of actually intentionally making disciples in the way that they had to in the early church and throughout many places in mission history, where you can assume people know anything about the story of Jesus and the and the alternative way of life that a Jesus shaped life you know, is entails. And so so I think, you know, for for me, when I first became a Christian, of course, I didn't know anything, and I was really compelled by the Christian story and the gospel, and I knew it was a strange way of life. It was different from what I was used to. It was countercultural. I needed to be formed in that. And I think that's where many people find themselves today who are already who maybe have been in the church for many years because church hasn't necessarily helped them with that. And certainly one hour of worship or an hour and a half of worship on a Sunday morning is not sufficient, whatever that worship looks like to do that work meaningfully for people, there need to be other things as well. And so there needs to be, I think, a lot more intentionality around what are the practices that shape people into habits for living a Jesus shaped life in a culture that forms us very differently.

Alicia: Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia: Okay. Dwight, when you use the term mixed ecology. Yes. What do you mean by that? What are the elements? And maybe what would you say are the promises of the mixed ecology is where as well as maybe some limitations for that language.

Dwight: Yeah. So the phrase mixed ecology comes out of the UK. And initially it was used in the term mixed economy by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as a way to talk about affirming the importance of inherited churches and the need for alongside them other forms of Christian community, and that these all work together like a thriving ecology. There's flows of energy and resources and support different species, if you will, in one shared ecosystem. It's not an either or. It's a both and. Right. And so in some ways, if we look back at church history, you know, this isn't really anything new. Any time the church has had a kind of predominant, established form. There have been movements that have arisen to bring about a different kind of faithfulness. So you think about even the early Christian communities themselves meeting in homes and in a very networked kind of structure. When we had, you know, more of a parish system developing, they were monastic movements that emerged. And even in the Middle Ages, when monasticism itself became kind of more established and bureaucratic, you had movements like the Beguines who were, you know, these lay monastic women who created much more inclusive communities alongside and on the edges of the existing monastery system. Pietistic revivals that happened in the antebellum South. Think about the hush harbors, where enslaved African Christians were able to have a much more faithful and free expression of the gospel of the liberating God, base communities in Latin America. You know, there's so many examples of this house churches in China. So so this isn't anything new. And we're in a moment in Western societies, I think in particular, where we really need a variety of things. And so as we think about what, what the component parts, if you will, of the mixed ecology might be, um, there's several. So one would be of course, traditional inherited churches. Right. So they are very important part of that. They are meaningfully reaching some people. And for mainline churches that tends to be generally older generations. Um, they're mostly in many cases norm toward caring for the people who are already there, which is understandable. Um, and that model of church is also less and less, um, one that people who are of emerging generations are able to connect with just because of the changes in the culture. And so one of the challenges is that it can be very hard. Those of you who are pastoring or leading traditional inherited churches will know this. To renegotiate the culture organizational culture of those churches in order to be able to really be accessible to people who are outside. So any time a church decides to meet at Sunday morning at 10 a.m. in a particular building, in a particular style of worship, it is already excluded a bunch of people. So, so again, inherited traditional churches are part of it. But we also need church plants, and we need lots of kinds of church plants, not just what I think a lot of mainline denominations have done in the last 20, 30 years, which is try to essentially replicate inherited church forms, maybe in a new suburb or whatever, often with professional pastors in a very expensive business model. Sometimes that works. That's wonderful. And often it doesn't work today in the same way. And so we have to think in a much more expansive way about what counts as a church plant. But church plants do tend to focus on gathering people for worship as the primary entry point, and that can be really powerful to reach people. Um, you know, our colleague Michael Binder says, when you have a lot of churches that are declining, it's kind of like a, you know, metaphor of a hospice wing in a in a hospital, right? When you have a full maternity ward and lots of births happening, it's much healthier than if all the action is over in the hospice wing. Right? So, um, so church plants are important. Another piece of it would be kind of closely connected to that would be fresh expressions of church or missional communities that don't focus initially on worship, but really focus on joining where people are already having life in the neighborhood, neighborhood spaces, listening, loving people, beginning to build community, adding in some spiritual conversations and exploration and beginning to explore discipleship as part of that. And then church emerges out of that kind of approach. And so fresh expressions, I think, are really important part of the mixed ecology for today. I think megachurches are also part of the mixed ecology. So, you know, right now half of American churchgoers attend or belong to the largest 10% of churches. And, you know, megachurches typically defined as 2000 or more in average weekend attendance. There are lots of different kinds of megachurches, as you know, they're not all the same. Often people in the mainline have an adverse reaction to the word megachurch because they think of it as a particular kind of suburban, you know, kind of church that has certain political affiliations and things like that. And and the reality is, of course, much more complex. So a couple of things. I think megachurches are doing well right now. Um, they are much more accessible than many traditional inherited churches, both. If you go to their websites, their websites tend to be you can find things.

