“Ancient Future” with Winfield Bevins

Show Notes:

In this episode, Eddie and Chris have a hopeful conversation about the future of the church with guest Winfield Bevins. Winfield is an author, artist, pastor and church planter who sees younger generations longing to be a part of a bigger story. They are looking for something deeper, and they’re finding themselves diving into liturgical traditions of the Church.

Winfield is the director of Church Planting at Asbury Seminary and has helped train church leaders around the world and start churches and non-profit organizations. He is also the Executive Director of Creo Art Guild, a collective of Christian artists who bring beauty, goodness, and truth to the world through the arts.

Resources:

Learn more about Winfield on his website

Follow Winfield on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Learn about Creo Art Guild

Buy Liturgical Mission and Ever Ancient Ever New

Transcript:

Winfield Bevins 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04

Today we're talking to Winfield Bevins, who is the director of church planting at Asbury Seminary. He is a pastor. He's a professor, a church planter, and an artist. And today we're talking about the allure of the Christian tradition and its resources for the next generation.

Eddie Rester 00:24

I think he really spoke into something I've been sensing for a long time. He's done a lot of research and interviews with young adults with churches that begin to show that the shift is happening where people are turning back to more ancient modes of worship, where they're exploring again the liturgical practices of the church where beauty, the necessity of beauty, is now returning in the life of the church.

Chris McAlilly 00:56

Yeah, he connects worship and mission. He's written a couple books about this. One is called "Ever Ancient, Ever New: the Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation." And the most recent book that factors in the conversation is called "Liturgical Mission: the Work of the People for the Life of the World." And there are a lot of ways in here. I mean, one is... I think, just kind of what is it... If you're interested in why are people, young people, at a time where all of the statistics say they're leaving the church, why are some people attracted to ancient forms of Christianity? What's going on there? And then we talk about some of the constraints and some of the opportunities within the modern world for the church's engagement. And it's a very hopeful conversation. He sees a lot of things in his role across the global church. And he brings a lot of that in.

Eddie Rester 01:53

And I think for me, it's helpful sometimes to hear from someone who has kind of a 30,000 foot view of things instead of, you know, I'm locked into what I'm doing here in Jackson. You're locked in there, and Oxford, Mississippi. And sometimes it's just helpful to get a breath of fresh air from someone who's seeing what's happening. One of the things that, for me as we get near the end of the conversation, where he sees hope for church, the big C Church, the movement of Christ in the world.

Chris McAlilly 02:28
And we acknowledge this is a post-denominational moment in a lot of ways. Young people are not interested in engaging with denominational religion.

Eddie Rester 02:38 Our arguments and fights.

Chris McAlilly 02:39

Yeah. What we get to are really what are the deep spiritual resources that are available within this one unique and particular wisdom tradition, that are connected to both beauty, goodness, and truth. And it was lovely, lovely and fast.

Eddie Rester 03:01
It was a fast conversation. I couldn't believe that our time was up.

Chris McAlilly 03:04

Yep. Yep. Yep. So we're glad that you're with us on The Weight. We invite you to like it, share it. Share it with a friend, leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast. And it's always great to have you with us on The Weight. [INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 03:27
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 03:36
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 03:47
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 03:56

We will create space for heavy topics, but we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] Well, we're here today with Winfield Bevins. Winfield, thanks for taking time to be on the podcast with us.

Winfield Bevins 04:12
Hey, it's great to be here with you today. Thanks for having me.

Chris McAlilly 04:15

We are excited about the conversation. I wonder if you could maybe just jump in and tell us just a little bit about your faith journey and kind of where you know how you grew up and what you're doing now.

