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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
Lorenzo Lebrija (00:00)
And Josh Packard, welcome back to the Try Tank Podcast.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (00:06)
I'm so excited to be here. It's always great to be here.
Lorenzo Lebrija (00:09)
Yeah, it's always fun to have a conversation with you. always it irrespective of your new book, I always just learn when I talk to you. like, so that's why that works that way. Or that's why those things, you know, why young people are doing this or that it's always just, it's if if if there were a theme song to our conversations together would probably be that the more you know, because I always learn more when I talk with
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (00:32)
Josh and Lorenzo learning things together.
Lorenzo Lebrija (00:35)
there you go, we can do our own show.
So for someone who has not heard of the book, doesn't know anything about the book, what would you say if someone just asked you, you were at your cocktail party and they're like, oh, you wrote a book. Tell me about Faithful Futures. What's this book you wrote? They're already looking past you to see who else they can go talk to for the record. You're this close to losing them.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (00:51)
⁓ I feel badly for that person at a random cocktail party who happens to ask me about my
Okay, well, let's see if we can hook them back in. ⁓ Faithful Futures, Sacred Tools for Engaging Younger Generations. The book is really about why now we have to change the way we think about
young people and generations in particular. And generally speaking, what we've been doing is thinking about them in containers and we call these containers generations. So we talk about the greatest generation or millennials or what have you. The world is far too diverse. Young people's lives are far too complex that we really need to stop thinking about them in these containers because we obscure the actual reality of their lives. ⁓ And we really need to focus on sort of what are the social events that are
that are actually causing them to behave or act ⁓ in certain ways, shift their identities and their meaning making structures. then ideally, that we, us in ministry, can find out, we can meet them where they are because we can understand where they're at better and how we can connect.
Lorenzo Lebrija (02:00)
So here's, and I get that, and in your book you call them bias containers, right? That we come at them with this bias because we look at them. You know, and aren't they somewhat helpful though? I mean, we cannot in the church think we're gonna do ministry for each individual person individually, right? I cannot do my service just for Josh Packard on Sunday. I have to do it for many people in the congregation, but.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (02:07)
The generations of these containers were biased. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lorenzo Lebrija (02:29)
So aren't they somewhat helpful? Or is it the point where we just go and we only see these stereotypes and are like, well, they obviously are all just the same. I happen to look at this whenever people talk about Latinos. They think, well, obviously you're Latino, so there's just one in the same. like, whoa, that's just way too simple to know the reality. That's not even talking about who am I as an individual. That's just talking, who am I as a mixture of Cuban Mexican?
that just separates me from someone who's Puerto Rican or someone who's from Peru. And there's so many things. So containers can be a little helpful, right? Or.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (02:57)
Mm-hmm.
I think actually right now there's two things going on that when we think in those broad containers like Latinos, I think that's a good one, or ⁓ Gen Z or something like that, ⁓ we're doing more harm than good. So maybe 50 years ago, 40 years ago, was actually sort of, we would gain some expediency by talking about boomers or Gen X or something.
We knew that it didn't really capture everybody and certainly not all the nuance, but it captured enough of most people that we could design programs and ministries and ad campaigns or whatever it is that we were designing. could, you know, we can sort of target the big meaty middle and get enough of what we were going for. But the world we live in now, there's two things going on. So number one with, with young people, these are.
the most diverse generations that have ever existed anywhere ever in the history of the world ever. like demographically, politically, you know, the viewpoints that they express and encounter the family systems that they live in. So I think for that reason alone, like we're seeing good that that is in and of itself a good enough reason to say like, okay, so these these generational containers that were never actually all that perfect. I mean, the world was never as homogenous as we wanted to think.
Now, actually, you know, if we aim for the big meaty middle of whatever we're going to call gen alpha, you know, we're probably only capturing at best, I don't know, 35 % of the population as opposed to maybe 70 or 75%. And and Pew, for this reason, has also moved away from this. They have said, we're going to stop talking about generations. It's just not helpful. And that, that has been the North Star for me as a researcher is, you know, I think I've told you this, maybe you said this last time I was on, said, you know, I always want to do work that is useful, not just interesting.
