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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
Tritank Podcast brings together two worlds that don't often meet
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From the Try Tank Research Institute, this is the Try Tank Podcast. Welcome to the Try Tank Podcast. I'm Lorenzo Labrija, and in today's episode, we bring together two worlds that don't often meet. The deep incarnational theology of the Reverend Dr. Sam Wells and the sociological insights of Dr. Josh Packard. Their conversation uncovers why being with God's fundamental desire to be present with humanity may be the key to renewal in a, uh, low trust, highly fragmented world. From sacred listening to the eight dimensions of presence, this episode reveals how relationships, not programs, form the heart of Christian life and mission. Let's listen in.
>> Josh Packard: And go. Today's conversation brings together two strands of work that have been running on separate tracks for years. Sam. Sam's theology and ministry, uh, mine and sociology and listening. And somehow they end up arriving in the same place.
Sam Wells is one of the most influential public theologians writing today
Our guest is the Reverend Dr. Sam Wells. He serves as the Vicar of St. Martin in the Fields in London and is one of the most influential public theologians writing today. His work spans ethics, pastoral life, and Christian imagination. He's been a parish priest included, and, uh, spent time at Duke Chapel and has written more than 50 books. His newest book, Constructing an Incarnational A Christocentric View of God's Purpose, explores why Jesus came not as a problem solver, but as the embodiment of God's desire.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: To be with us.
>> Josh Packard: That theme shapes his wider work, including the being with course, which has changed the lives of so many people across the world. I'm Josh Packard, the co founder of Future of Faith and guest host for this episode. As a sociologist, I study trust, belonging and religious trends. This work has led me to a focus on sacred listening as the most viable pathway forward for the church in our current low trust world. The data tell me that relationships built around listening and presence are deeply disruptive in a good way. In a world where everyone is talking but nobody feels heard, the simple act of listening is a profound and radical act. I see much overlap with Sam's vision and incarnational theology. And so today is a chance to explore that shared ground. How people change, how God shows up, and why presence matters in a world that is fraying at the edges. Sam, welcome.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, thank you for making the trip all the way over as we sit here in the United States. Um, not very much. Not London.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's the best country in the world.
>> Josh Packard: This one right now. Fair, fair, fair. Um, well, look, I had a chance to get your book and read as much of it as I could possibly, uh, get to over the course of the last week or so. Um, and one of the things that I really love about it is that it places God's desire to be with us at the center of this whole story that's unfolding.
Conventional Christian theology says Jesus coming is dependent on the fall
Um, and I'm wondering if we can just start by you sort of talking a little bit about, um, why you see that desire, that presence of God wanting to be in relationship not just as a part of the story, but as sort of foundational to, um, the entire. In this book. But even your work going back further than that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, there's an irony at the heart of conventional theology, and that is that, uh, it's not really about God. Conventional theology is really about our twofold predicament that we're going to die and that we face judgment as sinners. Uh, and so we're the center of the story, not God. And God has a job to do. God has a job to rescue us from death and from judgment. And so here appears Jesus who does the job, fixes it, uh, job done. That's a short summary of Christian theology in conventional form. I think there are a number of problems with this. Um, the first problem is theology. The clue is in the name. It should be about God, uh, not about our need to escape and survive, but God's desire to be with us. That's the reason for creation. And then if you look in, uh, three places in the New Testament, Ephesians 1, uh, 1 Peter 1, and most interestingly John 17, you find the same phrase before the foundation of the world. And what it means is the same in each place that the Incarnation, Jesus being with us, Jesus as God being with us, uh, was part of God's plan before the foundation of the world. It's written into the DNA of the Trinity. Now. That brings me to the second problem with conventional theology, which is m. Uh, the way that it makes Jesus coming dependent on the fall. So I think everybody who calls themselves a Christian would agree, uh, that Jesus is coming among us is the most important thing in the history of the universe. So how could the most important thing in the history of the universe be dependent on a mistake? The fall, which was never supposed to happen. That's bizarre. It's absurd. Um, I think it's just wrong. I think the reason why Jesus came, uh, was to embody God's fundamental desire to be with us. Uh, and Jesus was coming whether there was a fall or not. Now, obviously, the fall affected what happened when Jesus came because humanity had an allergic reaction to Jesus, put Him on the cross. But the resurrection showed us that the bond between us and God, God's desire to be with us is fundamentally unbreakable, even though it came under the most severe threat to imaginable. Uh, so being with, it seems to me, is the very heart of the Trinity. The relation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or whatever names they're now given, uh, is all about relationship. It's the reason for the Incarnation. Creation comes about in order to provide a theater for the Incarnation, uh, the reason. The cross is the fundamental demonstration that whatever the cost, whatever befall, as the hymn Be Thou My Vision puts it, God in Christ will be with us, whatever the consequences for God. The resurrection shows that, that even though it hurts God, uh, is an unbreakable purpose. And nothing can separate us from the love of God. Uh, Pentecost shows us that God's desire to be with us, uh, beyond Jesus, ascension will empower us to be with one another. All the different languages and so on, uh, sent out across all the world. Uh, and on the last day we are drawn back to be with God and one another and do a new creation forever. So as we say in England, the whole nine yards, uh, it's Genesis to the maps, is all being with. So anytime that we practice and experience being with one another in fostered and reconciled relationship, we are, uh, imitating the whole character of God and not anticipating the way we're going to spend eternity.