Winfield Bevins 04:27

Yeah, I mean, that's a long story. So I'll kind of you know, give the elevator speech, maybe. I you know, interesting journey. I was raised in kind of a nominal Baptist background. And so I had kind of gotten mixed up in the drugs and alcohol as a teenager and had a art teacher that actually took me under her wing and taught me how to paint and it was art that actually pointed me toward beauty, truth, and goodness. And I had a radical conversion experience sitting on a rock at a lake at the age of 19. And shortly after, kind of experienced a call to ministry. Went to Lee University. And what's interesting is there's all these convergences in my life. I'm an Anglican now, but I, at Lee, was introduced to John Wesley and fell in love with Wesley and some of the richness of that, the Wesleyan tradition. And ended up getting involved with church planting. And I was on my way to do a PhD at University of Manchester when a friend from college called me about planting the church in a little island community called the Outer Banks, North Carolina. And so I'm a surfer there. We got involved with church planning, we launched a nonprofit art gallery. And so art has really been a real cool part of my journey, as well, and that's how we grew our church was kind of out of this art gallery space, that a lot of young adults, you know, the Lord really used the arts as a key way to touch the lives of young people that were not in church. And so there on that little island, we just somehow got involved with working interdenominationally, and I started helping train church planting leaders across the US, became a part of the ACNA, Anglican Church in North America as a candidate for church planting and was speaking at a conference and a member of Asbury Theological Seminary search committee was there and long story short, told me about this global initiative. And two weeks later, I was in the president's office, and I've been at Asbury seminary for eight years now, writing, teaching, but traveling the world. So a lot of my perspective, is working across the denominations, you know, Pentecostal, Methodist, I mean, you just name the gamut. And so I have a global perspective, also North American, but also liturgical sacramental lenses, how I view mission in this theology. And, you know, I'm also, my wife and I, we have three daughters. And so, my daughter, Elizabeth is a freshman at Asbury University, which maybe some people on the podcast have heard about here recently in the news. I experienced that firsthand with my daughter on the first day when kind of outpouring began. So I've got a unique perspective as a local person here at Asbury, somebody who's connected to the schools, but also as a father who has a child who's a freshman at the university. And so anyway, that's a quick snapshot. I can drill in on any number of those things that I just mentioned. But I'm always looking for these convergences where the Lord's working in the spaces between words, Spirit, sacrament, mission, with a keen view of how all that relates to the next generation.

Chris McAlilly 08:20 Thanks for sharing.

Eddie Rester 08:22
If I remember correctly, you were on the Outer Banks for about 15 years. Is that right? Or is that, did I misread that?

Winfield Bevins 08:28 We were there for a decade.

Eddie Rester 08:29
A decade. Yeah. So, and it's a fantastic place, let me tell you. I don't know how they pulled you off the Outer Banks.

Winfield Bevins 08:35 I know. I still don't know.

Eddie Rester 08:38

One of our favorite places to vacation when we were in North Carolina. So that's my commercial for people to go to the Outer Banks. Ten years of church planning, it sounds like you really did it based on the arts instead of the typical 1980s or 1990s model of get a building and a band and a stage and some lighting. And you continue to be in that arena. So what do you see? What have you learned about churches that are planting effectively or just actually beginning to move back into reaching people today?

Winfield Bevins 09:16

Yeah, I mean, early on, there were a couple books that really impacted my life early on. I still lift these up, as I think are incredibly relevant for today. One is Robert Coleman's "Master Plan of Evangelism," which is actually about discipleship. It was about Jesus's strategy to reach the multitudes was not the multitudes, it was actually the 12. You know, he poured himself into the disciples who would lead the movement as it grew. So disciple making has always been at the heart of everything I've ever done. And the other book, and the interesting thing is both of these authors, writers, are here in Wilmore. The other book, George Hunter's "Celtic Way of Evangelism" really had significant impact on me in terms of how the Celtic saints kind of engaged culture. And one of the one of the unique things that you see out of Celtic Christianity is the engagement of the arts and kind of a visual engaging the senses with the gospel, not just the spoken word, or not just, you know, dealing with just theology proper, but kind of engaging the whole person with the whole gospel. And so I think, for me, early on that gave me a vision for more holistic approaches to church planting that wasn't built on bodies, buildings, or budgets, or launching long, slow smoke machines and laser light shows to draw big crowds, but planting churches that are really built around community discipleship. But also, there early on, part of our story was we planted this church and the Lord really blessed it, and people were coming to faith. And I really wrestled with what are we going to teach these people? One of the first Bible studies that I wrote, which was one of my first published books was called "Creed." I somehow made it through seminary and never really knew anything about the Creeds and stumbled into a used bookstore and saw Luther's "Small Catechism." And I knew Luther was a reformed guy and I knew catechism was a Catholic word. And it completely rocked me. And I remember picking it up and just discovering wow, the Apostles' Creed, this is just a simple, historic statement of the faith. What if we made this our church's declaration of faith? And that kind of sent me on a journey of wondering what other treasures might there be in the treasure chest of church history, and eventually, that led me kind of toward to embrace the Anglican tradition. And I think there's a lot of riches there for--and this is part of some of my more recent writings is looking at tradition for today, tradition. My most recent book with InterVarsity is called the "Liturgical Mission." And it looks at the work of the people for the sake of the world. And this stuff isn't just for, you know... It's really for all of us. And, you know, my argument is, it's not trying to make Anglicans. This is just trying to be good Christians, embracing the great tradition of the church.