Lorenzo Lebrija (04:42)
Got it.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (04:58)
And that's what ultimately leads me away from this idea of generational containers as our default setting, because I think it's not only is it not helpful, I think it's harmful. And so we're not doing things that are useful when we're thinking about containers. So that's number one. Number two, ⁓ there's been this massive trust swing in our world. Trust doesn't disappear, it's just relocated. And it's moved away from institutions and towards individuals. And you start...
coupling those two things together. then I think this picture emerges where like, yeah, I guess we're probably not going to give, you know, a hundred sermons to a hundred individual people. We're still going to give one sermon at the service to the hundred people who are in our congregation that Sunday morning. But what we have to recognize is that the efficacy of that delivery method is far lower than it used to be. And so we've got to come and bolster this with some more individual relational approaches.
Lorenzo Lebrija (05:55)
And before we move on, I certainly want to get to the tools ⁓ when you talk about sacred listening in a moment, but sticking with a second to these containers. just to make sure that I'm totally getting it wrong. The containers that we're using right now are wrong, but is it OK to still use any sort of containers? Or should we just do away with containers in any way? Because the percentages, to your point, are going to be so small. The containers are no longer going to be able to represent
such a large percentage of the population that you can say like, there's your, there's your bell curve. You're getting the bulk of them in this one container. It, that's no longer the case. It, this is now spreading to so many that the moment that you go into containers, you're just, you're, missing out on a lot and you're just focusing on the wrong thing.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (06:44)
Well, yeah, and so I think that is true. I think that it's probably time to stop with that kind of thinking. Also because I think it sets you into the wrong sort of posture and sort of, instead of mindset, if we could say heart set, that any hint or sniff that you are trying to lump teenagers in as a group together, it sends them running in the opposite direction. And so I think...
That's why I think changing our heart set away from, how many caveats do I have to build into this category so I can still talk about you as a category? ⁓ It's unlikely that there's going to emerge out of that a ministry approach that's going to resonate with a generation that doesn't conform to those categories more so than ever before. Look, continuous have always rebelled against us. I'm not going to suggest to you that somehow all of Gen X or whatever was thrilled to be lumped in.
Lorenzo Lebrija (07:20)
Ha ha ha ha ha
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (07:39)
know, together. I mean, people always nobody likes being categorized. But but I would say that that that approach is now sort of like a toxic approach
is what we've come to.
Lorenzo Lebrija (07:49)
You know,
on the one hand, though, if you will, the silver lining in the ending of the characterization of people through using these containers is that in some ways it's pushing us back to where the church should be, which is relational, relational first. I don't see you coming up and saying, like, look, there's a Gen Alpha that I can put into my youth group. But rather, it's like, let me get to know this person. Let me go ahead and hear their story.
and then try to see where they might fit within who we are as a church.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (08:23)
would hope so. I'm not a minister or a theologian. I'll let you use the word should. If you say that's where the church should be, mean, that seems right to me, but I'm a sociologist and I want to be really clear about that. most, think the way I would look at this from a social scientist perspective would say, you know, there were some tools that were really effective in that sort of high trust, big category world. And in this low trust, small category world, those tools don't work anymore.
the big sort of everybody gather in my space and like look at my credential and look at how important I am and come to my campus and my setting and those are less likely to be effective tools today. I don't think they're bad, right? It's just different tools for different times.
Lorenzo Lebrija (09:09)
How does then, how do, for example, non-denominational churches still manage to attract so many thousands of people on a Sunday to a very specific sort of, are they just sort of, if you will, getting the remnants of who's left that still might identify within those categories? Or are they, yeah, how are they still able to attract thousands of people? And we can certainly talk about.
the fact that people may not last very long, there's all these other things, at least initially, initially they're able to attract large groups of people. How do they do that? Would you say?
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (09:35)
Yeah, there is all. Yeah.