>> Josh Packard: And it's that last part that I appreciate, I mean, so much. The entire framework of sort of reposturing and repositioning relationship at the center of it is, uh, sort of mind blowing for me. I had not thought about it ever that way before encountering your work. Um, but I'm not a theologian, right? Like, so it's. These are not things that normally it's okay, um, but. But I have thought a lot as a sociologist about sort of what causes, like how theology informs action. And so, you know, what is it that's sort of embedded in our theological assumptions that informs the way that we treat one another? And at the end there, when you're talking about this idea of being with, if we have a theology of being with, then that means that we are doing something distinct when we're with one another is that we're imitating God. How does that m. Reshaping, I mean, in your mind and sort of maybe even in your hopes and with the being with curriculum. When people grasp on to this way of thinking, um, what does it compel them or inspire them to do?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Eight Things.
>> Josh Packard: Okay, yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So I call them the eight dimensions of Being. With. I have a book called Nazareth Manifesto that lays them all out. And then in the recent book Constructing an Incarnational Theology, I show how these apply to the whole of the scriptural testimony of the character of God. So I can talk about each of them briefly, if you like.
All eight dimensions apply. Presence is being in the same space, just showing up
Uh, and so we start with presence. Presence is being in the same space, just showing up. If you think about. If you have a loved one who dies, somebody can text you and say, my thoughts are with you at this time. But in the end, that's not that great. It's better than nothing. If they travel across the country to come to the funeral, that's presence. That's what Jesus does in the Incarnation, by the way, travels across the country to be at the funeral. Um, attention is the second one, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that in a moment, because listening is your thing, and attention is fundamentally about attentiveness. Uh, Simone vai, uh, talks about attention as the sincerest and purest form of generosity. I always say attention, uh, is me saying to you for the time we're together, there is nothing more important than my being with you. I'm not going to pick up my phone. I'm not going to look at the clock. I'm just going to be totally focused on the gift of you. Uh, mystery is about not seeing people or things as problems to be solved, but mysteries to be entered. It's about leaving aside words like solution and fix and allowing the uniqueness of the other person to be present completely to you. Delight is about moving from trying to fix, uh, other people's deficits to, uh, appreciating their assets and seeing what they uniquely are. So I do a lot of work with people experiencing homelessness, and a lot of people see them as homeless. I'd like to see them as somebody who may be an expert on the Premier League, may be able to tell me why Manchester United hadn't found a decent manager since Alex Ferguson retired. Why don't we start with that conversation?
>> Josh Packard: These are real places and people you're talking about.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So why don't we start with that conversation about what you know and your unique insight and you might have been a professional footballer before you came home. That's not a strange thing to say. Um, uh, participation is about with for its own sake. Participation is more like working with where you bring your skills and I bring my experience. And we've put those together and do something we couldn't have done apart Ah. And enjoyment is the one that sums up all of the others. Enjoyment is where we move away from the sense that I use you as an instrument to get me something else, uh, to the place where I simply enjoy you for your own sake. And the big move is to recognize that God doesn't use us to achieve some other purpose, like getting us ahead on our settling. Constantly enjoys us. There was a being with groups a few years ago when one person was silent for about 10 minutes and sort of looking into the sky. And I said to him, do you mind me asking what you're thinking about? And we'd just been talking about these different dimensions. And he said, um, I'm thinking about what part of me God most enjoys. I've never forgotten that. It was such a beautiful thing to say and so different to the gospel of you're a sinner and Christ came to save you and that kind of stuff. He felt he was feeling enjoyed by God. It's an amazing thing. And then the last dimension is glory, which is a recognition, rather like Jacob says, surely God was in this place. I never knew it. But if you practice those seven dimensions, then what it all amounts to, uh, is glory. So when people say, well, what does it actually entail? Being with. And all of those things apply equally well for, say, us making a relationship this afternoon and us getting to know each other. All eight dimensions apply. But they also apply when you are in the face of social difference or even adversarial relationships. All of those eight dimensions still apply to those. You need to be in the same place. You need to listen to the other person's story, find a truthful story that was beyond your prejudices and so on. You need to see the mystery of the other person wrong, try and fix them. All of the things still apply. So it's not a sentimental thing about how to meet your partner and live happily ever after. Although that's not always nice. Um, it has a real cutting edge about, um. And so Jesus practices all of these things with the Sadducees and the people. He gets into confrontation with the crowds and then, you know, insignificant about the woman. Caution, adultery. Does no one condemn him? You know, he enjoys her. Uh, everyone else. You know, the person who sat there has used her, he enjoys her. You know, that's the transformation. So it's there all the way through the Gospels and the whole of Ireland.
