The Future Christian Podcast
Talking about Christian Universities, Evangelicals, Mainline Religion, and the Local Congregation
Around the time my book released, the folks running publicity at Eerdmans told me of a request for a podcast interview that had come their way. Loren Richmond is the host of the Future Christian Podcast.
As we were scheduling the date for our conversation, I discovered that he lived one suburb over from me here in the Denver area. So in the middle of March, I drove the ten minutes to his house and recorded a podcast (while getting to know his dogs). The episode dropped yesterday and I encourage you to listen to it. It runs right at an hour.
The central themes of my book ran throughout: What if we weren’t afraid? What does it mean to really belong? What is the role of asking questions in a safe environment? How do we understand the relationships between evangelicals and mainline groups? How do we develop a faith that matches the complexity present in the broader culture?
If you’d rather read than listen (which deprives Loren of the downloads), I have provided a (very long) transcript below. It’s lightly edited to take out the “um”s and “so”s and stumbles. It faithfully captures the nature of our conversation. There are some great things in the conversation that would make wonderful SubStack newsletters on their own, so I may return to some of the themes in the future.
Future Christian Podcast is joined live and in person by John Hawthorne
>> Loren: All right, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. I am actually joined live and in person with John Hawthorne and dogs recording from my house. So if there's some dog noise in the background, please forgive us. John, anything, um, else you want to say about yourself?
>> John: Um, so the reason I live here, is that our daughter came to grad school at DU a couple of decades ago and met her husband and then they have two children and settled in a neighborhood. And so when we. I retired in May of 2020, in the throes of COVID, I went home on March 13 and went back one day to pack my office.
>> Loren: Wow.
>> John: And so then a year later when things looked like they had calmed down a little bit, we sold the house in Michigan and we were able to buy a house here and have the good fortune of living, 4/10 of a mile from my daughter's house. Walkable distance for, you know, grandchild can ride the bike over and that's been great. I'm now the board president of the children’s charter school in Northglenn. So that keeps me kind of busy, but not terribly so.
>> Loren: Yeah.
>> John: I grew up in Indiana and as we'll. We moved around a lot given my decision to be in Christian universities and more importantly my decision to go into administration, which meant more mobility than kind of taking a teaching position and staying there for 35 or 40 years.
>> Loren: Right, right. you've bounced between and forth between Nazarene and Methodist churches. Anything you want to say about your faith journey? What that looked like in the past, what that looks like today?
>> John: Yeah, I don't want to get too deep. I, grew up in a kind of faith-adjacent home, which meant my grandmother's kind of avid Presbyterianism. But mostly not so much. But through influence of friends and other things, I became a Christian in high school. I actually flunked out of college after my first year and went home -- at their request -- back in Indianapolis. Wound up getting involved at a church, a Nazarene church that was pretty fundamentalist even for Nazarene churches. I always felt that was good for me at the time, given lack of discipline, all the things that contributed to looking at a school. And over the years the notion of grace became more and more prominent, which is one of the reasons that I am a Methodist today. That notion of the free gift of grace kind of has kind of taken the place of that earlier somewhat more fundamentalist leaning is kind of the big transition, I think, of my faith journey. We bounced back and forth between Nazarene churches and Methodist churches. Upon moving from California to Michigan we've been Methodist ever since and kind of owned that. But I've always been in more or less Wesleyan kind of big family spaces.
>> Loren: Yeah. Because Nazarenes have a Wesleyan connection.
>> John: Nazarenes have. I was at a Church of God school, Church of God Anderson School, which also is there. The second institution I was at is Sterling College in Kansas, which is a Presbyterian school, but I went to the Methodist Church.
>> Loren: Cool. Any spiritual practices that you really like to keep maintaining?
>> John: Honestly, I'm not real good at that. Um. Um, I keep trying to kind of get into regular rhythms.
>> Loren: Ah, Practice practicing.
>> John: Exactly. They take for a bit and then they don't. Yeah. Community is important, Being with other people. Even reflecting on what I'm reading, even if it's not, uh, particularly a religious topic, is, you know, kind of feeds that broader sense of understanding of the world.