Chris McAlilly 12:28

Yeah. What you said about the Creed reminded me of one of the Christian theologians and priests that had the biggest impact on me when I was in seminary, which was Archbishop Rowan Williams. Rowan Williams became the Archbishop of Canterbury, was leading the Anglican Communion at a very volatile and turbulent time. But he made the centerpiece of his of his work, really, this exploration of the Creed. And, you know, one of the things that he said in his very first press conference, I've not been able to get away from it, he said this: "And if there is one thing I longed for, above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country be able to begin to capture the imagination of our culture, to draw the strongest energies of our thinking and feeling into the exploration of what our creeds put before us." You know, when I read that, for the first time, I was like, "Yes!" You know, I mean, within that is like the B minor Mass from Bach. It's, you know, these massive cathedrals across Europe. There is this explosive and very amazing tradition of Christian art that comes out of the imaginative resources of historic Christianity. I think oftentimes, the creeds get dismissed as somehow coercive or exclusionary or whatever. But someone invited me to think of it more like the scales. You know, if we're doing improv jazz, the Creed is almost like the scales. How do you think about the Creed or even some of the other resources of historic Christianity in light of imagination and art?

Winfield Bevins 14:23

Well, two things. One is I tend to lump the Creeds in terms of--I see it as a package of the great tradition of the church. And this is what the Church has always affirmed and predates any Western captivity of the church. Oftentimes, there's this critique, "Well, isn't that kind of white, western kind of colonialism?" This predates the Creeds... You know, Thomas Odin argued that the creeds were genuinely multicultural in their origins and representation. And so I see the creeds, I see three kind of core elements emerging as you have kind of these doctrinal essentials of the faith, then you have the framework of historic, traditional liturgy that I think can be contextualized and has been contextualized, throughout the ages, across traditions. And then I also see this sense of the recovery of beauty. And you see that beauty, truth, and goodness have been these three transcendentals throughout the ages. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine are talking about these things. And it's interesting is you have with the dawning of the age of reason and modernity, you have this... Hans Boersma talks about the scissors of modernity, that the church actually embraced in the west the rise of the Age of Enlightenment. All of these things affected these cultural shifts to move away from a sacramental, God- centered worldview in place of placing humanity first. "I think, therefore I am" is kind of the great statement there. And I think one of the things that we see out of this Asbury revival is this hunger. Barna and all these statistical research show that all these young people leaving the church, well, God has another word to speak over this generation, has another word for the church. And I think it's holiness unto the Lord. And I think that, and I write about this in "Ever Ancient, Ever New." Part of the research I did there was interviewing hundreds of young adults across the US that are embracing, rather than rejecting the church. They're actually saying, "Give me that old time religion," or saying, "Give me the real stuff." They want to go deep. But they also want to experience a transcendent experience of God. And I think there's an interesting interplay between a hunger for an encounter of the Holy Spirit, which might be more of a charismatic dimension, with also I think it parallels the hunger for the encounter of the risen Christ through the real presence that the Eucharist or the liturgy, sacraments--I see them as actually being a part of the same thing. And that's interesting. It's something that I actually kind of argued in 2019, in that book. And there was one evening during the revival, I was down at the altar with Kevin Brown, the president of the university, and he brought that up and said, "Winfield, I think what we're experiencing here is, it's like what you were writing about, about that hunger among this next generation for the mystery for the transcendence, the beauty." And so I see... You know, I think we've relegated the Gospel to just cognitive head knowledge. And I think maybe that's what a generation has rejected, where we boiled it down to kind of...

Eddie Rester 18:19 Bullet points.

Winfield Bevins 18:20

Conservative or liberal, like, take your pick. You know, you're one of the other. We've, we've, you know... I think young people are moving beyond that, and they're saying, you know what? Actually, there must be more. God must be... They're looking for a holistic approach to the faith where they can experience God with their head, their heart, their hands.

Eddie Rester 18:45

I think about that, and I think about when I served with Chris in Oxford, the service during the year that attracted more college students than any other was always Ash Wednesday. They just turned out in droves for Ash Wednesday, because it was a experiential, transcendent moment where they, it was more than just sitting and absorbing.

Chris McAlilly 19:10

I don't know, I think it was probably because there's a lot of sinning that goes on between August and February. And, I don't know. There's something very powerful about just the physicality and the end the holistic spirituality that is embodied in that service. That's one of the things that you write about, Winfield, just about the allure of liturgy. Just talk a little bit about what are some of the other dimensions of liturgy that you find alluring for this generation.