>> Josh Packard: And I do think that that is, um. I imagine that when you're doing. Being with courses and even just encountering, uh, people in this way, showing up In a way that you do. This is a fairly radical, um, way of being in the world. In a world especially that it's been so organized post Enlightenment, especially around authority figures and institutions and titles. And what you're really talking about here is this incarnational presence that every moment matters, not just, uh, the ones that are being held with an expert.
One thing that emerged through the Being with course is the concept of wandering
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, one thing I think that's emerged through the Being with course, and it's now several courses, because we published a book of 10 further courses, but we still call it the Begin with course. Uh, because the original course in Inquirers course is this doctrinal theme that I'd never really put my finger on before, but came through very much in how we structured the course, which is that the Holy Spirit has been at work in your life since your life began. And when you say it, you think, well, obviously. Well, you know, that's about the sovereignty of God. And the Holy Spirit moves where it blows, where it was. Of course, it's in life. It can be in anyone's life. But certain other courses whose names I can't remember talk about how the Holy Spirit comes into your life at the moment of conversion, sometimes in week seven, believe it or not, uh, at our beck and call. Um, I don't see it like that. We don't see it like that in the be with movement. Uh, we understand that. So we have this practice of wandering, which is, in a sense, a curated form of attentive listening, uh, where we, you know, wondering doesn't have a question mark at the end. It's an invitation to imagine or to remember. And what people do is they share their. Their memories of occasions. And so often people say at the end of the course, you all know me better than my spouse knows me, because the spouse has never wandered with them. Uh, and if you say, I didn't know you used to play the violin, the answer is, well, you never asked. So unless there's a wanderer, I wonder if there was something beautiful you used to do, you don't do anymore. Then you'll hear about the violin playing and why it stopped. And my brother broke it, and I never forgave him. And we took years to. You get this whole story. And so people are sharing about this most profound experience of their relationship with their sibling and how they've never felt able to be creative. And they were heartbroken about the violin. And that's a Holy Spirit moment. And those stories come out over and over again. And so, uh, after several weeks, people have actually been witnessing to each other without using the word God or uh, without all the kind of hang ups about testimony and whatever. But they look back and they realize they've discovered God in two ways. In themselves articulating things they never realized the significance of or were never cherished by others in saying them, including their spouse, quite often, uh, or in hearing from other people, uh, moments of revelation that they themselves had never previously realized. The number of times people say I've never actually said that to anyone before. Yeah, and that's the kind of quality of attentive listening because in a sense we're getting to the parts of people's lives that only God knows about. Well, that's revelation.
>> Josh Packard: That is a revelation. And it is revelation.
People do not listen to or automatically trust their institutional representatives, says Sash
Um, and I mentioned at the beginning that like we'd been at Future of Faith, we've been coming at this um, from a very obviously very different perspective. We're coming at this from the sociology and we've been watching the institutional levels of trust decline and decline and decline. And people, you know, just do not listen to or automatically trust their institutional representatives. So they're, you know, pastors, priests, et cetera. But it's not just the church, I mean it's every institution and it's not just in the United States, um, and into that environment. The data lead us to a place where um, we landed not out of conviction, um, but out of empirical evidence that what people were telling us is that what I listened to is when. What I'm listening to is when I feel closest to God. Um, and it's really sort of eye opening for us because that doesn't, on the one hand it doesn't uh, automatically make a whole lot of sense to us until we start unpacking it a little bit and paying attention. Um, but we've been sort of kicking around this idea that for so long, um, our religious institutions have largely been built around this like, scarcity of knowledge that we've got to get the experts who have knowledge to convey that information to the people who don't have it. But of course that's no longer the case. Uh, you can access lots of times even false knowledge. But you can get you know, on your phone obviously all the information that you want. But what we find in the, like when we interview people and we ask them questions is that they're um, suffering from a profound lack of experience. They could look up or tell you something about humility or um, when people about forgiveness or grace, but they can't describe a time when they were extended, um, grace or when they've been forgiven or when they've experienced awe or wonder. And I think, um, a lot of what you're talking about here is like you're creating these moments where through interactions you do get to sort of have those things completely.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, tell about a time when something went really badly wrong, but something good happened afterwards. So if you wonder like that, tell about is a wonder from the past and I wonder is about the future. You're much, much so if you wander like that, you get an answer from everybody. I've always got time. But the great thing about it is that the people in the group don't just remember what other people said, they remember what they thought and felt about the wondering and they come back and they say next week. Well, I spent all week thinking about. Um, so. That sense. James, who runs his head of being with, and I were in a group with some young people from New York a couple of months ago and halfway through one of them said, just based on the experience of the sort of 45 minutes we've been together, I feel more seen than I've ever felt before. Just in 45 minutes in a group of 20 people. It's extraordinary, right? Um, and I can't remember what either of us said at the time, but I sort of thought, well, our, our deepest fear, uh, about God and one another is that we will be known, but we will be judged.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And so to be known and cherished, to be known and loved, is a transformative experience. And that's what happens. But people aren't just coming to know each other, they're coming to know themselves. Because, uh, it's one of my theological convictions that God gives us everything we need if we're prepared to receive the gifts of God sending it in the form in which they come. And obviously that applies to things like race and sexuality and so on and disability. But it also applies to our own experience that when we live in a world of scarcity, we think, oh, well, God just is too busy or too lazy or too uncaring to give us everything we need.