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. John is the author of the Fearless Christian University
Well, I'm fortunate to be talking again live and in person with John this morning as we're recording. And um, we're talking about a little bit around his book. John's the author of the Fearless Christian University. No subtitle, right? No subtitle. He brought a copy. My copy is upstairs. Uh, but we're going to talk kind of around this topic and then more broadly around institutions, particularly Christian institutions in the church.
What inspired you to write the book about Christian higher education? But do you want to start off kind of just what led you to write the book? What inspired it?
>> John: So as I just mentioned, uh, I got into Christian higher education because my wife was a graduate of Olivet Nazarene, which was where my first job wasSo through her networks I was known when I was in grad school and they called up out of the blue and offered me a job. So I went and taught there. I was there nine years and by the latter part of that period I was kind of itching for something else more to do and felt led -- I think I could say that I don't know if call is too strong -- but definitely led to exercise some administrative gifts I thought I was sensing. And it wasn't going to happen there. If I was going to pursue that, it required moving. I mean they weren't like, opposed to me. It was like the person who was my department chair was department chair another decade. And it was just like the amount of time necessary to wait to make that move was going to be endless. So I moved and taught sociology at Sterling College in Kansas. Then in two years into that the college had acquired a non-traditional program, one of those classes for working adults that meet at night, one night a week. And that actually operated in Missouri. I was the chair of the faculty committee that gave oversight to that. Well, the president fired the VP and I became acting VP while they did a search. And then after they did a search, I became permanent VP. And I was VP for that from the middle of, well from late 1992 through 1995. It had some challenges to it, um, but I was enjoying what I was doing. I was, I thought accomplishing the right kinds of things. But I didn't want to spend my career in non-traditional education. And I figured if I stayed too long that was going to be a problem.
>> Loren: Mhm.
>> John: As it turned out, the President nominated me for an opening, uh, at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, which is a Church of God, Anderson, Indiana affiliated College. And I took the role eventually the title became Vice President of Practical affairs. And I did that for a decade, uh, and then, uh, spent a year in transition as Assistant to the President and then moved to Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego where I was provost for four years. That ended badly. And then, uh, I wound up eventually in Michigan, back in the classroom teaching sociology at Spring Arbor University Free Methodist School.
>> Loren: Mhm.
>> John: So I knew I was retiring in May of 2020, made that decision early on, um, the year before. And um, two months before I retired, I sat down and I wrote myself a memo -- 30 pages, double spaced on, well, here's how my career went. And as I looked over that memo I said, oh, maybe there's something here. Maybe there would be a series of essays that I could write about Christian higher education. And I actually met with one representative who happened to be here in Denver for the Evangelical Theological Society. We had coffee and I said, here's what I've got. And he said, oh, my wife who teaches at a Christian college, she'd like this, but I don't know how much of a bigger market there is than her. And I said, okay, fair enough. So I kind of set that aside. But the first of those essays became the first chapter in Fearless Christian University. And what I wound up doing was writing what I came to see is the affirmative case for a different approach to Christian higher education rather than just, oh, here were some important lessons from my past. Those lessons you could still find through the pages of the book. But it shifted my focus and I was able to speak to kind of a broader issue which as you say, I hope speaks to broader issues within the evangelical church and to extent the mainline church and maybe to parachurch organization, all of it.
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. Your book is called the Fearless Christian University. It seems like we're in an era of fear. So let's get into that because I think again your title is the Fearless Christian University. But I think this is more, uh, applicable. It seems like to me we're really in an era perhaps from my perspective that fear, I think runs everything. And I was thinking about this a. I can't remember if it's in your book or if it's in another book I read where they, they talk about how like the kind of worldview thing in evangelical universities has been like the kind of the boogeyman driver of like, oh, parents, you got to invest in your kids’ worldview. And I feel like similarly in like mainline or progressive spaces now it's like, oh, Christian nationalism, like that's the boogeyman. And not that these aren't like problematic things, especially today Christian Nationalism, but it seems like, like everything is kind of reactionary, fear-based. And you really try to like, hey, I guess, is that fair?.
>> John: Uh, I think broadly. So here's how the first chapter begins. “Christian universities, much like the evangelical subculture that spawned them, are characterized by fear, fear of societal decline, fear of secular authorities, fear of apostasy, fear of not being real schools. In short, they fear losing their way.”
>> Loren: Yes.
