“Breaking The Inherited Church Model” with Lisa Greenwood
Shownotes:
How do churches adapt to the world we’re in today? How do institutions with inherited traditions of membership and specific roles to play in a community change to actually fit their current context? Today’s guest, Lisa Greenwood, has a few ideas. Even if you’re not a pastor, this episode provides some thoughtful ways to engage the people around you and to help you better serve your community.
Lisa is an ordained elder in the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church. She currently serves as Vice President of Leadership Ministry at Texas Methodist Foundation and Wesleyan Investive. She is also the Executive Director of the National Association of United Methodist Foundations. These organizations offer financial services--loans, investments, endowments, donor advised funds, and grants--while also working with leaders across the country to help churches live out their mission and calling in their local communities.
Resources:
Suggestions from Lisa:
Gil Rendle, “Jacob’s Bones”
Kate Bowler’s podcast, “Everything Happens”
Anne Snyder’s “Comment”
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 00:03
We had a great conversation today with Lisa Greenwood. Lisa Greenwood is in a part of the work that we don't think much about. She works for a conference foundation, but it's a little different type of foundation.
Chris McAlilly 00:19
Yeah, so the foundation that she works at, there are kind of two different ones. One is she's the president of the Texas Methodist Foundation, and then also an initiative called the Wesleyan Investive. Both of these provide financial services for local churches. They also convene conversations among leaders, and provide, I would say, just in general just investment in both what the church is now, supporting the church's mission locally in places across the country, but also where her passion and energy is, is in some of the changes that need to happen if the church is to have a credible and strong witness in the next season, or in the next generation. What would you take away from the conversation, Eddie?
Eddie Rester 01:07
You know, one of the things I mean, there's just so much here. And if you're a church leader, if you are a pastor, there's still a lot of layers to this conversation today. But we really got into talking about cohorts to learn, but the thing that she said, was that everything is an experiment. And I feel that in my bones right now. If the church is going to recover, its witnessed that, to see everything not as something we have to do, but as an experiment.
Eddie Rester 01:38
The other thing that she said is we're not failing at what we were doing. We're just doing things basically for the wrong era, that we're doing things for an era before this massive shift of folks to unaffiliated happened and that, it's like the doctor told me recently, "No, Eddie, you didn't do anything wrong. You're just old," is what he told me. That's really what he told me. And I didn't go back to him.
Chris McAlilly 02:07 [LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester 02:07
I feel like, so while the church isn't doing anything wrong, it's just we're doing the things that we did 30 years ago and wondering why they're not working anymore. We're asking pastors to do the same thing that the churches did 30 years ago, and then wondering why those pastors aren't any good at what they do.
Chris McAlilly 02:26
She talks a lot about center and edge conversations. And I think, you know, broadly if you're, let's say, you're not all that interested in church leadership, but you're interested in kind of leading organizational change, or maybe you're trying to think about kind of what's the right mix of conversation partners that are really going to help me think about the next season of my work. And, you know, I think I'll take that frame away from this conversation that there's the need for conversations at the center of institutional life. But there's also the need for conversations at the edge. There's the need to renovate and renew and reform. But there's also the need to create new initiatives that perhaps have never been done before. And they're seeding conversations and creating learning communities in both directions. And they see both is valuable, even if they're slightly different conversations.
Eddie Rester 03:23
Yeah, I think this is an episode, I mean a conversation, that was just joyful, you could hear the hope in her voice that, I mean, we've had several these folks we've talked to recently that hope for the future of the church. And I think that's where I am. And it's just a matter of, how do we lean into that future. So I hope you enjoy the episode today, wherever you are. Like it, share it, write us a review. If you don't like it, send Chris an email, maybe.
Chris McAlilly 03:56
You're gonna like it. And we're glad to have you with us on The Weight today.
Eddie Rester 04:00
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.
Chris McAlilly 04:13
We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 04:29
We're here today with Lisa Greenwood. Lisa, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Lisa Greenwood 04:33
It's great to be here. Thanks for asking me.
