Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From Try Tank Experimental Laboratory. This
is the Try Tank podcast where we talk
about all things related to innovation in
the church. I'm, um, Father Lorenz Labrija.
Thank you for joining us.
And hello everyone. This is Father Lorenzo Labrija.
Welcome to the Try Tank podcast. This is episode
023 on Mutual
Ministry. And this is a, this is a good
conversation that you're going to hear today because going to excite
you, it's going to also challenge you.
It's a lot of good stuff in the
conversation. And my guest for this
conversation is from my own,
um, seminary from Virginia Theological Seminary where
I work as the director of Tritech.
Uh, Dr. Tricia Lyons. She currently
teaches evangelism, works at the Lifelong
Learning with us as part of the team.
She's also the senior advisor to the
Dean for Evangelism
initiatives at vts. For our
purposes here today, what's most important, she's also the program
director for Lily Grant at
vts. Uh, regarding mutual ministry and we'll
talk a lot about what that is, but uh, it's
going to be, it's a really good conversation. Ah, we talk
about joy and how that's important, baptism, what uh,
it means to be in mutual ministry. And then we
get practical. We talk about if this is
something, if mutual ministry, if you are just tired
and realize that not only can
you not do this work all by yourself as someone
at leadership in the church, but that you're not called
to do it all by yourself, then
there's a five step formula that we will
be talking about in there. Uh, that will
help you, that will help you do that. Um,
you'll also be talking, we'll talk about a resource, a book, uh,
from Rowan Williams and a
very clear modern definition of
evangelism in the world. So it's a full
conversation. I uh, think it'll give you some
information, it'll do this, it'll give you
the idea of and the knowledge of where our
church is right now, particularly the Episcopal Church where we
are. We talk about some numbers, what sort of the future
is in terms of how we need to get more people
involved into the work that we're doing, how to do
that. And then the final part is a little bit more
about ourselves as Christians
doing this work and how we ourselves can talk
about our own Christian identity. So as I mentioned, a
full conversation. I certainly hope you enjoy it.
Here we go, right onto the podcast.
And Dr. Tricia Lyons, welcome to
the Try Tank podcast.
>> Tricia Lyons: Thank you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So in order to give context to what we're talking about
here today. Right. We're going to be talking about mutual ministry and
what that means. I think it's important to give our
listeners a sort of, a sort of baseline
of where we are. And these are the latest numbers
that the Episcopal Church as a whole has
given us when they just released a couple of weeks ago,
about a month ago now, they released the latest numbers which actually
show the numbers for 2023
parochial reports which came out this year in
2024. So to give an idea of who we
are as a church, we have about
6,700 or
so. I think it's 6,758
congregations in the Episcopal Church. We've only gone down, I think we only went
down like 20 or 30 or so. So it wasn't
bad. But the numbers of people keep dropping. Uh, but
here's what's interesting of our, if you think about it, of
our 6,700 congregations,
2,228
of those have 25 or
fewer people on a Sunday. Right.
So a, uh, third of our congregations are
small congregations. We're primarily a denomination of small
congregations. But then within
those we have uh, also other
numbers. So we know now that there are
425 congregations
where the worship leader is a layperson.
There is no priest who comes around. There's just, it is
all lay led both in, uh, on the
administrative and functional side and also on the liturgical
side. And then there are
congregations with long term
supply where the priest just comes on Sunday. So the
majority of the work is done just by lay
people. And by the way, this doesn't
necessarily mean that all of those congregations are also under 25. It
is possible that a lay, lay congregation can have more than 25 people or
something. Yeah, that, that' very much possible.
So what do you make of those numbers?
Is that reality? Sort of. Why the mutual
ministry? And I'll ask for your definition of what it
is. Exactly. But is this why
this is a time for something like that?
>> Tricia Lyons: Yes. Um, the good
news about um, anything that we might call mutual
ministry is, uh, there's ancient
precedent for it. There's um, there's
medieval precedent for it, there's monastic precedent for it,
there's reformation, ah, era precedent for
it, the ah, onset of modernity.
Um, so it's a practice, a way of
doing ministry, um, that
I think is very relevant to today and very relevant to the
numbers that you're saying. Um, the first thing I'll say
about what is if someone says well, what is mutual ministry?
Um, the reason I'm smiling is my answer. My first
answer is it's joyful.
But I'm sure people might want a little more information than that.
Um, there's a history in our church, a recent
history. Let's bracket the ancient medieval, things
like that. Um, the recent history of the church in the
last, um, five or six decades, um,
are attempts, um, a lot of them
still, uh, a wisdom center of some of those
practices and experiments, um, or out
in uh, the Diocese of Northern Michigan,
but other, um, uh,
diocese and in some cases brave individual
priests and lay people working with native communities
in multiethnic, um, multiracial communities.
Um, and what mutual ministry has had different
names in the past. Shared ministry,
um, local, uh, ordination, um,
total ministry. These are just phrases over the last few
decades. Um, none of which of those
phrases actually captures what I see
now happening in the church. Uh, and I think we have to be
careful. People that don't know a lot about mutual ministry, they
know something was happening in the 70s or weren't there
bishops just ordaining people without seminary in the
90s. And those are all pieces to a puzzle. But
it's like a thousand piece puzzle.
Uh, so we want to just say that from the beginning and the kinds of
things that we're studying now through our Lilly,
uh, funded from uh, the Eli Lilly Foundation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, so how would you describe it? If we're in an
elevator, what's the elevator pitch for? What, other ah, than
joyful. What is, uh,
mutual ministry?
>> Tricia Lyons: Right, mutual. A mutual ministry
mindset or a mutual ministry metabolism,
um, is simply saying that baptism
is the essential change of the human
person. Um, uh, it's not just
their entry into eternal life. And we have to keep saying
that our entry into eternal life is not at the, at the
death of our mortal body. Our entry into eternal
life, our citizenship and the kingdom of God begins
in baptism. That's one of the ways that the kingdom is
actually sort of birthing, um, or
blooming in the world is with every baptism. Which is why, you
know, we really want to celebrate every baptism. Even if you walk
by a church and you hear there's a baptism, go in and see it. Because what you're
really seeing is another bud of the kingdom of God.