>> John: Um, and I think that notion about if we don't hold the line on every little thing, on the Christian worldview, on the social ethic, on all these things, that everything will fall apart. I have to work to figure out Christian nationalism. See, I think the Christian nationalism thing is also related to fear of social change. So it's similar in that way some of what's fostering that.
>> Loren: Yeah, So I think one thing that was interesting in your book and this title or phraseology doesn't come from you, particularly Andy Crouch. But he used a term from him, zombie institutions. So talk like what that is and then how do we go about revitalizing these institutions?
>> John: I meant to look up the scripture reference to get it right. But you know, the paraphrase is the form of religion without the essence therein.
>> Loren: Sure, sure.
>> John: And I think that's some of what Crouch was talking about. It is that institutions settle into patterns of being and behaving that have suited them in the past. And they have this perhaps bias toward inertia. And if the culture around them has changed or the internal dynamics have changed, they seem to be unaware of that because things run on autopilot. They just kind of know how to keep doing the thing they've always done. And every year looks like every other year. So it's in that sense that I kind of talk about in my case, particularly Christian universities, who are simply kind of talking about the same issues, saying the same things in their admissions brochures, doing everything they've ever done. And that limits their ability to respond to what I argue is a very much changed cultural dynamic, among incoming college students and the broader culture. And so maintaining that past practice, particularly, um, either in a reactionary mode or at least in the zombie sense, in the non-reflective mode causes all kinds of problems.
>> Loren: So I think what's interesting for me, and again you were writing primarily from the university context. I'm thinking about this for a church context, especially from my situation within the mainline world. But when I read the zombie institution thing and you talk about this bias toward inertia, like I feel like again I haven't been part of mainline Christianity that long. I'm really in many ways an outside observer, so to speak, because of that. But it seems like to me that mainline Protestantism has been kind of just managing decline for -- I mean really when you look at data from like Ryan Burge or something -- it's like managing decline for 20, 30, 40 years.
>> John: Actually 80. I mean, no, the peak was 1970.
>> Loren: Right.
>> John: Let me go on a detour into the sociology of mainline churches. So back in, you know, in post war America, there is this sort of religious boom, part of which is a civil religious boom. Church uh, is a good thing. You know, this is where you get Eisenhower saying that our country makes no sense unless it's based on a deeply felt faith and he doesn't care what that faith is. So church became part of social acceptance, of affiliation, of recognition that you're a good member of the community. And that, I think fostered the big growth in the mainlines. Which of course means the main lines are demographically about a decade older than the evangelical churches which explode in the late 1970s through the 1980s. There is evidence that the evangelicals are now hitting demographic plateaus and having their own issues. There was some sociological research that argued that mainline pastors got very much involved in social action which created a gap with the population. There's some truth to that. I think what is more likely is that you have a traditional versus an experimental, innovative shiftSo while the mainline church is still in the big old building downtown with the choir and the robes, the worship band is going on at the evangelical church and they've got the youth group and I mean there, there is a cannibalization. It happens as there's defection from the mainline to the evangelicals. Now the growth is non-denoms.
>> Loren: Right.
>> John: That's how I kind of think about what that looks like. One of the dynamics of that kind of historical pattern Is that part of the evangelical strength -- and this relates to the themes of the book -- part of the evangelical identity is “we're true believers. Those guys don't believe anything.”
>> Loren: Right
>> John: There may have been a period of time where mainline churches soft-sold theology, but I think that's generally a myth.
>> Loren: Yeah.
>> John: What you find today in mainline churches is this kind of broader social awareness blended with a commitment to community both local and internal and a kind of Jesus-centered theology. My wife and I went to St. Simon's Island, Georgia at the end of January for this event that Diana Butler Bass puts on. It was great. It was just, it was very white, um, very middle class. But it was 700 kind of well meaning, faith filled mainline folks. And it was really encouraging. I mean it's just to counter that kind of, all the main lines don't stand for anything is really important.
>> Loren: Well, let's talk about that because one of the things you note in the book that I feel like I've seen broadly speaking within American Christianity is this kind of like melding of Christianity into the progressive wing and the conservative wing and in the conservative wing because I think, correct me if this is wrong, but I feel like even within a tradition like the Church of the Nazarene that had distinct rituals and practices, there's kind of melding into like just evangelicalism writ large. You can correct me if I'm wrong. Certainly within, I think, within mainline Protestantism, I feel like there's, it's not quite as distinct but there is kind of this again this kind of amalgamation into just like one sort of like, we're just liberal Christianity.