Chris McAlilly 04:35
Tell folks, that maybe who are not familiar with your work and your role, just a little bit about what you do and kind of the scope of the work that you're currently doing.
Lisa Greenwood 04:46
Okay, so I am the president of Texas Methodist Foundation and Wesleyan Investive, and I'm really just two months into that role. But for 10 years I've been working with at TMF in leadership ministry, and most recently with our national footprint, which was, which is Wesleyan Investive. And so, in broad sweeps, we are really trying to help the church be its strongest witness. And that means sometimes we offer financial services, loans, investments, endowments, donor advised funds, some granting, those sorts of things. But also we work with leaders, really across the country, who are in positions to leverage change in a season when we really need to be thinking about the deep change and working toward deep change in the church's witness.
Lisa Greenwood 05:49
And so we have largely worked in the United Methodist Church, but we have much broader reach than that, and have the ability to work with folks who are in sympathy with Wesleyan values. And so that is giving us an opportunity right now to work with GMC and independent churches, who claim Wesleyan values. And that's really a fun opportunity for us right now.
Eddie Rester 06:19
So folks may not realize this, but that's a pretty big shift from the ways that foundations, particularly United Methodist foundations and local annual conferences, which are attached to states or sections of states have worked. Typically it's been they do the investment side, maybe they do loans. Ours, I don't think. The foundation in Mississippi doesn't do loans. It's mainly investments, endowments, and those things. How did that begin to shift? Where? Whose idea was that? How did it begin to move out from just kind of the traditional, this is the way it's always been done?
Lisa Greenwood 06:52
Right. So this was more than 30 years ago for us. And realizing that as we offered financial services for churches, as we came alongside them as they were growing and expandin, and really trying to help reach their mission field, that sometimes it either was difficult for them to get traditional bank loans. Frankly, commercial banks have have gone in and out of really wanting to work with churches. And so we just saw that as a real need and a way that we could partner with churches to help them realize their vision for the future and live into what they believed and discerned was the difference that God was asking them to make.
Lisa Greenwood 07:41
And so originally, it was a lot of new construction and continues to be new construction. But also what we're seeing is that folks are repurposing their buildings. And so there are renovations and things that we can help lend money for, for those projects, as well. All of it is really to help the church better serve its mission field.
Eddie Rester 08:04
You know, I think about there's a church in north Mississippi that, for a while, kind of converted to being a coffee shop and doing some different things in its community there. And I think that we're starting to see a lot of churches think differently about facilities, what they need, what they don't need. But also, can their facilities be used in a different way for the community? What are some of the creative things that you've seen churches do the job, that y'all maybe worked with?
Lisa Greenwood 08:31
So interesting, I've just been a part of a conversation that is really about how churches are thinking about their property as an asset for the sake of their vision, right? We have tended to just think of the building as the place where we gather. We've thought of it as, sometimes as it gets older and it needs more maintenance, and there's deferred maintenance, then it can kind of feel like an albatross. And this was a whole event, a symposium really, with folks that were real estate folks and developers and pastors and actually investors and denominational folks, other...
Lisa Greenwood 09:20
It was fascinating to think about how do we think differently about our buildings, our property as assets that help us then lean into our mission. So lots of folks have extra, actually extra land or building space. And so we're seeing folks that are working toward and are building affordable housing or senior living or partnering with retail partners that are actually helping to bring service says to the community in a new way, but also bring income to the church. Coffee shops, you know, as you mentioned. So it was really a fascinating conference. And I think we're seeing those kinds of things happen across the country in creative ways.
Chris McAlilly 10:19
I think... I was a part of like a camp, a camping ministry board for a while. So, you know, camping ministry really got off the ground post World War Two, and you'd have a summer camp that would run for 10 weeks on 150 acres of land, and all of a sudden, you know, they realize from a viability perspective, some of the funding streams that supported the camp over the course of time were going to run out. And so then you start asking questions about, you know, what are your assets, and you have people in a network that are connected to that camp, and then you have the actual physical land. And the questions in the board really became how do we, from a big picture perspective, you know, have people accessing and using the property, not just for 10 weeks in the summer, but, you know, every weekend during the year, and then, you know, Monday through Friday, and not just on the weekends.