The answer to our prayer and the Lord's Prayer that we
say, um, that it would be on earth as it is in heaven.
And every baptism, uh, is a bit of the
kingdom bursting through the world. So a mutual
ministry mindset simply says everyone baptized
already has this Citizenship of another world,
um, and a world that. Not we're going to leave and go to
like some kind of evacuation theology, that these are all the people
who are going to get, you know, um, zoomed
out. It's the reverse, you know, in our lives we're
baptized. The kingdom is coming slowly to the
world. So that kingdom is coming here. We're not going there in
that sense. So mutual ministry simply says when you gather
together two or three people, um, to be people of God
together, to be the body of Christ
together. We don't prioritize
something like ordination, uh, which is, uh,
and I'm an ordained person, um, so I'm not anti
clerical. That would be odd as a priest.
Uh, but I would simply say that whether you're being consecrated bishop
or ordained as a transitional deacon, deacon, priest, anything like
that, um, those are clarifications of my
particular role in the coming of the kingdom, but they don't
change the level of my power, my access
to the, to the Holy Spirit. Um, so mutual
ministry says whenever you're looking at a group of baptized people, you're
looking at the kingdom of God called together.
And people are gifted according to the vocations
that they have. And a lot of the clergy burnout we have right
now, let's say you have a clergy person standing in front of one of their
services, and let's say there's 35 people there, or one
cleric is standing in front of a vestry of 12 people.
There's this sense, and this is terrible, that we've had for,
um, more than decades, uh, centuries, where the priest
is somehow in charge of those
people, um, or is the
professional who sort of does the work, and he or she or
they are looking at a room full of volunteers or something,
instead of saying 12 vestry members and a
cleric, that's 13 baptized
people, 13 people with the kingdom of God in
them, ready to burst into the world, connect with one another, and then
the kingdom begins to grow. So
unfortunately, you know, we, we created seminaries and things like
that after the Council of Trent. That's not the unfortunate part. The unfortunate
part, I was gonna say, uh, to be clear, the
unfortunate part is that we start thinking of it like a specialization,
like calling a plumber or calling an electrician, where
people stop learning those skills in their lives. I don't need to
know anything about electricity because there are electricians. So I'll
call one or a bunch of them and I'll pay them and
they'll have benefits in the dental plan. And I'LL get all of my
plumbing taken care of. That's what we've come to in the church. And that's
a terrible burden to put on someone because we were never meant to be that
priests were not meant to be the specialists who get
paid and get the parking space in the office so everyone else doesn't need to
learn anything about electricity or learn anything else about
plumbing. Um, as a result, we have over functioning
clergy and we have under functioning laypeople. As a result, we
have clergy who are burning out or whose sermons in
ministry looks like they're burning out. They're
faithful. Many of them are willing to give
their lives to pour them out like a libation on the altar, as St. Paul
calls us to do. But the whole model is unhealthy.
It's not mutual now.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And to be clear, they're tired.
I talk to clergy all the time. They are tired.
I'm sure anyone who's listening to me right now says,
absolutely, I am tired.
>> Tricia Lyons: Cruise directors, right? And when you get. You don't like the cruise and you're
on the cruise, doesn't occur to you, you don't learn anything about
nautical navigation. You don't know how to run a cruise.
You just show up for it and you pay for it. So you want it to be a
certain way. And more and more the inboxes of people
who are leaders in the church lay in, ordained, who are professionals. That
is to say, they're paid full time and they're in charge of something. Um,
they're really burned out because the emails are starting to sound more and more like the
ones you'd send to a cruise director. I didn't like the lighting. I never liked that kind of
music. And why did you paint the wall that color? Instead of people
thinking, I am the church, I am part of the
kingdom, just like this cleric is. And we lose the fact
that there's such a symbolic dimension to the celebration
of the Eucharist. Not. Not. Remember, there's nothing in
Christianity is just a symbol. But when I stand up
and put on all the fancy clothes and make an offering,
receive prayers, lift up, literally my hands lift
up, literally the gifts of the people. These are all meant to be
the kind of this symbolic demonstration of ordained
priesthood so that everyone in the congregation can live out their
universal priesthood as baptized people. So come Monday morning when they go
to work or they're a home healthcare worker, they're taking care of their parents,
or they're homeschooling their children, whatever they're doing they're saying,
how do I receive gifts? How do I call, uh,
forth the prayers of the people? How do I heal? How do
I break the bread of the world and share it? So
Sunday is becoming instead of sort of this
symbolic, beautiful demonstration of how
everyone, everyone, your autistic, non
verbal 18 year old in your church, your grandmother,
uh, dealing with Alzheimer's, where everyone has an
experience of the worship of God. There's a highly
symbolic system going where they can see human
beings actually lifting up, um,
bowing down so that they know how to go through their week and how
to have a relationship with God and be a priest, a
leader in their own life. So we've lost that. And as a result, the people who
are paying the Pryse are laypeople who just don't feel
that their gifts are being tapped anywhere in faith community except
being asked for money or to volunteer to teach a third grade
Sunday school class. When they're not given any support, they're given kind of a
handout for a plug and play. They know that's an inauthentic way to teach
anything. They know the Boy Scouts don't work like that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And getting it sounds though, as if,
though then the mutual ministry is,
I guess it's in the name, right? It's mutual. We are both. I
am a layperson. I'm not, I'm ordained. But let's say Lorenzo is
a layperson. You're the ordained person. Let's do this together. How
do we walk in and just do this work together? But,
uh, to your point, I think it takes two
mind shifts, if you will, two mindsets. One is
that the laypeople feel on the one hand
empowered that they can do that
and that it will be valued and that they
can come alongside and say, yep, I want to participate in
this. But it also takes
the mindset of
the priest. The cleric also has to be willing to
say, I am willing to let you help me with this.
