What does church look like when it moves from traditional sanctuaries to breweries, hiking trails, and pizza shops? In this episode, Bryan Willkom, founder of Jesus Fit, shares how Beer Church and other innovative gatherings are creating authentic spiritual community in everyday spaces. From monthly Beer Church gatherings where diverse groups share stories around brewery tables, to Trail Church walks that combine movement with meditation, Bryan is pioneering fresh expressions of church that meet people exactly where they are.

Beer Church isn't just about the location—it's about reimagining how we build spiritual community. Bryan shares why public spaces create natural opportunities for spiritual conversation, how to create judgment-free zones for faith exploration, and practical ways to practice Jesus' habits of hospitality and table fellowship in modern contexts. Whether you're looking to start alternative forms of church or simply want to better understand how to reach those who feel disconnected from traditional religious spaces, this conversation offers valuable insights into the future of spiritual community. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" (Jossey-Bass, 2022) by Patrick Lencioni
• "Liturgy of the Ordinary" (InterVarsity Press, 2022) by Tish Harrison Warren
• Gallup poll on religion and wellbeing (2022)
• The official Jesus Fit website.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZWPKmXU7Pr.

Bryan Willkom: What would it be like if Christians were known as a community of the well-rested? Wouldn't that be amazing? Well, so I think so. So even as we look at spiritual wellness as the backbone of beer, church, trail, church, all of our little weird churches, um, what happens if we we were to slowing down with each other and at a baseline, treating each other as valued human beings made in the image of God just at a baseline. Let's just do that and let's keep doing that and see what happens. If we can just get that part right and we might not do all the content, we might not be able to to guide you through a big pathway or process when it's all said and done. But at least we're listening. We're hearing people's stories, we're welcoming everybody to the table, and I think we just need to get back to that somehow.

Dwight Zscheile: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pivot podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile here at Faith lead, one of the four key pivots that we believe the church must make is a pivot in structure from a one shape or size fits all model of church, to a mixed ecology of multiple expressions of Christian community, both inherited traditional forms of church and new contextualized forms of church to reach those who aren't being reached by inherited churches. And that's why we're so excited to welcome Brian. Welcome to the show today. Brian is the founder and director of Jesus Fit, which is a nonprofit empowering spiritual wellness through innovative forms of church like beer, church, trail, church, yoga, church, pizza, church. We're going to hear about all of those more today. And each church gathers in a shared public space like a brewery, park, library or community center and is structured around a practice or habit of Jesus. Brian's an ecumenical, a faith leader, entrepreneur, coach, and content creator on a mission to make space for those who can't find the right church fit. Brian was also one of our seeds fellows here at Luther Seminary's Faith lead. Woo hoo! So, Brian, welcome to the Pivot podcast.

Bryan Willkom: Great to.

Bryan Willkom: Be here.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, so let's start out with hearing a bit about your own story, your own personal faith background, and and your journey into ministry and leading these kinds of out of the box forms of church.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. So it's great to be here. This is a lot of fun. This is like my favorite podcast. So this is good. Um, and yeah, I grew up Catholic. I grew up in central Wisconsin, in Marshfield, and I grew up very Catholic. Um, and then my parents randomly decided to take us to a Lutheran camp one summer just for the fun of it. And that's when I think my, like, leaving religious boxes kind of started. And so, um, and then from there, I went on to, I got pretty involved in campus ministry at, at UW Eau Claire. And then from there just, uh, really just caught the ministry bug. And from three three different summers I was leading, uh, I was at Christian camps and, uh, participating in various Bible studies and ministries, and then, um, ended up majoring in religious studies, uh, because I knew I wanted to get into ministry, but by then it was too late to go to a seminary. So, um, but I started in, in Lutheran ministry, actually, and I've worked for a number of different churches, um, all across the denominational spectrum. And, um, and, and that sort of led me to, uh, I was in youth and young adult ministry for a long time, and then eventually just kind of got antsy to start kind of my own thing.

Dwight Zscheile: Yeah. So tell us more then about Jesus Fit. What is it and what do you do and and how did it come to be out of out of that sense of restlessness that you had to start something new?