>> John: Okay. A couple of things. Yeah, yeah. There is a sense in which, you know, one of the things that happens in the evangelical world first is that denominational publishing houses die. And they are replaced by whatever Rick Warren did lately or whatever. Whoever the hot person is now.
>> Loren: Now it's ah, you know, I feel like what Cokesbury is still operating but there are uh, like whatever. Adam Hamilton for instance.
>> John: But they'll put that out. But that's different than when the Church of God Press dies and then the Sunday school curriculum. I was at the Nazarene Church in Portland and one year, they kind of bought the subscription for everybody, so we were going to read The 40 Days of Purpose from Rick Warren. And you read the first page and say, this book is theologically not what we believe, but it's a big name and it's a popular book. That means everybody knows about it, everybody's talking about it, everybody's reading all the stuff about it. And that replaces that kind of dynamic. And so what's distinctive about a denomination kind of shrinks.
Now your reference to, you know, how do they, you know, what do you do with kind of all of the kind of behavioral limitations that often went along with conservative evangelicalism. Those soften. I mean, you know, it used to be there were no cards, no bowling, you don’t go to the circus.
>> Loren: I was just telling kids, like when we grew up. Karina wife and I, like, we couldn't go to movies in college.
>> John: And now, you know, it's like wine with dinner. Sure. Who cares? I mean, it's, um. Except that there has been a move in the last five years for conservative denominations to double down on LGBTQ issues. Because what they've done is they said, oh, these positions that we held, these social positions, they're doctrinal.
And all of a sudden they have just shut down conversation around the topic. They don't do that around alcohol, they don't do that around movies. That's part of the generic evangelicalism. But then certain culture war issues rise to the, to the fore.
I could be wrong here. But I don't think the mainline church has had the same amalgamation. Methodists know that they come from Wesley and they like to talk about Wesley. Presbyterians, like, talk about Calvin and Reformed thought. Lutherans, um, are very much Lutherans. You know, I mean, so UCC has its own history, which is interesting to, to dig into. Um, but. But there are stronger kind of historical ties. Maybe that's what helps in the mainline.
>> Loren: I think within, this is what drives me crazy about evangelicalism. Like if I feel like, if I go to like a mainline church, like, I know why they have a reason for why they do something.
Whereas evangelicals sort of have to like reinvent the wheel all the time. Because like, I remember going to like a progressive evangelical church and they're like, they had communion, but it was just at a table that you self-serve and I was like, you're making me insane. Like, no, that's not. This is not right.
Going back to your point about being fearless, reactionary, it feels like if I'm understanding what you've read, what you wrote in the book, this culture war type of drivenness, influence, like reaction -- certainly maybe I'm wrong -- but certainly I feel like similar things happen in mainline process, especially right now in the political season we're in right now, which goodness knows is there's some fairness to. But thinking even bigger picture, it feels like, and I've been talking about this with one of my good friends, Dennis Sanders, like, it feels like when all that the opposite is known for is just resisting. There's never any kind of, um, hopeful future. And eventually people kind of wear out of like resisting and they want like, what's our hopeful future? Like, what are we offering people? And I'm wondering, like, have you seen the, a similar dynamic or seems like you've seen a similar dynamic within Christian evangelical universities. What do you recommend instead?
>> John: Okay, um, this is the version of the question that I get. People say, okay, could you name a fearless university? And my answer is I've got some nominees. I don't know how well they match my image, and I won't name them right now.
A quick side note. I had decided while I was waiting to hear from Eerdmans -- I knew they liked the book, but I didn't know where we were in the process -- that what I would do is I would add a chapter that would be a field trip and I would go and visit like three or four of these institutions I thought were nominees. Well, when I got the contract on November 1st of 2023, I had a February 1, 2024 submission deadline and the field trip went away. So the ninth chapter is my imaginary field trip.