This is, okay, so I mean, there's certainly, and there has been plenty of scholarship about this, but in a nutshell, I'll I mean, there is a desire to belong to things for people, know, even as institutional trust erodes, people still want to belong to something. And so there is just sort of something about going where the people are. But if you look under the hood at most of those large mega churches, ⁓ what you might, what I think people on the outside see is the massive campus and
you know, all the cars in the parking lot on Sunday mornings. But what's, you know, what's, they're really great at. Yes, they're great at the show on Sunday mornings. If that's your thing, you're going to get a great show, but they're, but they're really, really great throughout the week too, because underneath of all that is often a thriving small group ministry and affinity groups for every different slice that you could possibly want. And so, you know, if you're a, if you're a, if you're a stay at home mom of twins, you might actually find
within your own mega church, an affinity group, you know, of other moms who have twins, like they have such a population often that you can even find, you know, some pretty niche, niche groups there. So I think that's actually the engine that makes that whole thing run. And those, that ends up cascading and attracting lots of other people because those people who are in those small groups go and, know, they, you know, they can't go out to dinner this Tuesday night because this is a small group night and you know, when they're non-
religious friends or non attending friends start to get wind of how you know important that group is in their lives a lot of times that that becomes its own evangelical tool
Lorenzo Lebrija (11:17)
Yeah, that's a great point and something we've seen. And so you mentioned that the tools that used to work for us when we were in this high trust world, a world that was easier for us to put into compartments, ⁓ don't work anymore. And like a good author, you suggest new tools that you have for us. And these are the sacred listening tools. ⁓ I used the word tool in there. You didn't. But I think that ⁓ it's important.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (11:41)
yeah, that's what
we call them.
Lorenzo Lebrija (11:42)
Yeah, okay. But you know, sacred listening as a whole as a concept blends sociology, communication theory and
a little bit theology that that's in there, I would
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (11:52)
As much as we
Lorenzo Lebrija (11:54)
I would I would stand very much as an Anglicanist and a Sanofisco Palings to say that we are all theologians in this. ⁓ So why do you believe listening is the most transformative acts, act that adults can offer to young people today? Why is
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (11:53)
confident doing.
Hahaha
Lorenzo Lebrija (12:09)
that particular thing to say, Hey, little person who's let's come up with I was gonna say little Josh, but I'm looking at you. Let's just say little Mikey or little Susie. ⁓ Tell me your story. And why is that? And I know you've done research into this. Why is that? So transformational for that young person? Do you think?
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (12:13)
Mm-hmm.
I first encountered this when I was a professor and I had so many advisees that I would only see a couple of times a year, well over 100. I could not conceivably remember everything that they were saying. But I wanted them to feel like I wanted them to feel how much I cared during the interaction. And so it would be me and that person across the desk and I would...
I of course had to give them their pin numbers so could register for classes. mean, that was the instrumental purpose of our meeting. But I wanted to like dig into their lives and understand their motivations and stuff like that. Which I'm sure every student was not thrilled to have to do just to get their pin number. And then after, yeah, just give me the seven digits, right? ⁓ And after they left, I would scribble stuff down on a note card because I couldn't remember from time to time, but I didn't want them to know that I couldn't remember. And then one day this student...
Lorenzo Lebrija (13:12)
They're like, I just need the number.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (13:28)
sort of caught me looking at her notes as I was prepping for her to walk in. And I left them on my desk. And she says, what's that? I was like, ⁓ I'm really sorry. I explained the whole, like, there's so many of you, but I really care, blah, blah. And I said, I didn't mean for you to see that. I just wanted to make sure I remembered correctly before this conversation. And she goes, she's like, that's incredible. She's like, we write down the things you say. Nobody ever writes down the things I say. And.
And so like that, I can show you all the data in the world about why listening is important and why it's effective in this world where everybody seems to just be talking all the time. It's like, it feels like a radical act. But that story for me captures the whole thing of when there's a power imbalance and the person with more power takes the time to listen to the person with less power. if the adults and kids, means when adults listen to young people.
It always is a profound act of service. It really does communicate care. When Jesus would take the time to listen to his disciples, or when he would take the time to listen to the people in the towns that he was going through, sometimes people that, other people are also saying you shouldn't listen to, right? It's a profound act because they're disrupting this power imbalance. And so when you do that with,
when you do that with kids, it can be hard because they don't even always know how to share because it's so foreign to them for an adult to truly care and listen to them without agenda, without judgment. But it can be done and we offer some ways of how at the end of each chapter, some exercises that can help get you there. ⁓ I think that's why it's so profound and powerful just because it's so rare.
Lorenzo Lebrija (15:17)
Interesting. And this I think goes to what you were just talking about, because in one of your talk, when you talk about trust and belonging in the book, which you mentioned a little bit ago about this, this world that we live in, where this trust is not just a given anymore, where it was once upon a time. And you mentioned specifically that belonging now precedes believing.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (15:35)
Mm-hmm.
Lorenzo Lebrija (15:43)
And that's a paradigm shift for the church, isn't it? Where it was, you would come in, let us tell you what you need to believe. And once you believe that, then you belong to us. And you're coming and telling us now as a church, like, hey, just so you know, young people, the moment that you begin that way, when you, to use your word, right, when you come with that posture.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (16:06)
Mm-hmm.