Eddie Rester 19:15 A lot of sinning.

Chris McAlilly 19:15

And there's a lot of repentance needed. No, I'm joking. I think that one of the things about that service is its deep connection with the body, you know, this sense that our lives are fragile. We're limited. It kind of cuts against. It's a countercultural service in so many different ways. I mean, you know, you come from dust and to dust you shall return. You know, the fear of the Lord and the fear of death, it's kind of the beginning. It is the beginning of wisdom. There's this sense of, it's either death or there's something more. And you can come in that service and you have an opportunity to return to the Lord. You have an opportunity to repent, to change directions, to begin to reorient.

Eddie Rester 20:29

And define, for folks who may not be familiar with what liturgy is. They think it's, well, it's a call to worship. Define, just briefly, what liturgy is.

Winfield Bevins 20:38

Yeah, so oftentimes, when we think of liturgy, as like a formal form of worship. And liturgy, in the original etymology, it means "work of the people." And actually, it was a secular word that the early church co-opted. And what's interesting is, it actually is a word that actually ties to mission, like it had this idea of something that people were coming together to do for the sake, for the goodness of society. And it becomes a meaning of what we do together when we gather and worship. And so what he means there is liturgy is not just what we do in one hour on Sunday. It's actually connected to a framework worldview of being a Christian. So you have, and let me unpack that. You have the seasons of the church year. Right? So you were just talking about an Ash Wednesday service. Well, you can't take Ash Wednesday out of context of the beginning of the season of Lent. And you can't understand fully Easter until you've walked through Lent. And then Holy Week really sharply puts this into perspective. And you have the seasons of the church year. I kind of describe it as like... It's like discipleship It's following... It's a holistic discipleship program that the early church kind of formulated to follow Jesus throughout the church year. But the flow of the liturgy, and I talk about this in my latest book. I call it the symphony of the liturgy, there's this movement, like a symphony that's moving us back out into the world and mission. And so liturgy also is a buzzword. I don't know if buzzword is the right term, but I see it as a holistic package. And this is what I love about your more ancient traditions. You know, for instance, Anglicanism, which I tell people, John Wesley was an Anglican. Maybe we have some Methodists on the call. You know, Wesley was a good Anglican priest. He said, my favorite quote from John Wesley was, "There's no greater liturgy in all the world which breathes of more scriptural, rational piety than the common prayer of the Church of England." I love that quote. So you have this annual rhythm of following Christ, that the weekly celebration of worship is connected to them via lectionary readings. You have scripture readings. You have prayers. You have embodied practices, again, toward the season of Lent, you have fasting. You have, beginning with ashes, you're being marked with ashes and reminded that you are dust. You have the celebration of the Eucharist. You're coming and you're taking bread and wine. There's these senses. It's engaging the whole senses. And then if you want to take it further, there are actual spiritual practices that are connected to this whole. It's kind of like when I was a kid. I like real watches. You know, everybody's got their Apple Watch. So I'm showing you my, you know, I've got this classic, old school watch that actually has little...

Eddie Rester 23:46 Little hands on it.

Winfield Bevins 23:47

Little hands on it. I remember as a kid, I ripped the face off one of my brother's watches. Now, I may have gotten beat for this. But I was fascinated at the cogs, what was behind the clock face. And it's kind of like liturgy is this cosmic clock, if you will, where it's all interconnected. You have the annual cycles of the church year. You have scripture readings. Then you have the weekly that follows the annual, but then you have daily practices, like morning and evening prayer that's connected to these daily offices. I did a little book called "Grow at Home" for young families that gets into, there's a chapter on the church year. There are actually really beautiful, traditional practices that you can do together as a family during the season of Lent, during the season of Advent and Christmastide. And so the church, you know, these traditions move beyond just Sunday morning, and that's where some people tend to think of liturgy just as Sunday morning. I see it as a holistic discipleship rhythm that that church has created for us. And that should be a gift for pastors and then family members.

