Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is the Return, a podcast about religious reconstruction in a world of deconstruction. I'm Jordan Maddox.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: And I'm Dustin Maddox. We are not related different spell.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: On this episode, we're exploring how people rebuild faith after it's come apart and what churches can do to make reconstruction not just possible, but life giving. One of the themes we keep returning to is this reconstruction requires a hospitable environment.
People don't return to spaces where their questions are mocked, their doubts are unwelcome, or their perspectives are deemed dangerous.
Churches that can't hold diversity of thought about theology, politics, culture, or even spiritual experience often become places where those who have deconstructed simply cannot re enter.
And that's why we're excited to have on today's show Johnny Morrison.
Johnny is a pastor and writer and theologian who has spent years thinking about deconstruction not as a trend to be fixed, but as a real human process shaped by trauma, disorientation, longing, and hope.
His insights in this conversation helped us to see more clearly why so many leave and what kind of communities they might one day return to.
We talk about deconstruction at both an individual and institutional level, the loss of certainty, and why many churches are afraid to create an environment that allows for diversity. Joni helps us to imagine what a church might look like if it embraced curiosity, welcomed disagreement, and trusted that the spirit is present even amid uncertainty.
Let's go meet Johnny Morrison.
Johnny, what do you like to cook?
[00:02:04] Speaker C: I My primary way of cooking that I like the most is outdoors on an open fire. That's how I like, really got into cooking for groups is open fire cooking. Like hung chickens. Like two Thanksgivings ago, I did five turkeys or chickens over the fire, like basting them in butter stuffed with citrus. I love that style of cooking. I like New Orleans or Creole cooking a lot. Gumbos, jambalayas, things that were French but then got better spicier. So I love that. I mean anything though. I like to cook for large groups, though. That's my preferred. So over the largest group, you've done 55.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:39] Speaker C: I did 100 pounds of gumbo in the woods for a group of 55. So kind of like combining all the things that I like the most right then and there. And then we're doing Thanksgiving this year and I'm cooking and we're at 38 guests so far.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: So is your church just really like a camouflage catering service? Is that what this is?
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. That's. Honestly, that's if that is what we were and if that's how people would describe us, I would feel like that was a win. We have a lot of good cooks, though I am not the best cook in the community by any means. A lot of good, competent mini chefs. And then we also have a restaurant in our building.
And so we do a lot of food every other Sunday is Taco Sunday or Burger Sunday or something like that. That's like kind of our version of like old school fellowship time after service. So food's a really essential part of our community. There's big long tables in the center of our auditorium and sanctuary that we do food on. And then we also do community every single Sunday. So if table catering meals potlucks, that to me is like the primary imagery of who we are.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: So if I were, what are the odds that 10 years from now you're just a restaurateur? What are the odds on that bet right now?
[00:03:48] Speaker C: Oh, man, it's not the worst bet. It's not the worst bet. But my brother in law is an executive chef for a restaurant that's gunning for its James Beard and Michelin star this year in Oregon. And watching him do it is like watching the bear. And I'm losing interest rapidly in watching the Hustle.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: So stressful.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Yeah. So if I could like a very. My best friend, one of my best friends here, he's also a very good chef, better than I am. His dream is someday to retire and have a little food cart that when it wants, serves donuts in the morning and smash burgers in the afternoon until they run out. I think something like that would be awesome if we could own like some kind of fly fishing camping refuge for those who need a place to rest. And we do donuts, smash burgers, gumbo, fly fishing trips, and we do it when we want, how we want. I would feel very happy with that kind of retirement career.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: I, I used to go to a church when I was at Fuller Seminary. I would go periodically when we just needed cheap booze because it was this. The term back then was emergent church. And it was in a warehouse in Koreatown. And they would just, I think they would go to Trader Joe's and just fill the cart up with two Buck Chuck. And then they had potluck style. And so me and the, the homies from Fuller who didn't have a lot of disposable income, we'd go down there just to hang out and then we'd disappear upstairs and they would have some kind of, I don't know what they had some there. It's always rebranding all the time, just, oh, it's not worship, it's this. And so we go upstairs, they give us each like a cajon or conga. And by that time you had your bottle of two buck Chuck that's already gone down. And so I just remember my eyes rolling back to my head and then I'd wander downstairs and get some food.
That's. That's. But then I contra contrast that with growing up in the Southern Baptist community.
Food was also important, but it was a lot of fried chicken and potato salad. So I've had a lot of different food. Dustin, what's your food association memory of church? Is there anything that comes to mind?
[00:05:53] Speaker B: My current community is big on food and so all the kind of ethnic Mennonite deals that's front of mind right now. But I don't know, any time that we have a food truck after church is just the best.
Something like that.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: Better than what is technically Mennonite food.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Like a Zwiebok. So it's like a double stacked roll. I'll send you a picture.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: It's.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: I'm sad that we did not get you one when you were here because it's a very distinctive and something that they're like. Mennonites are. Mennonite brethren in particular are like very proud of recipes that have gone down from generations. And that's a. I've been to a.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Lot of Mennonite churches this year like yours, your guys is included. And nobody gave me E block.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know if that's a failure or progress. Actually.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Nobody asked me my last name and nobody asked me if I had a disease. Whack. And those are both things that I've now been prepared for.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Yep, yep.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Speaking of your last name, Johnny, tell us a little bit about your story and who you are. Who are you and what are you doing here?
[00:07:03] Speaker C: I don't know what I'm doing here, but who I am. Yeah. I'm Johnny Morrison. I am a pastor currently the church in Salt Lake City, Utah called Missio Day. We joked about the emerging church. That's the world we come from. Like fully our aesthetic, our vibe and so much of our theology was shaped in that community and then reshaped by time and deconstruction, reconstruction, healing, all that kind of stuff. I grew up in Utah. I grew up in really Pentecostal churches. So think name it and claim it. Word of faith kinds of communities, prosperity gospel, preachers that you would see on tv. That is the world I come from. A lot of things that I had to work through and heal from, especially because I lost my father when I was a kid.
