“Never Repeat An Idea” with David McDonald

Show Notes:

Chris and Eddie share in a fun conversation with an old friend of Eddie’s, Dr. David McDonald. David is a preacher, teacher, and creative innovator within the Christian community. He believes in the creativity and imagination of God and how that creativity and imagination can spark joy and fulfillment in us. 

After being a local church pastor for 27 years, he left full-time ministry to found and build Fossores Chapter House, a creative headquarters for pastors and church staff. Ministry and lay leaders come to the chapter house to recharge and rebuild their passion for the work of the church, while building community and relationships with other church leaders from around the world.

Resources:

Follow David on Instagram

Learn more about David’s books here

Learn more about Fossores Chapter House

Follow Fossores Chapter House on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 Hi. I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:02
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04
Today, we're with Eddie's friend.

Eddie Rester 00:05

Today, you're with, we're with my friend, David McDonald. Dr David McDonald. I've known him since our days in a doctoral program together. He'll talk a little bit about that, but he is a storyteller, a creative, he's a coach for pastors and congregations. He was a local church pastor for almost 30 years, and he grew up in a home where his own father was a pastor. And he talks a lot about, talks a little bit about that, and you asked that question, Chris, and I don't think you knew that his dad was his pastor growing up. But he, for me, is one of those creative, life-giving voices that sees the ministry of the church as a place where God is constantly on the move. And trying to help the church see that, experience that, and know that is his good work. It's a lot of fun. He's a fun and funny guy, and love spending time with him. And today's one of those conversations, if you have a creative spirit, if you want to nurture the creative spirit, or if you're really thinking, how do we begin to move the church into the world with the creativity of God? This is a great conversation for you.

Chris McAlilly 00:58

He believes, he said, in the creativity of God. And so it infuses not only way he sees God, the way he sees the work of ministry in the church, but it also fuels what he's doing now, which is creating spaces for leaders and pastors to come and be together, to collaborate in what he calls a chapter house. And it really is a creative space, a space for not just kind of recharging and healing, but also cultivating the imagination, listening to what God might be doing, and trying to get, I can't remember exactly how he said it, the future that you might see in your mind, into the world. Some version of that. It just, it's really interesting conversation. I don't spend a lot of time with folks from a charismatic or Pentecostal background, and so when I do, I'm always just captivated by the way they think about God, the work of the Spirit. And this is one of those conversations. Yeah, he also pivots, you know, mid career. I think, you know, there are a lot of people. Maybe you're out there wondering, man, I wonder if there's something else I could do, you know. Or maybe you are at a point where you have no imagination for the future of your local church. Maybe you're in a space where you want to cultivate the dreams, or an imagination for something new. And he talks through that journey as well. So we're glad that you're with us today on the weight, it's always good to be with you. Eddie, I always love being with you.

Eddie Rester 02:44
It's great to be with you. Let me, if you're listening today and you've never been to our website... theweightpodcast.com.

Chris McAlilly 02:49
You should go. theweightpodcast.com. The Weight.

Eddie Rester 02:52
The Weight, W, E, I, G, H T, podcast dot com. and there's going to be a screen that pops up.

Chris McAlilly 02:57 Boom.

Eddie Rester 02:58
That's going to allow you to put your email address in there. We'd love to add you to our email list. We're gonna launch...

Chris McAlilly 03:03 We will never spam you.

Eddie Rester 03:05
We're not gonna spam you. We're not gonna sell your data, but occasionally, we're gonna send you some important information, not just about the podcast, but maybe some things.

Chris McAlilly 03:11 Life.

Eddie Rester 03:12 We're talking...

Chris McAlilly 03:13
Eddie has little drips of wisdom that he may just drip out.

Eddie Rester 03:15 We'll see. We'll see.

Chris McAlilly 03:17 You never know.

Eddie Rester 03:17

But thank you for listening. Share this and we'll see you next week. As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.

Chris McAlilly 03:21

[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change. But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.

Eddie Rester 04:00
That's why The Weight exists, to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.

Chris McAlilly 04:10
Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness and tradition, and responsiveness to a changing world.

Eddie Rester 04:18

So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to TheWeight. [END INTRO] Well, we're here today with my friend David McDonald. David is a pastor and a storyteller and a dreamer and wise. And I'm not sure what other nice words you're going to pay me to say about you, but the number one thing is that we're friends, and I'm thankful for that, David.

David McDonald 04:50
Yeah, me too, bro, great to be here with you. Great to be with you, Chris. Looking forward to the conversation.

Chris McAlilly 04:55

Yeah, we, you and I share a thing. We don't know one another, but we're both friends with Eddie Rester, and because you are also friends with Eddie, is there something that we need to know about him, that you may be uniquely positioned to tell us?

David McDonald 05:11
I have this great story about Eddie that I will not repeat on your podcast.

Eddie Rester 05:16 [LAUGHTER]

David McDonald 05:16

It's out there, and I shared it with somebody today. I was like, Oh man, my friend, Eddie. You know, you look at him, he looks like Mr. Perfect. He's got perfect hair. He's got perfect glasses. He just looks like the most holy man alive, but he's got mischief, and I love mischief. I won't tell anybody the story, but Eddie got me into a lot of trouble once upon a time, and it took a lot of work for me to get myself out of it.