Chris McAlilly 25:05

Yeah. Yeah, I think about, you know, if you think about this as a resource or something that is alluring to the next generation and why that might be, I feel like what we ask... I mean, what I was asked to do when I was 18, 19, 20, 21. And what we ask of this generation is, you know, there is an awareness of the social construction of reality. And there's a sense of that you've got to construct meaning, you've got to construct significance out of the resources that you have in yourself. Like, go write your own story, go live your own life, go do your own thing. And, you know, I was talking to a young person the other day, and they said, you know, "The catchphrase of my generation is, 'I'm gonna go... I'm not gonna go hang out. I'm gonna go work on myself.'" And so there's a sense of that at the center of that is you. And part of what this holistic set of resources that the tradition offers and the liturgy offers is an opportunity to be drawn out of yourself and into a different story. And I think, I mean, for me, that is what's so compelling about it. But I wonder if you could maybe, what is another place where you see this holistic and time-bound set of resources, practices, liturgies, what are some of the ways in which it draws folks out of themselves into a larger story?

Winfield Bevins 26:27

Yeah, I think that's lovely. I think the... You know, again, I'm thinking of multiple books that... So, the "Liturgical Mission" that just came out, chapter two is called "Story-Formed Worship. You know, we live in a story deprived world, and contemporary Christianity is me-centered. You know, the music's like, "I feel happy." Well, what if you don't feel happy? Well, God doesn't want you to feel happy. And liturgy, says, hey, actually, you belong to a larger story, and it's the Gospel story. And there's a creator, and we follow, and that's the significance of the church year. And the liturgy is it's connecting you to a larger story. And it re-narrates your world. And that's what's really profoundly missing. And most, I think, young people are hungry for this. They're wanting to just move beyond some scripture passage that's exegeted to understanding their place in this larger Gospel narrative.

Eddie Rester 27:34

As we, I'm thinking back to a lot of work I did on post modernity, over a decade, maybe 15 years ago, and one of the things about the postmodern shift was the loss of meta narrative. And I think we felt that deeply over the last decade. And I think you're exactly right, people now, and particularly the younger generations, are hungry for what's the story they're a part of. Not "do I get to make everything about just me?" And I feel like there's this, maybe a recovery of, "I have to be a part of a bigger story. It can't just be that we all have our own atomized stories anymore." Go ahead.

Winfield Bevins 28:18

Well, I was gonna say so I did these interviews with young adults that were embracing traditional liturgy for "Ever Ancient, Ever New: the Allure of Liturgy." And so some of the themes were a hunger for transcendence, a hunger for historic rootedness, for instance. Like, so many kind of contemporary Christians kind of like, hey, you know, it's almost like, "Hey, Christianity has existed for maybe the last 10 years." And then there were, "Let's go all the way back to Jesus." And young people are actually saying we want to be a part of something much bigger, something kind of across denominations, something that's ancient and future. And then also there's a global component to this as well, that I think we belong to something much bigger than ourselves. The other interesting thing is back to the creeds, kind of where we started, what the creeds, do, you know, the creeds are essentially this summary of the bigger Gospel story. You know, it's like, the Apostles Creed, for instance, like a little paragraph, that's one of the earliest formulated statements of the Christian faith that the early church actually crafted to articulate what are these larger story form doctrines. So it begins with, "We believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth." So there's a creator. You have the creation account. Then you have Jesus Christ the Son, who comes in. We know that he lived, died, was buried, resurrected. Then you have affirmation of the Spirit, the Church, the forgiveness of sins. So it's kind of a compacted way for us to like memorize that story and to embrace that story. And what's interesting is one of the points that I highlight--I came up with eight kind of factors of why young adults are embracing traditional liturgy. One is what I call countercultural, actually tired of watered down, me-centered... To embrace liturgy is actually... You know, some people are like, "Well, is this the new shiny silver bullet?" No. Liturgy is not going to grow your church, but it might grow your people. And I think there's a hunger to actually go deeper in a way that's actually countercultural. Rather than giving giveaways to try to get people in church, let's give them liturgy. You know, let's have them recite creeds. And I think that kind of goes to this deeper hunger where they're not looking to be entertained. It's moving beyond entertainment evangelism. It's moving beyond a me-centered approach to Christianity to a very God-centered. It's kind of shifting that to this larger narrative to say, we belong to this larger story. And actually, if there's a story, then there's a storyteller, and that storyteller is God.

