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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 Father Lorenz la Brija. Thank
you for joining us,
and welcome to the Try Tank podcast. Father Lorenzo Lebrija
Breja, with you here, I'm gonna take a little bit longer in
today's introduction just because I need to explain
something that I will mention in the program a little bit
later that I don't think I've ever explained out to you all. But,
uh, today, this is episode zero two one.
Episode 21 on becoming a research
institute. Because Try Tank became a research institute as of
January of this year. And our
guest is our research director. We partnered, uh,
with Future of Faith, which is an organization that
is out there, and we partner with them. And,
uh, doctor Josh Packard, who is one of the co
founders of Research of, uh, future of faith, became
our research director, and that's who I will
be speaking with today. And let me tell you a little bit about Doctor
Packard. He is, of course, the co founder of Future of Faith and one of
the foremost experts in the lives of american
youth and religious trends in the United States.
He is an accomplished researcher in sociology of
religion and new forms of religious
expression. He has authored numerous books and
articles in both popular and academic outlets, including
church refugees. It's a great book, by the way. Church
refugees sociologists reveal
why people are done with church, but not
their faith and meaning, making eight
values that drive America's newest
generations. Josh was previously a professor,
founding executive director of Springtide Research
Institute, and vice president of strategy with the
National Catholic Education association. He
lives in Colorado, Greeley, Colorado, with his wife and teenage son. You'll
hear about that when we speak. Actually,
in today's program, we're going to talk a lot
about why we made this change at Try Tank. What
does it mean for Try Tank? What does it mean for the work that we do?
We'll also talk about future of faith and the work they're doing,
particularly in the area of sacred listening, which is
incredible work that they're doing, uh, and just well
worth your time. Um, and
in all of that, though, one of the things that you're going to note that we
will say, and I think I'm the one who says it in passing, is
tritanks path to purpose.
What that basically means, our path to purpose, is
our methodology, how we do the work here at Tritex. Right.
It begins with this idea that may come up. Ah,
an article or something, or another study that
says you should look deeper into something else. The first thing
that we do, step number one is we pilot or we ideate.
We figure out, what is this? What would it look like out there?
Uh, can we collaborate with someone in doing this? So sometimes we'll just do a
quick little experiment, or we may put a focus group together just to
find out some more. Then we sort of yield, if
you will. We do a little pause and we say, okay, what have we found
out here? Is there something here to go deeper into?
Is there an opportunity for research? If we
find out something, would it make a difference?
And so is there funding available for this?
For research costs money. So then we go to step number
two. If we decide to go forward, which is
the research, we actually do research, and
we try to find external funding for
it. Uh, and once we have the research back, then
we look at what we have found, and we say, is there
a missional case for this?
Uh, is there something,
the old way of saying it would be, is there a there
there for the good of the church?
And this is where we also can go outside to try to
find bigger research dollars that can
help us do larger research, or how would we do
it? But most importantly for us, it's also where we
begin to look at what are the actions that we can take
here. Tritank. Uh, for those of you that have been following our
work, we're all about research that leads to
action. We are about being out in the world. We're not just a think
tank. We're a Try Tank. So we will then, step number,
um, three, prototype and design. And step four, we'll actually
go out and experiment. We will take the data that we found,
and we will experiment out in the field to see, are
there points of intervention that we could do that would
actually perhaps make a difference? And
after we do that, once again, we yield and we say,
what have we found here? Uh, and
the most, most of the time, that sort of will be the
end of us, because we're all about
proof of concept, and as we do the research, we do experimentation.
And then the fifth step would be, is there a way
to scale, replicate, or disseminate
the information that we have gathered here? That's our path
to purpose, is what we call that. So it is about
taking and doing good research, but
also research that leads to
action. So that's important for you to know as we go
into this podcast. I hope you like it. It's a great conversation.
Here we go.
And Doctor Josh Packard. Welcome to the
Try Tank podcast.
>> Josh Packard: Hey, thank you for having me. It's glad to be here.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So, um, you know, today's episode is
called on being a research institute.