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. So maybe before we get into that question, a question we ask all of our beer church speakers to answer is to share something that makes you human. And so I'm going to share something that makes me human. Maybe you can share something too. No pressure. Okay. Um, but so, for example, I really like egg rolls, but I'm also trying to lose weight, and that's not going so well. Uh, we also have three kids, and pretty much every single night of the week, we are just running, carpooling, chauffeuring them around to different, so, uh, different things, which is a blast, but also keeps us going. So what's something that makes you human?

Dwight Zscheile: Something that makes me human? Gosh. Um, so I, um, I love to, alongside my spiritual and intellectual work, which is why I spend most of my time to have hobbies that are, you know, very kind of physical and material. So, like, I'm a huge soccer fan. Mhm.

Bryan Willkom: Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Well I think that sets the stage a little bit because a lot of what we're doing is we are kind of getting back to human Jesus. And so we we have that on our little cards here. Beer. Yoga. Pizza. Trail book. Human. Church. Jesus. Um, but just this invitation to kind of get into the humanity of, of Christ a little bit and how Jesus spent his time. And of course, Jesus was fully God and fully man. Um, and so we're just we've been very fascinated by the human side of of Jesus. And so Jesus Fit is our nonprofit, and it's at the intersection of faith and wellness. Um, and that's sort of the backbone of spiritual wellness, or that quest to be spiritually healthy is really the backbone of all these churches. And different times we've thought about rebranding because we're not CrossFit, and there's been a little bit of confusion. Um, but we we can't just we can't leave this idea of what does it mean to be spiritually. Well, and we keep coming back to that. We want to be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy. And this question has been so fascinating to us that we just can't seem to shake it. Um and so each church then so we're meeting in breweries and libraries and parks and coffee shops and community centers, and we are just practicing something Jesus did. And so there's, there's there's this intersection of, you know, you need to sleep, you need to get exercise, you need to eat healthy, um, to be physically well, among other things. Um, which I'm clearly struggling with. But then those also align with sort of how Jesus spent some of his time and did ministry. So you find Jesus actually sharing a lot of meals and spending a lot of time around tables. And you see Jesus, uh, asking a lot of questions and meeting a lot of people in his community. And that's kind of our goal is to meet in community spaces so we can meet more of our community, and we can do healthy things together.

Dwight Zscheile: Mm. So. So who are you meeting? Who's coming to these and how do they find out about you? And, like, what's that? You know, give us a sketch really of kind of. Maybe it's different people for different forms of of church that you're doing.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah, that's a good question. So our goal is just to meet everybody. And so we like to use the word approachable. And so the community spaces they send a message of welcome and inclusion. Mhm. Um and so you know we're the J and the F in Jesus Fit. I always say just stands for the judgment free zone for spiritual community. We're not once again we're not Planet Fitness here. But we that that judgment free um thought is really helpful. But a lot of times people are looking for more than just language around welcome. They're looking for actually signs that that that your community is welcoming. So meeting in breweries, meeting in public parks and public libraries is actually kind of a low bar so that more people in the community might feel like, hey, I can try this church. Um, and so our goal is to meet as many people as possible and, and to really, um, uh, just do the the basics, right. Hospitality, curiosity, uh, questions, stories. If we can do some of these basic things well, which are just practices of Christ, then hopefully that, um, yeah, we just we, we want to be be meeting people and, um, you know, sharing God's love through those things.

Dwight Zscheile: So are most of the people coming, um, older or younger? Are they coming from church backgrounds? Have they had bad church experiences? No church background. Is it a mix? How would you describe them?

Bryan Willkom: Okay, so this is why I love the mixed ecology idea. I mean, I think it just it's brilliant because it matches human experience and also just nature and, you know, the whole diverse, uh, ecosystems, how they thrive. And, um, we, I think this is the function of church, right, is to be a kind of like a rainforest that are very, very vibrant, where the whole community can come together to share good things. The early church was just sharing things. It's teaching food, hospitality and just taking care of each other. And if we can just get that right at a baseline, I think more people in our community will see value in the church and just kind of show up organically and naturally because that diversity is being acknowledged and celebrated. Mm. Um, so does that make sense?