Eddie Rester 05:38
Let me tel you, I actually just told our producer, Cody that. I think it's the same story. And I still feel...

David McDonald 05:44
Was it the one where we were on Twitter?

Eddie Rester 05:45 Yes, and I still feel...

David McDonald 05:46 It's so great.

Eddie Rester 05:49 Incredibly terrible.

David McDonald 05:50

And I thought we were sharing private messages back and forth, teasing each other. And then I repeated, you know, one of the things that Eddie had teased me about, but not privately. I repeated that to all, however many, you know, 10,000 followers or whatever I had, and it was on a Sunday morning, so as I walked down to go preach the next sermon, you know, my elders are all looking at me like, "Are you okay? Do you need to talk to somebody?" And I was like, What do you mean?

Chris McAlilly 06:12

We're here today to talk about the, you know, the perils of social media for pastors. No, that's not what we're here to talk about. We want to hear about you, man, tell us, where did you guys meet? That might be a helpful question. Where did you guys... You guys are not from the same place. You're from a long way apart from one another. Where did your paths cross?

David McDonald 06:34

Yeah, we both did the Doctor of Leadership and Emerging Culture program with Portland Seminary and Len Sweet. I think, I think we started in 2003.

Eddie Rester 06:43 I think that's right.

David McDonald 06:44

We were one of the early cohorts. They keep changing the name of the cohort. And I think this current batch of students, is the last batch, but Eddie and I were in group three. So and group three is when I think they really started to turn out quality candidates. Prior to that, can't say much. It took a dive a couple years after it, but man group three was...

Eddie Rester 07:05

Just right up there, yeah. While we were in the program, David became the pastor of a church called West Winds in Jackson, Michigan, and it was a church that was looking for someone that was creative, that was someone that was going to really help them push the edge on how they reached their community and how they offered Christ to their community. And David was, you were the perfect fit for that church. I think. So, tell us a little bit just about your approach to ministry. When you think about your time as a pastor, we'll get to what you're doing now in just a few minutes.

David McDonald 07:44 Sure, yeah, yeah.

Eddie Rester 07:45
But what was important to you in your work as a pastor and a leader of a local congregation?

Speaker 1 07:53

Yeah. Well, the way I'm wired, I really am drawn to and inspired by the creativity of God. I mean, for so many people, creativity is like, it's like, a cool t shirt, you know, it's something you don't really need to have if you got a little creativity. Great. Everybody's kind of creative. So, you know, that's pretty neat. And then there's other people for whom they think of creativity, almost like lipstick. Now, you know, you gotta put a little pizzazz on Sunday morning, some lights and lasers, maybe a bit of smoke to, you know, bring in non-believers or something like that.

David McDonald 08:26

That's not how I think about any of that stuff at all. God is first revealed to us as a creator, and we were made by our Creator to be participants in creation, in the ongoing beautification and complexification of the world. And for me, that's at the very heart of how I understand Jesus, of how I understand the Father, the movement of the Spirit. And so I like to do new things, and I like to do things differently. And I don't know that I ever feel more closely connected to the Spirit than when I'm making things or making things up. And so when I come to ministry, I really, you know, I was a local church pastor for almost 30 years in a variety of contexts, but creativity was always like, that was my thing, you know. I just, I always wanted to do things a little differently, because I felt like that was good stewardship. I felt like that was good stewardship, not necessarily of the church or the liturgy or the staff. That was good stewardship of my own soul. That's how the Lord made me, and I wanted to be found faithful with the gifts and the imagination the Lord has entrusted in my care. So I was always trying to do things elsewise, feeling that our best experience of God, our best understanding of God was always when our defenses were a little bit down, and the best way to get our defenses a little bit down was to sidestep away from routine, tradition, habit. Not those things don't have their place, they do. But my place, my role in the kingdom, is as a creative. And so I had two rules, and these were really the hallmarks of my creative endeavors in church ministry. The first rule was you never repeat an idea. Ever. You do something great once. You don't do it great the next year at the same time. You have a great Christmas Eve service. You don't do the same thing next Christmas Eve, I never re-preached a sermon, not once. Now, there were times where we had, you know, seven services and three campuses on the same day. So those days, I would repeat that day's sermon. But I've never once in my entire life preached on a sermon from before, because I believe that God's always speaking and it's my responsibility to always be listening and always be responding. So I never repeated an idea, no matter how successful it was or how much attention to garner. We just, we never went back to the well to get the tried and true strategies. And there's some problems with that, of course, because you can't really optimize an amazing idea if you only do it once. And you get a lot of misses as well as a lot of hits. But in the process, you don't just make incredible things. You make incredible people. You make people who are sensitive and nuanced, people who are exegeting the culture and listening to the Spirit and love to cooperate. And so that whole thing is the exercise of creativity is spiritually formative. It's how God has most worked in me. So that's my first rule, is never repeat an idea. The other rule I had was one that always made people mad, is I believed it was important to just change for the sake of change. People always say, we don't want to just change for the sake of change. I go, yeah, you do. Because if you just keep doing the same things over and over and over again, the probability that you will calcify and die is really, really high. And when you don't change things, then all kinds of stupid stuff becomes sacred. You know, the location of the candle, the shape of the flag, the the lighting on the auditorium. All those things take on this ritualistic significance, when they really just don't matter all that much. So I would tinker with things all the time. Sorry...