And so the big first kind of like faith crisis question for me was how can a God who rewards the faith of the faithful not allow my father to be healed? So that was like the big first kind of like faith crisis. And I think ever since then I have been on a pretty like curious is maybe the positive version of that quest to understand my faith and to think through it. Also very thankful for that tradition. I do want to say that like a, it was a really diverse tradition. Our communities were really diverse both racially and socially. And the people there knew how to love well, even if their theology was like really jacked up in some moments. So grateful for that. And then, yeah, I'm married to my wife Tori. When we're not doing church stuff, we are outside. Utah's like an amazing place to be outside. That's why I love living here. And so I fly fish and I like to cook, as we talked about, and host my friends and explore the mountains. And yeah, I don't know if that's answered any of the questions that you were hoping for me to answer, but that's what you got. Arts and books. I should probably say that for financial.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Purposes, yes, we're going to jump into your books in a little bit, but we're going to start with just definitions and terms. And I have a two part question, so I want to hear what you think deconstruction is like what's happening at almost a phenomenological level, not to use a fancy term, what are people, what's happening to people when this is happening? And then the second part, which you gestured at, which I think is an interesting kind of thread that Dustin and I have not explored yet, is can institutions deconstruct? So I'm thinking about churches. You mentioned the emergent church. I feel like that's an institutional deconstruction that's happening there. So maybe start with what is deconstruction and how do you see institutions doing that?
[00:09:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll answer from for myself and then feel free to push back if there is a better classification or categorization of this. To me, deconstruction is maybe the metaphor I would use is an unraveling of the theological frameworks or foundations that we had inherited and maybe assumed to be true.
And that unraveling, I think often comes from crisis. Now that can be a Crisis of, like, intellectual curiosity that you've wrestled with something like sexuality or death or politics, and that has begun to unravel. But I think more often than not, it's a crisis that hits emotionally and existentially. So for me, the first one was my father dying. The second one was Christian support of Iraq. I grew up in a really prosperity. Churches tend to be very conservative, very nationalist. Before we're using that language today. It's everywhere in Pentecostal churches.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: And I couldn't understand how Christians could support the Iraq war. So that was both intellectual, but it was deeply emotional because I was watching and reading about civilian death toll, soldier death tolls. I started talking about it with my leadership team at the church that I had my first employment opportunity.
And I was told that I had to either hold a just war position of the off staff. And so then I was removed from staff. Wow. And so I think that was, for me, those moments. Yeah. So I guess that's how I was.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: That's crazy. You got a foreign policy question as part of your church employment.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: That's.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: They gave me. They gave me some like Augustine to read for just war theory. They, like, wrestled with me for a while.
But at the same time, like, this is. In some ways, Dustin, this is how you and I become friends, is this long journey is that I am. It's my first couple years of college. I'm wrestling with the Iraq war. They're giving me traditional just war positions. And at the same time, I'm reading Anabaptists.
And I like, the Anabaptist position was so much more compelling to me, and the nonviolent picture looked so much more like the picture of Christ that the tension became too great. And as I, like, articulated that in this tradition, all of a sudden I look like a progressive or a liberal, which is just like an ahistorical way of describing an Anabaptist. But. And then I was told to. To leave. And so then I church planted, which is, I think, what everybody does when they're fired from their first job.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Okay, let's go to the deconstruction of an institution. How does that happen in your mind?
[00:11:27] Speaker C: Yeah, gosh, that's a good question. So I'll tell you. I'll tell you our story, and then we could. You can flush this out. The church that I'm a part of and helped plant, slash, serve, and lead at was planted by a large church in Oregon, which was planted by a large church in Washington.
And that was Mars Hill Amago Day. And then Us.
And each version of that, I think you actually can see a bit of a deconstruction. So Mars Hill plants, it's super complementarian. Obviously, we're familiar with all the problems that come with that. Imago is the very first church plant of the Mars Hill network, before actually 29 is even like, language that is, like, familiar. And they split over complementarianism. And so it's like, at some level, you can see a kind of deconstruction happening. As Imago is more shaped by missional thinking, anabaptist thinking at some level, because there's a lot of nonviolence there. And emerging evangelicalism, it's not like full deconstructed, emerging. It's kind of like we're. It's the aesthetic of emerging, but with evangelical underlying. Yeah, foundations.
But I think that tension of those things being held together actually creates a really, like, beautifully polarizing environment.
Like, how do you hold nonviolence, emerging aesthetics, a more mutualist approach to leadership. How do you hold all that together while still having evangelical frameworks? And I think it starts to unravel some of those things we plant out of that in 2010 into a new context, into a new congregation. And immediately you begin to see even more of that tension, unravel inherited assumptions. Because we just took everything that we got from maga. We took structure, ecclesiology, polity, mission, and just laid it into the city.
And as our community grew informed and questioned, and as crisis hit, so especially when our founding pastor departed, that created a vacuum that made us ask really intense questions about our leadership structure, including women in ministry. Covid was another big one that, like, forced us to ask huge questions about power.
I think those crisis did that to us as an institution and, like, deconstruction for many people, it was pretty chaotic, I think, because you have half of you that wants to go one direction, half of you that wants to go another direction. Family of origin pools, all those things are happening. I think it's very similar, honestly, to an individual level. It's just you have more voices involved in the process, and then more levers to pull and to change.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me ask you a question. I want both of you guys to talk about this real quick, which is. It seems like what's happening at an individual level and institutional level is you get you. It devolves to dualism, where, you know, when a church deconstructs, I feel like the net result is schism. Typically. Like, I was involved with the Presbyterian Church when they were wrestling with gay marriage and the different issues.
And you just get the RCA and the pcusa, and then. And then I think. I think at the individual, human level, people just split, too.