Terri: You can.

Dwight: Find things. They're designed for people who aren't yet Christian or not yet part.

Alicia: Of their church. Yeah. In in their community. Yeah.

Dwight: Or even in their community. Right. So when you show up, it's pretty easy to find it and get in and, you know, have an experience. Um, they tend to be about, you know, inspiring, joyful kind of experience of worship. Um, there's an invitation to personal transformation, right? That's important. And you get connected into small groups for an intimate, you know, set of relationships. And then they really do invite you to, to discover and use your spiritual gifts and participate in ministry, not just in sustaining the operation, because staff basically handle the institutional maintenance. Um, as well as lots of volunteers supporting that. But but the primary task is to serve on the property committee or, you know, be the treasurer. It's how has God actually shaped you to serve in not only in the church, but really in daily life. And so so I think there's a role for megachurches. There's a there are reasons why they are so impactful right now. The other side to that is micro churches. And I'm really curious about this grassroots movement that's emerging of very small, neighborhood based, lay led Christian communities that are really vehicles for making disciples, very simple, focused on gathering people around spiritual conversations, prayer, simple Bible study, and then loving neighbors. Right? And intentionally not building a big structure so that, for instance, the resources of that community can be directed to those in need in their local community. And so things like the Tampa and KC underground movements, I think are really interesting. Um, and then finally is Digital Church. And that's something, of course, after the pandemic, most churches are doing some kind of hybrid version of church, but that is one of the spaces in which the church needs to be incarnate right now. And what does that mean is complex. And what that means is complex, given the, um, the digital space is different, and we live in this moment where life is increasingly dislocated. It's not based on place. Um, we have these kind of flows in the network world of of the digital life. Um, people feel like they should sort of construct their religious identities, just as you would a digital identity, like curating your social media profile or whatever. And, um, how does the church faithfully be present in those places? Um, you know, I'm curious about some of the churches that are reaching, you know, so many people. I mean, like Life Church 140,000 a week in their online services that they're offering. I mean, that's huge. They have, you know, pastors who are there engaging people in prayer and in the chat and people from all over the world connecting in. So so that's a that's my kind of just high level overview of some of the pieces of the mixed ecology.

Lara: Are you a pastor feeling overwhelmed by the demands of ministry? But what if doing less could actually help you achieve more? Join Faith leads free webinar. The Ministry of Less is more five Practices to Cultivate a Flourishing Church. By scaling back in this interactive session led by Doctor Alicia Granholm, you'll learn how to identify truly high impact activities strategies for scaling back without compromising your calling, and ways to create space for the Holy Spirit to work more powerfully through your ministry by doing less. This isn't about adding to your plate, it's about finding a way to focus on what's essential and let go of the rest. The webinar is completely free and available at three different times to fit your schedule. Don't miss this opportunity to transform your approach to ministry. Register now at Faith. org slash webinars. That's faith lead. org slash webinars.

Alicia: So Dwight one of the things that I can't help but think about when you kind of just share, um, you know, really the variety of forms of church is how they really are, are attempting to remove the barriers to Jesus. Right. To make Jesus as accessible as possible for people. I'm curious what you would say to that.

Dwight: Yeah, I think that's really important. Um, you know, for the church to be authentically the body of Christ to and to to live Jesus's way in community, and it is always embodied in community. Um, in a particular setting, context, neighborhood or network. Um, to do that in a way that, that people who aren't yet Christian or aren't part of the church can encounter and engage and understand and be invited into. I mean, that is essential to being church. It's essential to mission. And we have many inherited, many inherited forms of church that really aren't focused on that, aren't designed for that. Um, it's not a priority. So, um, so and that's fine. And we need more. So that's where it's like, okay, let's, you know, there are those people who are on the edges of the church's life figuring out how to do this in some creative ways. And I think it's really important within a framework of the mixed ecology to say that's legitimate and necessary. We need all of these things, and they all actually fit together. So, you know, in fresh expressions, for instance, in missional communities and church plants, those that are healthy are all connected into the inherited church. They're connected into this broader system. So what you don't want is a whole bunch of isolated rogue kind of communities off, either trying to compete with each other or sort of go and do their own thing without any accountability or connection. New forms of Christian community need to tap deeply into the roots of wisdom and tradition, and at the same time, inherited traditional churches are renewed when communities that are connecting with neighbors on the edges bring the gifts of those neighbors back into the life of those of those communities, and so on. So it's good to think of it as a both and. Yeah.