Eddie Rester 12:07

No, I was gonna say I had a pastor that I worked with early on in the ministry who said, "never do something a third time." If you do it a third time, it's a tradition. And so he said, be real careful about doing things a third time. So it wasn't that he didn't repeat, but he was real intentional about what got repeated. I always thought that was good.

Chris McAlilly 12:28

I wonder about your formation. Did you come out of a very structured environment and you maybe rebelled against that? Or did you come out of a more Pentecostal kind of open environment and you just embraced it?

Speaker 1 12:42

Yeah, both I did Pentecostal, charismatic and so, you know, there was lots of talk about how open we were, but every service kind of went the same way. You know, we sing until somebody cries.

Chris McAlilly 12:57 Yeah.

David McDonald 12:58
And then we pray until somebody falls, and then we give an offering until the sermon starts.

Chris McAlilly 13:03 Yeah.

David McDonald 13:04

There's a Pentecostal liturgy here, at least, you know, there was back then, and I loved it. Don't get me wrong, I, you know, I like to have a lover's quarrel and playfully poke at my upbring, but it was a really healthy, great upbringing. But I just kept thinking, you know, as a... You know, I'm a musician, and I'm a playwright, and I was really heavily involved in graphic design and media production in my younger days. And I just thought, Man, I want to do this stuff as a manifestation of serving God. I want to serve God with all these things that I know how to do. And for me, you know, I'm primarily drawn to the liturgy. You break down church work into liturgy, missiology, and formation, and really, the liturgy is the thing that has been the most meaningful to me, personally. Doesn't mean the other ones are important. It's just the way I'm wired. So that's where I always had the most meaning, fulfillment, and satisfaction, was in how we corporately, together, worship and experience God.

Chris McAlilly 13:59

I have a friend from South Africa, and he is Assemblies of God, AOG South Africa, he would always say. And he makes fun of his--and he's, like, second or third generation pastor. And he makes fun of this, the liturgical dimensions of Pentecostal charismatic worship. And it just like it has the same kind of rhythm and routine to it. And I do think it's interesting that you say that there's a reason why we fall into these patterns, because there was a time when the Spirit worked through them, and so they became kind of a reliable way in which people connected with God. I had very much a main line, a mentor from the main line in kind of southern Christian culture, once say to me, a very structured, traditional, conventional worship. But one of the prayers that this individual said, that they prayed before they went in to lead, was God, please let something happen today that is not on the bulletin. That is not in the script. That's great. I mean, you know, because it puts the emphasis on the living, breathing work of God in this place at this time. It's not as if God once worked at that time in that place. And we have to just kind of go back there to that well.

David McDonald 15:19 Right.

Chris McAlilly 15:19
It's that God is in the business of of making new wells, and there are people that go out to be well diggers. And it sounds like that's been part of your work.

David McDonald 15:28 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 15:29

And I wonder if you could maybe give an example, like a specific example from your ministry context, that would maybe concretize or ground kind of some of the things you've been talking about.

Speaker 1 15:39

Sure, well, the easiest ones would always be Christmas and Easter, because, you know, I was a lead pastor for 17 years and not repeating a Christmas Eve sermon for 17 years in a row, that my brothers, that is a trick. So you really, yeah, you can attest. So, I mean, you know, I think over the years, I probably wrote eight or nine different sermons just on the shepherds, you know. And I'm always like, looking for a different way into talking about the shepherds, looking for a different way into the Magi. One year, I did a whole Advent series all about Herod and what we learned from Herod, the great and his gross corpulence and misogyny. And then one year I looked all specifically at the Theotokos, you know, the idea that Mary was carrying God and we're meant to be God bearers. You know, always looking for a different angle. That's just the the homiletic side, that's the preaching side.

David McDonald 16:33

But also in the liturgical design, you know, we did a 1940s Christmas one year. One year we did Christmas out of the book of Revelation. So sort of a Gospel, according to John, or, pardon me, a nativity, according to the the Yohanan writings, story. So always, just again, just, I like this metaphor from rabbinical Judaism. They say the Scripture is is like a diamond, and you keep turning it over until it catches new light. And so, you know, whether it's Christmas Eve, Advent, Holy Week, Lent, you know the passion triduum, I mean, you're always going, Okay, look, what's our way in this year, in terms of teaching, in terms of expression, of worship, in terms of community activism? I mean, how are we going to experience this afresh? And most of those were, I think, some of our finest moments. Some of those were really dumb, like I really missed it a few times. I did one, all on Christmas carols one year. That was awful. That was, I really, I would love to command Z that one and get it out of here.

Eddie Rester 17:40
Did you choose just awful Christmas carols or? I mean, what did, how did that go sideways?