Dwight Zscheile: Well, yes. And the question I asked about kind of just a little more about who's coming, is it, um, you know, like, how do they find their way to you? And are they people with kind of church backgrounds or. No or. Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Willkom: So sorry I didn't fully answer that. Um, so at the a beer church table someone could be 70. There could be a 70 something, a 20 something, a 30 something all at the same table. Mhm. Um, which is the goal. Right. You want that intergenerational table centered experience where all voices are celebrated and heard and people can express themselves spiritually without judgment. um, but people come with church, hurt people come who are ex something ex evangelical, ex Catholic, whatever. Um, people are coming as a like die hard Christians are coming as a supplement to their faith. And so it is really a mix of people, which makes things quite interesting, but also challenging and exciting to see that kind of diversity coming to the same table.

Dwight Zscheile: So walk us through what happens in a typical, say, trail church or beer church or yoga church or any one of these? If someone if I were to show up, like, what would my experience be?

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. So I brought a handout to maybe help just you visualize what that kind of looks like. We do provide an outline, especially at Beer Church, so people just know what to expect. Um, but so the way like Beer Church works, for example, is that it's just built around hospitality, curiosity, stories and just neighbors coming together. And so typically we have a member of the community. They're typically our speaker. But we're very clear that the speaker is not the shining star at your church. It's the table. And so we have a time of socializing. Sometimes we have live music. Like tonight we're doing Beer Church Minneapolis. So we have a local musician coming. And then, um, there's plenty of time for socializing. A speaker will share, but it's more it's not it's not your classic sermon. It's more of a story. And obviously they share things that make them human, too. And then there's a time of just community conversation where we actually put questions on an outline for people to follow, but we also put fun questions and also sometimes a game on there for people to connect first. So in an hour and a half, you basically have a very short window to get people to have this really positive spiritual experience. And so taking you through this process of you're welcome here, you belong, then let's have some fun together. Then let's hear some stories. Then let's talk about at the table. And then we wrap up with a time of open mic sharing, where people actually get to hear that the brilliance of the room and people actually get to say the thing that's really spiritually significant or meaningful or maybe hard, and it's quite a moment to witness, actually, at the end of Beer Church, to see that kind of expression happening.

Dwight Zscheile: So the storytelling that's done, it's led by someone kind of, you know, from the group who is, you know, queued up to do that. And those are just kind of around their own spiritual journey, their experience of God in their life. Like, what are those? What kind of stories tend to get shared?

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. So that's a that's a good question. So we tend to kind of uh, ask people who are, who are members of the community who are doing some good work in the community, who can kind of talk about the intersection of faith and life. And so that can mean a bunch of different things. It could talk. It could mean you're coming to talk about. We have someone who is involved in a human trafficking organization, uh, from Eau Claire, coming to speak and kind of share a little bit of their work, but then also talk about their story of just wrestling with their faith and finding finding freedom, too. Um, we've had podcasters come and talk about their work and the stories that they get to listen to. Um, a lot of it is people coming to kind of open up and be honest about what they've experienced in the church. And so that could that could mean all sorts of things. Right? Um, but we're really encouraging that vulnerability and honesty so we can, um, kind of prime the pump, if you will, for people in the community to maybe unload some of that religious baggage themselves and experience a little bit of that freedom. Mm. Yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: So, um, so let's talk a bit about that, about that freedom or or maybe kind of what next steps people might take from here. It sounds like a lot of people who are coming are people who have, as you say, baggage that they need to unpack or unload. And so they've, you know, some of them have walked away from traditional forms of church. Um, and, and they're coming into a space that you've cultivated and curated that's much more open and non-judgmental, not particularly churchy, necessarily in, in a, in a, you know, brew pub or a trail or something like that. Um, so, so where does Scripture play a role and how do you help people then take deeper steps into following Jesus?

