“Wonderful Tension” with Will Willimon
Shownotes
The Gospel is a claim about who God is and what God is up to. The Church’s role in embodying the Gospel means that we meet each other in community. Intergenerational community is one of the vital aspects of a healthy church environment. What does it mean to be part of a “church family?” How can the Church serve each generation within its community, bringing people together in unity?
Chris and Eddie are joined by Reverend Dr. Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and former Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. Willimon’s experience as a professor has informed his perspective on the ongoing vocational questions we ask at many different stages of life. They talk about cultural idols, what the Gospel looks like in a college or university setting, and the problems and pressures that American Christianity faces.
Resources
Follow Will Willimon on the web:
Aging: Growing Old in the Church by Will Willimon
Check out Will Willimon’s other books and publications here:
https://willwillimon.com/writing/
Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon on the dangers of providing pastoral care
Follow Will Willimon on social media:
Full Transcript
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:02
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 0:05
Today's guest is a familiar one, at least to me and to Chris.
Chris McAlilly 0:09
Yeah, this guy is...
Eddie Rester 0:10
"This guy?" You're gonna call him "this guy?"
Chris McAlilly 0:12
This guy is Bishop Will Willimon, the former dean of Duke Chapel and kind of a staple in the circles, the Christian circles, that we've run in for a really, really long time. I've known about this guy for most of my life. He's hilarious and funny. He's also an incredibly faithful preacher and storyteller. And just generally, a great conversationalist.
Eddie Rester 0:42
Great conversationalist. Yeah, I knew him when I was at Duke in the 90s. He was dean of the chapel then. But back then some of his books that he was writing were really pointing out back then the decline, not just of the United Methodist Church, but he was pointing to the decline and the loss of impact of the church in general. And he is one who still sees hope in the life of the church. And it really was, I think, as we move through the interview, just a lot of hope in what is, what was, and what can be,
Chris McAlilly 1:12
We talk about university culture and what the Gospel sounds like in a college town. We talk about youth and aging and conversations across the generations. We talk about cultural idols and some of the problems and the pressures that American Christianity faces in this particular moment. We talked about the pandemic a bit.
Eddie Rester 1:37
We didn't get to cover Duke basketball, really. But other than that, it was a pretty wide-ranging conversation and just a lot of fun. So if you're listening, you're thinking, "Well, I don't know if that applies to me," just wait. We're going to change directions again. And then again. It was fantastic.
Chris McAlilly 1:54
Yeah, thanks, Eddie for a lot of great questions for the Bish. And we thank you all for being here today to be with us on The Weight. We hope you enjoy the conversation today.
Eddie Rester 2:07
Leave us a comment. Let somebody else know about... You're shaking your head at me again.
Chris McAlilly 2:13
Shaking my head at myself. I'm just speechless.
Eddie Rester 2:16
You're speechless.
Chris McAlilly 2:17
I don't know what the deal is.
Eddie Rester 2:18
Share this with somebody that that needs to hear it today. Enjoy.
Chris McAlilly 2:22
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:28
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 2:32
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 2:39
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 2:51
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 3:07
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 3:09
We're here with Dr. Will Willimo, Bishop Will Willimon, today. Will, thanks for taking some time to be with us.
Will Willimon 3:15
It's great to be with you.
Chris McAlilly 3:17
Will the thrill!
Eddie Rester 3:18
I was at seminary back at Duke a long time ago, and Chris has been through the halls there. But we want to dig real deep into your history, real deep in your history today. Are you really...
Will Willimon 3:30
You've got an old guy on. That makes sense.
Eddie Rester 3:34
Yeah, we just want to hear the story, whether it's true or not that you actually advised Vanna White not to go to pursue her dream of acting.