Speaker 1 17:48

Yeah, yeah. In so many ways, so many sideways, yeah. Well, at first I made an error in tone, because I thought I wanted to find Christmas carols that had really, I felt, like really good gospel stories to them, you know. So the story of God rest ye gentleman, to the Little Drummer Boy. And so you kind of learn these Christmas legends and go behindthemhim and sort of what the devotional significance was. But they're all ridiculous. Like, you learn the stories, and it's all like a magic diaper shows up, and then there's a little blue angel... And like, they're all ridiculous. So the mistake, the biggest mistake I made, was because I found these legends so laughable, I made the tone something along the lines of John Oliver and Last Week Tonight, where I was constantly just poking and being an agitator. And that was just the wrong tone for Christmas. You know, people, people...

Eddie Rester 18:42
They're gonna love the Little Drummer Boy no matter what, and they don't want their preacher...

David McDonald 18:46

The Little Drummer Boy, goofball. so, yeah, so I messed up. I messed up that one. And, yeah, you know. But you learn through the screw ups. You learn, yeah. You learn humility, that's for sure.

Chris McAlilly 18:59

I do think that the risk in doing that, is that you might mess up every once a while. The advantage is that you gain... You do gain flexibility and the ability to adapt and to evaluate along the way. And just yeah, there's a humility to just saying, "Yep, we screwed that up. We're moving forward." And yeah, yeah. I mean, I think one of the most difficult things to maintain, I think... And I think about this from decade working in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, there's a natural progression of just kind of falling into, these are the things that work for me. These are the things I've settled on. You know, I think, how do you... When... I think everybody knows what that feels like. How do you break through that? There's a resistance. Or should you always break through it? Are there things that you shouldn't?

Speaker 1 19:50

Yeah, you know, I actually developed a really good, albeit quite complicated system for breaking through that. It came from a book called, I think it's called "Art and Anthropology," "Art and Agency," pardon me, "Art and Agency." But it's a book about art, anthropological art. You know, somebody goes somewhere, you know, Victor Turner or whoever, and they uncover the artifacts of a particular tribe, and they try and figure out what they can learn about this tribe based on their art. That's the whole idea of the book.

David McDonald 20:24

So in it, they talk a lot about the difference between being agents and being patients. And then they talk about the different elements of art, like the audience, the art piece itself, the artifact, sort of the community perception of the art. You know, for example, you know, if I hold up a fly swatter, it's not a piece of art. It's got a functional role. Everybody knows what a fly swatter is and how it works and what it does. And it's also not only a thing that everybody knows about, it's also a particular object, you know. So you could have a fancy fly swatter, a gold fly swatter, etc. So in the book, they really say there's a way for you to consider what happens when I am an agent, using a fly swatter as an artifact, meaning I do something to it. I whack a fly. And that's different than when I'm a patient and somebody else is the agent, and they, instead of me whacking a fly, they whack me. And then there's a whole different thing, where if I use the fly swatter as a metaphor, as a symbol, rather than as a tool, that's a different way for me to use it. But there's also a way in which somebody else might use it as a metaphor to describe me. So instead of me being active, I'm being passive. So there's a really sort of complicated grid that I adapted to church ministry. I published it in my book, "Then, Now Next: a Biblical Vision of the Church, the Kingdom, the Future." It's the chapter that nobody can get through. Nobody reads because it's so dense. I mean, it's got concrete examples of how it works. But most people are just like, "Yeah, dude, I don't care. I'm going to sing a Bethel song."

Eddie Rester 21:58 And we're moving on.

David McDonald 21:59

"Tell the story about youth group. And people are going to give money. We're gonna go home," you know. But for me, developing that rubric, or adapting that rubric, meant I could sort of chart out what kind of ideas I'd done and see where I was most comfortable, and then force myself into those other areas of creative expression. And then so that kept me from falling into my ruts too deeply.

Eddie Rester 22:24

We've talked a lot about worship in creativity. I remember when I visited West Winds, and one of the things that y'all talked about was shadowing God as kind of the comment on discipleship, really, in formation. And so and that, I can't remember the other phrases that were a part of y'all's core values and vision, but that one always stuck with me, that the idea behind what we're really seeking to do is to shadow God. So how did that creatively play itself out. What are some ways as y'all approached how do we do the work of formation of people into the people of Jesus? How'd that get lived out?

Speaker 1 23:13

Yeah, there were rhetorical ways that we supported it, and then there were experiential ways that we support it, you know, sort of programs. And then the way of talking about the programs, the way of talking about it. But you know, it's just good Wesleyan theology, you think about being led by the Spirit. And what happened was, I was studying Genesis one, and learned that, you know, when God says, let's create mankind and our image and likeness. That word image the Hebrew word "tzelem", it means "idol" literally, but it can also mean shadow. And so I thought that's just kind of a cool idea to think about God making us like God's shadows, because then if God jukes left, we juke left, you know. We're shadow boxing with the Spirit, which is just sort of a funny way to talk about all that stuff, and it was really attractive to me.