Terri: So I want to pick up on that and then take us to a new place, I think. I like the word ecology because it's about life. Yeah. It's about cultivating a life. And so different things are good. Not everything should be an oak tree, and not everything should be grass. Right. One has a short life. One has a long life. Right? Yeah. And so that sense of if we're going to contextualize if we're called to embody the gospel. We're going to be more faithful in living out that promise by a variety of expressions. And so I love those images that were coming up as you were talking to think about in light of the contextualizing challenge and embodiment of the gospel. And and so I'm also aware that most of us are like, but that's not my view of church. It's a very either or, right? This is how like denominationally, um, or even more generically Protestant, you know, like it can be specific or it can be more general or regionally in a, in a or globally like we have different understandings of what church does it have to have a pastor? Does it have to have sacraments? So we have spent so much time differentiating all of these things. This challenges us to that. So I want to say, because you two know this, I'm an and person, not an or person. So what I like about the mixed ecology is it lets us to say this is church and this is church. We don't have to differentiate. So say a thing about how and that's hard. So how do we live into this mixed ecology when we come in with our own set of understanding of church and theologically have given a lot of effort to that? How do we how do we lean into that?

Dwight: Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, one of the gifts of the Roman Catholic tradition has been this capacity to contain a lot of different mission impulses within it. And so rather than split, they, you know, the Roman Catholic Church has said it's great that, you know, Francis, if you want to start an order or Dominic or Francis, you know, or Claire or whoever, and and you have, you know, or Jesuits or and so there's this, there's this ability to have multiple kinds of things all in one system. And Protestantism has struggled with that, partly because one of the questions that Protestantism in its, in the Reformation was trying to answer was, what is the true church? And so the Protestant tradition has tended to, you know, kind of try to narrow that and define that in very particular ways, often over against some other form of church. And that has on the one hand, there's some blessings in trying to be precise. On the other hand, often we end up with definitions that made sense in the 16th century, but may be more restrictive now for the moment that we're in. And so I'm curious, you know, one of the the conversations that's emerged in the UK in the last 20 years, really starting with a mission shaped church report from the Church of England in 2004, is is an attempt to redefine ecclesiology. How do we define the church more in terms of relationships? And those relationships are really four fold. I'm drawing here on the work of Michael Moynagh in particular, that there's a relationship with God. That's the primary one. There are relationships within the local church with each other that we have. There are relationships with our neighbors right in mission and their relationships with the broader church. We're part of the the church universal right, and that when we have all four of those relationships in place, we have church. And I like I like that as a way to to think, you know, a lot of the classical Reformation ecclesiology defined the church as either an event or a place where functionally, you know, word and sacrament happen, which tends to lead to a pretty clerical, ized version of church. And I think what we're seeing right now in a lot of Protestant traditions, mainline in particular across North America and the West is what if you don't have enough clergy? And if post liturgical renewal movement, where the Eucharist is understood to be the primary Sunday celebration, but there is no clergy to do it? What are we going to do? And there's kind of a crisis around that. And so so it was kind of ironic that just as the liturgical movement really brought the Eucharist back to the forefront as the primary service, it was at the same time as the mainline churches started to decline, and you had fewer and fewer clergy to actually provide that. So I think there's work we need to do to, to to renew our ecclesiology and to think afresh about this and maybe in some more expansive ways than we have. Um, again, the the global church, both at the present and also historically is really helpful for us to think about how this is playing out. Um, many places where the church is thriving in global majority contexts, for instance, there are less clericalist. Christianity is something that is owned. The practices of the faith, prayer, evangelism, things like that, that are, that are kind of owned more collectively by the whole body of Christ. And, and thus the role of clergy is really equipping people to do all of that. That mostly happens in daily life. So. So our, you know, our former colleague Harvey Kwiyani, who did his PhD here at Luther, who's a scholar of African mission in the West. Very interesting. You know, he makes the point in one of his books that, you know, in Africa, there aren't really professional missionaries. It's like everyone's kind of a missionary. And then there are, you know, people who are called to be pastors, etc., who have a really intentional role around equipping the whole body of Christ. But a lot of the leadership is much more dispersed and spread out in a collaborative way. And those are helpful things for us to learn from here in the West as well.