They see one element of religion they don't like, and so then there's, like, us or them. And so I guess my question to both of you guys is, do you think that's just the inevitable result of crisis is you just. You tend to simplify the world into black and white, or you separate into us and them and all that kind of stuff.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: I'll take a swing. I think what's interesting is, at some level, yes, but when you zoom out more broadly and this. It can be nuanced a lot more, but just in a broad stroke, like, it took over a thousand years for the first church split to happen, so it's not inevitable that it is possible. And then from there, it's another almost 500 more years for the Protestant Reformation to begin to happen. And I forget who it is, but some scholar talks about the Protestant heresy being that, like, the thing that made protest being like the Reformation, what it was, and being able to say, no, there. There's something off about.
Traditionalism is also its own kryptonite, because that's baked into the origin story of how or. And into the ecclesiology of how Protestant churches work. It's like you're constantly looking for something to push back against rather than saying, what holds us together is you're looking for the thing that divides. And now, as the joke goes, there's. There's 3,000 different Christian denominations, and all of us agree on the priority of the unity of the church.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I like what you just said, man. I think that's true. And I just think we don't have the skills to do it differently.
And so I think this is. Our learning is. So we'll take an example. Like, during COVID we really wanted to try and have conversations that felt like maybe like listening circles like from the Amish or like discernment circles from the Anabaptist. And so we set it up, and we have one of our board members near the end of 2020, gets pretty radicalized away from the vaccine and away from masking and is a unique person in our community in that way.
But we don't want him to bail because we love him and he's been a part of our community for years and helped lead us actually through some really difficult things. So we start doing listening sessions, and they go terribly. They go terribly. They're, like, pretty harmful, honestly.
But we thought that Getting him in a room with someone who's like family member had just died from COVID would create empathy. And instead it did not.
And the learning on the other side of that was like, I think twofold, that our intention was good, but our skills were lacking. We just have the skills to do it, and nobody in the room had the skills to do it.
And if you're gonna do it well, you have to address power differentials. And we hadn't really done enough of those two things. And so all that to say, I think it is possible to not live in a binary as we deconstruct. And I think we've done some better versions of it as a community recently. But what we had to learn is that we have to teach ourselves and figure out how to do it and maybe do it with some lower stake issues first and build up the muscle to. To discern together, to hold tension together, to deconstruct, reconstruct together.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah, let's talk about reconstruction. A lot of this show we've spent on, look, unpacking the reasons why people deconstruct, which I think is a useful thing because I think we need to understand, we need to be clear about what that is.
I think we've slow rolled this bigger conversation topic of once you've lost it, how to get it back. And I think we're. I think this is a great opportunity because I think you're working with these folks who are in that lane. And so I really want to pick your brain on this, both because that's where I am, but also because I would be curious to see what it looks like in the wild. And so maybe I'll start by talking about when I started to lose things and I started to filter through more progressive theology. I remember in the early days, I pick up those Brian McLaren books. And you know what was interesting about him and that world and all that stuff is they all felt like him. Marcus Borg, that whole crew, they all felt like magicians. Like, you were always looking for the rabbit. And then eventually I was like, there ain't no rabbit. They're just like. It was all just like a game of cups where they're like, we're going to. We're going to hide that supernatural ball somewhere. We're not going to show you where it is, so you won't be afraid to step foot in this building with us.
And it just felt gamey to me in a way that was both misleading and perhaps slightly dishonest about where they actually were. And so it. And so for me, it felt okay. Like, I want to take your stuff seriously, but you're also not playing with there's one hand or the table the whole time.
So I'm curious your guys perspective on this. And this is going back to the emergent world, but it's really a discussion about when people lose faith in elements of Christianity and how do they create a structure again if they. If like part of the joists that hold up the building, they. Their hands tie behind that because they can't use those joists, if you will. Does that make sense in my question? It's a vamp question, but I would cure. I'm curious what you guys think about that.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that makes sense.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: I think that's a great insight, bro. I hadn't quite thought of what they were doing in that way. But you're naming.
Absolutely. I think what they're doing and I think that's.
I wasn't in. I haven't been a part of an emergent church, but I was a part of the mainline church at that time who. The McLarens and Borgs. And all of them were like, yay, look at what they're doing. This is finally somebody's saying in a popular way what we've been trying to push out. And I think you're naming the like almost duplicity of that approach of saying, hey, we can do church without any of the like weird, like supernatural claims that we're. We moderns are suspicious of.
And I think where that actually leads practically for many people who I walked with in those seasons, is then what am I here for? At the end of the day, it's just if it's. And this goes in either direction, if the church that I'm a part of is simply just echoing or saying, yeah, like in the sandlot to what my political views are.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Like, it's.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: There's nothing really here for me to think through or be challenged by or.
Or something of that sort. So I think that's one dynamic that's at play and making that approach problematic. And I. But I think on the reconstruction side of things is not to just merely double down and be like, it's all supernatural. It's all this. It's like the.
It's similar to. I think the.
Or I think a healthy and helpful approach is what Johnny takes in his book, which is to. To take something core about Christian faith and doctrine and practice in terms of atonement theology and not try and diminish it, but like really understand it to its core. Like to take it more seriously in some ways than. Than other approaches.
And in that you find the humanity, you find the. The real like universal human condition and how God is present scandalously in that. Not in some philosophical category elsewhere that we're trying to try and intellectualize our way into, but God.
That's the central claim. Like God is present in.
In this mix of humanity. And that's what is phenomenologically wondrous about it. Johnny, what would you say?
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's. I think that your insights there are really good.
I think the thing it makes me think of is like.
Like I think with us and as we work with folks who are deconstructing and I work with my own heart as I've deconstructed and reconstructed, I think what is the thing that is so compelling about this story?
I am still deeply compelled by Jesus. And so for us, we're going to pretty rooted in following the person of Jesus and what that looks like, what that means. And then I think the Dustin second point and we're going to be constantly trying to reimagine what it looks like to follow Jesus in our moment.