The central thrust of the book is that there are, and I think I can work this background at churches. Central thrust of the church is that there are two critical dynamics at play, and they overlap in Christian universities. One is that you've got a set of leaders, administrators, trustees, major donors who are insistent on wanting to maintain their separation from the world, the left, the liberals. That's where all that comes in. And so they wind up trying to hold continuity with the past that isn't realistic in terms of what's going on in its surrounding milieu. Okay. the second dynamic is that this generation of students is very different than what those administrators and donors and trustees and denominations see and think.
I have this whole litany. I won't go through the whole thing. But a student beginning college, beginning at a Christian college in the fall of 2025 was born in 2007. She doesn't know anything about 9/11 She was barely alive for the great recession. Doesn't know much of anything about the Obama administration. She’s in elementary school when Trayvon Martin dies, when Michael Brown dies, when, I mean you go through that whole list. She's 11 when MeToo hits and ChurchToo, following it. She has dealt with school shootings or the fear of school shootings, with concerns about climate change, with political polarization. All of that has happened in her short lifetime. And the cell phone in her pocket has been the dynamic through which she engages all these topics. And it has been present her entire life.
>> Loren: Yeah.
>> John: So that's the dynamic of the students that are coming in. Even if they're like evangelical students. These are the sentiments they're bringing with them.
>> Loren: So like the norms of like when we think about the majority. What was the Falwell.
>> John: Um, Moral Majority.
>> Loren: Moral majority. You mentioned 9 11. Like so many of these kind of culture war issues -- Teletubbies, if you remember that whole thing - like clueless to her.
>> John: And the issues that are of importance to her -- diversity, LGBTQ at least respect. Climate change, a broad sense of community, legitimate discipleship are exactly the issues, with the exception of the last one that the university leadership prides itself on in not focusing on.
>> Loren: Right, right.
>> John: So that's the central crisis of the book. And so the solution to that, which is also going to speak, I think, to what you want to talk about in terms of churches. The solution to that is to center the students’ questions as the primary piece of the mission of the university, that there is a question. The alternatives are sort of protecting the brand versus addressing the needs and concerns and questions of today's students.
I have a friend -- I won't name the institution -- but I have a friend who is recently at a kind of recruiting event for interested students. And he told me that the admissions department, because our students had parents present and the admissions department tells the parents that the university has not changed since when they went to school it was the same institution. And he and I, because he has known about the book since early days. Um, this is like the absolute inverse of what I'm arguing in the book.
>> Loren: And it feels like pretty preposterous to think that they have absolutely not changed. But I can see why you'd say that to a parent. So this is where I want to kind of hit to, because I think this is very applicable, at least in my perspective. You talk about centering student questions as the primary mission. So if we think about that in terms of a church context, how do we do that? And it's not necessarily going to be 18- to 20-year-old, 22-year-olds in the church context, because the data suggests they're loosely involved with church at that age anyway. But you may get them at the end of high school, you may get them as they're young adults or later young adults, whatever the terminology is now, as they're trying to trickle back and ask some questions. How do you make church so that you're centering these questions, but like not, I hate to use this word, but for lack of a better word, abandoning kind of these central tenets, your core theology, does that make sense? What do you know?
>> John: So I think part of the answer is, and I don't know how this works structurally, but part of the answer is first of all legitimizing questions. So that's one piece that it's okay here in this church to say I'm confused about this. I don't know what I think about this. I don't know how to read this passage of the Old Testament. I don't know how to reconcile these ideas. I don't know how my lived experience with my neighbors, my gay neighbors, can be connected to these scripture passages.
How do you know there's an openness to being able to at least acknowledge that those are legitimate questions. I don't think that's all kind of talk-back issues in churches. I'm not sure that structurally works, but I think there is a mode that preachers can demonstrate that they have their own questions and the questions are okay and that we're not afraid of questions.
So that's part of it. A second component is to think about what it means to be truly focused on Jesus. Not just Jesus's words or Jesus's ministry, but the broader theological understanding of the Incarnation. You know, what does, how do we talk about God-with-us and how do we talk about the broader theological idea. We just at our church did small group study on Philippians, you know, and so you got the whole Philippians 2, just massive important passage which kind of creates this context which isn't clearly, which isn't just Jesus was a good guy who got along with people. This is again to go back to the sort of stereotype of mainliners, right, there's depth there about what the person Jesus means. A third thing I would ask maybe, I think it's a third. Maybe it's a sub point of the first or maybe it's the major point. And the thing I said was a subpoint.