I am willing to be vulnerable and say, I don't know
what the outcome is going to be of this, but I'm okay with that. And the Holy Spirit is present
here. So I'm curious. So I can now
sort of see the image as to. Right.
Mutual ministry means we're all working on
this together. It's just all of us. And, uh, a
great example, by the way, that sounds somewhat like this would be
to. On the podcast last month we
had Dave, uh, Lloyd, the Reverend Dave Lloyd from
the Garden Church in England listen to that. I think it's
a little bit like that. But I'm curious a couple of questions here.
One, uh, have you found anywhere where
this is happening? Where there. Are there places where it is a
mutual ministry that is happening. And two,
how does one do
these changes of a mindset? Because if someone's been
doing ministry in a certain way for 20
years and now we're coming along saying,
oh by the way, what we should really be doing is empowering
people. I mean this, by the way,
now I'm getting myself off track. This is
not different from the business world. In
the business world, the best leaders are the ones that can empower their
subordinates. They're not subordinates in the church
sense. Right? In the church they're not subordinates. But
that you empower others by the vision you empower others
who are under your care to say, let's go forward together. But it
is a mutual thing.
>> Tricia Lyons: Right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Is, is we all work towards the same thing where I
think you, you're right. We have these lone sort of priests
that sort of feel like they have to do everything. And the other people are. The,
the lay people are like, let's go ahead and you do it, that's
fine. Less for me to do. So how.
One, is there somewhere where this is happening? That's a good example that you would be
like, yes, this is a place I would say. And two,
how do we begin to change those mindsets?
>> Tricia Lyons: Right. Well, let me just say that the particular
Lilly grant that um, I'm working
on, um, is a very specific grant
that was given to Virginia Theological Seminary
to analyze our curriculum in light
of the growth of lay led congregations, as you
say, um, and areas of the church where
lay people are working in coordination
with. Not. Maybe they don't have a clergy person full time
or part time in their faith community or campus
ministry or conference ministry. But um, they're
dealing with sort of regional priests, things like that. And
precisely for what you just said, this grant is to help the
seminary understand that we have to
begin forming people at the seminary level.
Um, in this. I don't want to call it a change, um,
because it. Or an innovation. Um,
those are good things. I mean we love innovation. Um,
but it's very important that I see the uh,
the re. Emphasis and the sharing of ideas about mutual
ministry as a healing ministry. I see myself as part of
a healing ministry, um, in talking
about these ideas in the church to heal the
burnout of clergy and uh, lay people who
are in positions of leadership, um, who are
trapped in a system that really
locks, um, whoever is being Paid
to really over, not even over perform, just
to over function to the point of exhaustion. And I
don't even mean large congregations. I mean you can be exhausted if in an
unhealthy way you're trying to take care of two people. Um,
so people who are not trained, not formed, not supported in
full time roles in the church, in a system that says because
you have a certain kind of clothing on or a collar, or you have a name
tag that says I'm the director of children and family Ministries,
that somehow you can sort of do this on your own and
other people are watching you, like literally watching you
do your ministry. Rather than a, uh, community
of two people or of 200 or of 2,000, saying,
what do we want children's formation to be? What
do we want it at the end of the day? Let's get consensus around what we'd
like a five year old to be able to do as a disciple
and to believe and to sing or to say anything like
that. And then together we all then pool
the gifts and you can do this. By the way, I can think of one of the
healthiest churches I know. Um, a growing church,
um, out in the middle of the country, um, with maybe
300 people, um, six, uh, hundred probably
on the rolls, maybe three or 400 people coming to different
liturgies. And yet they have, and they have two full time
clergy. They have what I would call a mutual ministry
mindset. You have the two priests who work there, the, uh,
rector and associate, who are very focused on their
role and their gifts, which are teaching and
preaching, um, and prayer.
Um, they have a huge garden as part of their church that
has grown up over time. And one of the fun things to do is ask
the rector what, what's growing in the garden, by the way, the garden has
become its own Nonprofit that has 200 volunteers,
only half of which are members of the church. So that outreach that
started out during COVID as people coming and planting
some herbs so that they could be at the
church even though they couldn't be with other people. So that's a
ministry that's growing up very quickly, but you only have to spend 10
minutes at the church and you'll see why. Ask the rector what's growing in the
garden, there's a very good chance he has no idea. I
mean, tomatoes, you know, produce.
It's um, and it's a perfect example that it's not being micromanaged
because the priests who are both there will say, that's a
lay ministry. I was not Ordained to be in
charge of the garden and decide what plants are growing in it. I don't even know
about gardening, but we have master gardeners in the community, we have
master grant writers in the community. We have master
people who didn't finish high school, who were in
their 60s are better at digging trenches
and figuring out how these things are watered.
So that's a perfect example of mutual ministry isn't the last
stop. And if you know anything about this kind of lay
led congregations, in my experience of talking to people,
people are often saying, oh yeah, that that's what happens when, when
a church gets too small or they can't afford a priest.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: On your way to death, right on.
>> Tricia Lyons: Your way to take over as a last resort
kind of CPR on what is someone who's already not
breathing. And it may have been used for that in
the past. But one of the things we're trying to do with this grant is to
develop, to take the curriculum we have at the seminary,
make faculty more and more aware of some of the statistics that
you read and give them examples of
people we know in the field, so to speak, who are practicing
ministry this way. And that priest I was talking
about, there's no reason that priest shouldn't be completely burned out like
half the other priests in his diocese. Because I know half the. I've done the
clergy conference of his diocese and he who has the
fastest growing church, one of the larger churches, a church that's
only been around for about 20 years. So it's not even like they
inherited, you know, centuries of endowment that has no
endowment, it still has a mortgage. And this is the least
tired person in the room. How is that possible? And
it's because the way they're so clear in that church
that the job of the cleric is the
administration of the sacraments clear.