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. So this is, uh, this is such a great question, and I love talking about it because I think in some ways I think we actually get we've gotten discipleship wrong in the church, and I think we like to use the word discipleship a lot, almost to feel like we know how to do it. But Jesus's followers didn't really know what they were doing most of the time. And there was a ton of confusion around how do I actually do this? But we see something in Jesus and Jesus is worth following. Mm. Um, I think we just if we can lead from that place of. I'm not sure I'm not sure actually how all this works, but there is value in Jesus. We're all intrigued by Jesus. We haven't given up on Jesus. Um, and let's let's practice some healthy things together. So by way of asking questions, by way of holding space, by way of including everybody. Um, right now, faith and social justice. Um, we're seeing just the just the importance of that right now in the church and focusing on that. It can't just be we worship now. We we memorize all of our creeds and we we check the Sunday box. Now, I think people are really looking for. And how can my faith coexist with with real life? And so, um, so what we're trying to do, the formation piece to really answer your question is we're really trying to help people practice something Jesus actually did. And that's how we look at discipleship. So when we look at, um, just forming people in the image of Christ, let's just get to know how Jesus spent his time. And I think it was Anne Dillard who said something like, um, you know, how you spend your days is, is or how you spend your your days is how you spend your time. I just botched that quote, by the way. It was something along those lines, but it was like, let's look at an ordinary day. Let's look at what kind of practices we can do in that day. And and let's look at the life of Christ and see if we can line up with kind of how how Jesus spent his time. So we see Jesus telling stories, asking questions, sitting around tables, sharing food, um, serving his neighbors, um, going around reminding people that they matter and meeting needs in the community. So if we if we can just practice some of those things on a weekly basis and start to live a more habitual spiritual life that I think is going to lead to some really healthy and exciting outcomes for the church.

Dwight Zscheile: Um, so if if there's someone who's coming, who maybe doesn't have any Christian background at all and, and they're just trying to kind of get oriented to their curious maybe about Jesus. I know one of the practices I don't know if you still do this. You would ask people when they show up, what's your soul goal? Do you still do that? We we did that for a while.

Bryan Willkom: We even we did that for two years and then we kind of got burnt out on soul goals.

Dwight Zscheile: So I'm curious about that. What did you learn from that experiment, if you will, with asking people about their soul goals?

Bryan Willkom: I think it's just so much of our work now needs to be letting like it needs to be reminding people that they're not alone in their spiritual journey. That. And by the way, if you're watching this and if you get to this clip, I want you to know that you're not alone in your questions, your doubt, if you feel like you don't fit with the church, if you feel like you've been struggling with the church or hurt by the church, you're not alone in that. And more often than not, you might be extremely validated. And I just want to speak to you because there's a huge growing majority of people who don't fit anymore in these religious boxes, labels, categories. You're somewhere in between. And so I want to make sure that, you know, that that there's a space for you and not just our churches, but there's many churches where you can show up as your full self, and you can feel seen and heard and supported in this crazy thing of pursuing Jesus and trying to figure out what it means to be spiritually healthy. It's actually quite difficult to do these things. So our tagline is give your faith a workout, because ultimately we're inviting people to do hard things and sitting at a table with people you don't know, and having a spiritual conversation is extremely difficult. But if you can have that conversation and be really curious, our water bottles are themed for the year is abundant curiosity. But if you can practice abundant curiosity with your neighbors, kind of like Jesus did. There's a sense of human connection, and at a baseline, just love and respect for each other. And so these are some of the basics that we haven't been doing or have been known to do so well in the church that I actually think we need to return. We need this massive return to the basics of Christian living. And if we can get back to the basics of just spending time with Jesus, being a part of supportive spiritual community, practicing healthy things together like rest and conversation and curiosity and hospitality, maybe we we can change the future of the church. Mm.

Dwight Zscheile: So I'm intrigued by the wellness kind of framework that you're using for this, which on the one hand, you can't go anywhere in sort of corporate America or society without or, you know, advertising without the theme of wellness being very prominent. Right? You know, it's something that's always people are always talking about or trying to sell to us. And it fits in many ways with this sort of age of authenticity of, you know, we have to kind of find our own way to, to our own flourishing of our self and all of these things. Um, and and so there's that side to it. That's very much a cultural touch point, I think. Um, and thinking about it theologically, you know, a lot of Jesus's healings when we think about salvation in the first century context wasn't just, um, how do I get to heaven? It was how am I restored holistically into right relationship with God and also with community? Yeah. Um, and so so it's a it's a more holistic concept. So I wonder just think with us a little bit about how you're understanding Wellness theologically in this space.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. Great question. So wellness is a $4.3 trillion industry right.

Dwight Zscheile: There you go.