David McDonald 24:08

And then, and then I started thinking, Well, how do we teach people to stay in step with the Spirit, you know? And so we really, we really tried to anchor so much of our teaching in the gospels so that things became really crystal clear. Like, a Jesus follower is going to follow Jesus. Here's how Jesus treated women. How are you treating women? Here's how Jesus treated his adversaries. How are you treating your adversaries? You know. And then we had, of course, all kinds of scaffolding to support that programmatically, whether that was individual discipleship plans. I'll tell you about one in a second that I thought was really cool, or just your normal stuff, like Sunday school classes and small groups and, daily devotional readings or whatever. But really the idea of staying in step with the Spirit and shadowing God, that was the thing that we all talked about frequently and extensively. And as a Wesleyan, I felt really proud that I was able to do that.

Eddie Rester 25:00

Thank you for bringing that up. I really was... Thank you. Well, it's just such a great image. I think sometimes what the church misses is it's not that we don't have the right words, but we're not giving people the right picture. And for me, in that moment in my life, it was the right picture of what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. Your shadowing. Yeah, like you say, when he jukes left, go left when he goes right, go right.

Speaker 1 25:24

Yeah. And I was really, I had a lot of fun learning about shadow puppetry, you know, like in the Philippines, in Thailand, they do this thing called nang talung, and they hold up these goofy puppets, and they make little puppet shows on the wall. And so I thought, well, that's cool, because the shadow is a less dimensional image. I want to embrace the fact that I am a carrier of Christ, but I'm not Christ.

Eddie Rester 25:50 Right.

David McDonald 25:50

You know, I'm a little Christ. I'm a Jesus junior. I'm, you know, I'm less than. But I don't want to be robbed of the dignity of the fact that I belong to God, that I'm a joint heir with Jesus, that I've been adopted in, I've been grafted in. Like my high and holy calling is present, is saturated with the Spirit of God. But it's still just me. Soit was a nice word play on that.

Chris McAlilly 26:18

So from your work in pastoral leadership, at some point you pivot, perhaps into a larger calling or a different setting. Talk about that. You describe yourself as a storyteller, a team builder, a coach. Where is that being expressed now? And maybe what were the impetus, or the kind of the factors that led you to make a change?

Speaker 1 26:41

Yeah, well, right now I run the Fossores Chapter House, which is like a creative headquarters for imagineers in the church. So it's what happened is I was doing so much consulting, and I was doing so much coaching and flying on around all over the place, my kids never saw what I was doing, and so I was just gone a bunch. And then when I would go places, I was always well received and very gratified about that. But if you're trying to talk to a church about commute, about creativity, the worst place you can do that is in the church building, because every church building is painted like a Holiday Inn Express, you know? So you get in there and they give you an anchor chart or or they give you a whiteboard and a marker. They're like, "tell us all about creativity." And no matter what you say, they go, "Yeah, we do that already." Like, I can guarantee you you don't.

David McDonald 27:28

So a lot of times, as a result, people would come and sort of job shadow me at the church where I work. They'd hang out in my office. They'd see how our team worked together, catch the dynamics division, and immediately lights would start going on, way different than when I would travel to them. The problem is that the church wasn't paying me to be a consultant. And there was a season where I was having two to three pastors in my office every week, just about year round, and the tail was starting to wag the dog. I didn't feel good about that. Very Len Sweet. Very Lynn Sweetian, just like... So I thought, man, what I really need is to take my office and my creative space at the church where I work, and blow it up, expand it. And so I started looking at property in our town, because we're in southwest Michigan or southeast Michigan, and there's lots of cheap property here. And so there was this big old, dilapidated Victorian mansion near the downtown of our little city. And so I worked two full time jobs in addition to pastoring for two years to save up a down payment. And then I bought this old house and renovated it with friends and family and tons of volunteers and turned it into really a Hogwarts of holiness, a tree fort for pastors, I mean, a place where pastors can come and do their best work. So it's got a recording studio and a podcast studio, and it's got an art lab, and it's got all kinds of hidden rooms behind bookcases, and it's got great theological references and really cool artwork.

Speaker 1 28:00

Yeah, it's clearly, it's an homage to Len in so many ways, you know. And so, yeah. So that's the Chapter House, and we do retreats and residencies here year round. Last year, I think we did 33 retreats. Or in 2024, I think we did 33 retreats, most public, but a lot, lots, of course, private, too, where we'd host church staffs or think tanks and then, you know, present curriculum on liturgy, creativity, formation, and theology. And so this is where I'm primarily focusing all my efforts. I still write. I just completed a manuscript of a book about a man looking for Judas in heaven. So, that was a fun project, you know. And I'm shopping that around to find a publisher. And so I, do lots. I do lots, and it's so fun. It's very rewarding.

Chris McAlilly 29:44

What do you like about it that's different than pastoral ministry? I mean, did that feel like freedom when you left kind of the care of a particular flock of people in a particular place? Or did it feel like you were unmoored? Do you feel like you just expanded the work? I mean, you said kind of, there's this one dimension. "I was doing these two things. This is the thing that expanded. This kind of decreased." I guess, how do you think about it? I think a lot of people consider at the middle of their career in ministry, "maybe I need to make a pivot." I think a lot of people are afraid to do that. And so I just wonder how it feels to you, like, how did... Was there a mourning? Did you lose something in that? What was gained?