Preaching on the sacramental life, um,
and being a pastoral care team with other lay
people. Every other thing you see when you go there, oh, you had a
new carpet. The rector will say, yes, we are. What color are you getting? I don't
know. Talk to the committee. His whole thing is I don't know anything about
carpeting. Um, so he's not an over functioning
priest. And his lay people. If you go on any day of the week, it's
very. There are so many different people who are in the church,
uh, during the day and there's just little committees happening. Ask
one of the two priests. It's now, it's not that they're not involved, to
meet their responsibilities, to be the liturgical authority of the. Of
the community. But they really spend their time
delivering excellent. And this is important,
excellent liturgy, excellent preaching. Not
every Sunday. Sunday is going to be the best sermon you've ever heard, but
every Sunday is going to be one of the better sermons you've ever heard.
Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. And why? Because they can
spend the week preparing their sermons. And they've. Some will say, well, how
do you run the church? Because most rectors are. They're learning about plumbing,
they're learning about H VAC systems and everything else. And I would simply
say the answer isn't just drop that tomorrow. Because you and I both know
that that means a lot of things aren't going to get done. So that's why we come
got this grant from the late to start working at the seminary level. What's
the change in imagination? When you walk into a room of lay
people as a cleric, do you look around and say, look at all the other
baptized people who are baptized just like me.
Let's try to solve problems, let's try to have joy, let's try to
experience eternal life. Or do you walk in and say, gosh,
how can I? I've even had clergy say to me, it's really intimidating. I have two
or three vestry members. You know, one is the vice president of Google and one is
the. And there's this sense that they're almost afraid of the
capacity of their vestry because their whole thing is,
how can I. Without saying it, how can I lead or be
in charge of the head of the March of
Dimes? And you realize the imagination is so
broken. Instead, you walk in and say, you're someone who's
obviously got in touch with a lot of your gifts. Keep doing
that here, and I'll make sure that our worship
experience is an encounter with Christ.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So here's a question, Tricia, for, uh, I'm all in on
this. I am 100% in. Right.
But, uh, a. I, I think
I feel bad for the church that has to wait for new seminarians to come out
that will. That will be in this sort of way. Right? So
we, we always try to be very practical here on the podcast.
So. And for. We have people who are in ministry who
listen. So let's get to it. Let's. You are the expertise.
You've been looking at this. Not only the numbers that tell us why
we need to do this. I think we've covered that fairly well. We all see
that. But let's say that I'm all in on This, I believe you. I want to
become like director, um, that you, that you were
talking about. How do I get there? Give me step by
step. What should I do? The first thing, I'm open to
it. I want to change my mindset, but I've been trained in a certain way. I'm
used to doing it one way. What do I need to do internally
both to change my own mindset and how do I
change my congregation to want to take up the mantle? Because as you
said, if you stop doing everything tomorrow, it's not like Mrs. Johnson is going to
run around like, oh, thank God, I can finally do the toilet.
I've been meaning to fix this toilet for a while. Right. So how do
we do those two things?
>> Tricia Lyons: Okay, number one, first thing that I think a, ah, person and
it could be, I think we could have lay led congregations right now whose leaders
are just as burned out. Because you could still be a layperson, quote
in charge and still be over functioning while people are under functioning. So whether
you're lay ordained and you're completely burned out, first of all, begin with
that. What is God saying to you? God did not call you
to ministry for you to feel exhausted.
Now we might be called to martyrdom,
but I don't believe God called us to
exhaustion. That comes from a kind of sickness in many ways,
an alcoholic family system, broken family system, uh,
in the church around the theology of leadership.
So number one, listen to your exhaustion. Listen to it,
um, again, we are called to suffer with Christ for
the world, not to just be burnt out and exhausted. So
listen to that, number one. Number two, go on a retreat, get a
clergy group, get some friends and focus on
what brings you joy as a
person. Look at the areas of your life. When are you most alive
in the liturgical year? When are you most alive in the week? When are
you most alive in a day? These things are
crucial because they will be the North Star
God. We believe in the Anglican tradition we are not totally
depraved. We think that that was kind of a nutty idea of Calvin.
Um, we can trust our deepest longings. Doesn't mean they
can't get confused like our minds. But if
you have a longing for art, music, poetry,
walking, um, crossfit, I don't know, pickleball, uh,
uh, writing, silence, get in touch with those things.
And I'm guessing a person will realize that they, if they
could have more of that in their lives, um,
they would have more joy. But figure out what those things are because
what is pushing them out a lot of that pushing
it out is probably your over functioning. God does not call us
to a ministry that if we're doing a healthy
way, will not leave room for the things that we've been wired to
enjoy. So be honest about your
exhaustion. It's the Holy Spirit talking to you. And
I say this as someone who deals with chronic illness. There's a difference between
fatigue, tiredness, these psychological,
physical ailments, and just exhaustion.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh yeah, when you hit that wall, when you're just, uh, I just can't even
think anymore.
>> Tricia Lyons: And even if you can't admit that, you start to hear yourself being
cynical here, being jaded, and you're saying
things that were 20 years ago that you couldn't believe people were saying
20 years older than you. And you are that person. You
are.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay, listen to your exhaustion. Then you retreat to find
that joy and the deepest longing.
>> Tricia Lyons: Find your joy because what's pushing it out is probably over
functioning. So the fastest way to find where you're over functioning, that don't
begin with where am I over functioning? Because you're probably also being paid
and rewarded and publicly upheld for it. So it's going to be
very hard to discern that. But find out what, where your joy
is and that's going to show you what's pushing against it. And that's
a good way to see what your over function is.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay?
>> Tricia Lyons: The third thing you have to do with your congregation before they're ever going to have
a change about what your role is or theirs, you have got
to start doing formation on baptism.