Chris McAlilly 11:16
And that can take, you know, a lot of different forms, and a lot of different communities. I know, some churches in some urban settings, that have, you know, the neighborhoods have really shifted or changed. And so now the neighborhood, you know, that perhaps grew the church 30, 40 years ago, and the neighborhood that's there now might look different.
Chris McAlilly 11:38
And so, you know, we had a conversation, I can't remember, last season, maybe, Eddie, with some folks in East Nashville that were doing amazing, basically, community. The church building functioned as a community hub, and almost like a nonprofit hub that allowed different dimensions of the community that weren't always connecting with one another to connect with one another. Because the church almost functioned as like a semi public private space, that had trust from a lot of different constituencies. And it was fascinating to hear kind of the way in which the church building itself was being repurposed, or reimagined for a new season.
Lisa Greenwood 12:25
Right? Right. There's a church in East Dallas, that, you know, it kind of the classic story of, they used to be worshipping 2,000, big old sanctuary. And they had 60,000 square feet of education space, and they were declining and declining, and they were living off their endowment, and got a young pastor in there who had a vision for what it meant to engage their community, and really literally just started walking the neighborhood and meeting people and learning what the assets were that existed in that community. And the people who had ideas for startups and things, and they created a co-working space, and they cleaned out so much of their building that had kind of just become storage space. And they partnered with a daycare and with a local theatre group. And they, you know, got their kitchen up to snuff or whatever for code and began to use that as a space for folks that were wanting to do food, you know, really, a food business right out. Now, they had a commercial kitchen to do that. And, I mean, just, they suddenly turned that church--and not suddenly, right. It took time, but really had the support of this church, and they turned it inside out. So that it was absolutely, and is today, a hub in that community, a real asset for the whole community. And it's in a neighborhood.
Chris McAlilly 14:06
So if one of the things that's changing is that just the nature of the relationship between the church and the community, and that happens in different ways and different settings. You mentioned earlier, just this concept of deep change, you know, and I wonder, it sounded like for you, that's an important kind of weighty phrase. When you think about that, just kind of the church's relationship to the broader culture or the community at large, what are some things that you see that need to change or that you would hope the investment of your organization would help to, I guess, create in terms of deep change?
Lisa Greenwood 14:49
Sure, sure. So, you know, we're all watching this trend of fewer and fewer people affiliating with organizations, membership-based organizations, from Rotary to local churches, right, whatever you want to describe. Those membership-based organizations are declining, because increasing numbers are not seeing affiliation or membership as important. Okay. Well, the church is a membership-based organization, and so we are riding that decline in affiliation. But at the same time, growing numbers of folks, they're tracking that growing numbers of folks are calling themselves spiritual, who are seeking meaning and purpose and even encounters with the holy and wonder and those things that I would hope a faith would enable.
Lisa Greenwood 15:55
And so, you know, as we look at that, and look at that decline in affiliation and the growth in searching for meaning and purpose and belonging and spirituality, right, then we have this growing number of spiritual but not religious, as they've been dubbed. But that feels to me, like that's our opportunity, because they really are seeking what the church has to offer, but might never walk into a church. Okay, so we know all that. We know that's the picture. But the thing is, everything in our systems, our denominational systems, our seminaries, our leadership training and structures and accreditation and affirmations and reward systems and support systems support the inherited model of the attractional model church, right. And so, all of it, and we can continue to do that, but we are going to continue to reach a smaller and smaller bit of the population. We are going to ride that line because that trend is not turning around.