And that's like the work around atonement or the work around story or the work around gospel is what does this mean for us?
And then I think third, the thing that comes to my mind is Dustin, you said this is. I am like pretty skeptical of attempts to.
It's interesting. Like you could play shell games with the supernatural, especially in our services. We're talking about the emergency Church had this way of deconstructing the service to make it more palatable. But I think the only person that is for is the Christian who's actually already in.
I don't think that does anything for somebody who's deconstructed and left or somebody who's never had an experience of faith. That's. I don't think that's actually for them. I think that's for us who are still inside of it who have grown uncomfortable with the supernatural. But I don't know, like the.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: The structures around us. And I actually think that the.
And I think a lot of the like older Gen X boomer Christians who are talking about like shorter sermons, less liturgical worship or whatever, I think all of that is actually just false. People who, who have deconstructed or who don't go to church actually in my experience in missio are longing for things that look like church. And so we have to be just careful about not trying to hide what we are because there's a kind of like humble, I hate this word, but authenticity that is actually really effective in developing trust.
And so I think the question for us is can we always be ourselves? That's maybe the better way of saying this is can we be ourselves? Can we be most us in all of those spaces that we are owning it with a lot of like good humor but never hiding it?
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So let me pull on another thread that I see. And this is in the reconstruction domain, which is I call this when. When wound becomes creed. And basically where people, they leave, they deconstruct for a very particular reason and then they come to a church to reconstruct, but it's. The church becomes like a vehicle for their therapy sessions of whatever it is. And all those are completely valid. I'm sure if you were gay kid that grew up in Kansas in the sbc, there's going to be this particular wound that's going to follow you. And so you're going to pursue a church that corrects that.
But at the same time, at that point, I, I don't know what the church is exactly as a. Other than just a mirror for your own maladies. And you're just going there to correct something.
And so I don't know. Do you guys view that as a common kind of approach that like mainline churches, emergent churches are using? They like figure out what the common wound is that people have from churches and they try to fix that, but then they get this mission creep because they're like, we're here for this like big meta project, but now we're just spending a lot of time with you guys and your church wounds. And then we lose a sense of what is the broader purpose that connects people with a lot of different wounds in one direction? Does that make sense?
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Totally. I think that's absolutely true. And I think the one thing that I would. I've said I've. We've experienced from this is because we feel this temptation all the time because we want to be a trauma informed community. We want to be a place that is safe for those who are reconstructing or in the process of deconstructing or unraveling, whatever.
But I think the thing that's interesting about it is like the emergent church's attempt to change the service to be more palatable. I think that the way in which the church becomes has mission creep around wounds actually very rarely is shaped by the queer kid from Kansas. It's shaped by the straight white kid from Kansas who projects onto the queer kid from canvas some wounds and then in the name of creating a space for that kid, changes the mission of the church in a way that is actually no longer helpful to that kid. This has been our experience, like kind of a lot is that who is raising those wounds. And it's almost never like our queer and LGBTQ members of the community. It is like our straight members of the community who grew up in the church. I think, like maybe feel some shame judgment around that, whose faith has changed, who's done their own, like deep deconstruction and now want to live a more equitable, just kind of faith and are projecting into the world around us that expression. We saw the same thing like with George Floyd and it was like it was never our black and brown members who were who.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: I mean, they were.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: They would be advocating for something, but it was. There's a kind of difference in which, like a wounded white person advocates for racial equality and what it is that it says about them. So I think that's totally true to the point that you're making. And I think it's can often be deeply self serving is maybe the larger point that I'm making, that it has actually nothing to do with that community.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Let me ask you a follow up then, Johnny. So what happens to the church if that is taken on as part of its mission?
[00:27:57] Speaker C: If it's taken on as it's part of its mission? I think I want to be careful in this. At some level that is not the worst thing that can happen. Like maybe I'll just scale back. If a church becomes more equitable or attempts to be more equitable than like its neighboring church down the road that a lot of people are wounded by. That's not the worst thing that can happen. I do think though that it is, to use the mission creep phrase, it is not necessarily the mission of the church to just be a place of therapeutic care. I think that is a part of what we do, but it's not the only thing that we do. And I think we will become homogenous communities in that way that are maybe more a clan to clubs than they are to churches. And if we want to risk in the direction of a big table with lots of diverse people sitting there, then I think we have to be unified and motivated by more than just healing those like, specific deconstructing wounds. Like we have to be unified around a positive vision of what Jesus is doing.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: That I think essentially though includes, yes, the healing of those wounds.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: I Think you're exactly what you're, what you just landed on is the thing like the mission of the church is to follow Jesus. And when you actually do that, these other things happen too.
Like you become more equitable and just and skillful in navigating challenging conversations with people across lines of difference. Like those things actually happen.
And, and it's su.
Super tempting, especially in predominantly white, predominantly middle class, like progressive leaning spaces to, to move in that direction of a what about. And I think, and I there, there's at worst it can just become virtue signaling so that we feel better about ourselves rather than something that is really bearing fruit in terms of. I always come back to the line of like from Oscar Romero who was getting interviewed by Time magazine or something and liberation theology and was. Somebody was saying the poor and he stopped them and he's okay, you keep saying you care about the poor, but tell me what are their names? And that I think has to be the driving reality in the context of a local church is no, we're talking about, we're talking about this specific person with this specific story.
And they're, and we're actually, we're bringing them in to, to have a dialogue and conversation about it with others like, who are like them. Because that's the thing. Like you, it's super easy to tokenize somebody in that space too, rather than bring along, have multiple people who are not in the majority of your community be able to speak to something in the context of your community with others from their, their context.