Unknown Speaker 3:45
Yeah, unlike a lot of my stories that one actually has basis in reality. But when I was in North Myrtle Beach, my first full-time appointment, by myself, Vanna was in my church youth group. Her mother was my church's secretary/treasurer volunteer, and we had a sort of a baccalaureate service for our graduating seniors from high school. And I remember after that service I came back to the parsonage, and I said to Patsy, "You just won't believe that poor Vanna White. I asked her what she's gonna do after graduation, and she said, 'Well, I have this dream, and I've just made my payment to modeling school in Atlanta, $500.'" And I said, "That's nuts. Those modeling schools are bogus. Can you get your $500 back?" And she said, "Well, I don't want to go into just modeling. I see myself in television." And I said, "Man, you're a sweet, wonderful person, and we all love you. But there's no way that's gonna happen. You'll never make it in TV. I see maybe nursing for you as abetter vocation."
Eddie Rester 5:20
Yeah.
Will Willimon 5:20
A few years later, Vanna informed me that she makes more filming one episode of Wheel of Fortune than I did as a Methodist minister in one year of advising teenagers what they ought to do with their lives. That is true.
Chris McAlilly 5:37
Speaking of...
Will Willimon 5:38
The Duke students used to kid me when I was chaplain, and I'd be in a discussion in a group with students, and some student would disagree with me and a student in the back would yell out, "Wait a minute! You're talking to Vanna White's former pastor. This guy knows some stuff." You know, so anyway.
Chris McAlilly 6:04
That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, I wonder, you know, you've been on college campuses, you know, around the country, but particularly, there at Duke for many different kind of seasons. And I wonder what you've observed with the kids these days, as they've changed. What are some of the questions and concerns that seem to be similar to maybe when you first got there, and what do you think it's changed?
Will Willimon 6:35
Um, I think there are perennial similarities among college students or young adults. I remember at some point, when I was a chaplain reading that of the six most important decisions you make in your life, you make four of them between 18 and 23. Like, what job do I take? Who do I spend my life with? That kind of thing. So they've got a lot of big decisions on their plates. And the big question at any moment is, what should I do with my life? Which I, as Christian minister, mainly tried to get them to rephrase. No, what does God want to do with your life? And what is God doing with your life?
Will Willimon 7:36
And I think there's a kind of, there's a typical quality of that. I think one thing that I love about young adults on a college campus is that one of the major reasons they are on college campus is they want to get born again. It's like they show up and say to the faculty, "Hit me. Make me a more interesting person than I would be if I hadn't been paying this extravagant tuition to come to this place." And I used to love kind of being a preacher, an evangelist, on the college campus, because it's like everybody's just kind of walking around saying, "Hey, Older Adult, evangelize me for something."
Will Willimon 8:27
And you know, so those, I think those continue. I do think how it's different is the pandemic has, in a way, impacted young adults, particularly in a strong way. Student athletes have lost some of the most important years of their development and competition and all. Other students had a bummer of a senior year in high school and then followed by bummer of a year as a freshman in college. The job market is being impacted. And also their generation has been revealed to be uncaring and irresponsible in not getting vaccinated, some of them. And so I'm not sure how that has impacted them. But I believe it is impacting them and helps to explain them.
Chris McAlilly 9:53
I wonder, so, a lot of your work, I mean, you've written widely. You've done a number of jobs, but at the heart of your work is preaching and preaching the Gospel. And I wonder, what is it? What is the Gospel? What does it sound like? Or what, as you reflect back on your career of preaching the Gospel on a college campus or in a university community-- we're in a university community. I think about this a fair amount--How is it different? What does the gospel sound like to university people? Or what does it need to sound like? That would be maybe a better question,
Will Willimon 10:31
What does it sound like from one and speaking it? I think the Gospel is a claim about who God is and what God is up to. It's an announcement of a regime change. Jesus Christ is Lord, and a lot of the other little lordlets are not. And I think that that's a word all of us need to hear. But for young adults, you know, they're at a time where they're... Behind their questions--what job should I take, who should I marry and why, where should I live... Behind that is the question who is your Lord? What power shall have its way with your life? And so the Gospel has a claim about why we're all here, where we're all headed, who's in charge, those sort of political questions. I think the Gospel can have particular resonance there.