Speaker 1 30:29

Yeah, all the above. First of all is I realized that I was having a conversation with my mom. My mom and dad were, pardon me, in ministry for their whole lives. And my mom asked me, she said, "David, tell me about your dreams for the church, for the local church where you pastor." And I said, "Oh, Mom, I don't have any dreams for the church right now. All my dreams are for the chapter house." And that's when we were just renovating it. It hadn't opened yet. And she said, "That's what I thought. Since you were a child, you have been dreaming about the church and the church where you are now was perfect for you. And if you're not dreaming about that church right now, somebody else is, and you're in the way." And I was like, "Mom, the chapter house, it doesn't even exist yet. It doesn't make any money." Like, like, I'm gonna step way out in faith. And she says, "Well, isn't that what you've been telling everybody else to do this whole time?" I was like, shame on you, Mama. That's a dirt that's a dirty trick, right there.

Eddie Rester 31:25 Moms are like that.

David McDonald 31:27

So with my mom's urging and support, you know, I put a plan together and, you know, gave the church, I think, nine or 10 months until I stepped away with the idea that I would, go full time as a missionary through the chapter house. And so there was a sense in which I was like saying goodbye to my church. And really, I love that church. I love those people, and I wanted to be careful who I told and when and how. So the week that we announced it publicly, I went to 84 individual people, and had one-on-one meetings prior to that Sunday public announcement, because I love those people. I wanted them to hear it from me, like over coffee, not just from the stage, you know. So leaving all that was hard, but hard, like graduating and going off to college hard, not hard, like losing your dog. And then the business model of the chapter house is very different, so that's taken me a long time to understand that at the end of the day that the chapter house runs almost completely on philanthropy. We have pastors that pay a membership fee, but it's really nominal. Doesn't come anywhere close to covering their costs, and so we just have to do a fair amount of fundraising, and we're always praying and asking God for donors. Because our budget's really small, it's like $180,000 a year, which, you know, my church budget was like 10 times that. But church has the idea of a tithe built into it, or some version of generous weekly giving, whereas the chapter house does you know, this is the only one like the only one that exists like this, so people have to find out about it and care about it before they're ever going to support it. So that was a real big learning curve that just made me realize that the day-to-day work of the chapter house and the business model of the chapter house and the pastoral relationships of the chapter house were not at all the same as church ministry.

Eddie Rester 33:24 Right.

David McDonald 33:24

And I really was very comfortable doing church ministry. I excelled and enjoyed it, but I really had to go back to school. And so there was a lot of feeling dumb, stupid, like, Lord, I went out on the limb, am I a fool? Like, am I? Do you hate me? Am I an idiot? Are you punishing me? Was it hubris that got me here? You know. And so it was like starting all over again, in 20 different directions, and that's been really healthy. Scary, but healthy.

Chris McAlilly 33:54

Isn't that... That's creativity, though. I see it with my kids, you know? I see it with my... So I have a 13-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a seven-year-old. And when my 13-year-old was 10, I feel like he just took more risks, and my seven-year-old takes more risks than my 10-year-old. And over the course of time, I don't know, there's just this solidifying of "This is who I am, and this is what I do."

David McDonald 34:18 Yeah, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 34:19
And we lose... And I don't know, there's also the social shame thing that happens in middle school where you're, if you can't do something really well, you just don't do that thing.

Eddie Rester 34:30 You don't try.

Chris McAlilly 34:31

You don't even try. And so there's so much of that stuff that keeps people from pursuing some thing that they really might be passionate about. You know, for the sake of feeling dumb. There's also, like, the practical realities of just making sure that you can pay the bills. And that's a reality, too. I wonder if you just... That first six months or that first year that you were doing this transition, what are some of the lessons that you learned in that?

David McDonald 35:03 Oh, uh...

Eddie Rester 35:05

While think about that, and let me expand that, not just to lessons that you learned about you, but what lessons did you learn, things that you maybe saw about the church and pastors and staffs that were new to you as well?

Speaker 1 35:18

Yeah. I mean, one of the first tricky things that I had to accept was because we opened in 2019 and since then, we've had just over 1,000 pastors from 17 denominations and 13 countries. So we get people from all over the place, you know. And they usually come together, you know, in small groups, you know, 10, 15, at a time, you know. So that gives you kind of a picture of the work. And in all the things that I'd seen for pastoral development as a pastor, I was always frustrated that everything people offered to pastors was like a way for pastors to heal or to pray. And I was like, Hey, I don't need you to show me how to pray. Like, I know how to. This is one of the things that we do. Why is there such an emphasis on carving space for pastors to pray? Like, I know, all these pastors, we all pray.

David McDonald 36:07

And then the other thing was, I thought of it as, like, as... My joke was that they were, they were always ministries of palliative prayer, you know, like, instead of palliative care, where you go to the hospital and watch somebody die slowly. That's what these retreat centers are always where these pastoral ministers are like you're dying as a pastor. So come here and be sad with all the other dying pastors, and then you guys can pray and have a sandwich. You'll feel better. So I always thought that was like just garbage. And so I really wanted the chapter house to be like an incubator for passion and dreams. Come here, do your best stuff. Get charged up. Become enlivened and go. And the truth is, pastors are really beaten up, and a lot of them are really hurting so even though what we want to deliver is artistry and passion and creativity and fuel, nine times out of 10 the pastors are showing up with a broken heart, with a limp, and they just need fellowship. They need brotherhood. They need family. They need somebody who has been where they are, who can look after them and love on them a little bit. So that was the first hard thing where I had to go, "Oh, I'm just plain old wrong about what pastors need."What they need most is love and friendship

Eddie Rester 37:24

As you recently made a move to Detroit and renovating a house there, because renovating the chapter house wasn't enough for you. And we talked probably a month or so ago just about your experience of going to visit churches and...