I once was asked to give a little staff devotional talk at one of my colleges during the summer. What I wound up talking about was what it meant to trust God. And that so often we get ourselves in the evangelical world into this position that says if we don't hold the line right here, then we haven’t been true to God. There are days where that skates really close to idolatry, that you think somehow that you're protecting God from difficult conversations. And I don't think God needs to be protected from difficult conversations. That's why that relates to that first point. and even to my other point about Jesus. I mean that's challenging kind of what do we do with this, you know, Jesus, here's what this person is. What do we do? Do we do this or do that? Those weren't easy. Uh, and that's part of the dynamic.
>> Loren: Yeah, I think that's interesting. I'm thinking too, as we think about, maybe more practically speaking too, when you think about, certainly in higher ed, you can speak better to this that I can. But I'm just thinking like I have a degree on my wall that I did entirely online. Most of my seminary was completed online. It seems like the, the shift has been practically speaking to like online alternative sort of education models. I don't know if you want to speak any more to that. And thinking again applying that to church, like does, how do we need to perhaps reenvision like the structural elements of church
>> John: Yeah, let's see. Frst of all, let me say something about the non-traditional programming at colleges. The degree completion program I was part of or online programming or graduate programming. The schools made the move to do that because it was financially important to do so. But to argue that those programs carry the same mission components that happens with an 18- to 22-year-old residential student is just impossible to articulate. It just doesn't.
>> Loren: Because even when I was doing my master's divinity I had to be on campus for a few classes. There's a huge better. I felt so much more connected and engaged even when I was a week-long class.
>> John: Churches already have the problem of fostering spectatorship. I mean, the best thing we do at our church every Sunday is the eight minutes we spend in the passing of the peace, which really involves wandering all around the congregation, not just talking to people next to you. People just get up and move all over the place. It is really the -- as a friend of mine from years ago said -- it is the “re-membering” of the congregation. That’s just impossible to do in a church of 750. And it is absolutely impossible to do by typing in the chat line on the online service to say, oh, “good to see you all on the screen”. Which you can't see because the camera is only focused at the front anyway. So that becomes problematic.
I think it has a place. I, uh, think one of the things we learned during COVID is that it's a nice fallback for people who can't travel to the congregation or as I happen to know, from people I know at church. You know, it's, ,” we got up a little late and so we're just going to watch today” and it'll be. But there comes a point where if that's all you do; you're not part of the congregation in the same fashion.
My dissertation, 40 years ago, was about people who regularly attend church and don't join. How prevalent was that? Did some interviews. Why is that? Talk to some pastors. What do they think about that? That was the dissertation. But early on I had to decide what I thought about the relationship between being in community versus being on the membership rolls. And it didn't take me long to figure out that being in community is the primary driver of congregational life. So being online, only online, is a step removed from that. And a step removed from that is being on the rolls and going at Christmas and Easter.
>> Loren: I have it, there's a book coming out from Baker, The Strategically Small Church, thinking economically too about this. And I'm sure you can speak to this, you kind of already have, from the Christian university perspective of going online was somewhat about scale, I imagine, and financial. Because again, you can only, from a campus perspective, only house and sustain so many students.
Similarly, I feel like certainly in evangelical church, the megachurch model works because it's like financially viable. You can keep bringing in people and your ministry staff doesn't really have to expand exponentially. Um, whereas like this, you know I often say this like the, the classic 20, 30 years ago church that we think of like the 150-member church, like that's almost doesn't exist now. And it's really hard to maintain because of giving levels decreasing.
>> John: You know you're right that the, the metrics have shifted downward. But I used to argue that up to 125 maybe you can maintain the metaphor of the church's family. And then it gets really dicey from 125 until, until I don't know, 250, 300 where you're big enough to have sub components. But there is that, you know what happens when you're too big and then when you're very big, when you're really big and you got subcomponents. One of my favorite little quotes and this goes back to the about 2011 I think. But one of the books that Robert Putnam wrote, the Bowling Alone Guy was about kind of community organizations.I used it a class and one of the community organizations they studied was Saddleback. And he had this little throwaway line that there were 152 people on the mountain biking email list for Saddleback. And I always liked that image because that says where community exists in the really large megachurch, it exists in interest pockets or in the neighborhood small group. And the loyalty is there much more than the loyalty is to the institution. There is a parallel there by the way to the non-traditional programming at Christian universities. If you talk to people who do a degree completion or who do a master's in divinity in this online program with a cohort, your loyalty is much more to the people in the cohort than it is to the institution.