Will Willimon 11:51
One weird thing is if a predominant young adult question is, "what should I do with my life?" the Gospel is going to sound like a very different kind of countercultural read on that question, because in a sense, Christians believe the lives we're living are not our own, that we are living our lives with a claim upon our lives, an external claim from our Creator, from God. And that Jesus comes to us not simply to say, "Hi, would you like a more fulfilling life?" But Jesus comes to a saying, "Hey, kid, I got a job for you to do," and commandeers your life.
Will Willimon 12:43
So the vocation implied in the Gospel is of particular significance, I would think, to people starting out with their adult lives. What I don't... And maybe just add one more thing, and that is that behind this also is a kind of a confrontation with false gods, with idolatries. And if I were cynical, and looking at, for instance, higher education from a particular angle, higher education could be seen as training in various idolatries. And the Christian faith, like the Jewish faith, is a kind of contentious activity of who do you worship? Who do you serve? And they're going to find the Gospel implies some real conflict with the false gods that our culture urges us to serve.
Eddie Rester 14:07
I want to push a little bit more into the false gods that we serve, because that's one of those things, I think, the pandemic has begun to reveal to us, particularly as it lingers on, not just those in the university setting, I think for all of us. As you think about the pandemic--I want to talk about an article you and Stanley Hauerwas put out recently in The Christian Century as well--but as you think about the church and where we are, do you think that there are some false gods that we have, we're now seeing more clearly that we're chasing as the church?
Will Willimon 14:47
Ooooh. Yeah. When you talk, as John Calvin said, "the human mind is a permanent factory for idols." Yeah, where do you start? I do you think in the present moment we're learning. If you spoke with Hauerwas, I know at the beginning of the pandemic, Hauerwas said, "I really feel sorry for clergy, because it's gonna be hell dealing with people who don't believe they will ever have to die." So when you talk about something like pandemic, for some of us, it has been a jolt to our illusions of immortality, and we've been impressed by our mortality and our finitude.
Will Willimon 15:44
But I think it's been a time when people have had their futures jerked away from them. They thought they were going to be in this job for the rest of their lives, and now they have lost that job. Or maybe our illusions of who we are as a people, that lie that we told ourselves at the beginning of the pandemic, "we're all in this together." Well, it's shown that we're not in this together. So as far as the church is concerned, if you're somebody who really has put a lot of faith into the continuance, the subsistence of denominational Christianity, I would think you're in a lot of grief right now. Because that appears to be being taken away from you.
Eddie Rester 16:51
You talk about, you know, the idea, the lie that we're all in this together, one of the things I've really struggled with over the last few months, just to be honest, is so many Christians saying, "It's my personal decision. It's my rights. My rights." And every time I hear that, I hear Paul's conversation about meat offered to idols. Is it okay to eat meat offered to idols? Yeah, yeah.
Will Willimon 17:23
It's a good text to think about.
Eddie Rester 17:25
It's a fine thing to eat meat offered to idols, however, your personal rights are constrained by your love and care for others. And, you know, I think that for me, at least one of the things I'm just trying to struggle seeing more clearly is how we're going to deal with that false god, maybe beyond this at some point.
Will Willimon 17:50
And that would be the language of rights of freedom. Surely this is a time where Christians are waking up and realizing we're not into human rights. We don't do rights. Godless constitutional democracy talks like that, because that's the way Thomas Jefferson talked, prominent slaveholder that he was. But we don't know what people are talking about when they say, "This is my right to choose," or "this is my personal decision." You know, Christians don't think anything is a personal decision. I mean, it's what about the Holy Spirit working in us? What about our being given responsibility for one another by Jesus? And so I think that kind of talk does reveal the selfishness, the detachment, and unchristian self-centeredness that American constitutional democracy often fosters as a kind of byproduct.
Will Willimon 19:10
Sad, but it was being noted the other day that this is sort of the first occurrence in American history where a crisis, a natural disaster, or human disaster has not sort of brought us together. America has always been brought together during time of war. In fact, they are those cynics who think, you know, America has no means of coming together except war. Well, the pandemic has shown that even a pandemic can be a cause for political division and separation, and maybe the limits of rights, personal choice language, when seen in the light of the Christian faith. And by the way, everything I'm saying I hope is a kind of prejudice Christian statement which says, "Wow, some of the real flaws in our godless thinking are being revealed, exposed."