Lorenzo Lebrija (16:06)
towards
these young people, they're immediately there. It's not a thought through reaction, but their immediate reaction is like, Whoa, stop, no. That's not exactly how this is gonna work, dude. So they don't even have the they don't listen. It's not that they're, you know, obviously, Satan worshipers that don't want to listen to anything that comes from God. They're just they're sort of protecting themselves like no stop. So
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (16:14)
Right?
Lorenzo Lebrija (16:31)
What is the, I mean, this is, you know ⁓ how wonderful the church is at changing its paradigms and how it does things. And we're used to like, we build a program, they come through the program, they have pizza, and they have watched movies, and thus they belong to the small group of the youth group. And that's what leads them into church. We know that's not working because it hasn't been working for quite a bit now.
So what would you recommend? How does someone that's like, ⁓ instinctively in my gut understand what Josh Packard's saying here. I get it. How do I live into that as a rector of a congregation that has X number of people and I have all these other concerns. I want to attract young people, but how do I do it in such a way? So how do I get them to belong so that they can be like, then, okay, tell me more about what this thing you believe in.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (17:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so the good news here is that I don't think that the church has to fundamentally shift what it's doing. mean, it's at various times and in various, throughout various traditions, the church has gotten that order correct. I mean, it is not now the case that belonging precedes believing. It has in fact always been the case. You can get, and we know this going back to the very first studies in sociology from Emil Durkheim, if you remember your...
If you remember your freshman, sophomore year sociology class, I'm not going to give you Durkheim lecture, don't worry. I'm just saying, this has been a thing that has been well studied. It is easy though, and we can drift over into these short term gains of getting them to believe, especially with teenagers. I I've worked at a summer camp. know how to, I I remember distinctly how to get a group of kids off the bus on a Sunday and get them fired up for God by Friday afternoon. But that's not...
Lorenzo Lebrija (18:21)
You
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (18:26)
You know, if we think about what those really are, I mean, they're not really very durable. I mean, they're important. Camp is important. I'm not suggesting it isn't. ⁓ But for like durable lifelong faith, it's the belonging that's going to see you through that. is the fire and conviction of an encounter with the divine ⁓ on a mountaintop that's going to wear off over time. Nobody can sustain that by themselves. So the church has known this.
It drifts over into believing first and tries to create belonging out of it every once in a while. But at various times throughout, in fact, our fairly recent history, I mean, you look to the revivals of the 1950s. mean, this is largely, you know, this is not necessarily a theology that I love, but if you look like what Billy Graham was doing with youth gatherings in the 1950s, that was based far less on
you know, convicting people to believe, even though they've got so much attention, that it was about gathering young people together in this emerging adolescent teenage culture that didn't exist before. I here is now a space where you could be with other people who also were like you. And that was, you know, that was really at the core of that movement. So this is not, this is not so far out of our wheelhouse. mean, what I do think we need are some new tools. I mean, we got really good at these sort of high trust programmatic tools.
Part of the reason we offer these listening tools here is because in this new world, we're going to need new tools. the way we say it at Future Faith a lot is, can't do relational ministry with 500 people by having 500 cups of coffee a week. That doesn't work. That's right. But you can do relational ministry with 500 people if you know which five cups of coffee you need to have this week. So we need tools that help us sort of cut through to figure out who needs our attention.
Lorenzo Lebrija (20:00)
If you're going to be over caffeinated.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (20:16)
⁓ this week.
Lorenzo Lebrija (20:17)
You know, what's interesting
is that as someone who studies and looks at artificial intelligence, could name several tools where artificial intelligence could be helpful in there. However, the problem with that is that it basically is using a bad tool from the corporate world. We know where AI is headed and AI is headed in the wrong direction vis-a-vis knowing way too much about us and how we talk and how we make decisions.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (20:26)
⁓ yes.
Lorenzo Lebrija (20:46)
that it will utilize that to manipulate us into doing that. Unfortunately, that same tool could actually be really helpful in identifying people when they need to talk to someone, right? If we could, but there's no way anyway, so I won't, speaking of like online and AI and all that social media, the impact of social media that has had.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (20:50)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lorenzo Lebrija (21:10)
And in fact, you identify the fact that social media was one of the defining forces shaping today's teams, right? So what do you think are the long term, I'm asking you to speculate about something here, what do you think are the long term spiritual consequences of social media and what that's gonna do for, and is there anything we can do to prepare for that? mean,
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (21:18)
Yeah.