Lisa Greenwood 17:02
Now, the important thing to realize is the inherited model of the church is not the same thing as what we mean when we say the Church, the Body of Christ, right. That is one way we structure. But we have put all our eggs in that basket, we folks who are associated with organized religion, we denominations, whatever. We put all our eggs in the basket of the inherited model of the attractional church. And so what's emerging is this mixed ecology. This is what we talk about all the time in our house. But this mixed ecology, which is a mixture of, yes, the inherited model attractional churches, but also those kinds of inside-out missional churches, like I just described in East Dallas and we've named a couple of other examples, but also coffee shops and online communities and, you know, home churches and faith communities that are popping up that don't look like or rely on buildings and traditional structures.
Lisa Greenwood 18:07
Okay? So if you've got this mixed ecology, but none of our current systems support these things, these innovations and these faith communities, I think we have to think differently about who are the leaders, what's needed to help support, what's the spiritual infrastructure needed for this emergence that's occurring? And these are, I mean, these are questions we need to be asking as we come alongside, we who are in the position of kind of an edge position for the church, right, which I think foundations are. We believe and are deeply committed to the mission of the church, but that's our client, the mission of the church, not the structure of the church or the denomination. So how do we come alongside what is emerging and help support innovative leadership, support innovative models. Some of that is financial. Some of that is gathering cohorts of these leaders so they don't feel so alone. But it's... At every level of the church, we cannot be putting all our eggs in the basket of the inherited model.
Eddie Rester 19:22
What you're talking about, I'm thinking about a book I read, gosh, a decade or 15 years ago, "The Innovator's Dilemma," by a guy, I can't remember his first name, his last name was Christensen, and his son played basketball at Duke. That's one of the reasons I remember him. But the book talks about all these companies that hit the peak of their niche, and then they disappeared, because they could not maintain what they were doing and innovate. They had innovated to this point. But because they were so invested in, he called it their cash cow, they could not then break away to do the innovative next thing, and I think what you're describing with this inherited model of church is a lot of what he was talking about 15, 20 years ago in the business world.
Eddie Rester 20:12
He talked about, you know, the people who made cassette tapes, all of them disappeared. They didn't make DVDs, and then our CD ROMs. And those people disappeared. None of them are in the streaming business. Anyway, so all of that, but now, I feel like y'all are kind of giving that lift to folks to say, "let us support you as you step out of the inherited model." So, as you think of, as you start talking about the need to support leaders and cohorts, what are some of the effective things that y'all are doing to help do some of that supportive work--not just with funding, but in how you're developing leaders and helping churches think adaptively for this next season?
Lisa Greenwood 20:57
Right, right. Well, I can tell you that everything we're doing, we feel like is an experiment, right, because we don't have the answers. If we knew, we would just line it up and say, "Here's what you need to do. Do these three things, and everything will be better." But of course, what we're all doing is experimenting. But we believe wholeheartedly in the power of networking and of cohorts and of gathering folks for conversation. We use all the time Margaret Wheatley's words, "Conversation is the currency of change." And it's this notion that if you can bring the right people into a room around a good question, and, you know, kind of give them the container to learn from each other and to delve in and discover that those conversations lead to new ways of thinking, which leads to new ways of behaving, which leads to new outcomes, right. So we're wholly invested in this notion that conversations are the currency of change.
Lisa Greenwood 21:57
And so if we can create and a container where we can pay attention to the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit is doing, then we hope we're sparking imagination for what's possible, igniting imagination for what's possible. And so, everything we do kind of follows that model. And so we have some cohorts of leaders who are in, you know, kind of center roles. So they're innovative, but they pastor churches, and so they're in kind of a central role, meaning that they're trying to do differently. They're trying to be the church in their communities, but do that perhaps differently than maybe the inherited model, but they're doing it from the seat of a senior pastor of a church. And so we have a couple of cohorts of those.
Lisa Greenwood 22:54
We have, we're grateful to the Lilly Endowment for some grant funds that help us do these cohorts. And, and we also have cohorts of edge leaders. So these are folks who equally want to innovate and live into this sort of mixed ecology. But these are pastors who are doing it through maybe a nonprofit, or maybe they're in, maybe they're an associate of a larger church, but they're doing kind of this edge ministry in the community, something. We've got a guy who's doing some creative ministry in New Mexico. He is a bartender bi-vocational gathering folks for, you know, sort of faith formation. Really, we've got folks who are doing some online community gathering. We've got actually a couple of campus ministers that are doing things very differently than maybe the model they inherited.