Bryan Willkom: So yeah you're you're exactly right. And so we're kind of working off of that. But okay, so something happened to us a couple of years ago really when we started Bier Church where something just clicked. And so we started this whole Jesus fit thing, thinking that we'd be like the personal trainers for people's spiritual lives. Yeah. And cheer people on and do this coaching thing and mentoring thing. Uh, that's where the soul goal question comes into play. Well, it turns out that that was really difficult to get people to have those conversations. And maybe I was just too young and naive. And, you know, people are looking for someone older and wiser. Um, but then so we pivoted, uh, to, uh, creating content, and we thought we would create all this content and we created almost ten different, uh, challenges, spiritual fitness challenges, um, you know, Bible reading, music, conversation, all the all this different stuff and that was exciting. But it was also super lonely.

Dwight Zscheile: So you had to do it on their own.

Bryan Willkom: I kind of did it on their own. But then there was these virtual pieces and we were trying to engage people all over the place. And so we might have 40 some people from like five states doing our Jesus fit challenges, but getting people to do the community piece or the processing piece, either one on one or with a group that was extremely hard. So when we finally started Beer Church and we started Beer Church, by the way, and we had no idea it was a fresh expression. I didn't even know what that meant. Word was we started Beer Church and we stumbled across this research from Gallup. There's a really fascinating article, uh, from 2022. It was a Gallup poll on religion and well-being in the United States, and it basically said the research found that it wasn't necessarily sermons, worship sets, or Bible studies that was making people healthier, happier. It was a sense of community and a web of relationships. So once we read that, it was like green light. People actually want community. And also we can do these events pretty well so we can create community within our community. At breweries and other places. And this is being driven by Jesus's vision for wellness. I love John five six. Do you want to be well? And over half of Jesus's miracles were healing miracles, by the way. So we're dealing with a healer here. So our world is broken. Would you agree?

Dwight Zscheile: Amen. Yeah.

Bryan Willkom: So we need healing. And I think what we found after trying to do coaching, trying to do content is that actually the magic was in the community. And if we could do community better, this is why churches, by the way, are getting really scared and nervous right now and are afraid of losing community because they I think intrinsically, we know that this is the lifeblood of the church where the gathering in acts two. Acts four like the early gathering, sharing with each other something that's real and we are drowning in content right now. I don't know about you, but it's just a scroll. You get stuck on the scroll. We're drowning in content. And so this is an invitation, a low bar invitation to do healthy Jesus things in community together. And it's challenging. It's also really exciting.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, let's let's unpack that a little bit more because I think you're on to something really important. So on the one hand, if you think about the secular wellness space, the peloton phenomenon is fascinating, right? It's not just to have your own treadmill or your bike where you work out individually, but you want to be somehow, even if it's electronically connected into this group of people taking a class together with a coach, you know, or you think about all the, um, you know, gyms where, you know, having a class is essential for people to actually make any kind of progress. Just thinking again, on the physical wellness side in our culture right now. And yet the default of modern Western culture is so individualistic, and particularly spirituality gets relegated, if you will, in Western culture to this private individual, you know, path, um, or you have these institutions that often struggle to actually cultivate deep, shared life together, extra kinds of deep experiences of community. And so because so much of it is normed, more around performance, or it could be kind of a social coffee hour. We're having chat about the sports team or the weather, weather rather than we're going to in vulnerability, open up our lives to one another and share stories, which it sounds like is what you're doing in these experiences so well.

Bryan Willkom: So I was just going to say that this is this is why we haven't been we have not been able to drop our brand. So we've got Jesus wearing AirPods. Right. And sometimes that's off putting to some people. But for us, you know one, Jesus wasn't white. Two Jesus listened. Three Jesus was human. And four Jesus walks with us and gets us. Um, people. People, especially after Covid, everybody wants to be well, everybody wants to be healthy. And so but we haven't done in the church a good job of actually defining spiritual wellness. And I don't even know if we talk about it. We kind of just talk about faith, and we talk about our creeds and doctrine and kind of do's and don'ts and pray and obey. But let's actually talk about what it means to be spiritually healthy. And by the way, any time I've ever asked people that question one on one or in a conversation, what does it mean to be spiritually well, for you right now, it's sort of like something stops inside of them. They don't know how to answer that question, but I can tell once they start working on it, it it's slow, but you can tell they want to talk about it. And they start talking about deep things and meaningful things, and they start talking about their brokenness. And so this is all a part of being being spiritually. Well, and it's it's in kind of an untapped, I guess, if you will, to use a beer church word, untapped realm. I think in the church to say, what does it mean for us to be healthy? Have we been healthy traditionally? Uh, kind of. Yes and no. But the reason why we're even here today is because the church is in decline. At least the traditional church or the church is struggling. So so we need to pivot. And I love the four pivots, by the way. I think I have it memorized so well.