Well, I hope nothing. look, part of the, I hope the long-term impacts and consequences of social media on spirituality at some point will be like the long-term spiritual consequences of the telephone. You know, negligible, essentially. But that requires that we, as people who are leading congregations and young people, that we engage deeply with what this technology means for their lives and
help build appropriate norms of use around it. I you got to remember, as much as we talk about social media all the time, and as much as influential as it is on our politics, and on our social lives, and everything in between, it's in our work life, et cetera, I mean, everything. It's only 10 years old. I mean, we don't really know what we're doing here. You know I mean? And even within those 10 years, we've already seen it move from, in some massive, massive ways to...
I mean, just to trace out a few of them from entirely user generated content, mostly about mundane things to this world of of like user influencers to now it seems to be the case, which is that most of the content, you look at the data that's being about what's being consumed are essentially, these are professional studios. These are professionals running whole studios that are putting out content. It just looks personal in some cases to what is obviously coming, which is.
⁓ quote unquote social media that's entirely AI generated. know, 90 % of what's on social is going to be made by not social beings. ⁓ And so it shouldn't be a surprise then that we've struggled to figure out what to do with it. But that doesn't mean that it will always be like this. I think even if you just take, let's just take two groups of people. So people who were say 13 to 18, what we would commonly call millennials when social media, ⁓
Lorenzo Lebrija (23:11)
Yep.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (23:33)
came around, it was I mean, was unmitigated good. Nobody could even figure out what might be bad about it really, aside from some theologians, philosophers, et cetera. We had Arab Spring, just to seem like a democratizing force. Like everybody was on it. Those people are now parents. when it comes time for them to give phones to their kids, they're like, no effing way. And not happening.
Lorenzo Lebrija (23:45)
Yeah. Yeah, I remember.
Not happening.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (23:59)
And we look at my own 15 year old and his friends and they're super skeptical about social media. We don't let my son on any social platforms. I told him about that. The thing I'm most afraid of as a parent is the thumbs up button, the like button. Like I just, do not want your self worth being externalized in that way. And he has provided no pushback whatsoever. And I mean, I would say probably at least half of his friends have no social media, don't want it.
So just in that short period of time, we've gone from this like mass adoption to this super skepticism. So I think we're going to be fine. ⁓ But, ⁓ you know, all of us say, I think we're going to be fine. Right. But adults here can't check out. So what this young person told me once, they said, when adults dismiss my online life, they disqualify themselves from the conversation of my life. And so
what that means, you what she's trying to say. And then she goes on and I write about this in a book too. She's like, only adults make this distinction between online life and IRL in real life. Right? Like she's like, we don't do that. That's, it's just, that's exactly right. It's just life. mean, the minute, you know, the minute my son's like free from homework and dinner, he goes downstairs, flips on the computer. It's discord, which is a chatting platform. So it's all the, you know, all the kids that he knows and plays video games with. And then
Lorenzo Lebrija (25:04)
It's just like.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (25:22)
what feels like somewhere between three and 300 video screens pop open and he's like chatting in face to face and on discord and they're playing video games together and like, tell me that's not real. You know what I mean? You know what mean? So it's a, think it really calls for adults to be present in that place. When he was younger, I used to ask him, I was like,
Lorenzo Lebrija (25:34)
no, absolutely, yeah.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (25:45)
We used to drop them off for school and I would say, know, make sure that school is a better place today because you are there. That was our expectation as a Christian. Schools should be better for your presence. And then we shifted and we're like, we should be sort of doing the same thing. And so we started saying like, I don't know what this means, but make Minecraft a better place because you are there today. You know, just trying to get some like value should be expressed there too. And as parents, we should be parenting there too. As religious leaders, we should be leading there too.
Lorenzo Lebrija (26:15)
think it calls into us to be more intentional also about ⁓ the work we do wherever we're doing it ⁓ the same way. So you talk about micro narratives ⁓ and this is a way for young people to reconcile ancient traditions with their modern sort of realities that they're going through. So how do these micro narratives challenge the older generations? And I'm putting people back into a box I recognize, but how do they?
challenge the older ideas of truth and authority. ⁓ Because the church is very much about truth and authority in a lot of ways, because I think that they maybe create some opportunities for us as a church to revitalize faith communities with these micro narratives.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (27:05)
Yeah, I came up with this concept because I was really struggling to figure out how to reconcile what I was reading with what I was seeing. And what I kept reading from theologians and social theorists and others, philosophers, was that there would come a time when people would reject these overarching narrative structures like capitalism or the American dream or Christianity. We call this the death of the meta-narrative, you remember your postmodern theory.