>> Loren: I mean that really speaks to the broader cultural dynamics we are in right now. Right. Where people. Far less institutional loyalty, it's far more relational, connectional based. So I guess what do you advise universities? Uh, what do you advise institutions? What are they thinking of? Like we know we can't necessarily like sustain our model through a purely, you know, in the university space on campus, in whatever the terminology is, similarly for churches or other institutions.
>> John: Part of, well, one of several answers I have to that is my argument is that the future of the fearless Christian university involves a willingness to try to meet the needs of the rising generation. Even though the rising generation, only 9% of them are white evangelicals. The interests of Gen Z, the need for belonging, the need for security, the need for their lives to have meaning, the need to have impact, all those things are very, those are the kinds of things that residential Christian universities can provide.
>> Loren: I mean frankly, what Christianity provides.
>> John: What Christianity provides, yes to kind of move on to that. So to recognize that we are addressing the felt needs of people, not to prioritize the individualization of that because that becomes problematic on its own. But, but yes to say again. We invite the questions; we recognize the needs. We are here to provide belonging and importance and meaning. I think is possible. That requires a willingness to kind of step out of the past zombie patterns. And rather than saying don't know, this is an old argument in the sociological of religion but is the question about believing versus belonging. And if believing is primary and you are welcome in this place, as long as you line up, then that's going to be a challenge. Um, and if belonging is what's important and believing comes along tailing that, then that's a different, it's a different dynamic for the church.
>> Loren: Yeah. And I'm thinking, um, as I'm right now believing in belonging. Jeff Keuss, who had on a couple episodes, a few episodes past, did a lot of work on this. Maybe I'm too optimistic here, you can push back, but I feel like this is possible. Going back to that point about maintaining ethos and theological values. Like it's possible to say like, hey, this is what your felt needs are. You're looking for purpose, you're looking for connection. It's just about messaging. It's like, uh, is that too simple? Is that too pie in the sky?
>> John: Say more about what you mean by just messaging.
>> Loren: Like it's reframing, it's reframing to say like, um, like so like in my tradition Christian church, Disciples Christ, where I'm ordained in like our big thing is the open table communion, blah blah, blah. Like the central, the central component of a worship service in the disciples gathering. And it's funny even when like Disciples clergy, like you know, you've had what they call worship is like we've had communion, so we know we have worship. You know, uh, it's funny because like, like in evangelical space,
>> John: Worship when they, when they do the music.
>> Loren: Like they've worshiped. Um, but I feel like there's a way to like when we get stuck on like, well, we have to have a central table and we have to have elders up there and we have to have, you know, the elder give reflection, like, versus like saying, what are the, what are the ethos and values of the table? Everyone being welcome, people included, God, love and graces for all. Like translating that and not, not that I want to get rid of the table.
>> John: Let me, let me add one piece to that.
>> Loren: Yes.
>> John: Years ago, I realized that I had been socialized to see communion -- this was with passing the little trays -- as a very introspective moment. Let me take communion and, you know, let me dig down deep inside. And even with the little trays, I came to recognize the real miraculous thing is to be aware of all of these other people in the room sipping the little cup and taking the little piece of whatever that is at the same time. And even with the little trays, I came to recognize the real miraculous thing is to be aware of all of these other people in the room sipping the little cup and taking the little piece of whatever that is at the same time.
>> Loren: Yeah.
>> John: Or now in our congregation, we go forward to take communion. The pastor names us. I've helped before so I know that the dynamic is you are named and you are very aware, not just that this is communion and the table is open, but this is Loren taking communion.
And even as we are communing at the table with Jesus and each other at that moment. So that notion of belonging gets communicated. The word Kingdom came to mind is institutionally in practice more than just messaging.
>> Loren: You're right, because you're getting at. It's a way of saying you belong through the tradition, but there's intentionality behind it.