Dwight Zscheile: So let's unpack that being spiritually. Well, because I think that's a fascinating question for congregations to ask people and to ask neighbors, because I think a lot of people in, in our neighborhoods who aren't part of church do want to be spiritually well, and and yet, um, I wonder about how that's heard, because again, in in the culture in the West that we live in, you know, the word spiritual often means the immaterial dimension of life rather than in a New Testament sense of life in Christ, in the spirit. Right. You know, life which is which is the whole of our lives, not just some kind of immaterial side to it. So, so, so how do you how do you kind of meet both the things that people bring to that conversation being shaped powerfully by the culture, and then help them reframe that in a more Christian way to understand what does it mean to live life in the Holy Spirit?

Bryan Willkom: Right. Great question. So how we're kind of looking at spiritual wellness is, is always through the lens of Jesus and just, frankly, how Jesus spent his time. And really, um, we're we're wondering how, um, you know, functionally, every church's mission statement is forming followers. Like forming people to be fully alive. Followers of Jesus. I mean something something along those lines, right? And so the you know, if you think of like, chess, right, in a chess game, um, you're, you know, the end goal. What's the end goal of chess?

Dwight Zscheile: Winning. Right. Winning.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. Okay. So, uh, you're always thinking, like, in steps or moves, right?

Dwight Zscheile: Sure.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah. Uh, and so that's how you win at chess. And do you win by going forward or backward?

Dwight Zscheile: Mhm. Yeah.

Bryan Willkom: Both.

Dwight Zscheile: Right.

Bryan Willkom: And so this is even another reason why the mixed ecology thing works. But I think in order for us to get get healthier spiritually through the lens of Christ through the gospel, we just need to look at how Jesus spent his time. And we need to try to just do some of those simple practices in our day and in our week, and if we can fit them in, if we can fit Jesus into our life in those simple ways like rest. So we're resting at yoga church. We're walking at Trail church. We're practicing solitude and silence. Um, we are asking a ton of questions. We're practicing abundant curiosity. We think that if we can practice some of these Jesus practices together. I love the definition of of, um, you know, some people define discipleship as just practicing the way of Jesus. I think that's a great way to think about it. I think it's a very approachable way. I think it just admits that we're not there yet and we can get better at this, actually. And I think people generally in our, in our culture are so tired of a church that is not getting this right and is not really showing us that this works. So the behaviors haven't matched the beliefs. And so what we're starting at, we're starting from the behavior side, the orthopraxy side right. The right practice side. Um, to quote Richard Rohr. And you guys have quoted him on the podcast before, let's live our way into a new way of thinking instead of what the traditional church did for eons, which was thinking our way into a new way of living. Yeah, that's the big pivot.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, right. And you think about Paul's, um, you know, metaphor, athletic imagery of training, you know, in, in his letters. And I think of, you know, John Ortberg years ago talked about training versus trying, you know, so the method of actually practicing, following Jesus, doing the things that Jesus did, um, and trying to do that in community, which I think is, is really so often the missing, the missing point. Right.

Bryan Willkom: And so what we've been practicing in community, if you think of a typical church service, we've been practicing teaching worship. Uh, what else? Fellowship. Fellowship. Okay, this is good, but a lot of people just come in and out really quick, and they, they they they scoop up the teaching and the worship. We are really light on practicing all these other things that Jesus did.

Dwight Zscheile: Right.

Bryan Willkom: So let's let's spend some time looking at some of those things. And also to Rohr also talks about how in the church, um, we if you think of a tricycle, there's three wheels, a tricycle. And we in the church history, we have tended to put scripture or tradition on that front wheel, but we haven't put our own experience on there. And so I think some of this is actually a return to like listening to our body, listening to our lived experience, and actually paying attention to the God who's always with us. So Jesus's power and presence, it didn't come from scrolling on Instagram. Jesus's power and presence came from just that relationship and connection with his father. And he got he got relationships right with people and with God. And it was through that simple act of presence. You can practice presence in nature. You can do it while exercising. You can do it while you're taking a sip of water that that can become a mindfulness thing. You can do it in community. We're really light now. We've overdosed on content. We need healthy forms of spiritual community, and I think at our best we can we can achieve a lot in the church and solve a lot of problems if we can create these, these new communities.