And that in its place, what would come is this very individualistic approach where nobody believed the same thing as anybody else anymore. ⁓ it was all just this sort of like, I don't know, maybe like really narcissistic kind of culture, but so that's what I kept reading. But what I kept seeing wasn't that. I mean, yeah, young people.
you know, as an, and their parents before them even, and maybe even their parents for them, like they are steadily moving away from these institutional one size fits all expressions. They are not going to like open, you know, open the, the bylaws of the Episcopal church and be like, I sign onto everything there. Thank you. Where do I, you know, is it in blood or will ink do, you know, like that, that's not going to happen. But I
Lorenzo Lebrija (28:11)
the
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (28:14)
But I'm not seeing, like when I would go around for, I don't know, five, six, seven years now, surveys, interviews, anecdotally, I'm not seeing a bunch of young people rejecting the notion of truth or rejecting the notion of authority. They do seem to be questioning the location of truth and the location of authority. And so that's what led me to this idea of what I really saw them doing was try to build these micro narratives that helped to explain.
and reconcile all these pieces of their lives. So like, how is it that I'm, you know, I'm in the ally, the LGBTQ plus ally group at school, but I also belong to this Bible study for this campus ministry that many of my friends at that club couldn't go to. Like, how do I make sense of that? You know, I care about the environment. I buy loads of stuff on Amazon that gets shipped to me in cardboard boxes, right? And not all of these are going to be reconcilable. What I'm saying is that I think the point is that
what they're trying to do is find a pathway through all those things that makes their life make sense. ⁓ so Christianity can be a big part of that. God can be a big part of that. taking wholesale all of the teachings ⁓ or tenets of any one thing, their university, what their parents are telling them, the church or what the government is, that doesn't leave space for them to do that kind of reconciling.
work of their lives. And so that's, think, large part why they're rejecting the notion of those containers in general and in favor of trying to find a way that sort of snakes through all these things. They're kids. They're in formation, right? We should not, like, let's not get so hand wringing about, you know, this idea of like, ⁓ they're picking and choosing, or, you know, they're treating it like a cafeteria tray. Like, okay, like, look at their Spotify feeds. I mean, they listen to all kinds of stuff, right?
Lorenzo Lebrija (29:54)
Ha ha ha.
Thank
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (30:08)
Look at the way they dress from year to year. They pick different styles. And I know religion is more important than that. just mean, we know the thing about being a teenager is experimentation and change. You know, the question isn't, are they going to challenge beliefs or are they going to change? The question is, are you going to be there with them when they do it? So, you know, when we focus so much on trying to get them to pick the right thing, and then when they finally do hit on it, we think like our job is done. Well, I think that's just the wrong approach because it's going to change again.
And the question is really who's going to be there with them when they're navigating those changes.
Lorenzo Lebrija (30:41)
know, a few years ago that what you're talking about reminds me, we put out a film at Try Tank to talk about some possible scenarios for the future. And one of them was the fact that people were probably going to go lean more into a do it yourself spirituality and that they would say, yeah, I'm a Christian, but you know, meditation and Buddhist meditation is also right up my alley. And I also at the same time, fill in blacks, right? They might.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (31:03)
Mm.
Lorenzo Lebrija (31:08)
pick and choose a couple of things. And the pushback that I got from some more doctrinal sort of Orthodox people was, yeah, no, we have the truth, need to hold the truth, the truth is very important. And we need to, and so...
I guess the question that I would have on that is at which point do we say to them or how or are we losing the narrative to the point that if someone, this is getting into more theology I think that at some point that somebody even above my pay grade, I'm a political theologian, right? I live in the.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (31:51)
Ha ha ha ha!
Lorenzo Lebrija (31:53)
I will
let those that just can consider and study these questions as to how many angels exactly can fit on the head of a pen. But at which point do we say, the creeds are the bare minimum that you need to accept. And that's just in order for you to call yourself a Christian. If not, it's okay to call yourself something else, but you're just not a Christian. ⁓
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (32:16)
think the key in that is not do it yourself, but do it ourselves. And maybe some cultural competency baked in there. I mean, I'm not sure the Buddhists are thrilled about the idea of you dabbling in a core component of their faith. I don't know, but...