Lisa Greenwood 24:03
And so one of the other things that we do is sometimes is say, what if we gathered folks around this issue or this topic, this sort of adaptive issue? And right now, one of those is--and we're all struggling with this--but what does online space make possible for spiritual formation? So that's the guiding question. And we've gathered some folks, not just who are asking the question but then not sure what to do with it, but folks who are actually doing something with it. They're trying things. They're experimenting. We've given some little micro grants to help them with their ideas, but also then planning to have a larger gathering of other folks who can learn from what these folks have done, but also can, through human centered design, come up with their own ideas. So that gathering will be in the in the spring of '23. I could go on with some of the things we're doing but...
Eddie Rester 25:01
I was just gonna say I think it's fascinating that you've got "centered" and "edge." And that's, I'm just sitting here thinking about how important that is. Because the role of the pastor in an established, brick-and-mortar church has a certain responsibility to, as you said, the inherited model, but helping them think about how can I break time or how can I set people free for that. I think it's so important, versus the edge people.
Lisa Greenwood 25:26
Yeah, and one of the things because, this is a thing we struggle with all time, don't they all needed to be in the same room. And yes, sometimes they need to be in the same room with each other and learning from each other. But as they're doing their work, what we found is, they are... They're meeting... Everybody meets resistance, every leader meets resistance, when they're working toward change. We know that. The place from which that resistance comes is different. For a center leader, who's likely to get resistance from within their existing congregation and constituency, their board, you know, and even the conference, right, as they tried to do things differently.
Lisa Greenwood 26:12
And for edge folks, they're likely not getting resistance from their constituency, their constituency is right with them. They're getting resistance from maybe the organizational structures, their denomination, or whatever, that are not sure what to do with them, because they don't fit the mold. And they're getting resistance from, kind of, life and the business model. You know, how do I provide for my family and do this ministry that I feel so deeply called to do? And so we just felt like with the resistance coming from different places, the questions that they were asking, and the things they needed to do their innovative work was different. And so they needed that time on their own, you know.
Chris McAlilly 27:01
I think that's so helpful as a framework or, you know, as one of the frameworks with which to work. Because you do see a need across the landscape of American Christianity for basically, like, renovation and new builds, you know. I mean, to use a real estate metaphor, you know, like, renovation and new builds, you know. I mean, to use a real estate metaphor, you know, you both need to renovate old spaces, old models, old structures. Those things are not going to go away. So it makes sense to spend less and invest time, energy, and effort in making existing institutions stronger and more nimble, more innovative. And that's going to strengthen the whole.
Chris McAlilly 27:43
And then also, there needs to be, we need to build new things. We need new structures. We need things that we've never engaged in before that may provide kind of new spaces or new opportunities. And those things are going to ultimately be organic, and they're going to be on the ground. They're gonna emerge out of particular contextual constraints and forces and the creativity that emerges kind of on the ground at local place.
Chris McAlilly 28:09
But I can see how the power of convening and the power of conversation across contexts could be really strong. I wonder, you know, there's some organizations really invest in like the, you know, the continuing education model that's really like, come in for the conference, and this is three days. And I feel like what you guys are doing is more like ongoing learning through time with the same group of people. How did y'all land on that? And I guess what, you know, that's an intentional choice, and, I guess what have you seen as the benefit? Like what's the right length of time for a group of people to be together and then depart?
Lisa Greenwood 28:55
Yeah. So I mean, there have been a number of influences over the years for how we got to this place. Folks who have been, that we really got to know through Lilly, who had been deeply committed to the peer learning models. And so we're all in with the peer learning models, and this notion of convening and getting folks into the room for conversation and creating the containers and that sort of thing.