>> Josh Packard: Or I don't matter enough.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly. Uh, we've already been given everything, and not just us, ourselves. You get in a group with eight or 10 other people and your jaw hits the floor when they tell you this extraordinary thing that happened. So within. I remember doing a group within minutes. Uh, the first wandering and the first, uh, being with Sashin. I wonder what it feels like if you're set free. I, uh, hope I'm not using the wrong language here, but A middle class, middle aged woman who looked like she'd been a civil servant. All I said the day I came out of prison and everyone said uh, uh, uh huh.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know, you don't look, of course you're not allowed to say that sort of thing anymore but you know, you're not my image of the kind of person that's been to Treso and she's shared on that level. And so rather than saying tell me about an experience of forgiveness, she's talking about feeling set free after being punished. Well that sounds like forgiveness bit but you don't use the F word disowning. So that's what's happening all the time in those groups. People are discovering what the faith was really supposed to be about without the veneer on expertise or professional language or judgment that comes with the package. And so many people in my community, if you just use a word like sin will kind of almost have an allergic reaction. But they went to a school where that word was used all the time about things that weren't actually wrong, they were just naughty or they were sexual in some way and they just, you know, the whole thing just makes them freeze up.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And so we don't use a lot of that kind of language but we're basically getting to the territory of you uh, know. I can remember another occasion in one of the groups where the wandering was tell about what happens when a close community falls harm. And uh, somebody said um. When my sister said. I never want to be left alone with my dad again. And nothing else needed to be said. You feel the pathos. I mean you don't need to use the word said. You don't need to even use other words that we might use. It's all there.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Nothing else needs to be said. And people are getting onto that level of experience and trusting each other. Um, and they are being known and loved. We're terrified of being known but not loved.
>> Josh Packard: Because in that moment, the theology that you're laying out here in that moment, you're sort of leading them into the space where they are acting uh, according to God's vision for us in the world. I mean God desires presence there, being present with one another. Um, and so I'm actually not surprised to uh. See that level of depth get reached so quickly. When I was a professor teaching sociology research methods to my students, I mean it was a state school so I had to be very careful about the language here. But um, I remember telling them a lot like you know, you're, we're doing qualitative hortic. So not just survey. We're just sitting there doing interviews. And whether you're talking about a, uh, medical diagnosis or religious conversion or whatever your field of study, you're going to end up across the table from somebody. And two things are going to happen. They're going to tell you a story, um, that you've never heard before. And you have to be prepared to receive that in a way that honors that story. But this other thing is going to happen too, where they're, they're going to tell a story that they have never told before because nobody has ever asked. And that's just the nature of doing so. Like, I think good sociological research, and I would tell my students, you know, if. If you don't think that that's a sacred moment, then you're fooling yourself. Like, if you don't take it that seriously, then I'm not really sure that you can do good sociology. I mean, I was not, you know this. I'm not trying to make them into pastors or anything like this or, or teaching them how to be a sociologist. But I've seen that transformation. Just because somebody's asking you a question and you start putting together you've told the bits and pieces before, right? Because nobody's ever asked you to tell it in a way that requires you to put all that together. It can be transformative for both the, uh, listener and for the person speaking.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So just to interrupt you there, uh. The asking, the question that no one's asked before is what we call in dealing with attention and the hearing, a story that's never been told before is what people mystery.
A survey at Future of Faith looks at the impact of listening on faith formation
Yeah, that's amazing if we're talking about the same stuff.