Chris McAlilly 20:34
I wonder, I want to just press this point of kind of American Christianity and the way in which the pandemic has kind of exposed the fact that we have these two different, very different conversations that are happening. A lot of the way in which this gets framed is in terms of political polarization or the news sources that people listen to or whatever. I do think that one of the things that's super disheartening to me is the inability of Christians to simply listen to or honor one another in the conversation as they disagree. And I wonder, you know, you've kind of been a conversation partner and with a lot of different kinds of people through time. I wonder, as you look at the broad American Christian conversation, what do you think it is about kind of progressive Christianity that conservatives don't get? What is it about conservative Christianity that progressives don't understand?
Will Willimon 21:31
Hmm, yeah. Those are good questions. And maybe I don't do enough thinking about that. I do think, I have said that, if we are living at a time of great contentiousness and division, of argumentation and difficult conversations, I think I can make a case that the church, your congregation, is the optimum location for such talk. Much better than the floor of the Senate, or a college classroom. In that, it is powerful freedom to be able to say, "Hello, I'm Will, and I'm a sinner. And I bet you that my biases and prejudices and self-interest are clouding so many of the positions that I am advocating. And I'm assuming that you are a sinner, and your positions are also suspect in the same ways."
Will Willimon 22:47
Now. The only reason we're talking to each other is Jesus Christ has forced us to be together in the church. Let's have a debate. Let's have an argument, and no holds barred. Come on, be as truthful as you can. And I'll try to be truthful to you. I'll try to listen to you. And I'll expect you to try to listen to me. And then we'll all go to the Lord's table and share in the body and blood of Christ. We will [???], as Paul put it. We will put up with one another, because Christ expects that of us.
Will Willimon 23:30
That why I think the church, I tell preachers when they say, you know, "I don't get into controversial subjects because that my church is already divided enough and everything," and I say, "You know, I think it's part of the church's witness to say Jesus Christ makes possible for people who do not like each other and do not hold important beliefs in common to be together, to love each other, to work together, to put up with one another." So I think it's an important issue.
Will Willimon 24:11
Back to your question, though, you know, I think I need to keep hearing the sense of loss, the fear, the excellent positions held by some of my sisters and brothers who I think of as evangelical, conservative Christians. They're right. United Methodist Church has played loose with Scripture. They're right that we've allowed certain secular etiologies to cloud our church's reasoning. And I would hope -hat our so called conservative evangelical sisters and brothers could listen to their, these terms are all wrong, but progressive or liberal sisters and brothers and hear them say we're so worried about people in certain conditions and situations and orientations that you appear willing to exclude. We are worried about the way you're using scripture against us as if we don't also honor scripture, but maybe honor it differently. So maybe I would say that.
Eddie Rester 25:55
You know, people tend to think of the early church as this idyllic place where everybody got along, sold their stuff, and ate together and just sang and danced and all were happy. But you know, and maybe it's our fault as preachers for not doing a better job of teaching why Paul had to say, "in Christ, there are no Jews or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus," because the early church was such a freaky experiment of the Holy Spirit, to throw all these people who had never, ever, ever really been in the room together, except when they were in their hierarchical positions. And yet, suddenly, the spirit draws these people, Gentiles and Jews, all these people into the same room, who can't even agree on what to put on the table to eat.
Will Willimon 26:51
Great point. I think that's so important. I think half of the content of Paul's letters is about the problem of disunity in Christ. I bet you surely that proportion of the Gospels is concerned about it. It's just unlike Paul, in the gospels, you don't know that this story is being told because of problems within the church. There's a reason First Corinthians, the summit is in chapter 13--Paul's great hymn to love. And that's because none of the Corinthians were loving each other. That's the way we preachers talk all the time. We only talk about what we don't have, what we're aspiring to. And yeah, it must have been a knockdown, drag out.