Lisa Greenwood 29:27
And I would say one of the other things that we have learned and really embraced is the notion of a learning journey. That takes a group of folks, you know, so it takes one of these cohorts, and we go to a place--and it can be, you know, a city or a context where we immerse in that context. And so we learn from folks that may or may not be connected to the church. So they might be civic leaders. They might be artists. They might be, you know, nonprofit leaders in that community, folks who are deeply immersed in a community. And it's not so much so that our group, our cohort, learns about that community, but what they learn in that community, they then take back to their own community and say, who do I need to be talking with that I haven't been talking with? You know, that's the local police officer or the coffee shop owner or an artist or other folks that help us have new eyes to see what's happening in our community. And how we might be a partner in that as the church? And so those learning journeys have really, I think, been such an amazing tool to expand imagination for what's possible in your own community.
Chris McAlilly 31:01
That reminds me of Kenda Creasy Dean who I don't know, if you--I'm sure you know who she is. She teaches, for those of you don't know, she teaches theology, youth culture formation at Princeton Seminary. And she was telling me about this course that she had conceived, that it was getting on a train and going across the country, and like, stopping off at these different cities.
Lisa Greenwood 31:32 That's awesome.
Chris McAlilly 31:32
It was so awesome. It sounded like the best. It was gonna be like a month long thing. But I can imagine if you're in the process of formation, if you're at the beginning of your career, just how invaluable a trip like that could be, rather than just sitting in a classroom and reading a set of texts. I do, you know, I think sitting in a classroom and reading a set of texts can be a very valuable learning experience. It's not an either/or. But just, I don't know, contextual learning, learning in new settings and the things that you see and smell and, you know, I don't know.
Lisa Greenwood 32:08 Right. Taste. All of it.
Chris McAlilly 32:10
Yeah, it's a totally different way of engaging.
Lisa Greenwood 32:14 Feet on the pavement.
Chris McAlilly 32:14
Yeah, engaging a place and so much, I guess that's really what I'm hearing is that so much of it is how do you create the the right conversations or the right experiences that allow you to engage your context, perhaps with new new eyes?
Eddie Rester 32:30
Yeah, I think one of the things that, again, the inherited model of church is that the community came to us.
Lisa Greenwood 32:36 Yeah.
Eddie Rester 32:37
You know, we would have this great mix of policemen, teachers, business owners.
Chris McAlilly 32:43
What I thought you were gonna say that you preach this great sermon, and everybody just came out to it.
Eddie Rester 32:48
Everybody just came out. Exactly. I attracted them all, exactly. But in the old model, people came to us, and that's now, I think the church feels awkward or unsure as the world has shifted--maybe even scared, fearful of what they're going to learn if they really hit the pavement, and move into the world. I remember, one of the churches I started as an internet while I was in seminary, you know, small rural church in North Carolina. And this was a long time ago, a long time ago now, but the preacher told me that everybody in the congregation is convinced the community's dying. There's nobody moving in. Everybody's moving away. He said, but the census data says our little area grew by 5000 people in the last decade. And he said, what they don't want to know, is that a lot of the migrant workers in eastern North Carolina, have settled in our area, are going to our schools, and are just over there--he pointed- -but the people inside the church were so disconnected from their local community.
Eddie Rester 34:03
And you know, it's hard. It's hard for, I think, pastors sometimes to take the time to walk the neighborhood or to go to ballgames or to go to plays or to sit in the local restaurant and actually meet the people working there or send out your leaders to do it. It just, it's a different way to approach ministry, and I don't... I think what I would say is we just don't have the tools to do it well, maybe.
Lisa Greenwood 34:32
Yeah. Yeah, I do, I think that's part of it. And I recently heard a pastor telling her story of kind of the transformation in her own community and with her church when she was sent there. She said, it felt like the task was to introduce the church to the community, and she realized pretty quickly what she needed to do was introduce the community to the church. You hear what I'm saying there?
Eddie Rester 35:00 Yeah.