Lorenzo Lebrija (32:28)
you
It would be like Buddha
saying like, you know, I like to meditate, but everyone said, well, I need to have some wafers and some wine. ⁓
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (32:37)
That's right. Yeah, yeah along the way
Along the way i'd like to be forgiven of all of my sins instantly. ⁓ the Yeah And so I think but that is the thing that I think I would hold on to is the relational the ourselves the what do we do corporately as a body and Can you if you know because I really if you you know I would say if maybe if you can't bring yourself to participate in the faith expression with other people
Lorenzo Lebrija (32:43)
Exactly. He's like, ⁓ that's kind of important.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (33:05)
maybe that's not really your faith expression. And I don't want to discount that the possibility of people going it alone for a long period of time, maybe forever, I guess there's ⁓ history of, you know, monks like that, et cetera. But I think it's really rare, right? Like we're social creatures and religion is a social ⁓ construct. And so that would be a big part of the litmus test for me is, you know, where are we going together? I love Pope Francis's, you know, emphasis on accompaniment that he
really was driving at the last 15 years of his life. it's not a new concept. I Catholics have had accompaniment for forever and forever. What I loved about his emphasis though, is that he was like, yes, ⁓ you we're going to walk alongside people, especially young people, which is how he employed ⁓ the concept most often. But we're not just here hanging out. Like we are walking alongside them to a point, like to an end here.
Lorenzo Lebrija (34:00)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (34:02)
We should always be in relationship driving each other ideally, you know, towards ⁓ a knowing and loving God. And I think that last step is one that we often forget and that when we do run the danger of these things becoming narcissistic, becoming Shielism as Robert Bellah coined the term back in the early 1980s, you know, where the faith is just about me.
And it does everything sort of looks like God affirming all the decisions that you were already going to make anyway, right? I think it's when we do it alone. When we do it alone and without a goal and without accountability ⁓ is where we start to run into those troubles. think that's what Francis was trying to get at with accompaniment.
Lorenzo Lebrija (34:32)
Yep.
And, you
know, for those of us who are more Anglican, the theology of Sam Wells and being with is right up there as well with that. ⁓ You know, you write that survival is not required for the church, you know, in despite the challenges, what gives you what gives Josh Packard hope that faith communities can indeed adapt and thrive with these new emerging generations?
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (34:49)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's a quote from W. Edwards, deming a famous data scientist if there could be such a thing. And he said, you know, change is not necessary. Survival is not required. He's saying, you don't have to change. You are not required to survive. Sometimes the other really famous quote that sort of rattles in my head is Jeff Bezos actually said, you know, when your process becomes your product.
Lorenzo Lebrija (35:19)
I am a status like this.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (35:35)
you're doomed to fail. You when you get so beholden to the way you do things as opposed to what you do, that you can sort of put the nails in the coffin already. ⁓ I do, ⁓ every once in a while, I every problem, I mean, the cycles, you maybe every 50 years, it is useful for the church to come up for air and take a look around and say, what part of this is process and what part of this is outcome? And can we let go of some of those processes?
There are things that maybe we've been holding on to, we've gotten really good at in fact, but maybe they're just not as effective as they used to be and we can let go of them. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to, in a world that even where everybody watches movies, maybe we shouldn't be trying to rent them VHS cassettes. It's just not a viable process anymore. So what gives me hope is that that has been in fact what has happened.
Lorenzo Lebrija (36:21)
Exactly right.
Ha ha ha.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (36:32)
you know, either from within or from without, when the church gets to this point repeatedly, as it does, ⁓ there are innovators who come alongside and build things. The listening exercises in the chapter and on the Future Faith website, I these are our small attempt, you know, to try and do our part. One of our ministry practitioners, Keidrean Boston, he runs the Youth and Family Ministries, he we've found this model of time, trust and truth.
And we thought that if we told kids the truth, that they are, that, if we told kids the truth, then they would trust us. And so they'd want to time with us. And he said, now we, what we have realized, and we've rebuilt our whole ministry around flipping that completely. So that now we spend as much time with them as they'll possibly let us. And that builds trust with them. And then we get to like show experience, sometimes even tell the truth.