This past January of 2024, Try Tank went from
being an experimental research laboratory to
becoming research, uh, institute. The better term,
I think, would be an applied research institute, because we still go
out and experiment with it. But I think for people that may
not know what that means or why that makes a
difference. Um, tell us a little
bit about how you see it, why it's important that tritech made this
move, made this pivot.
>> Josh Packard: Well, I think for me, it's a little bit
about legitimacy, I guess, but mostly it's
about, um, rigor and
sophistication. It's nice to
have an idea. It's nice if that idea can be rooted
in some sort of empirical
reality. I say this in an era
when it feels like so m many of the ideas that I hear from people are
not rooted in any reality, empirical or otherwise.
Um, but even then,
you run into some real limitations. So if you're not sort
of, you know, if you're not collecting your own data, if you're. If you're
not able to ask your own questions,
then you're sort of limited to the way that other people see the
world. And, you know, through our conversations at least, or into it,
it felt like, you know, you were increasingly seeing the
world in a slightly adjacent way. You're having
a unique viewpoint, um, on what
was happening, uh, in the church world, in the world of faith, and
wanting to ask some different questions. And I'm not,
like a person as a researcher. I'm still not a person who would advocate
that, like, everybody should have a research arm, or certainly
not a whole research center or rebrand themselves, uh,
because I think there's a lot of really great work out there. But
in those cases where increasingly the existing work
just doesn't give you the footing that you need to be
credible with the experiments and the interventions that you want to create,
then. Then I think you have to look very honestly and say, yeah,
maybe we do need to be able to do
on behalf of our own work, and for others,
like, who want the same approach, we need to be able to add a research
element. So I think, again, I think
research is really important. I am a researcher, uh,
but I'm not one of these people who thinks it's
the answer to every single question in the world. In
this case, I think it's incredibly useful because of how
honed tri tanks, uh, work is on the
design, thinking and action side of it,
I think.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That you bring up a great point. We, for the first
five and a half years or so of Try Tank, we were working
using data, because I've always really, uh,
gone, and the experiments are generally based
on data or something that we find, but
it's always been secondhand
that we're getting it. And particularly
to the point that you just made. The
information we get, for example, from barna or pew or
Gallup, right. They're not specific to sort of
the mainline denomination that we are. So.
And in this case, when I say we, I'm talking about like
the Episcopal, the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the,
uh, uh, Presbyterians, uh, because Barna
tends to be much more evangelical, pew tends to be much more
general. Uh, so we
wanted data that spoke about, about
our people that we could actually, again, are what we call
our path to purpose, which is we take the data and we're able
to turn it into something, an intervention that might, might actually
move some needles. Um, so, actually.
So let's go back here for a moment. Uh, tell us about
yourself. It's like the dating game,
Josh. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
>> Josh Packard: Well, I mean, that, that is a big part, at
least professionally, of who I am. I mean, the,
you know, we were not like, ah, at future of faith. Like, we were not
setting out to try and like, let's see if we can find a, you
know, some entity to become a research partner of and,
you know, a place where I could be the research director. It was that
I have always, you know, whether
from the time I became, you know, went into graduate school and became a
professor, all the way up to now, my career, I've been saying that I want to do
work. That is, I want to do research that's useful, not
interesting, hopefully. Um, we're doing both
things, you know, feed two birds in one scone sort
of situation. Um, you know,
I'd like for it to be, but if I had to pick,
if somebody was like, well, look, you can do this work, it'll be really useful, but it'd
be really boring. I would do
that, but I wouldn't take the other.
I will never take the other. Or somebody promises me some really
interesting research that isn't useful. Um, I
think I always found that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Interesting, that people would come up, and this is the example
I give. People imagine that you're in a presentation, someone's like going, slide,
slide, slide of the data, and one of the slides says,
like, um, turns out that seven out of ten people want
to talk about God at Starbucks, and then they just go to the next
slide, and I'm like, this is where Lorenzo's tri type branch comes
in. Like, no, no, stop. We need to go to Starbucks right
now and see whether or not this works. And what does that mean? How
can we use this for the betterment of the church? Right. That's sort
of our, uh, you know, our research that
leads to action is.