This is why the church, this is a very group of smart people. Remember
this. Right now, at this moment, whatever time it is, right now, at this
moment, any preacher or teacher standing in front of a group of American
Christians faces the most educated group of Christians
in human history. So people
are smart, they have geniuses in their own work, with
their hands, with their minds, in their families. So you got
to take a step back and say getting some culture change about
people seeing church as a place primarily
to discern and use their gifts, that's a huge
culture shift. So you've got to begin with forming people on
what their baptism has already done in their lives,
what it means and what powers come to
you. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
self control, gifts of the spirit. So you really need
about a year, I would say you need a year if you want to talk about culture change in
a congregation. Once the leader later ordained,
has figured out that they're exhausted and can name that has
has figured out what Brings them joy and has got themselves into
some accountability relationship with one person. Spiritual
director, clergy group, member of the family. Please don't make it your
spouse. Uh, m. If you have a spouse, um, or
your best friend, these people are, you know, they're trying to love you
already. But uh, if you decide that they're going to help you now sort of level
up in this whole other area of your vocation, you know, find people whose
job it is to do that, um, so, so that part is
important. And then you come to your congregation and you have to be,
you just have to lead with formation. Um, so
people understand who they are in baptism. Because then
step four, after you've done deep formation, and again,
that could take a year of adult forums, online Bible
studies where you're literally strategic
preaching.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I think you can certainly bring it into your preaching.
>> Tricia Lyons: People know that, that they are
priests. It's actually in our scripture
that they are priests, what we call
universal priests. Um, and
that also connects people with the, with some of the liturgies in
the church instead of showing up. I mean, one of the reasons I Talked to a 15 year
old who doesn't go to church anymore and their family went to a very
fancy large church with fancy music and everything else. So, you
know, I said, you know, why do you not want to go? And I'll never forget the
phrase the kid said, I'm tired of watching
church. That's
the phrase. He's watching music, he's
watching preaching. So that's the culture shift over a year
that you explain to people. Healthy communities
experience the preaching of one person, but then they experience the
preaching of other people. Then they experience. Have a class on
how people would write sermons, people in your congregation,
and you may say, well, I have a bishop that maybe isn't in favor of that.
Teach them to preach where they are, but have a
preaching class and start to blow people's mind. They would
say, well, but I'm not preaching. And we don't have lay preaching at this church. And you
just say, do you speak during the week?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Do you talk to people ever?
>> Tricia Lyons: Right. So, so I would say after a year of
formation on Christian identity, their
baptismal identity, um, the problem is
our church really still is deciding what we believe about
that. Do you have to have that before you can have Eucharist? Uh,
so the devil loves the fact that we're still having arguments in our church
over when, what relationships sacraments have to
each other. Rather than saying, here's one that's already happened. If you're Baptized. And here's
what it means then the second year and the churches that we've
studied that are doing this well, the second year is a deep study of
spiritual gifts. What are spiritual gifts? Are they the same
things as things I'm good at? Is, um, it the same things
as stuff I love to do? Um, in some cases, yes.
In some cases, no. God has something for you maybe that
is greater than anything you've ever experienced. So. But
you really, you can't say we have like an adult forum on, um,
baptismal identity. And then next week we're going to.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Do discernment and two weeks and by the third
week it's all changed cultures, everything's different.
>> Tricia Lyons: And you know what? You could do that. And obviously there are worse ways. You could
spend two Sundays in a row.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: This is true.
>> Tricia Lyons: But the churches that we see that have
metabolic joy,
metabolic. And what I mean by that is
it's just, it's in the air. When you go into the
community during the week, you walk into the church and they're just people moving in
the hallways. Largely retired, you know, because they're the ones who are free during the day
and the evenings you have working people moving in the hallway. So much of a
life happening in the church. People, uh, talk about losing their buildings.
You go to a good, um, healthy mutual ministry congregation.
Their whole thing is we don't even have a room open that we could
rent out to a yoga studio because we have so
much lay teaching, lay growing, lay
mothers groups that come here, they cook for each other so no one's
paying bills. They're not worried about, um, babysitting because
we've given them a room large enough to bring their kids. And you know what? They know how
to do two things at once. If they have three kids, so well, do we have to
get childcare? Let them sort it out, figure out what they need. But in
these healthy churches, they're using their spaces
because it is a lay led
congregation, which doesn't just mean lay leaders. It means the life
of the laity is what's leading, what are their
needs. And once a congregation really, after a two or three
year cycle, really understands who they are, what they're gifted
at, they realize that they've now practiced the thing that you
now start to do in your community.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And would that be the fifth step? So, because let's just put going back
to the steps one was, listen to your exhaustion. Recognize
that that is not where God wants you to retreat. Go out there,
find your joy and your deepest longings. And that is where God
is. That's what you're pushing out. So how are you pushing it
out? That points out to you how you may be over functioning, probably
are like all of us then, uh, to change
the actual congregation
and yourself. I think, because as you're preparing these sermons
and these other teachings on baptism,
you yourself will be reminded of what the role is that
they play in this church and what my role as a priest
here in this church is. So you'll spend about a year talking about
formation on baptism in our Christian identity.
And then the step number four is about another year or
so looking at formation on spiritual gifts.
And then is
what happens from there. The next
sort of step is a natural overflow from that which is
now people begin to pick up
the mantles that are there to work.
>> Tricia Lyons: You just invite the congregation to do
with the, uh, neighborhood
exactly what they did with themselves to find out what
people's identities are. I mean that was the first thing people did at
baptism. Find out what people's longings are, what their needs
are. Find out what the gifts are of people around you in the
synagogue down the street. You know, what are, what are some of the gifts the synagogue down the
street has that our church doesn't have? They have a lot of, let's say,
Spanish speakers in that congregation. So maybe you could join
together because you've always wanted to do legal services for immigrants in
your neighborhood, but you don't have a lot of Spanish speakers speakers. Turns out
once you've gotten to know. Oh, wait a minute, I know how we
got to know ourselves, found out our gifts and then decided to
go out our ministries, we're going to do the same thing with our community.