Will Willimon 27:48
I've said to churches, "Your behavior is some of the sorriest. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I'll admit, you're not as bad as first church Corinth. I mean, some of you are not sleeping with your mothers, and that's good. But, come on people." And I was on a international conference with Churches Brethren. And they're talking about unity in a time of disunity, and all. And I noted that Paul just begs and he pulls out his biggest theological artillery, to help him for unity, for community, for love. "The greatest of these is love." And, at the same time, he makes comments like in First Corinthians about, "I hear their divisions among you, and I believe it, and that's a good thing. There should be divisions, because then you can find out who's sincere."
Will Willimon 28:55
And then Paul did not mind calling certain people out by name. He did not mind saying, "You stupid Galatians" and all. And so I think there's a weird but maybe wonderful tension always within the Christian tradition, that the Gospel is our most unifying and our most dividing thing we have and that congregations constantly wrestle. And if they're not wrestling, something's wrong. But they just constantly wrestle with, "Isn't it wonderful? We're all one body. We have different members, but we are all one body." And at the same time, saying, you know, "I told him to his face, he was wrong, Peter." So, in fact, I've been saying the pastors lately, if your church is not divided, if you don't have problems with blue, red, right down the middle, conservative, liberal, whatever, you have probably unintentionally limited the boundaries of the kingdom of God. You need to have a meeting of evangelism committee right away, because you've just been evangelizing people with whom you're most comfortable being with.
Will Willimon 30:26
Come on, Jesus wants them all. He thinks they all belong to him. I don't like them. But he does. And says. You know, so I'd say if a pastor says, "I've got a congregation so divided, and there's so much contentiousness," I'd say, "Yeah, darn it, Jesus. I mean, what can you do with it? You know, he keeps bringing in people that I don't enjoy working with, and who are political Neanderthals. I just, I just wish the scope of his salvation would be a little more narrow." But I think this comes with the territory. What's sad is I think we preachers, and I don't know whether this comes from, you know, the way our mamas raised us or the way seminaries corrupt us, but I think we often like thinking of ourselves as peacemakers and reconcilers, and many times, that just means we're very, very uncomfortable with conflict and difference.
Chris McAlilly 31:39
There was a sermon I heard you preach, switching the topic a little bit, at the Festival of Homiletics. And you were talking, it was on Jesus being youthful and young. And so imagine my surprise when I saw recently that you wrote a book on aging and growing old in the church. I just wonder, you know, I do think that there is this kind of cult of usefulness in American Christianity today. And now, you know, I'm not accusing you of that, but I am, I do wonder kind of how you how you perceive of that, not the dumbing down exactly, but just kind of the sense that the people up front and on stage need to be consumeristically attractive and presentable and Instagrammable, and the way in which that might inflect, in some, I think, maybe some negative ways, the way that we view Christ and the work of the church, and then also what you're learning as you continue to grow old in the church.
Will Willimon 32:48
Oh, hmm, well, I think aging is a spiritual challenge and a moral challenge, particularly in our culture, for the reasons you mentioned. And aging is a kind of recent phenomenon. You know, I just got back from my sister's 90th birthday, in which she came out in a boa and slid down the railing of the stairs and created the scene. So we've got so many more aging persons. The United Methodist is what, 63 years old is average.
Eddie Rester 33:37
Average age. Yeah.
Will Willimon 33:39
So it's a factor. I do, maybe I'm showing some of this tensive thinking, but on the one hand, I think we live in a culture that many times discriminates against the old. On the other hand, looking from another perspective, we've got a culture dominated by the old. Many of the elderly are very wealthy. They have benefited from the tax laws and all. They've accumulated a lot of stuff. And our president. The president United States--I get out of bed sometimes in the morning and think, "Man, I don't feel good. I'd rather stay in bed, and I really should not be running the United States of America at this moment. Somebody my age should not be doing that."
Will Willimon 34:39
On the other hand, speaking of Papa Joe, I've wondered some of his avuncular gentleness, his patience, some of his unwillingness to jump on the high self righteous moral ground in debates, maybe that's due the fact he's old. He's done a lot of living. He's seen a lot of life. He's experienced a lot of tragedies. He's experienced some successes. Maybe he's learned about his own fallibilities. That's good.