>> Josh Packard: The researcher who is
focused on being useful and not interesting. Wouldn't you
know, I think that's where you and I meet is like, I wouldn't have
only asked that question in the first place. Like, we would have been
even on the research before we even got to the experimentation
side. On the research side, we wouldn't have
ever collected just one data point that
we would have a lot more context around that, you know, a lot more. We
would have been asking questions from the beginning that could lead to action or
intervention, um, ah, at the end. And it's.
You just, when you do that, you ask a different set of questions,
you think about the world a little bit differently. And I think
it's sometimes small, but really critical difference. And so that's
been, you know, that focus
on application has run throughout my
professional sensibilities now. I have not always had the ability to do it.
So, you know, I'm not, uh, I don't work in a
denominational setting. I've never worked at a church before. All my
research and scholarly work has been,
um, in the field of religion for the most part. But it's not.
I would be like a fraud, you know, if I were like, trying to tell you how to do
ministry. Um, and so it's not.
There are real limits to what I can do just by myself on that side.
It's part of the reason why I like this connection so much.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I think part of what it also does for Try Tank
overall, uh, is by having.
Because every time that I come to you and say, hey, Josh, I want to
study this, and you created this
wonderful framework that I use now. It just becomes.
Has become part of the way that I think, which I think helps
clarify both my thinking and what we're trying to do
here, which is, I want to know. Blank.
So that. Blank. Right. And so for us at Try Tank
is, I want to know. One of the studies that
we're launching right now is about faith formation. I want to know
whether the congregations that double down on faith formation
are more vital and growing so that
we can share that with the world, right. So that we can figure out where
are exactly within there. Are there changes happening
so that we can tell us and move some needles, right. I think
as our resources become more scarce,
as the world is changing rapidly
around us, uh, the more we
have actionable data, the
better decisions we'll be able to make.
But going back to. So you were in
academia. Uh, uh, you
also were with a large, uh, research
company. Tell us a little bit about you.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, um, left academia. I loved higher ed.
It's the only job I ever tried to get, uh,
1st, 1st gen college student. It was amazing to me, still is
amazing to me that I have a PhD and
anybody ever hired me, let alone two places, as a
professor. When I sit and think about it, it's
weird, um, left higher ed
though, because, you know, I just, it was,
if I had a million lives to live, I would have been happy to do that for one of
them. But there are other things I was interested in doing. I had
the opportunity to go and start springtide research institute, focus on
religion and faith, uh, among young people. Washington
was thrilled to get that opportunity and be the executive director there,
uh, after, uh,
and then a brief stint as, um, the,
what was my official title as executive vice president of
strategy and operations, uh, for. I know,
right, that's fancy at the national, ah, Catholic
Educational association, which was really an interesting insight to try
and help the, that's the professional association
for all the catholic schools in the country, um,
and to help them think through the changes
that are coming for them, just like they're coming to the rest of the church. More and more of their
students are not catholic. You know, how do you do faith formation
in a setting where you can't assume a working knowledge of,
um, um, the tradition anymore? What does that
mean for teachers and formers and stuff like that, and love that
and probably would have been happy to stay there. But this,
uh, uh, we kept, my co founder and I at
Future of faith, kept really coming around to this idea that the
future of faith really is rooted in relationships and
relationships that are sent have listening as a central
component. And what could we bring to
that conversation? People don't trust institutions in an era
of misinformation. All they trust are relationships
that they have with people they know. How do we do ministry?
How could we bring some sociological tools to that? And so that's what we do at future of
faith. And uh, of course, wrapped up in that is a lot of
research, um, to try and,
uh, not just build something on an idea but build something
that's, you know, rooted in
fact. Um, and some empirical evidence.
The. So that's. I mean, you know,
personally live in Colorado, have a 14 year old watching, you
know, trying to do our best as parents. Uh, my wife
works at a local parachurch ministry here and
trauma informed ministry program that she built.
Um, I don't know that either of us ever. We could never have said
that this is where we would end up, that we both end up working in some sort of ministry or
ministry adjacent fields. But here we are.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's the holy spirit for you at work, actually. And
actually, one of the great. I do love future of faith and the work that
you're all doing there when you're not doing Try Tank work, when you're doing that
work. Uh, but let's talk a little bit about sacred
listening and the tools that you all are building. We
are, uh. I don't know which came first,
actually. I was trying to think about this earlier today. Was it that we
decided to join up with and partner
with the. With the sacred listening project
or whether or not I had already asked you to come in
and also be our research partner and our research director in
this?