So I think that matters a lot as well.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was joking with a progressive pastor recently and I referred to him as being post God, which I thought he, he, he didn't dispute. Enjoy that my opposition. No, not at all. Or Appalachian. But I, I think what's interesting for me is I, I watch some people kind of reconstruct, I think oftentimes for kind of political and community reasons. They want to have friends, they want to be part of something bigger than them. But they dismiss a lot of the kind of what seemingly sounds exclusive, like exclusive claims. And I'm curious what you guys would do, both of you in this situation, because I think this kind of is a situation where someone is in the process of reconstruction but is still having some issues with some key components of religion. So I, I meet people all the time that go to progressive churches that don't believe in any of the kind of core claims or dogma or whatever. And so I imagine you might have some people wanting to be involved in a church for different reasons, but don't actually believe in that, Believe in the key concepts behind it and that, let's say they want to be in leadership, they want to be involved in the church, but they don't believe in God. They dispute the Bible as an authentic document, but they want to be involved in a progressive community because they want the elements of religion that they like, but they don't want the other parts. How pastorally, both of you are simultaneously taking a drink, a cup of coffee, so you're, like, getting ready, you're teeing up. So how would you pastorally communicate with a person like that who wants to be involved, sees value in religion, but just can't get past some of the supernatural claims?
[00:32:54] Speaker C: That's an interesting question. And I've not had to deal with that. So this is.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Hypothetical.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Hypothetical. So I think it would change if I was, like, with somebody. Sure.
Now I've had, I guess what I have said. I have had folks who want to be really involved, but I've never had anybody who wants to be at leadership while also being in that space. I've had people who want to serve, who want to attend. In fact, we have this really wonderful woman who serves monthly in our sound team who would not identify as Christian in any kind of, like, traditional sense. And I think that's amazing. So I think part of me is, that's great. If you want to be involved because something about this is compelling, then welcome to the team. And I think that the ministry of Jesus has space for that. I think about the followers of Jesus, it feels like there's an imagination in scripture for that.
It would shift at leadership. If you were to be, like, on the board or hired for a pastoral position, that would shift. And then there's like, a statement of core convictions that we hold together as a community that define who we are that we would ask you to be a part of. But I think up until that moment, it would be, like, amazing to have you. And I guess I just never had anybody who's, I'm an atheist or I'm uninterested in spiritual and I want to lead. I just have not actually been presented in that situation.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: So I think it's probably more common than we think, but it's just not expressed. That's what I would say.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that might be true.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Dustin, what do you think?
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's absolutely space. And one of our core convictions and priorities is like, being centered, set as a community in which we, like, are more concerned with people's like trajectory and movement towards the center than whether or not they have checked all the doctrinal boxes in order to get in.
And so there's absolutely space for that type of participation, belonging, exploration within the community without a firm articulation of miracles, for example, or like an atonement theology.
However, I think pastorally my approach has been in conversations with people who are.
Who are struggling in that way is like you.
To say you don't believe in something is actually a roundabout way of. Of claiming what you do believe.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: And.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: If so, on the supernatural. Like, if you believe that there is no supernatural realm, which I would even argue this is a rabbit trail, is a post enlightenment realm intrusion upon how the world works to even that category. It's like beyond the natural. Anyways, that's a. That's a beside the point thing, but.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: You'Re getting me excited over here.
Enlightenment.
It's about to be podcast. Keep going.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: All. Exactly. We have all these priors and assumptions about how the world works so that we do positively believe.
And so some of that is like we believed in a closed universe, an imminent frame in which you know. And then you want to tease out some of the implications of that to say, do we? Is that something you want to believe? Is that something that, like, works? Is that something that makes you the type of person who's more capable of hope and joy and love and peace and kind of some of the virtues that you are trying to aspire to? And I think more often than not, the answer is no, that if people are really honest, they're gonna be like, ah, no.
And the things that are making them more virtuous are like inherited from Christian tradition.
And then you just have to. It's like a. The image I have in my mind is like a painting and a historic painting that has a ton of like dirt and grime and stuff. It's been uncovered and you have to like restore the painting. And that's. I think that's a helpful image actually of reconstruction and how to help sort through some of. Because there's a ton of junk on the beautiful image, but there is a really beautiful image behind it and it takes delicacy and time and care to.
To get underneath that.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker C: Can I ask a quick question? I'm interested in this. When you say they don't believe in the supernatural claims, what would you mean by that? Because here's the reason I ask is that I often find that people who have either deconstructed or maybe have no, like previous Christian faith are more spiritual than I am. And so I'm interested to know what it is when you name that. They don't hold to like some of the supernatural claims. What is in mind there?
[00:37:38] Speaker A: The Apostles Creed, the resurrection is a metaphor for rebirth. Yeah, I could go on and on. Some elements, a giant lake opening up and people walking through.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Just all the usual stuff where people are like, oh, those are kind of myths or fables and it's really just metaphors. Yeah, yeah, it's just a, it's a description of the way of life rather than a description of historical events or things that we need to take seriously beyond just a helpful mythology for how to live.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Maybe. Okay, so then this is. I'm actually glad that you named that because I don't have a problem with any of that.
Like I think about, I think it might be Richard Roy, but I learned this from the comedian Pete Holmes where he talks about scripture and spirituality as metaphor, which means always true, sometimes happened. Like I'm okay with that.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:22] Speaker C: Like holding that duality together. Like sometimes happened, but always true. And so like you look at like you mentioned like the lake that people walk through or the Exodus story or that you go even further back to the flood. Did these things actually happen? I don't know that I care, honestly. And I would actually maybe prefer that they didn't because that actually leads me to deeper questions about the nature of God.
But I'm willing to wrestle through that. But I do believe they are true at a core existential theological level, that there is something in those things that are true. And so I guess parable to me is not less true than historical reality in that way. So I don't know. I mean, maybe I am a. Maybe I am the problem.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: No, I think nt right is the problem. Dustin, what do you think about what he's saying?