Will Willimon 35:20
At same time, I guess as bishop, one of the things we tried to do in North Alabama is one of our goals was to welcome a new generation of Christians into the leadership of the United Methodist Church. And that proved to be one of our most controversial, difficult-to-achieve goals. And there is a great deal of privilege and protection of that privilege within my church. I was disappointed by some of my fellow aging clergy, who saw the advent of younger clergy as somehow threatening their own power and their own presumed legacy. So there's tensions there. And personally, I guess, one of the criticisms made of me as bishop was, "the bishop didn't like old people." And I said, "That is a stupidest thing. Look at me! Look at how old I am! I am." But it grieves me that the United Methodist Church has chosen to exclude two to three generations of younger Christians. We didn't know we were doing that. But it's almost like we've written a law that says, "We're going to minister to the spiritual needs of older adults, and to heck with younger adults." So it is an interestingly tensive thing we're talking about here, I think.
Chris McAlilly 37:15
Yeah, I find myself really interested in how to pull together networks of younger people who have a lot of questions and a lot of idealism, and a lot of, in some ways, naivete, and but also, like, a lot of passion and a lot of energy with folks who have that wisdom.
Will Willimon 37:38
Yeah, young adults do passion better than septuagenarian.
Chris McAlilly 37:42
But there is a, you know, we were at a dinner the other day with Pastor Emeritus at our church and some of our summer interns, and it was just delightful. It was so good. You know, there's a kind of hospitality that is done well and right with a certain kind of, I don't know... There's a kind of formalism to it that I think is just not there among the younger generation that is good to know. Like, there is structure and form to hospitality that can be learned from. You know, the reciting of poetry, the wisdom that came through in the form of this long quotation in poetry that I heard and just other, just the forming of really good questions. Anyway, I left that meal thinking, "I want to figure out ways to get younger folks and older folks in more conversation and meals together."
Will Willimon 38:42
Absolutely. And that was the theme in my book was the church is the optimum location for intergenerational connection. I served a church in Durham for a year. It concerned me that like a lot of United Methodist churches, it was aging away. So I really tried to, we really tried to reach out to young adults. And one of the most frequent reasons given for why young adults joined our church-- we had a good bit of luck with that--one of the most frequent reasons given for joining our church was gray hair.
Will Willimon 39:25
This young woman told me, she said, "I moved to Durham after college go to work. I'm living in a young adult apartment complex, where the median age is about 30. And everybody else is as dumb as I am about how to get married, how to have a family, how to start out in your work," and said "I miss my grandparents so much. I'm looking for grandparents, okay." And I said, "Have you come to the right place to look for that. Buddy, we got a surplus. You just pick one you want. I'll make them be your grandparents." So that is a wonderful resource.
Will Willimon 40:07
We had a man in our church, who has a real ministry in retirement of helping young people get started in business and being a mentor to them. And he had about six young adults that he would meet with, mostly individually and talk about, "hey, here's some skills you're going to need." He told me, he said, "Most of them are business majors in college, but they didn't tell them the things they need to make it." And on the other hand, I think older people, you know, the people who say, 'Well, I've raised my family, I've done that. And so I'm not going to teach Sunday school anymore." And I said, "No, you're wrong. You haven't raised--your family is the church, the body of Christ. And what gives you the right to retire from discipleship? Jesus didn't do that. There is no retirement. And you've got more time and more resources on your hand right now than you had at any time in your life. And irresponsibility is ugly, whether it's in a 60-year-old or a 16-year-old. Come on." I think the church can give a lot of older adults something important to do, more than being older adults.
Eddie Rester 41:48
I think about Stanley Hauerwas when I was there, talking about infant baptism, saying that, "Baptism is the radical act of giving your child away to the church." And maybe it's time to call our senior adults back to that responsibility that we voice every time we baptize a child.