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, they sort of emerge at the same time. Right. And I don't think of these as
separate. I mean, I very much think of the work we're doing at Try Tank as related, for sure.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, absolutely. But so for someone who
hasn't heard of sacred listening, and all the
Try Tank subscribers, uh, to our
newsletter are, I'm going to share with them one of your
newsletters, uh, so that they can also see, because I really. You're
absolutely right. They overlap a lot. And the work that you're all
doing in sacred listening, the church is
relational. When we're not relational, we're doing it wrong.
>> Josh Packard: Well, that is
a bold claim, Lorenzo.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I will stand by that claim. Uh, and I think that
that's part of the reason why sometimes,
um, why digital church, for example,
I don't think will ever approximate what we're able
to do in a physical setting in church.
So tell us about sacred listening and what are the tools that
you're building and how you're spreading that into the world? Because
I think, actually, I don't know if I've ever said this to you, but I think you and Megan have
taken a leap of faith by saying, this is
important to the world, this particular
part of sacred listening, and we're going
to leave our jobs to go do this, to go and
just share this with the world, uh, as sort of
profits of listening and being in relationship.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, thank you. Um, that is how it feels, like a
leap of faith.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um.
>> Josh Packard: Ah, so our central. We started from
this place of trying to take the data very seriously that say
that the only real source of
trust right now among people is interpersonal.
For about 50 years, trust has been declining in institutions
and in those institutional leaders. There's lots of really great data about
that. That's a, you know, it's a whole presentation for a different day.
But the, the call then for us came like,
well, what if that was ours to try and help solve, you
know? Because I think the real crux of that question
becomes, um, or the
implication of that question becomes like, well, how do I do relational
ministry like that, if I have, you know, 300, 500,
a thousand people in my congregation?
Relationships famously don't scale.
And except that we started wondering, like, well, what
if. What if we tried to get, you know, what if we tried to build a system
that, that did scale and that led us to this model
of, um, sacred
listening. And it's, it's really three parts. There's a theological component,
which is that I think you have to start with this posture of imago dei
that you're having. It every, every conversation is an
opportunity to have an encounter with God, you know, manifest
here, um, on earth. And that's really
critical. And if you don't think, you know, if you don't start from that
point, then I don't think that you can take. You end up
not thinking that the interaction is all that important.
Um, the second thing is a little bit of communicate. We realized
people did need some. Some way to think about the
actual interpersonal skills of listening. And so that we draw from
some communication theory to talk about alignment, that you have to put. You
have to position yourself as a listener in a way that makes the person
who is talking feel heard. Um, that
requires a certain level of empathy and a cultural
knowledge about their background and where they come from. And
whether you're in a digital space or an in person, you just have to be a little
bit aware of your surroundings. Um,
and then there's a sociological component. It's the third part of the
model. And that, for us, is really about
gathering some information in a very systematic
way so you can see some patterns. And what I
mean by that is that we know you can't have, you
know, you can't have 300 cups of coffee a week
with people, but you can have ten. Um,
so you can do relational ministry with 300 people,
if you know which ten need you this week. But the only way you can
do that is if you're gathering information, tracking it in
some way, looking for patterns. And so we build, are these sacred listening tools
on our website, um, that you can download for free or
whatever. You can see some examples of how to do it. I think the ones that we build
are probably, like, they're well intended. I think they're awesome. But I
also recognize that probably what's most valuable is
to take that theory, see an example of how it could be applied, and
build your own for your own context. Um, this is not
rocket science. It's really just us trying to figure out a
way to sort of scale those relationships. And we know other people do it.
We know fundraisers do it, we know salespeople do it, we know community
organizers do it. Other fields have figured out how to do this.
Now, what we're doing in ministry is not transactional, it's
transformational. So we have to figure out a way to do it in a ministry way.
Like, fundraisers are not starting from a position of
day. Um, I don't think
you've been one.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's all they see, dollar bills.