David McDonald 37:38 Oh yeah.

Eddie Rester 37:39

You don't have to name. Don't name any churches, but as you've done that, and I know we'll have a lot of... We've got church people, pastors who who listen. As you've seen these churches, what is some of the, how do I even ask this right question? What's some of the hope that you might have for some of the churches you visit? Is that a kind enough way to ask that question?

Speaker 1 38:05

Yeah. I'm going to this little church right now. It's an Episcopalian Church, and it's the same, everything every week. And it's a disaster. Like it's 30 people, and it's the worst church. I can't even... If I gave churches a scorecard and I said, here's all the things that matter when you're sort of, you know, gonna do church, they would fail in every category. Except, except the preaching. The guy is an incredible preacher, and I will sit there and weep through the whole service, because I personally experience such a love and care of the Holy Spirit in that church.

David McDonald 38:46

So one of the things I think is really amazing about, you know those whole set of experiences, I've been going to the same place now for four or five months, is I go, even when church stinks, God can move. So that gives me tremendous hope. I go, if this little church that doesn't have its act together at all, 0%, like, to a maddening degree, it is outwardly hostile to the point where I go, you must not want anyone to come here ever. Like, it's so bad.

Eddie Rester 39:14
So you're going there just to defy them, just to...

Speaker 1 39:20

Yeah, yeah. And, well, I go because God speaks to me and it's really beautiful. And I go, if the world's worst church has made this kind of impact on me, then God is working in every church all over the planet. Doesn't matter how bad the music is, doesn't matter how Keystone Cops-y the whole thing is, doesn't matter how much they rumble or fumble, the Spirit of God is there. So that gives me great hope for the church.

David McDonald 39:48

And also, I visited, I think, I visited 12 or 15 different churches before I settled on one. In my charismatic days, we'd say, before I got a dose of the Ghost, but I got a dose of the ghost at this little church, so I decided to stay there. But prior to that, visiting the churches, one of the things that was so heartbreaking was that they weren't listening to the people. I mean, the pastor, whoever they were, and the worship leader, whoever they were, anybody on stage, they had their thing that they had to say, and it didn't matter what was happening in the room. It didn't matter what was happening in the culture. It didn't matter if their thing didn't resonate, they they felt sure that they had to say this. They had to get mad about this thing. They had to hold the line on this other thing. So nobody was listening. But as I would talk to talk to those pastors, you know, and try and resource them and be good to them. They all had the desire to listen. So I think the desire to listen gives me great hope, because it doesn't mean that they won't listen. It just means they're bad at it, and over time, they'll get better at it, as we all do, to listen to the Lord, to listen to the people, and to listen to the promptings and nudges of the Holy Ghost. So I have hope for that.

Chris McAlilly 41:10

You've mentioned that now you're in a chapter house, not a church setting. It's a different image. Where does that image come from? The image of a chapter house, and why did you land on that as kind of the primary imaginative place for what you're doing?

Speaker 1 41:27

well, I wanted a churchy word, a word from Christian history and tradition. And I tend to find really obscure churchy words that no one can say. For example, it's not just the chapter house. It's the Fossores Chapter House. Fossores is a word no one can say. They don't know how to pronounce it. They don't know what it is. And it's got this really cool backstory. You know, it's a name that was given to the clergy when during the Roman persecution of the church, when they're meeting in catacombs. And so the those were the first Fossorians. And so it's got this whole, this whole great backstory, but nobody can say the words, so they don't use it.

David McDonald 42:00

So I wanted a word that people could use, you know. And so I thought about like, well, what about an abbey? And I thought meh. Well, what about a laboratory? Eh. A seminary? Eh. You know, so I kept searching and searching. And a chapter house is a room in a cathedral, usually behind the sanctuary, where clergy will get together and debate policy. So they're usually circular and with, like, kind of a donut shape. And so in the middle of the donut you would have sort of the higher ranking clergy, you know, bishops, presbyters, whoever. And then the outside of the donut you'd have the rank and file monks or whoever. And that's where they would go. And they would talk about, you know, theological issues, cultural issues. That's where they'd hash stuff out. They'd argue, they'd fight, they'd bicker back and forth, and it's where they'd have kind of their private conversations. So I love that because, of course, we've lost the ability in our in our world, particularly the church, to disagree civilly, but I would love to have people go after it and still love each other at the end. So that was a good image.

Eddie Rester 43:06

Well, you mentioned that I was listening to a podcast today with Trevor Noah on it, and a very serious podcast with Trevor Noah on it, but he said he's learned to love small talk. He said the big talk divides us, but it's the small talk that weds us together. And he said, we need...