Will Willimon 42:09
Absolutely. And show them in the Methodist baptism service. I'm sorry, you promised to God and everybody here that you want to raise his child as a Christian. Now, what the heck did you think you were doing? Come on. And boy, the American... I have said, sometimes in baptism, or talk about baptism, the church does not believe in single parent families like I grew up in. But fortunately, the church doesn't believe in two parent families either. And what you want to say in the baptism of a infant child is, "John, Mary, you're two wonderful people, but you're not good enough on your own to raise a Christian. So we got this thing called baptism. So all these people are gonna stand up, and they're gonna say, John, Mary, we'll help you. Some of us are better formed in the faith than you have been. So who better to help?" You know.
Will Willimon 43:18
So, one of the great things that happened to me in the pandemic, I got to do a conformation class with my grandson and eight of his friends. And we met outside, heavily bundled up for much of the time. And it was just one of the greatest experiences of my ministry. Not only because my grandson is wonderful, but his friends were wonderful. And one thing we did is in the service of confirmation, which we were socially distance in the backyard and all. Each person testified why they were a Christian. And one of the boys said, "My grandparents died before I came along. And I'd never had a person Dr. Willimon's age to ever explained to me about Jesus." And he said, you know, "Jesus is like 2000 years old. And so people who've been living with him longer than the rest of us know a lot more about him than the rest of us. But I've never had anybody take any time to tell me anything. And so that's why I'm here today." Of course, I was weeping by that time.
Will Willimon 45:08
But anyway, I do think the church ought to see what a resource God has given us in the older people we have and the younger people we have. But I'll tell you, it's a whole lot easier for Methodist preachers to visit and be with older adults than it is to be with younger adults.
Chris McAlilly 45:32
It's so hard to be with younger adults. I mean, it's just I feel really awkward. I was not popular. And so it's like, you know, you face all the struggles, right? Eddie's looking at me like he's got something he wants to say.
Eddie Rester 45:44
Well, you just, would love to, I mean, you've...
Will Willimon 45:47
Chris will always be a younger adult.
Eddie Rester 45:50
Yeah, he will. Oh, yeah. Exactly.Thank you.
Chris McAlilly 45:52
[LAUGHTER]
Will Willimon 45:52
Clueless, young guy that I tried to relate to.
Eddie Rester 45:57
You did the best you could. You did the best you could.
Will Willimon 46:00
Yeah. But, but I found out with Chris as a student that he is really good at manipulating older adults. He's gained wonderful skills at that. Which, okay.
Chris McAlilly 46:00
[LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester 46:05
He asks good questions. You know, as we kind of come to the end of our time together, you've had this grand career, love affair with the church, from, you know, Vanna White to chaplaincy at Duke, to teaching seminary students, to being a bishop in North Alabama, the return to the academic world. Where do you see hope for the church of Jesus? Where's that emerging for you?
Will Willimon 46:46
I think it's with Jesus. I don't mean to be coy about that. But I just think, in a sense, there's never been much hope for the church as a wonderful gathering of a community of people. And you can see Paul struggling with his from the first. And I think the hope is Jesus Christ is determined to have a body, that the church is the way he has chosen to take up room in the world. There have been times when I've asked Jesus, "What in the world? Why us?" Or "I hope you know what you're doing. I can't see it at this moment." But I think that is our hope, that God will find a way. If the United Methodist Church is laid aside, I guarantee he will have a witness in some form.
Will Willimon 47:53
And in fact, in the present moment, as we watch the United Methodist declension, I think I hear Jesus saying, "Oh, you won't believe what I'm gonna do next. Be sure you adapt to it. Don't spend too much time grieving. And don't spend too much time saying, 'Gee, we've now purified the church and we've got now a really faithful church.' No, just let me work." And one of the great things I teach in seminary is I get a front row seat on the people God is calling to lead God's Church in the future. And they keep showing up. And that, so I think that gives me hope, that it appears Jesus has not given up on us yet and has promised never to give up on us. And that the church is his primary way of getting what he wants out of us.
Chris McAlilly 49:07
I think that's a great place for us to land today. Will, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for the conversation. So rich, as always. We're just grateful for you, brother.
Will Willimon 49:17
Thank you. You, too. This is a great ministry and it's great to be part of it in this podcast. Thank you.
Eddie Rester 49:25
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 49:27
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 49:39
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com [END OUTRO]