Um, and what I, not that you're forcing people into baptism, I
just mean the, the stage model of, uh, find out
who they are, what's their identity. All right, we're a baptized
identity. The congregation down the street, Bethel,
you know, they have an identity as children of the covenant of Abraham.
That's their identity. But then get to know them and find out what
their gifts are. And now all of a sudden you can be a community
of faith communities or of non faith communities,
the Girl Scouts, you know, whoever is in your neighborhood.
But you've, you've had the, this, the, the
impactful, transformative practice of getting
to know each other. And you know, Lorenzo, you've been to congregations where people
have been going to church, sitting next to each other for 35
years and then they, they don't, there's, there's things that I,
uh, know about each other. That is just stunning to me.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. After 35 years of sitting.
>> Tricia Lyons: It's just that, right. We're not practicing getting to know each
other and each other's gifts for the greater good. So that is
really what your congregation does, if they do it well, is something
they start doing in the neighborhood. And I have to tell you, a lot of
mutual ministry faith congregations that I've
seen usually, um, I should say
normatively, have powerful relationships with
their community. And you begin to realize why is they
have already had the intimate practice of
getting to know one another, getting to know one another's gifts, getting
to know to work together, not relying on a cleric to be in
charge, but to realize they are baptized
for life. They are baptized for a certain kind of
leadership. Introvert, extrovert, neurodivergent, uh,
all called. And they just naturally become
good. They play well with others in their community because
they've gone through that experience.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But I want to make sure that we didn't lose sight there of number
five, which was an intentional invitation though. So we
spent a year looking at our identity as
Christians. Then we spent a year looking at gifts.
But then came the actual invitation to get to know others.
Right. And maybe that's how you begin,
but this is how you get your community
to start to take up their, for lack of a
better word, I don't want to sound bad, like their share of this work.
Right. Their part in this as well.
Right.
>> Tricia Lyons: And that's what we're called to do. Right. You know, Judea, Samaria, go to the ends
of the earth. So think of it as concentric circles. You know, we
can't quite often you've seen this in your work. When
churches, uh, feel frail and people aren't coming, we start to
get very involved in kind of, uh, what can be
performative things. We go to marches, we try to get outside
the walls of the church. But the truth is, if inside
the walls of the church, whatever that means, we have not been
doing study and prayer and song
about our identity. What are we really doing when we go
out? We're becoming actors in social and political
change. I do not mean to negate that, but at the end of the
day, those people are not going to keep coming back to that faith
community and giving 10% of their pre tax income
if what they're actually being asked to do.
You could go down the street to the United Way and they're better at
most of that kind of work. This is black.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Absolutely. But Then here's a question though. Do you
think if we were to ask the average, I'm not
even going to say the average Episcopalian, the average
Episcopal priest, if we were to
ask what is your Christian identity, do you think that
we would get an actual thought through answer that
actually makes sense? And for the record,
I'm placing myself in that category because I
would struggle, I would tell you what I think are some of the things. But
I myself have not sat down and said because of
my baptism and I know the five marks of mission and
I know the points that are the baptismal
vows that we make.
>> Tricia Lyons: Right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I created that star one time, so I know those
things. But I haven't sat down to
say that I can articulate what is my Christian
identity for my baptism. So uh,
that's me. So I could imagine that most people don't do
this. So that's a
fundamental sort of. I was going to
say issue, but that's a fundamental sort of opportunity. If we look at it
not as an issue, but rather it's like, oh,
if I can't answer, if you're listening to me right now
and you honestly, if somebody next to you asked you
what's your Christian identity? And you couldn't, you, you
would have to struggle to be like, well I think it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit of. That,
it might be a little bit of this and you sort of put it together to cobble together an
answer rather than like, oh, I know exactly what
my Christian identity is. Right. Uh,
that's, that's an opportunity because if we, the more
we know that, the more we can live from that. And then the other
things are sort of flowing from that, aren't they?
>> Tricia Lyons: Yeah. And you're absolutely right. Uh, there's a
famous phrase from uh, um, an industrial
efficiency expert that uh, Henry Ford, um,
who was a very problematic person, but he, he did in fact bring
in many experts to figure out how to do this assembly line thing better and
better. Uh, and out of the 20s, one of the great phrases from one of
the uh, Germans who came over and worked with
him said this. Every system is
perfectly designed to give
you the outcomes you're receiving.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yes.
>> Tricia Lyons: And what makes this uh, an earth shattering idea is quite often when something
goes wrong in what we do, when we make a batch of cookies, or we try
to be married, or we try to raise a teenager, whenever something
goes wrong, we think something fails.
Um, and that's a certain kind of mindset of fixing and
solving, um, when the truth is that phrase back
from decades and decades ago, almost 100 years ago, says no,
no, no, no, no, um, every time you
do something it's going to produce an outcome and the outcome
is going to match what you've done. So what it means is we've created
a denomination here in the, what you might call
late stage. The death throes of mainline Christianity
that for decades every denomination has focused on its own
idol, um, prestige in class,
um, uh, finances, uh, uh, so many different
reasons why we've just sort of lost our way on the basics of our
identity. So, um, we have systems perfectly
designed to select to
promote, um, ah, clergy, people in the
Episcopal Church who, because our denomination has had
theological debates, um, raging, as
have most denominations, we in our particular
conflict, diverse version uh, of sacramental Christianity in
America have simply sort of pushed those aside and
kept ordaining and baptizing anyway, thinking that that was a way
to keep people under the tent, which is not really to say,
well you can say the creed and you, maybe you believe this, maybe you don't. We're not going
to talk about that right now. Instead we're going to talk about becoming a priest
and, and building, uh, a, uh, second building
or selling our church building. And the truth is, uh,
it's come finally full circle that now we
have a system that produces, um, leaders,
lay and ordained, who really can't answer questions about identity. So
Screwtape is so excited the devil is
dancing at this because we've spent so much money
and time and blood and treasure on this system that produces
people who believe that having a set group of commun.