>> Josh Packard: So we've got a survey that we've done at Future of Faith. So I'm going to talk to a theologian about a survey. Now. Um. I think it may be the only work that's out there that attempts to try and understand the impact of listening on faith formation. Because when I was giving talks about all kinds of other things, uh, that would lead us up to this threshold, the pastors, priests, youth ministers, campus ministers, et cetera, in the audience would always say, okay, am I listening to build trust so that they'll then listen to me later? Or is there actually something happening in that moment? It's a fair question on their part and one that I had not ever, um, we had not ever actually investigated. And so in this round, we went back and we started asking people, you know, where is your Faith deepened. You know, what, what is it about listening? Is this a step along the way or is this an end and of itself? And they said some remarkable things like 2 to 1, telling us that listening mattered, um, in the moments that shaped their faith the most, over sermons like, you know, twice as many people telling us that listening was important as opposed to sermons which I think to me as a sociologist speaks more about this world. Because then they would express all this stuff like, well, servants are broadcast and that person doesn't know me. And they've never asked how can I possibly take what they're saying? Um, and I was like, well, okay, I'd not quite thought about it from that perspective. And when we started unpacking why the listening mattered, what they told us is that they were working it out in real time. But having somebody that would actually sit there through all the stuff, um, the iterations. And continue to be curious and be personable allowed them the freedom to sort of explore that people wouldn't do on their own, that they needed a sort ah, of partner, um, or a sounding board to do that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay, so here's two thoughts about what you've just said. So thought number one is, I know you were teaching at a state school, so you couldn't say this, but if I'd been teaching that class with you and Duke Divinci School where I used to teach, uh, I would have said what Jomptu has just described to you as prayer.
>> Josh Packard: Because, yeah, say more about that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Prayer. Is fully listening and being fully listened to. That's all it is. Uh, and as you said, that's more transformative.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Than anything else for faith. Well, that's more definitive of what it means to be with God than anything else. And then the second thing to say is how about reimagining the incarnation? Not as Jesus coming to give us something called salvation.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But Jesus coming to listen to us.
>> Josh Packard: And I think that's part of when we followed up on the survey and started doing interviews with people and then triangulating back to what I heard at the beginning. It's that thing that I kept coming back to over and over again is that, uh, people were sort of, I don't want to say rejecting. It's too strong of a word, but it feels like what they're resisting or pushing back on is this transactional notion that again, as we sort of frame this in this institutional story of like, as the structures of those institutions are losing credibility in their mind, I think what they're sort of inherently then Pushing back on is this idea that I'm going to move through a process from a state of not good enough to a state of good enough because I'm going to follow this prescribed order of confirmation or Sunday school or this eight week sermon series or whatever. Um, the seven series works. Yes, of course, um, if it's a really good one. Uh, and instead that this constant presence as a way of somebody investing and taking the time to get to know them, um, is the transformative act for them because it's not transactional. I think what you're suggesting is that Jesus is not transacting you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: No. And that's the theme of enjoyment. So, um. One motto for me, it's not one that I share very much with the congregation because although my own congregation now so used to me talking about these things, I think they would get it. But most congregations couldn't see what I was talking about. So my aspiration for every congregation member about how they feel about the church they go to is that they say, everywhere else I'm used, but here I'm enjoyed.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Imagine you're a checkout assistant and everybody is basically treating you like you're a machine and wondering why they're just too lazy to use a machine. And they'll use the checkout assistant. They won't say, I love the way you do your hair. They won't say, gosh, have you been working six hours without a brain? They won't say, you're looking forward to Thanksgiving. They'll just say, can I have a bag for that?
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, so they're using you. And if you're a dentist, it's the same. You may be more trained, you may have a higher rate of pay, but basically want to get in and out as quick as possible. There was less pain and that's all that really matters. Uh, it doesn't cost very much. Yeah, they're being used. Whereas in a congregation. There'S no using to do that is a place where relationship exists for its own sake. It's not, I'm going to sit next to you because I feel a bit more holy when I sit next to you. And also you know when to stand up and sit down. So I. We're not stupid, we're not using each other up and make this empty block. But we're genuinely enjoying each other. I mean.
How do we get people to be curious without expressing judgment
In the be with courses, every session starts with what's been the heart of your week. Because we really believe that there has been revelation in your life in the heart of the week. And we are impoverished if we have not heard the revelation that has come through the hearts of your week. Um, so that experience of shifting to a mode of enjoyment should be what churches the experience of church to be fully enjoying. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, we talk a lot about the love stuff and so on, but that sense of we will know even as we are fully known, to be fully known and loved doesn't get better from that.