And so it's, take heart from that. Like I know that that stuff is happening at ministries all over the country. I know it because we highlight it in our, it's literally why we built our newsletter. It was to show people like that thing you're thinking about doing is not crazy. Like that is actually happening. I know there's not a movement for it yet ⁓ per se, but like here, look at this example, look at this example, look at this example.
Lorenzo Lebrija (37:47)
And speaking of doing crazy things, how you've launched this book is also a bit on the crazy side of things. It's not, you know, one of the one of the best things about for those listening, one of the best things about Josh and the whole future of faith team is that much like Try Tank they are all about God's abundance. And it is a firm belief that there is abundance in God's world and that that is an ongoing thing that we can all live into.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (37:53)
Ha ha ha.
Lorenzo Lebrija (38:16)
And you've always been generous with your knowledge. You've always been generous with your time. You've always just been generous. So it should come as no surprise that even in launching your latest book, you're also doing it differently and leaning into that abundance. Tell us about some of the things that you're doing for for the launch of Faithful Futures.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (38:34)
Well, that's really sweet of you to say, Lorenzo. I don't want to make it sound like there's some moral positioning here. Ideally, it's a faithful one, but it really is a reflection of where we are in terms of our, I think, our personal lives and ability to take risk and that we don't have to try and monetize everything. And one of our commitments is to try and not monetize the things that are serving congregations and pastors to try and make those as free as possible. Now, I can't give away every copy of a book for free, but we're going to give away a lot.
Lorenzo Lebrija (39:03)
Ha ha ha ha.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (39:03)
So if you
go to faithfulfuturesbook.com or find it on the Future of Faith website, you'll see there's all kinds of stuff we're doing. we're tithing, I'm tithing 15 % of all my speaking engagements from the book. So if there's a ministry that's doing awesome things that you know of, you can just fill out a form, say what's awesome about them. We'll just send them $250, no questions asked. We'll do that as much as we can for as many of these until the funds run out. ⁓
You can read chapters for free. can gift a chapter automatically from our website to a friend. If you tell us something great in ministry that was your win for the year and we pick it out, we'll send you a book and a shirt and some of our sacred listening tools and there's going to be webinars and just more stuff coming. we're really just trying to use the concept we had Lorenzo was like, what if the book launch instead of launching a book,
was really about trying to launch other people's ministries. Instead of the light shining in, what if we used it as an opportunity to shine the light out? It got to a point actually where internally we're like, well, people believe us. Will they think that this is some trick to try and sell more books? I suppose it could sell more books, but as you know, nobody gets rich writing books. I guess some people do, but not us. This is not some money grab.
Lorenzo Lebrija (40:09)
Ain't that the truth?
No, and I think for
any of us who know you, we know that this is coming from a good place. This is coming from a, I hope it does sell a lot of books because that means that you're actually also going to be able to give away more and do more with it that same way. And not only that, because it also is an opportunity for more people to have these tools in their hands as they're doing this work. So that in and of itself is worthy enough. And I would recommend.
If you are a church leader, go to the website, take a look at some of the chapters, take a look at what is what the book is, and then figure out how can you use the book as a as perhaps something you do together in church where you and your vestry, you and others look at this together and figure out how we can implement this in our church. What does this mean for us? Contextualize it the same way that listen to each other. Use some of the tools.
and listen to each other deeply and be able to, because I think that if we do this, if more people in the church were to do this and we were actually to begin relationship first, looking at our context, relationship first, looking at people, not how can they help me meet my budget type first, but rather how can we be of service? How can, and one of those, the greatest gifts we can ever.
give to someone as you mentioned earlier is just listening to their story. So it's a great book. I'm glad that you've written this book. I'm glad that it is out there. The book is Faithful Future, Sacred Tools for Engaging Emerging Generations by Dr. Josh Packard, who is the founder, one of the co-founders of the Future of Faith and also the research director for the Try Tank Research Institute. And also just an all around good person. You know, if you ever have an opportunity to just share a meal or a drink with Josh.
He's good at conversation. Like I said at the beginning, I always end up learning something from this. So Josh, thank you for joining us today. I hope that the book does wonders and that people really start to use these tools. It's a gift that you've given us in the church and it's always a gift to be able to talk to you.
Josh Packard-Future Of Faith (42:25)
Well, thank you, Lorenzo, and thank you for your friendship.
Lorenzo Lebrija (42:29)
All right. Thank you for joining us for this episode and stick around, see what's coming up next.