Convictions is actually divisive,
exclusive, uh, and will hurt community.
I have to say, if whether it's a community of 10 people
or 10,000, and we do have a church that large
in the Episcopal Church in this country, um, across the
board, um, you will find it doesn't matter how large or
small your church is. When they have said with clear
delineation, this is what we believe. It's on their
website. What we believe about scripture,
about sacrament, about our neighbor, about
salvation. Um, and people say, well, the Episcopal Church hasn't
made up any decisions about that. Yes it has. We
can't pretend that we don't know and don't believe the things that we do begin
with the creed.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah.
>> Tricia Lyons: Um, so, and you know, you've done the research and this is a great
opportunity.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: We're coming to the 17th, 17th anniversary,
1700 anniversary and we have a new presiding bishop.
>> Tricia Lyons: There's a There's a hundred reasons, and this particular time we're speaking is the
season of Advent. Um, so let's just stop
pretending that we don't know what we know. Churches that are
as open and you can believe whatever you want, and there's no high bar
to join and there's no high bar to believe or
anything. Those are interesting ideas, like
concepts you run in the back of a napkin. But those churches
are largely struggling, even ones that historically have
done quite well being the most progressive church in town.
The culture has changed, and people want to know.
They'll show up. People under 50, in my experience
especially. They will show up and work and tithe
and serve and learn. But they are there
because every other part of their life, whether you're losing weight,
trying to manage your budget, manage your student debt,
deal with your adult children who are still living in your house, what
they find is, when you have a plan, doesn't mean you know everything, but
you stick to it. There's a kind of discipline to it. And our churches,
maybe in the 70s, we look like we had more freedom than more
constrictive, judgmental forms of Christianity. But those days
are over. You no longer get points or people to come
back more than once for just saying you can come and believe whatever you
want because you know you can believe whatever you want from the couch, and you can get online for
free and listen to Yo Yo Ma, who's probably better at the
cello than anything going on at any church in the
country. So we have to just say, you know, we are. We're inviting
you into an intimate community of covenant.
We have a creed, by the way. Ask me what it means for Mary to be a
virgin. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't
know what it meant then, what it means now. So this has nothing to do
with conflict. It has to do with unity. And
that can come from the kind of clarity that here are
the mysteries that we call mysteries for a reason. You know,
love, marriage, suffering. These are mysteries. But you know
what? We believe that they are. Which means there will be a time
when we will see through them clearly. We'll see face to face. We'll
know fully as we're fully known. Just name that. So
these aren't documents that are meant to exclude other people. But you know
what? If you have people who believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead and the tomb is
empty and that's the good news, say it,
and someone say, well, that means if someone doesn't believe that, then
you're going to be in disagreement with them.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yes. I've been called out for saying that
priests should believe that Jesus was, was the son of God and
resurrected on third day. So.
>> Tricia Lyons: No, that's just. Yeah, that's a threat.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Only. Only because we're.
>> Tricia Lyons: Your tomb can't be empty. My tomb can't be
empty. I can't get out of my despair. I mean, we've got to begin
with the, with, with the story at least the
historical fact that someone
came out of death. So let go
of that. I don't know what you do after that. I feel like you got to unplug
and send everyone home.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. Right. Uh, so wait, but just before
I let you go, if somebody wanted to,
even before these five steps.
>> Tricia Lyons: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Wanted to spend some time on their
own Christian identity, is there a book that you would
recommend that someone can just spend some time with it? Really?
Really. They could sit on that for a bit, be
with it, really be secure in it, so that then they can go
and lead others and say, I want us all
to find and be able to answer, what is our Christian identity? Is
there a book you recommend?
>> Tricia Lyons: Yes. And the reason my head is turning. For those who are
watching and listening to our conversation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Nobody's, nobody's watching this. Only on sound. So for those who are
imagining you turning your head from side to side.
>> Tricia Lyons: I was turning my head looking around because in the mail she looks like a
puppy. Um,
as I. Just before I got on the phone with you, I had to answer the
door because I had an Amazon delivery of Ah,
15 copies of a book at the last minute. I decided to buy a
copy for every member of my evangelism class and give
it to them as a gift. All of my students. Um, and that's the
book that I think people should start with. And it's Rowan Williams,
um, uh, who has a certain perspective. We have to
be honest about, um, his perspective as a white,
straight, uh, man, um, out of,
uh, out of England. No question. Um, but he's definitely
a once in 500 year theologian. There's no question. So he has
limitations. But the power of words. Uh, his
book being Christian,
Baptism, Eucharist, the fourth chapter.
No, I'm saying the book only has four chapters.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, okay.
>> Tricia Lyons: Baptism, Eucharist, Scripture and prayer. So
there's about 20. It's not a long book. Maybe 20 pages, 21
pages. About those four things it is.
I used to give out mere Christianity, but the older I got, the more
apologizing I'd have to say, we'll Read the first part of Mere Christianity
because some of it's so culturally locked in the 1940s in ways that are
not helpful, in some cases not even moral,
um, in terms of relationship between men like that. So I've always
wanted to sort of cut up Mere Christianity and make it like my Jefferson
Bible. But I finally now have a text that I can give to
anyone. Um, his discussion of those four,
um, elements of our faith is just
fundamental to the point that I, you know, scrape
together money whenever I teach anything. If I'm going to a church meeting,
if I have time and money, I will buy that book and bring
with me and give it to every vestry, member of the vestry I'm visiting.
Um, it's not the only book, but I find it to be very, uh,
clear. It's probably a sixth grade reading level, seventh
grade. Ah, reading level. Kind of like a daily newspaper.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Which I was just going to say on that because I've read,
I've listened. I've met
Mr. Williams. I've. I've listened to him give lectures, at
the end of which I said, wow, that was amazing. I have
no idea what he said.