Terri: Well, and what I like about that is our. Our systems need to be designed for the time. Right. And I think the Protestant system was designed for a time.

Dwight: Absolutely.

Terri: And if this is the the imagination around, what does it mean to be church and to do the practices of faith so that the gospel may be lived and proclaimed? Right. We may witness to this transformational gospel. We just need to design different systems, design different ways. And I think I would say we don't have to be scared about that because there's a faithful gospel. The church has been faithful, even as it's taken all kinds of forms over the time. And right now we're going to live in an and world. It's my time. I love.

Dwight: It. Yes and yes.

Terri: Yes and.

Multiple speakers: Right. Well.

Alicia: Right, Terri? I say yes and all the time because of you at home.

Multiple speakers: So thank you. I love it.

Dwight: Well, so one of the ways that that can actually be, I think, put into practice in a system is to think in terms of a metaphor that the leadership scholar John Carter uses of a dual operating system. So. So Carter makes the point that many institutions and organizations in today's world are finding, finding themselves struggling because the pace of change is so quick that they cannot adapt quickly enough. And so what he says is, what you should do in response to that is actually to set up another system within or alongside the inherited one that is much more agile and adaptable and more like a startup, and that you have these dual operating systems functioning simultaneously, and that the inherited system still functions to do all kinds of important things. Um, and the new one allows the the future actually to be discovered and lived into. At the same time. And so so that could be the form for the church of new networks. It could be a very different kinds of of ways of organizing. It could be spaces that have permission to maybe suspend some of the regulations and try some different things. Um, that's going to be really important for this era, whether it be within within a local church or you think about like a regional church system, a judicatory, or certainly for denominations, we need to make space for different things and then to learn together. And that's also the promise of the mixed ecology, is that we're not splitting off and starting a new denomination, which is the Protestant kind of approach, a separate church. But we can hopefully actually stay together, but learn from one another and recognize the different the gifts that the time honored ways of being church bring alongside some some emerging ways of being church that can actually take the shape of, you know, the different cultures that are present, whether it be a community of, you know, young skateboarders or whether it be a community of of, you know, new immigrants. Or maybe it's, you know, older people in a in a nursing home or something or, you know, whatever. These spaces are where we can have Christian community that takes root and comes to life, and then we can share those gifts. And, you know, that's a really important way to think about it.

Terri: So I was thinking as you were talking, I do this all kinds of places in my life. I was thinking about, um, my mother in law died last year and she's had dementia, and we have spent four years, probably both using the regular system of health care and what's available to us and all the systems and every network we could.

Multiple speakers: Yeah. Right.

Terri: Of cultivating Here are people and resources that you've been through this. You can help us this right. So I think about and and it was as they both were working that we were at our best. Yeah. Right. And it took a while to get figure out the health care system and hospice and things. And it took a while to figure out who are the right people. But I that as you were talking, I'm like, oh, I do this in other areas of my life. I just haven't thought about it as formally or as as articulately as, as you talked about in church.

Alicia: Well, one of the things that I really love about it, too, is as we work with, you know, a number of churches around experimenting. Right? And our advice, which right is to like do a small experiment on the side, because when we think we need to experiment with the thing, it's just too disruptive. And the reality is that whenever we try something new, it is never going to work out exactly as we imagined, because it's new. Like we we actually can't imagine what will happen because we haven't done it before. And so when when we have kind of this work in this dual operating system way, and we're doing these small experiments on the side and we stay agile, um, when they don't go as planned, it's not as disruptive. And it's just simply feedback. It's not failure. And we haven't blown the whole system up. Right. It's just oh great. We learned that that didn't work so well. What might we try this time. You know. And so I think it's such a healthy way. Um, and it really reduces the risk, um, and exposure really. Right, of trying new things which are essential all the time.

Multiple speakers: Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

Alicia: So I really love that. Um, Dwight, are there any biblical stories or metaphors that you're finding compelling as you kind of consider this moment?

Dwight: Yeah. So a couple from John's Gospel have been, I think, really resonate with me right now. One is John 15, the Vine and Branches, because it's a great ecological image, but partly because it speaks to the importance of us being rooted in the true vine and abiding in the true vine of Jesus. Whatever form of church we have, it has to be deeply rooted and it has to abide, and we need to be rooted there. So that's really important. That is also a text that talks about pruning and that kind of active management of the vineyard owner, the vine grower. You know, in the vineyard. And I think that's very much something that's happening right now in the life of the church. But then also, I'd skip ahead a couple chapters to John 17, where Jesus talks about in that prayer that all of his followers may be one.