>> Josh Packard: So I do. I think that that fundamentally changes some
things. Um, but still, I think we can
do this. And that's been. And that theory of sacred
listening is not just present in the tools that we build, but it's
present in the way that we approach research, um, both
for the project of listening, over it,
future, um, of faith, but even in the ways that we, uh,
approach our research here at
Try Tank, which is not just the straight up, kind of white
coated, uh, objective arm's
length, you know, point a, point b, and what happened in between,
but really, what does it mean to immerse yourself and listen to the people
that are having some kind of experience and what can we learn from it?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I really do think that, you
know, I. I think this is the first time I hear you
compare it to, like, salespeople and fundraisers
already sort of do this. And you would think that the one
that would get that
naturally would be sort of the. The ones that are called to
be with people, right? The ministers who are out there, who are
supposed to really be that. But
my question to that is, I wonder how much
of it is not just one intentionality that
you have to. This is now a priority for, hm, me as your
pastor, right, in this congregation, as your rector. Um,
I'm going to do sacred listening, and I'm going to
infuse that into everything that we do. So that, to
your point, I know, or as best as I
can, who are the ten people that I need to have coffee with this
week? Who are the ones that I need to reach out to this week just to sort of follow
up with? Uh, even if I have
150, I think that's still the number, right?
150 is the maximum number of relationships that one person can
hold. But whatever the number might be, right?
>> Josh Packard: Oh, no, it's way less for one person. I mean, it's. I mean, at
any important level, without. Without just in your own,
like, most of us walk around with like 15.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, no, this is very true. Very true.
>> Josh Packard: Uh.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I like the, you know, even as you were talking, this
is, this is. This is what happens, ladies and gentlemen,
when Lorenzo and Josh get together. He'll say some, some
data points, and Lawrence will be like, oh, I think we could do an experiment with
that. And I think we can bring an AI to do this and to
do that and to help us do this, but, you know, to create
it for your own context. And you're absolutely right.
Uh, I certainly do hope this is why
we. I wanted us to share your newsletter. I want
people to be following your work, because, as you say, it's not rocket
science. And I think if someone just is intentional in
their work and wanting to do this, if
they sort of learn how you all do
it, your framework, and then they
contextualize it for themselves, they could come up with something. Even if you
have 29 people in your congregation
on, uh, a Sunday, or even if you're not ordained.
Um, the largest number, the
greatest growth in congregations in the episcopal church are lay
led congregations. And so being able to equip
lay leaders also with the opportunity to
be sort of present to each other, this
is the theology of being with that Sam Wells,
uh, talks about all the time. So let's talk
a little bit about, um, the work we're doing
at Try Tank. Our four areas of focus right now
are artificial intelligence, faith formation, young
adult families, and latino ministry. And
in particular, and in all of those, now that we have a research arm,
of course, we're trying to do research, uh, on all of
them. Uh, but the one that we've actually, we partnered together
with the Lutherans and with the Presbyterians to do
something in is the young adult families or young adult
parents. Um, and
the high level in that, uh,
we don't need to go into specifics of the percentages or anything like
that. But as you, as a sociologist, when you look
at that data that comes back. Right. The question that we set
out asking today
was, uh, when we. Not today,
when we did, when we launched the survey was,
what are, what's happening
to faith transmission when nuns get together with other
nuns and have kids? And I'm not talking about the roman Catholic nuns with
habits, but the n o n e s, what happens
to faith transmission? And the news wasn't good,
right.
>> Josh Packard: Well, I think, I mean, I mean, it's
great you can make that jump.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: When Lorenzo looks at it. Don't forget, Lorenzo sees bad news as opportunities.
There's always, God's abundance is in there somewhere.
But if we were to just present the data to people, they'd be
like.
>> Josh Packard: Oh, yeah, I think a lot of
people would. But the, you know, as,
as a researcher, we.
I'm not the one who's going to say this is good or bad.
Um, the, I think that inter, that kind of
interpretation is left, is better left to the people who are actually
going to be responsible for doing something with it. Now what? So
when I look at that data, what I think is like, oh, very clearly
it's telling us that something different is happening here.