>> Tricia Lyons: No. He has whole books on philology and
linguistics. And, um. So, yeah,
going into the dark places of his gray matter is.
You really do need a guide.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, we need a Sherpa.
>> Tricia Lyons: Something happened with Being Christian where I swear it's
a love letter to his own children when
they. That's how I would describe it. Um, so
that book I find to be very powerful. And as we're
wrapping up, I'll give you one more phrase from Rowan William. That, to
me is essential. Um, and for example, the class
I just taught in evangelism, we had to spend a lot of time in the
class dealing with everyone's religious trauma around the word
evangelism. And, uh, people. I have
seminarians who were in their 20s and seminarians who are in their 60s. And
they all, uh, simply said, are we allowed to even talk about
evangelism? You know, are we allowed to talk about converting other
people? Um, and what if someone doesn't believe Jesus, the
son of God? I mean, all the questions come out even in seminary, where our,
uh, denomination just doesn't really have basic answers to these. They don't want to
hurt anybody's feelings. They don't want to be exclusive. They want to be
hospitable. All these virtues that are really civic
virtues, important. But. And they've. But they've risen to the top because
our denomination has decided largely to, like, not
have conversations about some of the hard, deep beliefs. And
by the way, in that year of formation, I suggested, please be
brave, talk about salvation, talk
about redemption, talk about what if you're married to someone
who's Jewish? What if you are married to someone who's an atheist? What if
your brother in law, um, is now a Buddhist? Um, how
do we relate to these people?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Because this is what people are dealing with. They are dealing
with why they're not.
>> Tricia Lyons: Talking about their faith. And you know, what if you don't know what you believe?
Because the system is designed, remember, for the clergy person
to work like they're on hamster on the wheel and the lay people
to watch church. Of course people can't answer these questions. It's not because
they're not intelligent. The system is designed to
disempower and to infantilize. That's part of the problem
with our language of mother this father, that we have to be careful that
we haven't literally even in our language, embedded the infantilization
of baptized lay people. But, uh, that's. Go back.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You were about to name a second book.
>> Tricia Lyons: Yeah, well, uh, just a phrase from Rowan. Oh,
answers the salvation question and a lot of other questions.
Um, in, ah, a conversation I had with him last time he was in
D.C. uh, in Washington D.C. um,
someone who was talking with us asked him a question, what's the purpose of
the church? And it was someone who's really stopped going for very good, very good
reasons. They realized the system was just really sick in some ways. And
Rowan's answer is important. He said the purpose of the
church, um, is to
form people into the
kinds of people who can receive the
gifts God wants to give.
So that to me, is actually any of you listening, if you want
to write something down, how do you begin to live, um,
a life that is more mutual, your ministry with lay
people? Think, um, of that as the creed of one
sentence, of what true life, giving,
liberating, mutual ministry is. It
is to form people, uh,
or to support them. You know, even if form sounds
too kind of almost colonial to other people. Think of it as
living with and encouraging people to
become the kinds of people
who can receive the gifts that God has to give. In other
words, all of our ministry, all of our evangelism. That's
my definition, by the way, of evangelism. Now evangelism
is forming people into the kinds of people who can receive the
gifts God wants to give. So that's why I can be, uh, very good
friends with a rabbi who knows that I'm an evangelist.
And he is not worried about that because he knows my creed
of what I believe, evangelism, is that it's my job in his life to
do whatever I can to make him more open to
whatever God wants to tell him, help him
find his joy, help him stop over functioning. And
then to believe, not in a fatalism or a
universalism, but to believe that if God wants to
give him faith in Jesus Christ, God will give that.
If God wants to make him a better Jew, God will give that. Uh,
that's not my business. My business is in a room,
a room or a world of people whose hands are in
fists, flight or fight. That is late stage
capitalism in our country, uh, especially politically right now, is
do everything I can to help them open, become
receptive, and then know that God,
the giver of every good and perfect gift,
will give them existence, exactly what they need, as opposed to what I
think they might need. I don't even know what I need when I get up in
the morning. So I certainly don't want to be in charge of what somebody else needs.
So instead I just run around the world and people say, what are you? I
say, well, I'm an evangelist, which means, how can
I been given life citizenship in the kingdom of God
and hope in Christ? I'm not afraid of death because my tomb
is going to be empty, because his was historically physically, actually
empty. So I live in that freedom. And I say to the
person, what can I do? Use the words, what can I do? Not
to make you a Christian, what can I do
to make you more receptive to receiving
the gifts around you? And I believe a God who wants to
give them to you. So that's, that's, that's the answer you give
to your congregation when they say, I don't think I want to go out and convert. People
just say, you know, conversion is kind of a word of empire.
We're more about liberation. Not that the
freedom comes from me. We want to free people up. And how
can we do that? Can we help them? Can we serve them? Can we educate them?
Can we get out of their way? Can we stop practicing a white
supremacist mindset about things, all the ways that we
can help people receive the gifts that God wants to
give.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Amen. Um, amen. Uh, amen. Um, but on
that, wow, that is inspiring.
Uh, and I have written it down. And there we go.
So, um, well, I
wrote down a ton of notes. Every time I do that, every time I speak with
you, I end up with such good ideas of things that I want to do and try,
even for myself as a Christian, not just as the direct of
Try Tank. So, Dr. Tricia Lyons, thank you
so very much for having joined us on the tritank
podcast.
>> Tricia Lyons: Well, Dr. Lorenzo Labrija, uh, thank you for inviting
me onto the Try Tank Podcast.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, thanks so much.
>> Tricia Lyons: Take care.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and
be sure to leave a review. To learn more about
Try Tank, visit Try Tank.
Be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter
where you can keep up with all of our experiments.
The Try Tank Podcast is a production of Try Tank in
association with Resonate Media.
Try Tank is a joint venture between
Virginia Theological Seminary and General
Theological Seminary. Again, thanks for
joining us. I'm, um, Father Lorenzo Labrija.
Until next time, May God bless.