Multiple speakers: Yeah.

Dwight: Participating in this Trinitarian unity of the father, son and spirit. And you know, Christ has one church at the end of the day, right? And we have sadly disobeyed Jesus's prayer in John 17 and created lots of different forms of church that often try to cancel each other and deny each other and things like that. Um, but at the end of the day, Jesus does actually have one church. So I actually find that to be important to lean into and to think abundantly in a John 1010 kind of way about how God is at work in different forms of church. I don't think this is a moment to where our energy should be spent in trying to, you know, deny the ecclesial legitimacy of other forms of church. You know, I think that's a luxury that you can do, maybe in a Christian society. And we no longer live in the West in a Christian society, for sure. And so we need to figure out how might the Holy Spirit be working in a variety of forms of church to reach a variety of people, and no one group is going to do it all.

Terri: So I hear and sense a spirit of hopefulness in what your research is telling you, and I'm guessing that many church leaders are. Would love to hear stories of hope. So where is your hopefulness come from, and is there a story or two you could share that would leave us on a on a note of hope?

Dwight: Yeah. So I do feel very hopeful, actually.

Multiple speakers: I'm reading you right. Yes, I'm very hopeful.

Dwight: I'm very excited, actually, about the future that God is, is actually bringing forth in this moment and the complexity of it. And so, you know, so those of you who are watching or listening to this episode, if you're in a particular form of church that seems to be struggling to connect with people in today's culture. That's hard, right? And I have a lot of sympathy for that, and have spent so much of my life in those structures and trying to help them adapt. And the important thing is, you know, there are other ways of faithfully being church in today's world. And they have to be rooted again in the vine. And so, so to me, the foundation is following Jesus. It's discipleship. And that's really what we need to work on. Brian Sanders, who is the founder of the Tampa Underground and has a wonderful couple of books on micro churches. He has this wonderful statement. He says, if we can't figure out how to be church in simple form, how are we going to figure out how to do it in complex form? We've inherited a lot of complex forms of church that are really struggling with how to do really basic Christian things, like, how do we form people to follow Jesus as a as a way of life in today's culture? How do we have regular Christians, everyone praying and reading Scripture and doing spiritual practices and able to to give a faithful witness to their neighbors and things like that. And so so I'm I find energy and hope when I see local churches and leaders focusing on that work. It is simple. It's not easy necessarily, but it is simple. And that is really the the work we need to do. Um, and then, you know, when I hear stories of people coming to faith and experiencing the power of the gospel who would never darken the door of a typical church. Um, that is exciting for me. Um, you know, a lot of the fresh expressions work and some of these missional communities and things like that. Um, they are creating a space that tolerates a lot of ambiguity, a lot of questions. A lot of people who are not ready to commit. A lot of people who are just, you know, need a space to sort of be in between for a while. And that is really important. Yeah. Um, and so that's also something that I think is necessary right now. Not everyone's going to make a quick journey into a full kind of embrace of Christian faith. Um, there are a lot of people who are who need to kind of lurk and linger and, you know, kind of explore for a while. Um, and, and I've what I've seen, you know, one thing that just a quick story. We did a training. Um, you know, recently with a bunch of Lutheran church leaders. Um, in the Midwest who are starting off a journey of trying to create fresh expressions of church. And we asked the question we often ask in trainings at the end of the day, which is, where have you seen God at work today? And one of the things that I heard in that they said very clearly was, you know, we see God at work in the sense of possibility. And, you know, they're all coming from traditional churches, but they see a sense of possibility of what could become because they have a heart for those neighbors who aren't going to come in their traditional churches. And so I was one of those neighbors. And so that's kind of where I always feel a sense of compassion and concern. And really, it's God's church. So it's all it's God's work. And that's where I have hope. My hope is not in us. Be disappointed. Totally. My hope is not in the structures. It's in the Lord of the harvest and the Spirit's continuing energy and presence and abiding with us so that we can abide with our neighbors and share that story.

Alicia: Dwight, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insight with us today.

Terri: And to our audience, we want to thank you for joining us for another episode of The Pivot podcast to help us spread the word about pivot. Please like or subscribe if you're on YouTube to do that, or if whatever platform you're listening to a podcast, please leave a review. It really does help us.

Alicia: And finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share. Pivot with a friend. So until next time, this is Alicia Granholm and Terri Elton with The Pivot podcast. We'll see you next week.

S7: 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.