Well, I want to keep talking about this, but we're running out of time. Let's take a quick break. We're back. We got the dogs riled up. So, um, John, we only have a few more minutes. I know you got to run. So let's take these closing questions as seriously or not as you'd like to take them. I don't know if you want to think about this, like, maybe not from the Pope, since that's the traditional question I ask, but from your context, like, if you were like, I don't know, what's the president? Or you could like, speak for all Christian universities or Christian institutions, like, what are, what are a couple things. Some things you'd want to do in that, a, uh, single day.
>> John: Um, let me answer this way. You know, a Lot of people say, oh, well, do you really expect all these Christian universities change their positions? And I say no, give me one. Give me one for proof of concept. Yeah, let's find one and let's have the conversation about what it means to be fearless.
That last chapter of the book, that I said was my made-up field trip, tells the story of two universities, both of which I made up, one of which has fully embraced what I'm describing. I described some of what goes into the components of what makes that work. And then the second one was one that would like to do that and is living in the shadow of another very conservative university that I nicknamed Driscoll, wants to know how not to do that and so is kind of moving the other direction.
I think the first move is what I would want in a day is to ask Christian university presidents to commit to seriously engaging the questions their students have. That means they'd have to go talk to them and they'd have to learn. And it's not just the subset of people they think are, you know, the right kinds of students, but just like the absolute opposite of that. Start at the other end and spend a day with the most troubled and questioning student you could find. And then imagine what it means if the university was organized to see that student deepened in faith m and character and learning and competence and ethical standing and all of that.
>> Loren: I feel like this could work in church too if, if you're like, hey, we're going to do a sermon series on um, like the, the biggest questions. And talk about like where we believe. Not again from an open, open perspective. Not like this is the law, but have like a, you know, an open this is why we think what we think type of thing.
>> John: The alternative to that I'm thinking of, uh, this goes back a few decades, but James Dobson's, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women. And where that book came from is he would go to his big conferences and he had a preset list of issues. Then he asked them to rank order them in the survey and then wrote about what they said. But he came with the issues already. So if I play off that, the issue is not to say, well, what are the key questions? Here's what I as the pastor think the key questions are.
>> Loren: Oh, that's good.
>> John: But you actually go and talk to the most marginal person in the congregation and say, what are your key questions? And speak to those.
>> Loren: Boy, this is good. This is good. Um, I want to keep talking about that but what theologian or historical Christian figure you'd want to meet or bring back to life.
>> John: Yeah, that was a good question for having dinner with anybody. I want dinner with the Apostle Peter and John Wesley.
>> Loren: Peter and Wesley.
>> John: I think that would be a good conversation about kind of how they think about faith and rigidity and openness and all that.
>> Loren: Okay, here's another loaded question that you have to answer shortly, I suppose. What do you think history will remember from our current time and place?
>> John: It depends. History will remember that either this is the point at which we were really committed to being a pluralistic culture, that recognized the inherent dignity and value of all people, or this is the time where a subgroup of powerful people dominated and everybody else was left to fend for themselves.
>> Loren: Yeah. What are your hopes for the future of Christianity?
>> John: More Jesus, more community, less manicheanism, less dividing everybody into good or evil. More of a celebration of the Imago Deo and our notions of common grace as they are lived out.
>> Loren: Well, uh, where can people connect with you? Get the book, all that.
>> John: Ah, the book's available from all your favorite, um, all your favorite places. Um, you could just look up the fearless Christian University, uh, from Erdman's or Barnes and Noble or Amazon or your local bookseller, or probably not your local bookseller because it's a little niche. Um, the other thing to find out is I write a Substack, uh, three days a week with the very profound title of “John's newsletter”, um, because that's what I did when I jumped on the Substack and haven't changed it. I write usually on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, about issues ranging from higher ed to politics to religion, to, obviously Christian higher education, or to whatever book I just read.
>> Loren: Okay, we'll have to make sure we get your Substack in the show notes.
>> John: Yeah.
>> Loren: And then when we share this. Well, thank you so much for your time.
>> John: Absolutely.
>> Loren: Thanks for coming over o my house.
>> John: And dogs are great folks in here.
>> Loren: The clicking and clapping, but really appreciated. And, uh, we always leave folks with the word peace. So may God's peace be with you and you.
It was great to hear the podcast!