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm with it. I like that line from old PB Boy, that's. It's a good one.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Because. Yeah, I mean I, if I want to be somewhere in between, like wooden literalism, like this all had to happen in a, in this. In exactly the way that the Bible says it in plain English, which is chock full of problems that way, but on the other side of it's all merely wishful thinking, metaphorical, like it's always true and sometimes it, it happened. And I think there are, just as we were talking about, there are core convictions.
It's a matter of I properly identifying what that is. So like resurrection is the key one that I'm not going to say Is it works as a metaphor. It is true, there is rebirth there, there's new life, but there it is.
Resurrection takes things a step further to say somebody was bodily raised from the dead. And in, in that a new world is reshaping our current reality and existence in ways that include, but transcend human ability.
And that's like the core conviction of the scriptures that I think all of these other things actually, when we learn how to read the Bible literately, actually end up. This is what Jesus, this is the claim Jesus himself made that those things in the old testament, flood, etc. Actually end up pointing to that, that greater miracle of his death and resurrection in ways that we do get to participate and that are really helpful. But it's. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go to the mat to say, yeah, Jonah survived three days in the belly of a fish, totally. But I will go to the mat to say, yes, that was a metaphor, a parable, an allusion to Jesus being in the ground for three days or in a tomb for three days and then raising and then giving people something to turn towards.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, Jonah's a good example because there's no record. Assyria repents. And so we already are presented with a pretty like substantial question about what is this for and is it true? Yes. Did it happen? Probably not. But I don't think that lessens the value of Jonah. It actually increases it in some ways because it's an imaginative text that's about shaping the people of Israel into a welcoming, forgiving, even enemy loving people like you named now pointing towards the work of Jesus.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: What, what percentage of Christian pastors in America would have that perspective on how to address these claims?
What would you guys guess?
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. I hope it's.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Do you like how minority of a position is? This is what I'm asking.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: I think that's really tricky to answer. It is a minority position. Let's just, I'll be, we'll just be honest that like it's a minority position. But I do think there's a lot that hold that conviction. I think they're trying to find each other as well. I think that's why you have these networks that are birthed.
And I do think, I guess the one place where I want to like caveat it is that we all do this at some level.
Like every one of us reads the psalms this way. Regardless of how you define your position of scripture or like, you know what I mean, we're doing it all the time.
So it's like more of a spectrum than it is anything else. But I think there is. It's a minority position, but a growing position with lots of people trying to find each other to not feel so isolated and alone within that. Which I think is like how Dustin I become friends or these like networks get burst.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah. The subtext of that question, just to be clear, is this a communication problem? Is this a transparency problem?
Because I meet a lot of people that can't find communities that have a nuanced perspective on these things. And so it's cool that we're here doing this, but I'm thinking for the average person listening because there is this kind of caginess or shell game with a lot of folks like how do you.
How do you find this? And how ubiquitous is this kind of perspective? I know it's a spectrum. I think it's. It's probably.
There's some bifurcation going on here where there's probably like this. I'm making a U shape where there's a lot of people on either side of the extremes, if that makes sense.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I.
Something that is that I'm finding right now, like I'm in a. I'm gonna kick where I am finding like I'm reading a bunch of stuff from what like the church mothers and fathers from like the pre.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: Pre.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: The Roman Empire becoming Christian in scarecrows, scare quotes. And I like.
It's utterly fascinating and so life giving to me that oh this was actually.
This was the position like people. This is how people. This was how people were trained to read the scriptures, to follow Jesus. Like all of this stuff that seems to be a minority now was the like the default setting until the empire took over.
And then we have 15 and now it's being rediscovered in this like post Christian era, post Christendom era where I think some of those things on the sides, on the polls are really Christendom recapitulations of the same thing. It's a like I think the megachurch is an American imperial model of doing church where I think Missy Ojani's community is a good example of hey, you can. A church can franchise itself, right? So you take this church and then you can just copy, paste and plan it in this community and then you can copy and paste and plan in that community. But then that community begins to reshape the way that church asks questions and does things because you're dealing with real people in real places. And I think that's a failed model for lots of different Reasons that the. But then if. When you look back through history, there is this, like, minority report of, like, communities and people trying to do this thing, but it's never the majority.
Yeah, Yeah, I could say that confidently. Like, it's never the majority.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I. For me, a lot of this feels like it goes back to, you know, how as pastors, you can hold space with a diversity of perspectives in the pews. And that seems really hard. And I don't think it's so much on the pastors, but the anxiety of the people sitting in the room, because they're looking, they're coming there hoping to, like, have clear answers.
They're coming for. A lot of them are coming for certainty in particular directions one way or the other on either side of the aisle. And maybe we can talk about the sin of certainty. That was a good book. But I think.
I guess my question to both of you is, do you see that as part of the core problem here is just this need to give people, like, a clear lane so when they show up to church, they know where they are. And then having a hard time allowing people to exist in their own paradigms within your community, it seems like just to make it political for a second, the church and liberalism are having the same problems, which is how do we allow people to just live their lives and their own ways, but also trying to nudge them in the right direction, but also not telling them, like, here's what you need to do. And this is what Trump is. In a lot of ways, it's like, people just want some clear answer. It's just tariffs or whatever. It's just Christology. It's just, let's pick one thing, and let's just be really clear about that. Whereas I think a good, healthy community allows people to be on their own separate journeys. But then where's the center? How does it hold, if that makes sense? And that's not really a question, more just like a monologue. But I'm curious for you guys to respond to that.
[00:47:21] Speaker C: This goes back to something we were talking about earlier, which is, I don't think that we have the skills in our communities to do this well.
And so I think that if you're a pastor or a teacher and you would like your community to be able to hold tension, then the next task for you is to figure out how to teach the skills to do it. I think part of that is imagination. Do we have an imagination for it as good and beautiful and right?