And in particular, like, uh, faith transmission. What
we found from the data, faith transmission is not going to happen
in the traditional ways. And by traditional, I mean at least the
last 50, 60, 70 years. And so that means that the models
that we've been largely relying on to do faith
transmission, um, or for faith
transmission probably aren't going to be very effective.
And, uh, what the second and third,
what I loved about this project and love about it still is that it's, there
are multiple iterations. I mean, it's survey interviews, survey. I mean,
there's, we get to keep going back and refining and asking
more. So not only is it clear that faith
transmission is not happening through those traditional
pathways, um, to the extent that it's,
that it's happening at all, it's that parents, you know, they want some
autonomy for their kids. They want them to be able to choose, but I don't think they
feel like the church is a resource in that regard.
Um, and, um, I'm not sure that they
even feel very equipped to make that happen at
home. Um, so that's the
dog in the fight that I have that I'll say is that the
research shows consistently that,
um, in order for a person to flourish, their
faith life has to be well considered, that the
worst thing that can happen is not in terms of human
flourishing, the worst thing that can happen is not
atheism the worst thing that can happen is that you're one
of these people who just says, like, I don't know, I don't think about that. I
never, like, I don't, you know, church is not. God is not
a thing I think about. Or, you know, I never really
contemplate why I'm here on earth. Those kinds of things. That's,
that's the worst, uh, you know, that's, that's the thing that's
less likely to doom you. And that's the thing that gets me
nervous like that. So if I'm going to make a judgment call, it is still
rooted in data, but I'll say, that's bad.
And I, and that feels like a place where a lot of these
nones parents, these nuns are leading,
potentially not through design, but just their default.
That's where they're, they're leading their kids.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And what I find interesting in that, in that data and in
the statement you just made, right, that they don't, you call it a
well considered faith life. I find
that fascinating, because when we look
at what they want as outcomes, even for their kids.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What they want them to learn are literally
the things that the church is not only
equipped for, but you would look at it and be like,
wait, this is literally why the church exists.
To give character, to give meaning, to give all these
other things that they say they want for their
kids. And I see that as, uh, just, uh,
a massive disconnect between one or the other. I think,
again, that presents an opportunity for us. But
it's fascinating to me, and I think it also talks about.
So another one of the research
projects that's going to come about because of that is
this deeper study to look at,
uh, just how, how toxic is the
quote unquote brand? I did air quotes. You can't see them people, but I did do air
quotes right now about the brand church.
Because if people
want something and we have it,
and the moment they hear your church, they're like, I don't even care what you're
building, what you're showing, what are you offering?
You use the word church. So I have to turn away from it just
because it's ingrained in me that it's such a bad brand, as
it were, then we as a church
have to reconsider. Well, if our job is to transform
people's lives, how can we get to them
to tell them, no, we do offer these things that you're seeking, that
you want. It's just, it's fascinating to me
that a, uh, simpler example
would be, these people are hungry.
We have great food. Uh, I mean,
if we want to get all theological, I'd say we have the bread of eternal life, right? But
we have great food, they're hungry, and
they just refuse to even look at us.
And so what we need to do is figure a way of
showing them that it's not scary and figuring
out what is at the root of their. Why they're
so, why it's such a toxic brand to them and all these things.
But that's what I love about this also. And you
can tell me you've been doing research longer, obviously.
Uh, does it ever end? Because I've
noticed that as we continue to do these, uh,
studies, one study sort of opens up
more questions. It's like a rabbit hole, right? It's like
just going down. That brings up a question and that brings
up another question and another question.
>> Josh Packard: I mean, if it never ends or at least doesn't pause,
then you are this, like, man,
I'm going to sound like a jerk, but you, you end up being not just
an academic, but a navel gazing academic, you know, where like,
you are just sort of holed up in your own world. And
I, um. I think a lot of good can come from that.
I don't know that it's necessarily Tritank's mission.
Um, it certainly isn't mine. Um, I love those people.
I've used their work a lot. I've written some of those things.