>> Josh Packard: The. To the being fully known, um, and fully loved, that those two things are not, uh, one does not necessarily follow the other. I think part of the fear that people have of being fully known is that they'll be rejected. And I mean, again, our own data bear that out of people saying that fear of being judged is the number one barrier to sharing. This is the reason why they don't talk or open up to people. Um. During the pandemic, I, like most Americans, watched more soccer through Ted Lasso than we had ever watched. And of course he quotes. I think it's. I can't remember if it's Einstein or Whitman who originally says this. Being curious, not judgmental. Um, very famous scene from the first season. And that's one of the things that I think it comes through in the data. But how do we get people to do that? How do we get people to be curious without expressing judgment? I just genuinely want to know more.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, I think judgment is invariably simply a form of impatience.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's trying to cut to the end of the story and make it land in the place that is already within my experience. If you think about a big breaking news story, um, a chief executive has been a Kim Gustavo doing something inappropriate with an employee. Well, sadly, most people have in their experience, either in their own experience or something, you know, something like that. Yeah. Uh, and so they will invariably impose their own experience. I say, I know how that goes. You know, he asked to see you after work and he comes over all nights and then he comes on a bit strong and then you look around, you'll find there's no. You do the rest of the story. You actually don't know anything. You don't know. It could be a hundred different stories, but you think you know the story. And that's how we make judgments. All judgments, I think, are of that type. We complete the story when we don't have all the information. And part of what this giving of time and wondering and paying attention is about extending that period of time and what you've called curiosity to say. And you mentioned earlier that Sense of mystery. This isn't a storming. I've heard before. I know how this goes. You cut that out. I don't know how this goes. Just slow down. Just have the humility to discover something you didn't already know. And if you stay with it and you actually listen and you let the person tell the story, you'll find a story you hadn't heard before. You don't know how it goes. And it may be a thing of wonder.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, but all judgment, I think is about closing that story.
>> Josh Packard: And that's a, I think that just to note that like that's a. This idea of completing the story based on a limited set of facts is a perfectly viable way to go through large parts of the world. I mean we are rewarded for it all the time, you know, so that we can understand um, something about a new situation in business or in a classroom or something without having to sit there, you know, and really dig into every detail. But that's not necessarily a great way to treat each other when we're really trying to focus on pursuing relationship. Not again, not transacting.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, it's the sort of triumph of technique. You go to business school to learn the three steps. You say to the customer, uh, first you say to the customer, so uh, how do you feel about having a home that takes an awful lot of time to clean? And then you listen to the customer, which has got nothing to do with your agenda. You make them feel. Then the second technique is say, can you imagine having a home that cleaned itself? Wouldn't that be amazing? And then the third step is to say, well we have this amazing self cleaning device and it only costs $40,000. But I don't know if my wife was standing next to me and I said I wasn't prepared to buy it for her, she'd probably leave me. So I guess you probably don't love your wife, do you? And you learn these sort of three steps of how to be a. And that's technique. There's no mystery, there's no delight in that. Um, but how'd you get all influenced people? You've learned it all out of a book. You've Learned from a PowerPoint. These days. That'S a very small world. Mhm. But real life isn't about manipulating each other. Uh, it's about enjoying the mystery, the wonder. And God isn't interested, uh, in a three step technique. I mean some people might say that God is a three step technique, but God doesn't have a determined outcome. Just Imagine being in a relationship where the other party doesn't have a determined outcome of how this is supposed to go. You know, once you start dating somebody as a 23 or something, probably one or other party has a very clear trajectory of how this relationship is supposed to go.
>> Josh Packard: I keep waiting for my wife to.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Tell me, yeah, we'll maybe say that for one more off there. Um, but just imagine that sense that you're being held with open hands. So the way I like to put it is the difference between using and enjoying is using something you do with one hand and you can actually do something else with that, like texting while you're driving or something. Oh no, we don't do that. Uh, whereas enjoying is something that takes both hands. It can't be doing anything else. You absolutely cherish it. Like holding a newborn baby. You couldn't hold a newborn baby like that. It's so precious. And you hold them. So we imagine that God holds us in two hands and doesn't have a plan for our life. You know, this whole God has a plan for your life, that's a prison. Just imagine the real love that doesn't have a plan and will love you whatever happens, whatever before.
I reject the notion that a data point can change people's minds and hearts
That's real love.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah. It reminds me, I have a family member that um, I disagree with on, uh, just ah, a wide array of political issues and they believe things that I would say are not even factual and true. And so I was telling this, I was having dinner with some of my friends and they're like, well, what happens? Like don't, don't you correct, like when you, when you show them the facts, like how does that, how does that conversation go?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I was like, oh.
>> Josh Packard: I said I don't, I don't do that. Um. I just realized like I'm not ever doing that with them. And my friend says, well, why not? Don't you, you know, like you're, you're a professor, like don't you want to correct the record? And I said, well, I'm not trying to win my family member. I'm trying to have a relationship my family member. And that is far more interesting, frankly and important to me than trying to convince them of something.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well again, but back to what we were saying about judgment is an impatience to close down the story. In a sense, you're not presuming that just by correcting them on, should we imagine what really happened on January 6th?