And we have not had that. We've had the Imagination, that certainty and dogma and doctrine is the way in which communities are formed and held and kept safe. And so then I think we have. There's something that has to shift and this will be very difficult for any community that tries to undertake that task because you will be like going back and forth with folks who've been taught their whole life and are well intentioned to believe that defining the boundaries is what it means to hold the center. But you have to do that. So I think communities are just not good at this. And so we have to do the work, imagination, imaginative work. The Is Christ big enough at the center to hold us and what does that actually mean kind of work? And then all the practical skills that we've lost in the Christian community, skills of conflict, peacemaking, reconciliation, friend making, that once we considered essential or hypothetically we once considered essential but have lost. I think that's the only way that we get there is if we're willing to do the work and it will.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Be slow and like internally like this is something that I am in the process of and thinking through.
It's if I, if I as a leader of the community cannot hold my own center in the midst of all of this and I'm reactive to other people's anxiety and desires and I'm trying to find silver bullet solutions for things like that is. That is so toxic for the community itself.
And somebody said to me maturity is the amount of time that it takes you when you're with your family of origin to revert to your 8 year old self.
So like your maturity is trying to increase that time. And I'm like oh, we're recording this Thanksgiving week and I'm thinking a lot about that like how can I show up in my family of origin in or my married into family and, and, and just see how long that gap is going to take this time. And okay, how am I doing? And to try and yeah to your point Johnny, like how do we then duplicate that in, in community through formation, through teaching and yeah, and that's a really.
I find that an endlessly fascinating question that like goes to deconstruction, reconstruction. The Pete Scazzero says Jesus may live in your heart, but grandpa lives in your bones.
I think there's so much of our journeys that are. Because we have stuff in our psyche, in our soul, in our bodies that we've just haven't worked through or we haven't given the space and time to grieve or heal or. And so we're constantly reacting to life Whether that comes through theology or politics or relationships, without really knowing, like, what the heck is going on underneath the surface. And that's the work I'm interested in doing and helping people do as well.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: So let me ask this. I heard this talk. I was listening to this, like, Simon Sinek conversation. They were having a conversation with hospital CEO, and they were asking the hospital CEO questions about patient care. And he was saying that he really cares about patients. He wants to have the best experiences with patients or whatever. Patients have good news. How often do you interface with patients? And he said, never. And they said, who do you interface with? Your physicians? And so physicians are the ones interfacing with the patients. So I guess my question to you guys, because we're speaking to people that are in the congregation a lot of this conversation, but I'm also curious, what would be your encouragement to other pastors who are afraid that if they allow diversity of opinion, and I know that's a funny way to phrase it, but that's probably how they perceive it, if they create a space where diversity of opinion is welcomed, if you will, what's your encouragement? That their church is not just gonna fall apart in schism, in infighting, in cliques, in subversive movements to weed out parts that some people have a bone to pick with. Do you what's the strongest case, that this will allow our church to thrive rather than die?
[00:52:07] Speaker C: I think the first question for pastors who are in that position, is this something that you believe is good?
Because I just. I will be very hard, and it will lead to tension and to conflict. And I think there's ways to mediate that and mitigate that. So I'm not trying to undersell it, but I do think you have to believe that it's good to be like Jesus, being like, before you build a tower, count the cost. Before you go to war, make sure you can win. Is this something you actually want to do? And do you believe the kingdom looks like a diverse table with lots of voices and people sitting at it? If you do, then it's the only option.
But if you don't, then I would not do it.
And so if you believe in it, then my second pitch would be, I think there is some examples that you can look at, and I think it's the most worthy pursuit. So I think, like, you're on the right track. And so we're in the business of faith and resurrection. Why not. Why not risk the thing where it matters?
And then I would give some, like, practical instructions. Let's Start small. Let's start with some skills. Let's start with some experiments that won't fracture the whole community.
And then maybe here's the final thing I would say is I really do believe that the community around us, both Christians and non Christians and people on the journey of construction, are quite hungry for this in their communities.
And I'm like, genuinely surprised by this. When I meet with folks in our church who I think five years ago would have left over certain big theological issues and now don't really want to do that anymore. It doesn't mean they've discerned where they land, but it's like the weightiness of polarizing issues is. It's almost like too heavy and they're like, I'm taking them off. Like, I don't actually want to fight with my neighbor anymore about sexuality or about politics. I just want to come to church and make some friends. And I'm hearing that more and more from, like, very strange groups like that. I wouldn't expect to. So I think that maybe is the last one of encouragement is I actually think that God is already doing something in this space and that the moment we live in has created an opportunity for your church to have this vision going forward.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the.
What I would just add to that would be, like, number one.
And I'm sorry, like, if you see diversity of thought in your community as a threat, like you have a gospel other than that of Jesus, like Jesus disciples are wildly diverse in their viewpoints, even of who Jesus himself was to be.
And then all of the New Testament epistles are addressing diversity of thought and practice in a community.
That's the whole thing.
So if you're trying, if you're going for uniformity, then that's not the way of Jesus.
But if you are in a community where you are advocating you and you're a leader and you're advocating for diversity of thought, you can't. You can't just show up to your next board meeting and be like, this is what we're doing.
Because that's the. That the means have to match the end. And that you can't just decree diversity of thought from a uniform, like a unitary perspective. You have to work with the community on that. And I think I know people. Johnny and I have people in common who. They've been on this journey as a church, and they've lost tons of people.
And that's.
I think, in my experience, it's really. It's growth, it's addition by subtraction, because your Community is getting healthier.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: And along the way, and sometimes there are people who are just, like, unwilling to pay that price to.
To be part of a community. And.
And those. Those communities grow very quickly. That's what happened during the pandemic. Like, the churches that grew rapidly were ones that had very clear, polarized stances on the pandemics or on the pandemic response, and they just grew crazy.
And I think that's the case on any polarized issue.
But I think most people I would agree completely with, John, like, people I'm in conversation with weekly are like, can we just stop fighting? Not that we don't want to, like, talk about religion or politics and polite company, but can we. There has to be a better way to do this. Can we please figure something out?