Chris McAlilly 31:12

I went back and was looking at... You know, I think youth ministry culture is kind of interesting. There are people that do a deep dive on what youth ministry is and how it's evolved. And one of the voices within that conversation I found very helpful is this guy named Andrew Root, who was a youth pastor, and he went to Princeton. He's written a series of books kind of putting youth ministry and the formation of young people in conversation with Charles Taylor's 900- page kind of doorstop of a book, "The Secular Age." Definitely don't recommend the book, but one of the things that Root does with it is he says, you know, the argument of Taylor is something has shifted. 500 years ago everybody believed and kind of the conditions of belief were such that, if you lived in the Western world, you were going to be a believer in the Christian faith. That was just kind of the way things are set up. And things are no longer that way. Things are very much contested. There are rival stories, and most of the rival stories, whether they be science, economics, politics, all of those are really... They all live within an imminent frame. There's no transcendence in those stories. They're all basically "this world is all there is, and there's nothing beyond it." And one of the things that he does with that, the whole first half of this one book that he wrote, that Andrew Root wrote called "Faith in a Secular Age" is all about authenticity, and about this deep desire that young people have for authenticity. And if there is nothing else than you and your story and working on yourself, then the best thing that you can hope for is to be authentic, you know. And so this... you launch on this authenticity project. And again, I was talking to one of the young people in our community the other day, who doesn't go to our church regularly, one of the things that this individual said was," I look at my friends on social media, and they're just impersonating one another." And, you know, everybody's trying to be authentic, but I think there's, you know, there's a breakdown in that project. And so young people then are looking for something beyond that, something more than just being super authentic, something that, again, I just think liturgy and the great tradition of the church are our resources, just like art, aesthetics, etc, to draw you out of yourself and beyond and to open you again, perhaps, to a transcendent dimension to your experience of reality. And I think that, you know, the way you put forward the liturgy, it definitely is compelling in this "Ever Ancient, Ever New." And I love the second book that you're talking about, that connects liturgy to mission, as well, because I do think that's another dimension for young people. They want their spirituality, their faith, their life to be connected to something that's going to make a difference in the world.

Winfield Bevins 34:09

Well, I think that's oftentimes the critique of liturgy and tradition is like, well, let's just, you know, join in a cloister that's so irrelevant. And the book actually probably will make everyone feel uncomfortable, because, your more evangelical or missional Protestants will probably be uncomfortable. I mean, you can't talk about liturgy and mission without drawing from the well of Catholic and Orthodox sources. Because Protestants and evangelicals and charismatics, there's not a lot of scholarship and there's not a lot of, you know... And then the book also kind of challenges and it tries to bring... Again, it's one of those books that's going to make people feel uncomfortable. But I do think in the end, one of the things that I look at, I actually tell some stories I've looked at. I did some ethnographic research. I've interviewed churches across the US and I drew from a lot of global sources. Justo Gonzalez wrote the foreword to the book. I look at some multi ethnic congregations. There's a thing. And my first chapter is called "Liturgical Renewal." This isn't a fad. I think that's what I kind of start the book out by saying is, actually, this started as a movement in the Catholic Church in the 19th century, and there was this liturgical renewal movement, and it was a recovery of early Christian sources for worship and practice. And it spreads through Vatican II into the mainline denominations. You have in 60s and 70s, you have all these prayer book revisions. The Methodists, Presbyterian, Lutherans, they're all revising their prayer books based on this influence. But what happens is with Webber and other evangelicals in the late 70s, early 80s, this wave, it's like a wave. It's like a tsunami, that begins to hit the evangelicals. And then you have these charismatic evangelicals. And what I kind of... Here's what's fascinating. Young people and emerging multi ethnic leaders are on this next wave, and they've never heard of Robert Webber or Thomas Odin. And this is what I love about it. They don't even know what Vatican II was. I actually kind of see this as, maybe that's the revival. Maybe this is something that God is actually doing in the church, that it's a hunger for a genuine, authentic ecumenicism, that's not a watered down ecumenicism. But it's what Odin referred to as "ecumenicism of the spirit" that's rooted in the creeds, that's rooted in Orthodoxy. It's not watering down doctrine. It's going back to the essentials. And this is where I see the framework of the historic fourfold liturgy actually can and is being contextualized. So leaders, there's a whole movement of Afro Latino Pentecostals, churches that I look at that they're contextualizing liturgy. I don't think they're watering down. they're actually contextualizing it. You know, they're just bringing it into their culture. Word and table is kind of at the heart of that, there's so much more I can say about that. But the neat thing is that I'm seeing--and this is maybe back to your question at the very beginning--I'm seeing church plants, new churches are doing this in a really holistic way. They're making those intuitive connections, that liturgy and sacrament and mission are not diametrically opposed to one another, but actually directly interconnected. And that's kind of what I'm trying to do in this book in a very humble kind of way. I'm not an official liturgist, but, I'm writing as a missiologist, but also a practical theologian, and also a priest and a minister. And so, with some of the insights that I've got from working with actual churches on the ground, and I hope it's a book... To be quite honest, these two books that we've referenced, are going to be books that will be around, and I wrote this for the future of the church.