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I'm just imagining.
>> Josh Packard: Mhm.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, we'll actually sort anything, of course.
>> Josh Packard: Because it wouldn't work anyway.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But what you need to get to is why the person, as you put it, uh, is so invested in something that in their head they know to be untrue, but in their gut has a ring of truth and a kind of liberating sense of finally someone's called it what it is about it. And to understand people's political convictions, you can't just talk Bailey data. And you know, that was the mistake with the Brexit votes in England that the government who was supporting Remain were saying, look, we'll be better off if we stay in the eu. And um, but that wasn't what people voted on most. They voted on profound things like belonging and identity. Uh, and so people say, oh, they were told lies about how much money was going to go into the National Health Service if we came out the. It's pointless having an argument about that. In the end, it was about who are we at the bottom of the bottom.
>> Josh Packard: I reject the notion that a data point can't change people's minds and hearts. Um, even though I know it very well to be true. Um, and in fact have devoted a good portion of my career to trying to figure out how we can use that to tell the data, to tell better stories. Because I know that that's the information alone is not going to do those things.
Tim Ferriss: I think of the church in three senses
Um, Tim, as we wrap up here, can you maybe just share. What is giving you hope for the church right now?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, being, of course, I mean, it's a no brainer, isn't it? Yeah. Um, so I think of the church in three senses. Uh, I think if you imagine an hourglass, uh, with an aperture in the middle of a basani based tree, and I think of essence like heaven forever at the top and then existence, now our reality at the bottom. I see Jesus as being that aperture between forever and ever. And when we pray, we enter that aperture with Jesus. And the church is the body of Christ that imitates and continues the pattern of Jesus in that aperture. So the church, that's the church in the first sense, that's the kind of big picture. Uh, and then secondly, the church is a bunch of people rubbing along together as best they can and trying to forgive each other and get along. And they can be a dozen people or 100 people. Um, and as Margaret Mead famously said, never underestimate the power of a small group of people. Change the world, it's the only thing that ever happened. Uh, so that's the second sort of sense of church. And most people can relate about it. And then there's the third center church, which is bishops and synods and, uh, conventions and all the stuff the media talk about in terms of failing and how many people are attending and data m and then ghastly failures and mistakes that are made and so on. Um, so the media looks at the third and judges by the third. I don't think God really cared about the third. I think if you're experiencing the first and the second. It doesn't matter if the church covers the whole world or is tiny. The first and the second is what it's really all about. So to the extent that I see the church embodying a first and a second, I get excited about it. And I see that in little churches and little congregations. I remember a church I served 25 years ago which had 12 adults and six children who weren't relatively adults. I remember the moment after four years I'd been there. A woman said to me after service, do you know if we were bigger? We probably do some of the best things we do. And that was a transformative moment where she stopped seeing the empty seats and she started seeing the people who were God's gifts in those seats. And I think the church needs to make that transition. Because to say, uh, we're huge or we're influential or we're wealthy, well, you won't have any of those things in the kingdom of God, sunshine. So you might well go on that. Just concentrate on seeing the glory of God in a human being, fully alive Jesus in that aperture, and concentrate on rubbing along together as best you can. Don't worry about the rest.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, I like that. Um, well, I'll say. For me, I find more and more people resonating. I show this slide sometimes. I drew it by hand. It's not scientific, but I make the point that the only data that really matters is the space between what you think you know about somebody and what their lived life is actually like. And I've been talking about that for maybe seven, eight, nine, 10 years. And it, uh, really feels like post Covid when I say that now I see people nodding along in this way that it feels like the church and leaders in it are grasping onto that concept that people like me can come up with all kinds of data, but real. And it can be informative in some ways and directional. But at the end of it, the only thing that matters is can you close the space between you and the person that you're frosting? Can you sit and understand the gifts that you've got in the pews that you're With. And so. That has been very life giving.