Dwight Zscheile: So what would you say to someone who would maybe push back a bit on Richard Rohr's emphasis on experience in light of how our culture right now in the West, at least, um, elevates individual experience as the ultimate authority, if you will. And so if we're trying to be formed in Christ in the spirit, don't we need a healthy dose of that alternative countercultural story of Scripture? And then, of course, the countercultural practices that Jesus embodies and teaches and that the church carries on to form us in ways so that it's not just I'm expressing my myself and its desires because that's so much the, you know, the norm, if you will, in the culture at this moment.

Bryan Willkom: Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, we need we need all of it. It's just that we haven't done the one thing. And so I think there's things we can learn from culture. And I think right now culture is pushing us to be more honest. And I think at one point in one of these podcasts, you talked about the role of clergy, how it's been changing. And so you used to, you know, the clergy used to be the central source of information, and now we're all overeducated and we're over informed and look at we have access to all this information. And so now what are the kinds of experiences we need to put on that front wheel to guide us? And the experiences I'm talking about are, uh, of course, listening to yourself, but also like spending time pursuing Jesus in community with people in these kind of different ways that almost feel like they're not churchy. But I mean, on our T-shirt it says church spaces for the not churchy, but we could easily replace that with very churchy because Ecclesia was just gathering assembly or community. It was relationships. And I love when when science and scripture align. And so this, this research from Pew and Gallup and all these sources are basically saying the relationships are really just the glue that keep us accountable. It's not just my individual experience, it's I'm sharing this in community. I'm processing. There's accountability in community. There's service in community. Um, and so we need each other as we do this spiritual thing. Um, so it isn't an individual thing. It's not just a me and Jesus thing.

Dwight Zscheile: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so and that word church is interesting because I think in some people might look at what you're doing and say, in light of this sort of reformation ecclesiologies, you know, confessional definitions of church as, you know, basically an event around word and sacrament, um, and say, well, you're not doing sacraments, right? And there's word, I guess, sort of in there, but not in the kind of traditional sense of like proclamation of preaching or, you know, Scripture kind of in that sense. Um, so is it really church? And I hear you trying to reclaim a even earlier definition, if you will. Um, say a little bit more about that. And is is it helpful, actually to use the word church for some of the people that you're trying to reach or, or does that maybe, um, is that put them off in some ways?

Bryan Willkom: Um, I don't know. I think we're still so, so much of this work is experimental ministry. We don't actually know, uh, if we're doing it right. So back to this whole idea of discipleship. We're just, you know, messy humans trying to walk this path with Christ and listening to our life and trying to trying to figure it out and get it right, because we're we see that, um, ultimately, the end goal is that if we can become more like Jesus, the end result is the healing of our world. It's restored relationships. Um, there's so much goodness that I think comes from a relationship with Christ. And we we're just looking at it differently. So instead of starting with the belief side, like I said, we're starting with the practice side. Is it offensive to some Christians? Sure. Do we get we take some flack on our Facebook ads. Yes. Um, you know, Jesus wearing AirPods, being out in breweries, but that. But that's it, right? I think Jesus made a lot of religious people very uncomfortable during his day. Indeed. And so I think if we just think about what's good sometimes that's helpful. Like, what is the good thing? Or just just what is the right thing? And it just feels so right to us to say we're we're we're meeting here at this public park. Um, we're meeting here at this brewery or this coffee shop, and we're meeting in the name of Jesus. But we're just starting with hospitality, curiosity and conversation. I think people need a reset. Most people that are in that liminal threshold space, not sure if they're going to even come back to church or not. They just need a bit of a reset. And at a baseline, they need to know that the church is going to listen to them. Yeah.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, I think that's huge. You know, I think many traditional inherited churches, you know, they recognize people are leaving or gone. Um, particularly younger generations in many cases. And they still assume that somehow within the box, if you will, of that inherited way of doing church, that somehow we can get people back if we do it better. And, and I think the kinds of experimental spaces on the edge that are in public spaces that are not churchy in the sense of controlled by the church, dominated by the church, um, are essential to figure out how to actually be in community with those people. And I think the word trust is really important because there is a lot of trust that needs to be earned. And I think a lot of people are looking really for a way of life, more than just a set of ideas.