Lisa Greenwood 35:01
And I think that is a mindset shift. But a couple of things to say on, just piggybacking on your comments or noting, you know, I think sometimes we, when we're making these big shifts, we think we've made a mistake or that we've done it wrong. And the fact is, we did exactly what we needed to do in a time when the community actually did go to church and affiliation was the norm. And so we did what was needed for that season. And now, the reality of our culture has changed, and so we need to think differently. And so that feels... You know, just important to note that it's not that we got it wrong. It's that we're moving forward in a culture that has changed.
Lisa Greenwood 35:51
But the other thing to say is, I think we, and you're kind of saying this, there's like this fear. And so what's happened is we've gotten timid and, this is a season in our lives together, in our world, this season of polarization and racial reckoning and the wealth gap, racial gap, the gaps between us are widening. This is a season that needs the church more than ever. This is not the time for us to be timid. We have good news to share. Right? And so, you know, what is it? What does it mean for us to claim our voice again in the community and to share that good news?
Chris McAlilly 36:40
Eddie, you mentioned "The Innovator's Dilemma." And, you know, Lisa, you talked a little bit about just kind of the peer learning model in an ongoing way as something that you learned from the Lilly Foundation and among others. I wonder what are some other books or resources or other foundations or models that you found really helpful in thinking about the work that you're trying to do right now?
Lisa Greenwood 37:05
Yeah, yeah. So it's fun to watch what others are doing, like Kenda. Like Elaine Heath with Missional Wisdom Foundation. And Shannon Hopkins and her team at RootedGood are doing some amazing things. Tim Soerens at Parish Collective, Jen Bailey with Faith Matters Network. I mean, these are friends that we're learning from all the time. One of our colleagues who I just think has continued to be on the front edge of the work that we need to be doing in the church is Gil Rendle. And he's about to publish his next book that will come out early next year called "Countercultural" where he talks about the value of institutions. Now, we tend to think of institutions as the structure. But that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about institutions are those things that carry and hold our core truths and values and practices. They happen to often be housed in, you know, organizational structures and buildings and such, but the institution of religion is carrying forth core truths and values and practices that we need to be formed and shaped for the common good in the human family, right. And so, I mean, I'm using that as a church example. But he's really talking even broader than that. And it is so good. It's exactly what we need to be hearing.
Lisa Greenwood 37:39
I just think that, you talked about that. I can't wait to read that book. He's amazing. We should get him on the podcast sometime, Chris, after the book comes out. But he, you know, he, the whole idea of the institutions claiming what it really is not the crustiness of it, breaking that away. There was one author I've read that the institutions were the pieces of our culture that shaped culture, that taught value and gave value. And as we've walked away and said, "Institutions don't matter. They're broken." And maybe they all are. A lot of the dissonance in our culture is because we don't have those bodies anymore doing the hard work of teaching and allowing what they believe to bleed into the culture, whether it's the Boy Scouts, the church, yeou know, the AMA, whoever, that those institutions have really struggled over the course of time.
Chris McAlilly 39:52
There was a book that I read several years ago called "On Thinking Institutionally" by a political science guy named Hugh Heclo. And I'm sure it was a Greg Jones book. But it was really helpful to me because it talked about sports as institutions. So I normally think of institutions as being like these big governmental institutions or hospitals or whatever. But if you think about baseball as an institution, or whatever. Baseball is one of the examples that he uses, and he just talked about how important, you know, athletic metaphors work for some people. They don't work for others. But just how important just the activity of going to the field, learning the rules, the ways of interaction and talking and structure and communication that you learn within the context of that particular kind of a game, have the capacity to form your character in a particular direction.
Chris McAlilly 40:52
And you know, one of the things that that Heclo notes in the book is the way in which we've turned character forming institutions into platforms, just into opportunities for self aggrandizement and promotion. The example he uses is the difference between like, Ryan Sandberg--and I'm really dating myself here. He was the second baseman for the Chicago Cubs. He was very much like the consument baseball player--and Barry Bonds, who was, you know, this great slugger who ended up getting into trouble for using performance enhancement drugs, and hitting a bunch of homeruns. But it was really all about, you know, Barry Bonds.