Um, so it's not me saying that that's
always bad. I just mean that it is a particular kind of
thing. If you're always
writing that last section of every academic paper, which is
future studies, blah, blah, blah, and as
you're doing the future study, right, and that is just your
job is to produce knowledge and information. Okay? But I think what we're trying to do at
Tri tank here is not. No, it never ends, but it
does pause long enough so that we can inform some
kind of an action design, some sort of experiment
or intervention to then test out what we have
learned from the project. Um, I mean, you could
study, you know, we could have a line, uh, of inquiry at,
uh, Try Tank around faith formation forever. Yeah.
Uh, but it doesn't mean that we would always be in this holding
pattern. It means that our line of inquiry would look like, okay, we did a,
we did a chunk of things to learn stuff that nobody else
knows or nobody else has learned up to now. And now we're going to
try some stuff and that becomes near the assessment of that
thing becomes the next stage of the research, um, which may
lead to another round of national research or something like that. But, yeah,
we could keep chasing that, but we would always be sort
of interjecting action throughout the
process.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh, yeah, no, I could. I mean, as much as I admire
your work and everything, I think I would be bored if I. If all I had
to do was just research, research and never get to do the
action, because it just. It just
comes very naturally to me to be like, oh,
again, if they're thinking about God at Starbucks, let's go
talk to them. Let's go. Let's go figure out, how do we.
How do we have that conversation with them? So, looking
forward, looking ahead. What excites you
about, uh, about the work? That.
And I asked this question. Let me. Let me be
fully open with this question in the sense of,
uh, there is a lot of anxiety in the church. The
numbers keep going down, uh, uh, for
all mainline denominations.
What sort of excites you within that. Within
that era where I call it the valley? And I keep
saying that the decisions we make in the valley now will determine when our
next peak is. And my hope is that
in 50 years, people look back and be, wow,
I'm glad they looked at this and they made these decisions, because we're a
stronger church. We might be smaller, but we'll be stronger.
We'll be more focused on Jesus. But I'm
curious, as you look ahead, what sort of excites you
about the studies that we're doing or possible studies in the future that we might
do? What excites you about the work?
>> Josh Packard: There's a really great book I, uh, talk about a
lot. Came out 2012, maybe, or something like
that from Nancy Emmerman, famous sociologist of religion called sacred
stories and spiritual tribes. And she wrote
in the, like, real early on, maybe even the intro to the book, she said,
in a time of significant change,
um, if we don't find as much religion in
the predictable places or in the predictable forms, we should not
assume that, uh, there's not as much religion in
the world. It's just not in those predictable places and in those predictable
forms. And, like, you know, Nancy
is a big proponent of this line of
scholastic inquiry called everyday or lived religion
and is great, and I recommend people to read her stuff, but
I get excited about this idea of, like, oh,
and for the last ten years, I've been animated by this. It's like, what are the
unpredictable places? Like, if religion is not showing up in the
unpredictable forms, but we shouldn't assume that it's
disappearing. Then where is it showing
up? You know, if the story of
people wanting something that the church, well, that at least
church leaders are uniquely equipped to offer,
um, you know, how do we. How do we
find where those two things can match if it can't happen in
institutions? Because people don't trust institutions. Like, well, then, like,
how do we leverage the power of institutions to do
non institutional things? I mean, these are the kinds of. But those are
the questions we get to ask at Tritenk, because it's a,
you know, try. I love the idea that, like, Try Tank is not
an, uh. It's. It's not like,
it's not like, well, here's the final answer. We do experiments.
Like, we get to, you know, like, here is the experiment
that we're going to run based on the research that we've done, and we're going to learn some
stuff. And so, essentially, I think of a lot of
the knowledge that we're gathering in the experiments that we're doing as
based around this idea of, like, what are the unconventional,
unpredictable places where people's faith lives
are showing up? And how can the church meet them there?
Um, in that space that gets me super animated.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And to give a concrete example of that, uh,
and I don't know if I've told you the story or not, one time, my nephew came out to
visit me in California. Visit us in California. He
stayed on our couch. He borrowed my car. Then he went out
to the desert in San Bernardino to go see his
band. That was. The concert was beginning, like, at 09:00 at night,
and he was out there all day. He did the concert,
then he slept in the car, uh, out there in the desert. And then he came back the
next day, and I just. I was like, I just need to know
why on earth. This is a group. They're touring. They're going to
go by Florida. Why did you have to? It's like, oh, there's just something that
happens when you travel somewhere
to go visit someone or see something that's important
to you. I'm like, oh, he just went on a pilgrimage. And
then he's like, and then you wait there all day with people, and you
share your stories of the first time I heard this band,
it was like this. And then the whole day is just
people that share these interests. I'm like, oh, you form community.