Sam Harris says modernity is obsessed with human predicament being limitation
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So I have a sort of a big sort of philosophical thesis which is that I think our, uh, generation modernity, whatever you call it, is obsessed with our human predicament is limitation. The problem is that we haven't got enough. Um, and so we celebrate people breaking 100 meters world record. We celebrate people doing brain surgery they never done. We celebrate these brain strips. But I think actually that's based on a fundamental mistake. I think our human predicament is ice ration. If you think that human predicament is limitation, then you need to put huge resources into finding new things we don't already know. Uh, the irony of that is that some of those things actually only increase isolation because we spend all our time on our phones and we're not talking to the person next to us or we're zooming to Australia and we don't know the name of our next door neighbor. But if you think of problem as isolation, the solution is already next to you.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You've already got everything you need. All you need to do is reconcile a relationship. So I'm a hundred percent with you about what you've discovered since COVID Because if in Covid, people realized m. They couldn't overcome their limitation and they had to find new ways of overcoming their isolation.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Then in a paradoxical way that shouldn't be misquoted, Covid, in some ways was a gift choice.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Um, and thank you for the clarity and I mean, Sam, just for the reminder that God's deepest desire is to be with us. Um, and not to, um, you know, not to overly tax that phrase, but, uh, but I think that's an important thing for us to. For us to walk out with. So thank you for this conversation. It's been deeply gratifying for me. I know I've learned a ton. And, um, we could do this for a lot longer, but I think probably listeners have other things to get onto.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thank you very much.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, well done. Thank you, gentlemen.
Sam Harris: What is your biggest takeaway from studying sacred listening
Actually, before I stop the recording, I'm just curious if I asked you what is your biggest takeaway now that, uh, for sacred listening, now that you know more about being with and how it functions and what's the foundation of it?
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Is it that you've been a theologian all along? You didn't realize it?
>> Josh Packard: No. The thing that I have been taking away from the last couple of months, even, uh, uh, getting, uh, sort of more familiar with your work, and in last week and in this Conversation as we move forward here is how useful it is to have clear language and structures for these things. Because we've been piecing this together from a variety of traditions, none of which we feel like we're very much experts in. Um, but it's everything from like, you know, evangelicals, con concepts, uh, of discipleship to, um. I had this amazing opportunity to have dinner with Michael Cherney, who runs the Dicastery for Human Rights, if I remember correctly, at the Vatican, and asking him, like, you know, how do you keep hope in as you go to all these places around the world where there's famine and war and all these things? Um, and he's talking about presence and accompaniment. And sometimes all you can do is. And he literally told me at dinner, sometimes all God is asking for you to do in that moment is to be with people. Um, and so I feel like I've been sort of trying to fit these various pieces, um, together into some sort of coherent picture. For us that's sacred listening. I mean, again, like, we don't offer it as theology, but it starts from a position of imago dei, and that's the. That's the simplest access point that we can come to with credibility. Um, and I think a large part of what I'm getting from Sam's work here is, well, that picture. Uh, can and probably should, as we've known for a while, be expanded tremendously before we move on to the other two parts of safer reasoning theory. Incredibly, um, useful.
Father Lorenzo: There is a breakdown in trust of institutions and of authority figures
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And Sam, I'm curious, as you listen to a sociologist tell you about what the statistics show, and particularly when you mentioned about young people, particularly saying that being heard was part of formation for them, it brings them closer to God.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yes. I think the paradox of the conversation about the emerging generation is, uh, the tragedy of a breakdown in trust of. Of institutions and of authority figures. For very understandable reasons, I don't think authority figures are more evil than they used to be. But I think their, uh, faults have been held to account more assiduously than perhaps happened in the past and have been made public. And therefore that suspicion that people are, uh, up to no good or in it for the longer reasons is grades open it previously has been. Um, and I think the democratization through social media, through wider access to education and so on has created, ah, a jungle of stories and allegations and suspicion that it's very difficult for any young person to find their way through. Um, now how do you rebuild that level of trust, first of all in those like your teachers or your pastor, and then beyond in institutions which are made up people you don't know personally, but you have every reason to trust. I think it can only happen from the ground up with forming relationships, you know, beyond the domestic, uh, where you have reliability, durability and trust. Well, I think the church is one of the few institutions anywhere where people of different generations make relationships with people outside their family or working circle. Um, so I think when you're talking, Josh, about that gap between what we already know and what we don't know, that requires, uh, that's an adventure, but somebody has to have the courage to take the risk of going on that adventure. Um, and, um. So we are basically fostering communities. You transfer people have their conflicts to go on those kinds of adventures.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And what's interesting to me is if we were to invite Brene. Do you know who Brene Brown is?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We don't go way back, but I certainly think she said.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Because she would also say that you being. Uh. I, uh, was just reading one of her books recently and the Gifts of Imperfection. And, uh, she talks about that it's courage, compassion and connection. Courage to be able to share your story no matter what others say, which is sort of the equivalent of being in a space where you can share your story without the fear of being judged, which makes that connection possible because of the compassion. I just think that so many of these things are just overlapping on each other, but it is so theological to me just to hear it. So, anyways, yay. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and be sure to leave a review. To learn more About Try Tank, visit tritank.org be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you can keep up with all of our experiments. The Tri Tech podcast is a production of Tritech in association with Resonate Media. Tritech is a joint venture between Virginia Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary. Again, thanks for joining us. I'm, um, Father Lorenzo. Until next time. May God bless you.