[00:56:45] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's probably is a good moment to wrap up, and I want to introduce a new segment which I call Reconstruction Resources.
So, Johnny, Johnny, you are in Salt Lake City, but I want you to take a moment to imagine someone that lives in Morgan, in Huntsville, in Centersville, in an adjacent small community where there's not a lot of church options, if you will. And they're going through this process not somewhat in isolation, but they don't have access to a community that can walk them through the reconstruction process. Are there books, resources, different things you would recommend as being helpful? I always recommend people just read poetry, but that's a whole different subject. What would you recommend for people that are maybe in a community that's homogenous, they don't have a lot of options, et cetera?
[00:57:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good question.
Normally I would recommend a resource that is connected to the questions that they are asking. And so I will do this. I have a question I get asked a lot from some people who are somewhere in their faith journey has to do with how the Bible narrates women.
And then how do you read all of scripture that way? Because that's. That that begins to undermine the authority of the text as it's. As a whole.
And so if that. If somebody was coming with that kind of question, I would recommend a resource like Redeeming Eden by a woman named Ingrid Pharaoh. Dr. Ingrid Pharaoh is an Altus professor. It's a beautiful book. And I think for anybody who's wrestling with can I trust scripture and how do I trust it? Like, in what way? That would be a great resource because it would help you see the stories in a very different light. But we're not having a conversation about inerrancy or Infallibility. We're having a conversation about how the scriptures narrate women. So that would be a resource in that direction. If your question was maybe about the nature of God, like, it is God good, and can I trust God? And you wanted something a little heftier, maybe Brad Jursick, some more God would be a good resource to go to. I think it's still pretty accessible, but it's. It is longer, so you just have to kind of preface that.
And then what if, Johnny, what if.
[00:58:49] Speaker B: You have, like, issues with penal substitutionary atonement and you were looking for a more like Christ, like, gospel? Do you have.
Do you have any resources for that?
That's.
[00:59:01] Speaker A: I thank you.
[00:59:02] Speaker C: I appreciate you. I wasn't gonna recommend my own book.
[00:59:04] Speaker B: Because I just know that's why I.
[00:59:06] Speaker C: A little weird. But I did write a book called Prodigal Gospel, which I wrote.
It is appropriate in this conversation. I wrote it for folks who are in this journey, whether you consider yourself, like, deeply committed to faith or somebody who had deconstructed and was unsure where to go next, but was either way, in search of a gospel that reflected a God of love. That was the hope of that book. And that you could read it and have a conversation with your friends, that you could read it and give it away, or that you could give it away to people who have questions that you're having trouble answering. So that's my book, Prodigal Gospel, which is what is the gospel?
And then how does that engage with things like atonement, like wrath, like those kinds of questions that I do hear a lot from folks somewhere on that journey.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's great.
[00:59:47] Speaker C: That are. We think would be good resources.
[00:59:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great point to start, is just figure out the issue you're wrestling with and then just join the conversation about that issue, because it's probably a bit more nuanced of a conversation than you're expecting from the outside. Very last question for you, Johnny. And the links to Johnny's books will be in the description for folks listening. Last question. Johnny, what are your thoughts on the lives of secret Mormon wives being in Salt Lake City? Yes. Where are you at with the Mormon wives?
[01:00:17] Speaker C: So we've. We've watched.
We bought both seasons as well as Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. What is funny about both those shows, though, is I will say they. Neither of them happen in Salt Lake. Like, they both say they're in Salt Lake, but neither one almost ever takes place in Salt Lake either. Like Park City or Utah county, which is a county 45 minutes south of us, which is very LDS.
I do think Secret Wives, Secret Lives of Warm Wives is, if you want to understand modern Mormon culture, is actually like a kind of unique anthropological piece and like the way in which social media has so changed the lives of young Mormons and how young Mormons have changed the lives of social media. Because if you're finding a mom TikToker, she's probably LDS, especially if you think she's evangelical. She's actually probably LDS. Like the bigger the hat, the more Mormon she is.
And I do think that's there's something really fascinating because people think of Mormons as so not culturally relevant.
And then actually most of the content that like you're consuming on social media, if you're like in certain demographics, like Moms Fitness Finance, is probably produced by young lds. There's been such a change in Mormon culture and they man talk about like institutional deconstruction and reconstruction.
Mormons are a fascinating example of that because they have an open canon. Like they believe theology can change and it changes all the time and culture changes all the time as a part of the conviction of the community, which is a beautiful and very strange thing. So yeah, lots of, honestly lots of thoughts about both. They're fascinating. And at the same time I'm always kind of, please don't think of Salt Lake when you think of, when you think of the secret lives of Mormon wives. Like there was a show that came out in the 90s called SLC Punk. It's. Please remember our other core components of who we are.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, baby.
Yeah.
[01:01:59] Speaker A: When I watch that show, it just keep SLC weird. Yeah, when I watch the show it just feels like, it just feels like watching young Mormon women become like LA girls. That's just, that's the experience I have where I'm just like, I'm watching this happen in real time. And then there was a recent episode because for the record, I'm like playing chess on my computer while my wife watches. And I didn't need that disclaimer, but I felt like for my own sense of self, I needed it.
[01:02:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all believe you.
[01:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, fair enough. So there was an episode recently in this new season, she was watching it last night. And the two of the husbands as their wives are doing Dancing with the Stars were like on a rooftop like having a conversation basically about being a stay at home dad. And they're like, yeah, we could just live here in LA and we can go to the beach and there's, like, cool museums. Like, there's these, like, tar pits that we could go check out, and they're like, we could just get strollers and it'd be great. It's like, it's all happening right there on tv. So, anyway, all that aside, Johnny, thank you so much for talking with us. I think this conversation is beneficial on a number of levels, both for people in the pews and people in the pulpit. And so I appreciate you taking the time.
[01:03:11] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me. And that's my hope that it would be helpful to whoever's listening.