And then he says, and then finally, you've had a couple of beers, you're with these people
that are your new best friends, and then all sudden, your group comes
on, and it just feels otherworldly. I'm like, oh, you
found transcendence, right. It's like, uh, he's
someone who doesn't go to church on Sundays, but he
definitely had a spiritual trip that
he made.
>> Josh Packard: He went to church in the desert.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly. So
that is exciting. And that's why this work at Try Tank
is, I think, so good and
cool. Um, any final
words, uh, for our listeners
as they're out there trekking and doing this work, and they're excited
by it as well. Any final words?
>> Josh Packard: Not so much final words, but it's a question, Loren. So, I mean,
you. Try Tank was doing good work in the
world, and you made the bold decision that you wanted to
add research. You want. You wanted to change, uh,
and do that. So I'm going to pitch the last thing back
to you, which was the first thing you asked me, which is why.
Why turn tritank into a center that has
not just experiments, but also a research
component?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Oh. And that's all the time we have. Oh, look at the time. We
gotta go.
This is my part. No, um, actually, I
think what actually costed was
that we weren't we being Lorenzo
and the lama, right. Um, in the
experiments we were doing, we weren't, quote,
unquote, moving needles. We weren't doing systemic
change. And as the church is changing so
fast, I felt that we needed to
have more information so that we could
do better research, so that we could
do better experiments, so that we could
actually then impact the church more. Not in
a scary way, not in a we're going to change it way. I've been
in this job. I've been accused of killing the church and trying
to end Sundays. I've been accused of everything. Right?
So. But rather, so that we could actually. I
mean, if we're able to show, and this is, this will come out from one
of our, uh, one of our research projects, and then we go and
try it. If we're able to show that faith formation, the churches that
double down on faith formation are stronger, more
vital, and each actually show some numeric growth as
well, which is not the goal, by the way. The goal is not
numeric growth. The goal is to transform
people's lives as being a church. So if we're able
to show that that happens, then we can
show that to the world and be like, this is who we are. So let's focus
back on that. So as we're in this valley, if
we're able to prune out the things that aren't working, that
aren't, shouldn't be part of our focus, even though
they're good, even though they're great. And that's actually from the
moment we joined with you all and brought you on board,
I've been able to focus more of trite chance work. We only have four
focus areas as opposed to, I think when we first met, I had, like,
18.
>> Josh Packard: More than four. Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So having four is good, and we might go down to three at some
point if we wrap up one of them, um,
and we'll find new ones and we'll just keep moving forward. So, yeah, that's what it was for
me, I think, is the wanting to have more.
A greater impact in the work that we're doing so that,
uh, because the church is changing fast, I see a lot
of people that are scared and
remember much to, uh, what this book that you
spoke about, sacred stories, book much like that. I
think the theological way that Try Tank has looked at
this for, at least for four or five years
now, is that ours is a God of
abundance, and God provides everything we
need to do the work we're called to do in the world right now. And if we
don't see that abundance, it's simply because we
don't recognize it. It's in the form we don't see
it. So I'm hopeful
that with deeper research, more legitimate,
sort of rigorous, uh, sociological research,
we will be able to say, here's some inflection points.
Here's where we can actually see. See God's abundance. Now let's
go after it.
>> Josh Packard: I love that. I love that. That's great.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, Josh, thanks so much for joining us. I know
you're hitting the road again, just like me. Uh,
so thanks for joining us. It is
wonderful to have you be part of the. You and Megan to be part of the
Try Tank team, and I look forward to many years of
continued collaboration as we do, uh, more and
research same.
>> Josh Packard: It's very exciting.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right,
thanks for listening. Please subscribe and
be sure to leave a review. To learn more about
Try Tank, visit
triteank.org. 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 la Briga. Until next
time. May God bless.