Chris McAlilly 41:34
And I mean, there are a lot of examples of this across the spectrum of institutions, but I do think it's helpful to widen our understanding of what an institution is. And then also think about the ones that have really formed us and shaped us into the people that we are. Inevitably, you know, you become the person that you are, because you've bumped up against really healthy institutions. And, you know, just because we live in an age where our institutions in general are not functioning well, or people are choosing not to associate or affiliate or become members of them, doesn't mean that they're not important containers of character, purpose, meaning, and belonging.
Chris McAlilly 42:15
But, you know, I do think there comes a time where those have to be, you know, renovated. We have to think about what we're doing and why. And then maybe, are there new ways that we can shape all practices that really meet people where they are? So I hadn't thought about that book in years. But I appreciate just kind of the prompt to reconsider the importance of institutions.
Lisa Greenwood 42:36
Well, and Gil draws on Heclo's work. So you'll see that thread in there. Yeah, and it's the movement that has happened from formative to performative. And really, the church needs to be about formation. Right? And, I mean, that's at the heart of who we are. So we've lost our way when we move from formative to performative.
Chris McAlilly 43:08
Yeah, well, you know, Eddie, Eddie has the... What's that account on Instagram, Cody, where it's like the pastors have the awesome shoes that are like... Preachers With Sneakers. You know, Eddie is very much about--you don't know this about Eddie, Lisa--but Eddie, Eddie and his shoes, man. He's got he likes to get up there, and, you know.
Eddie Rester 43:28
Look, actually, Cody, our producer, when I was in Oxford and he would get a new pair of shoes, I would take a picture of his shoes while he was up leading music and I would email them to Cody just so he would know that somebody noticed his new shoes. I get about one pair of shoes a year, Lisa. I'm not that guy.
Lisa Greenwood 43:46
I thought there was a bit of dripping sarcasm in there.
Eddie Rester 43:51
Yeah, it's much easier for Chris to throw at me now that I'm not in the room with him.
Lisa Greenwood 43:55 Right.
Chris McAlilly 43:55
That's right. You just have to hang out with us more, Lisa, and the sarcasm continues to drip and drip.
Eddie Rester 44:02
One other question. You've listed a bunch of authors. Are there any additional websites or resources? Or just if somebody in an area said I want to go see something that you know of. I mean, where would you send us? Anything else you would add to your list of names that you gave to us?
Lisa Greenwood 44:21
We do have a couple of papers on our website that might be interesting, one on the mixed ecology and Gil's latest one, "Jacobs Bones," that's the precursor or the launching point, if you will, for his newest book. So if you want to kind of get the synopsis of it, it's a little shorter than his book will be. And I'm also thinking about, we have been, we started a new award. It's an award for spiritual entrepreneurs. And their stories are amazing. I'm guessing you have show notes and could put the links in there, and I'm glad to send those to you. But these awardees are doing amazing things. And so hearing their stories and reading about that is so good.
Lisa Greenwood 45:17
And then, you know, I'm a big podcast listener. And so, part of what we're all doing is trying to cobble together what are some really good podcasts and learners and thinkers out there. And so I'd love to hear what, who you all are listening to. I mean, I do the Kate Bowler and Anne Snyder's project now, The Comment. I don't know if it has a "the" before it. It's just Comment magazine. It's so beautiful. And I think she too is trying to convene people to have these conversations and they're formative.
Chris McAlilly 46:03
Well, we're so, so glad that you're in the mix, and that you're in a position to really help shape the conversation, Lisa, and we appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of time talking about what you're seeing, what you're experiencing, and some of the ways in which you're helping to shape some of the deep change that we need right now. So thank you.
Lisa Greenwood 46:24
Well, thank you for having me. It's been so good to be with you both.
Eddie Rester 46:27
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly 46:37
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]