Chris McAlilly 38:25

So when you say, the church, I want to jump in on that, because I do think, you know, one of the things that I noticed among young people... There are two things. One is a hesitancy to engage with denominationalism. Just kind of all these denominations, what's going on? That, at the same time of what you're talking about: a broad, genuine, cross denominational deep dive into the essentials of the faith that ultimately open something up. I just wonder how you think about that. Do people... How do you think about what's happening, really, I guess, in American and global Christianity, in the world of Protestantism, mainly, just kind of across denominations? Kind of what's your read on that? I think I understand your perspective. I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about it.

Winfield Bevins 39:19

I mean, again, I believe we clearly live in a kind of post denominational context that's post everything, right? Post Christendom, post everything, you know. But I do, I actually really believe there's a ecumenicism of the spirit. I think God is bringing leaders together. Like yesterday, I had two, one of my closest friend who's a spiritual mentor, he's a father... He's from El Salvador. He's just incredibly deep, spiritual well, very charismatic, Spanish speaking leader who, he'll just drop... He's like this... He'll just appear in my office. He's like, you know, "the Lord told me to come pray for you." I'm like, "Yes." And he'll set these incredible times of prayer and fellowship. And then there was kind of one of the key leaders in North America for denomination for Korean immigrant churches. And all these people seek me out for church planting wisdom, because I've worked... You know, denominational level, I help create systems and structures for different denominations. And there's just like a holy moment. Here we are in my office. We're just having this time of fellowship and prayer, and I look around, I'm like, Here are these... This is an ecumenicism of the spirit. Like we had tears in our eyes. Here's a... Both of them, their first language was not English. Let's put it that way. I was like, I have to capture a picture. So I had my assistant come in. I was like, this has been like being with, you know, Jesus, Moses, and Isaiah coming in, you know, transfiguring... It was like, this was all... I've got to capture this. And that's kind of the new Christianity. That's the new ecumenicism. It's not a watered down, least common denominator. It's a genuine... God is bringing those who belong to him together in a very powerful way in this moment. This is my experience globally. When I'm with global leaders, there's such a hunger to get beyond all the baggage, to get beyond all this. And I think this is also what's happening with this generation. They're tired of arguing about are you conservative or liberal? They're tired of what denomination you're part of? Did you split from this or that? They don't care. Let's go back to the roots, to very essence. There's a beautiful quote, and I'm gonna butcher it. But you can Google it and look it up. And it's actually in my liturgical mission book, where I have a chapter on unity and mission, where I start the chapter off with Pope Benedict, then was Cardinal Ratzinger, was talking about this, the future of the church in Europe. And he basically says this. He says, it's over. He said, the church will be decimated. She will lose all of her buildings. She'll lose all of her wealth. He said, the Church will lose all of the things that she has taken for granted, all the privileges of society. He said, but in the ashes, there will be... He said, there will be an emergence. She will regain the very essence of the Christian faith. And I think that's what's happening in our day is I think the church... You know, call it post-Christendom, whatever. I just say, you know what? The barn's burning down, and what's going to emerge out of this is a purity, a gem, a multifaceted diamond is what we're experiencing. And I think we see this in the numbers of the decline of the church in North America and the West. I think Pope Benedict's quote, actually really, right on. It was, like, maybe the 1960s that he said this, but out of that will emerge this beautiful, pure form of Christianity. And you see this has happened throughout the ages. So that gives me hope for the future. I actually think God's doing something with... You know, I'm hopeful. Well, let me say this... Um... What's the right word? I"m hopefully, not hopefully optimistic. I'm cautiously optimistic or I don't want to use the word optimistic. I'm hopeful because I'm hopeful in Jesus, the resurrected Lord. And God's gonna resurrect the church out of all the mess that so many of us... Church leaders are just, you know, they're kind of in fog right now. But the stuff I'm seeing is giving me excitement and hope for the future of thechurch.

Eddie Rester 44:08

You're not the first one who's actually shared that hope with us. We had another guest couple months ago who said, it's gonna fall apart, but the Holy Spirit has never abandoned the church. And I feel like...

Chris McAlilly 44:22 Yeah, it was Alvin Plantinga.

Eddie Rester 44:23 Plantinga.

Chris McAlilly 44:24
Plantinga. Yeah, he was reformed leader. And, you know, I mean, he, this guy, I mean, he's seen a whole lot, and most of it has been...