Bryan Willkom: Um, if you read Patrick Lencioni's classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a team. Yeah, that pyramid in that book, I it just cemented in my brain the bottom part of that pyramid. Before you get any results, before you get, you know, work together as a team before you do anything organizationally or functionally. It is.

Dwight Zscheile: Trust. Trust.

Bryan Willkom: Absolutely. And so right now, I think this is so in such an important conversation to talk about, how do we actually rebuild trust in the church. What does that actually mean? I think it's connected to our our wellness. It's also connected to our practices. Jesus often talked about a full life, and let's just look at things that are filling our cup so that we can pour out Tish Harrison, Warren wrote in her book The Liturgy of the ordinary, fascinating book about ordinary spiritual practices. She asked this question and she said, what would it be like if Christians were known as a community of the well-rested?

Dwight Zscheile: Wouldn't that be amazing?

Bryan Willkom: Whoa! So I think so. So even as we look at spiritual wellness as the backbone of beer, church, trail, church, all of our little weird churches, um, what happens if we we were just slowing down with each other and at a baseline, treating each other as valued human beings made in the image of God? Mm mm. Just at a baseline. Let's just do that and let's keep doing that and see what happens. If we can just get that part right and we might not do all the content. We might not be able to to guide you through a big pathway or process when it's all said and done. But at least we're listening. We're hearing people's stories, we're welcoming everybody to the table, and I think we just need to get back to that somehow.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, so final question for you, what would be your advice to either a leader within an in some kind of inherited church, who who hears what you're describing and, and has a sense that, wow, like this, this is work that I'm called to do, maybe on the edges of the life of a traditional church, or maybe a leader who is already kind of walked away or been pushed out of traditional church and wants to cultivate this kind of fresh expressions type of community.

Bryan Willkom: Come hang out with us. No. Okay, so here's our theme for the year. I've talked to you about this. Here it is, everybody. Oops, I hit the microphone. Yeah, I broke the rule. So abundant curiosity, I think is really the thing that we need to do. We need to go on retreats. We need to get quiet. We need to go out in nature. We need to process with coaches and mentors. We need to start getting abundantly curious about how to be the church in new ways. And that starts, by the way, with just listening to ourselves. Not in some selfish way, but looking for those little gems that God's put into our life already. Maybe somewhere in our past that tells us something about how we're uniquely equipped to be able to share the love of God right now. So this is just this is the fun part, right? Where we actually get to have some fun with this. I mean, my friend Dan, who works in the Episcopal Church, who's speaking tonight at Beer Church, he just said to me recently, like, functionally, you've just basically taken all your hobbies and you've turned them into churches. And I'm like, I don't disagree with you. I so beer, yoga, pizza, trail book. We want to learn. We want to share food. We want to meet our neighbors. We want to be exercise, take care of our body, be in nature. We're building spiritual community around things that just work for us, and that we want to be a part of our daily life. So I think that's part of this too, is just taking something that's a part of your daily life, getting abundantly curious about it. What's your hobby? What's your passion? What's your interest? And just start there and see what God can just do with that. And ultimately it's going to lead you to maybe, maybe, maybe experiment and then build some community around pizza or in a brewery or at a burrito at the Mexican restaurant or whatever it may be. Um, but being out in the community sends a huge, huge message of welcome. So we need, I think, in many ways, a lot of this work requires us to leave traditional, spiritual and religious spaces, and that is this huge signal to the community that we're ready to listen.

Dwight Zscheile: Mhm mhm. Brian, thanks so much for being with us today and for the work you're doing for sharing your wisdom and insights.

Bryan Willkom: It's great to be here. Hopefully I didn't break the microphone.

Dwight Zscheile: And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of pivot. To help spread the word about pivot, please like and subscribe. If you're watching us on YouTube or if you're listening, head to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. Finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share. Pivot with a friend. Until next time, this is Dwight Sheely signing off. See you next week.

Faith+Lead voiceover: 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.