David McDonald 43:25 That's great.

Eddie Rester 43:25

We need spaces to have small talk. And at some level, as I hear you talk about bringing all these pastors from all over the world and different places and different denominations, you're providing that space. Yeah, you're going to have some big talks, maybe. Maybe, they don't divide. But really, the wonder that's happening there is the small talk. These pastors that realize, "Oh, you've got the same limp I've got. You took it upside the head, just like me." That's your joy right now. That's... That's my joy too. It's these spaces that we've, that, I think, whether it's pride or it's just, are too busy...

Chris McAlilly 44:05

Yeah, I don't think it's pride. I think people long for this stuff. I think that people don't have the space or time for it. And, or just like, this is a concept that you're kind of cultivating, and that you're, in a lot of ways, just pioneering. And I think that, yeah, I don't know. I mean, you bump up against... You have the relationships and the frameworks that you have, you don't have the ones you don't have. You know? And so you end up, you know, having the conversation partners that you have, you don't have the ones you don't have. And so unless you're in a space like this, and sometimes it happens in a master's or doctoral program. Sometimes it happens at a conference setting or retreat setting, what I hear you saying is that it's not just small talk and collaboration, it's also a space to dream. A space to really make connections that you might not have otherwise made. And I think that... I think we under utilize the imagination in the spiritual life. And the whole conversation, that's the the word that I keep coming back to is just "imagination." And I think that that's something that it's woven through your story, in the way that you led in pastoral ministry. It's woven through this new work, and it's something it seems like that you that you would want to encourage folks. What, how do you understand? What is the imagination and what is its role in the work of Christian leadership?

Speaker 1 45:45

Yeah, I think great question, and a big question. I think I have 37 different ways to answer it. But really, I think it starts with something you see in your mind. You know, whether you're thinking about Romans four, he's the God who calls things that are not, as though they are. Or whether you think about, you know, Proverbs without a vision that people perish, or people cast off restraint, whichever translation you like I mean. Or Romans, 12, you know, you transform with the renewing of your mind. There's a thing that happens inside of you that isn't yet happening in the world. And you catch hold of that. You see it, you smell it, you feel it. You live in that reality. You live in the future, now. And you start thinking and dreaming and working to bring the thing that only you can see into a place where everybody else can see it, and more. Not only that they can see it, but that they can live in it. And, of course, that's the work of the Kingdom, cultivating the kingdom.

Eddie Rester 46:45 I'd say the same thing.

David McDonald 46:45

Yeah. And so, you know, I often refer to the imagination or creativity as making things and making things up. I like to think about applied imagination. It's not just that I want to paint a cool picture, make a cool movie. I mean, I'm a designer, and so I go, I want to make an experience that people can share in together. That's the thing I'm good at, you know? So I'm making spaces where people can be together, making moments that people can share together. And so in that, in that case, my imagination always has to have a practical outlet. And one of the ways we do that at chapter house is really cool, you know, because I was like, how do I minister to all these pastors that are coming? And, you know, we do all kinds of prayer exercises together. We worship together. But I really wanted to put a church service together for these pastors. But that's tricky to do with no stage. You're in a house. And I didn't want to just, do, you know, crappy campfire worship and then preach at them. So I started looking at the liturgical calendar, and in particular the feasts in the liturgical calendar. And I was like, I have no idea what a liturgical feast is, so I'm going to make it up. This is how I got started. And so we end every retreat at the chapter house with a liturgical feast, and we sit together at this huge feasting table. It seats 16. And we have one of our local pastors, loves to cook. He's a chef, so he makes us this meal. We all set the table together. We all sit down together. We all sing together. We eat and horse around. And then, we have a church service designed around the Eucharist that's really conversation driven. And I have a series of prompts that I'll ask people to participate in, and they end up reflecting on their own lives and then also speaking prophetically over one another, all around dinner, around whatever the feast happens to be for that day or closest to that day. So that's just a really great example of what I say. The imaginations that I have have to manifest. They got to be real life. How does somebody play with the thing that I see in my mind?

Eddie Rester 48:57

Yeah, bringing something to life that is not yet. David, I want to thank you for your time. I could, we could talk to you all day, and I thank you for your time. We're going to put the link to the Fossores Chapter House in in the in the show notes. But if you want to go right now, it's F, O, S, S O, R, E, S, fossores.com.

David McDonald 49:19 That's right.

Eddie Rester 49:20
And, yeah, you're looking behind you right now is... Are you getting...

David McDonald 49:25

There's a bat in the room right now, which is amazing. Yeah. If you come to the chapter house, we won't have any bats. Wink, nudge. But we have one right now. If I die, if you read about me dying in the paper from rabies, it's because the bat catch didn't go well.

Eddie Rester 49:39
Well, thank you for your time. And if you're listening, go check it out. Support it. If you'd like to go, go visit, get to know my friend, David. David. Thank you. Blessings to you.

David McDonald 49:51 Love you, man.

Eddie Rester 49:52 Love you too.

Chris McAlilly 49:52 Thank you so much, David.

David McDonald 49:53
Thanks for having me, you guys. Yeah, cheers.

Eddie Rester 49:55
[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 50:04

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]