Eddie Rester 44:33

Taught seminary students forever. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 44:35

He basically said the church has been in decline for the entirety of my ministry. But he also said, you know, the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church belongs to Jesus Christ. I mean, it was like the conviction with which he said it was incredibly powerful and he said, I'm hopeful for the church's future not because of who we are, but because the church belongs to Jesus Christ. And God will not abandon the church. It's just this powerful statement. I was like you believe it, I'm on board. Let's go.

Eddie Rester 45:02

Well, and we restarted confirmation at the church I'm at this year to bring kids, high school and middle school, through a process to making commitments. And part of that is at the end, I sit with the student and the mentor and just asked sets of questions about their faith. And with all the stats that Ryan Burge can throw at us that make me want to crawl in a hole sometimes, I just felt a lot of hope after those conversations with middle school students and high school students. You know, they're starting ministries. They're pulling their friends together to start small groups, because they heard about how powerful Wesley talked about it. There's just this movement, that if we'll get out of the way, I think, and stop trying to dress it up into something else, that God will do what God alone can do.

Winfield Bevins 45:58

I think this revival at Asbury, nobody planned it. I know these... Again, the president's my neighbor two houses down. My daughter rooms and is best friends with the chaplain's daughter. Like, these are my neighbors. These are just really humble people that are non charismatic. The revival, there were no self-proclaimed prophets. There was... I walked over there Wednesday afternoon, because someone texted me. And I remember walking in and just tearing up, just the sense of God's presence pouring out on people was so overwhelming. And to see that day after day, these young people just feeling drawn. Nothing, I mean nothing made this happen. And on the back of the sanctuary, or the chapel, or the Hughes Auditorium is the wording "Holiness unto the Lord." And it was like, I believe God has another word to speak over this generation. So much... You know, this has been written off as Gen Z, the rise of the religious nones. I talk about that in Ever Ancient, Ever New," and what I was trying to do in that book in 2019, to say, hey, there's another story here. Rather than leaving the church, there's a group of young people who are actually saying, give me the church. And moving beyond all the splits and schisms and all that, they're saying, let's go back to the very essence of what it means to be the church. And I think what this revival symbolizes for me is that God is speaking another word over this generation, and saying, "This generation belongs to me, and I will raise up." Now I'm so encouraged. I believe that the Lord is going to raise up a whole new generation of missionaries, church leaders, leaders in the marketplace. I think there are new wineskins emerging that will be ancient future, like, I think, some of those old paradigms probably need to die. And I think there are things that this generation will do to reach this next generation. And I think those of us on this call right now, the three of us, like, it's kind of like Moses. We'll be Taught seminary students forever. Yeah. there to be able to see maybe some of that promised land and some of how this generation is going to be called to reclaim territory for the Lord. And so again, I'm optimistic, hopeful rather, you know, that God is always calling his people unto Himself. And my hope is in the Lord.

Chris McAlilly 48:40
That's a good place to put it down.

Eddie Rester 48:43
What a great, great conversation, and a quick conversation. Thank you for your work, Winfield. We really appreciate your time today.

Chris McAlilly 48:49
Yeah, we really we didn't get to talk about your painting and the icons and...

Eddie Rester 48:57
I wanted to talk about beauty. I wanted to talk about beauty. N.T. Wright talks about it, and just... Anyway.

Chris McAlilly 49:03 That's another...

Winfield Bevins 49:04

Let's do... I would love to do another time. Real quickly as we're ending, one of the things I'm doing that's actually connected is I really have a strong sense coming out of the revival is I've formed a nonprofit. It's creoartguild.org. And the whole vision is launching local art guilds across the United States in strategic location to gather the artists. Because one of the things I found is there had been Christian art organizations, and a lot of those have kind of been all over. But none of them have been connected to formation for artists or, to be quite honestly, to the church. And the church has kind of relegated its role where I believe God, the greatest patron of the church, or of the arts, should be the church.

Eddie Rester 49:54 The church.

Winfield Bevins 49:55
Need to embrace love, disciple, mentor, and mobilize to Christian artists for the sake of bringing beauty, goodness, and truth to the world. So maybe that's our next podcast.

Chris McAlilly 50:05 That sounds great.

Eddie Rester 50:06 I think so.

Chris McAlilly 50:08
That sounds great. Thanks a lot, Winfield.

Winfield Bevins 50:10 Thanks so much for having me.

Eddie Rester 50:14
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, nsubscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 50:20

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com [END OUTRO]