Brian McLaren on Leading and Living after Doom

>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church into the 21st century. At the Future Christian podcast, we talk to pastors, authors, and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical wisdom to help you and your community of faith walk boldly into the future. Now here's your host, Lauren Richmond, Junior. >> Loren: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today, we're welcoming Brian McLaren to the show.

Brian is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college english teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for a new kind of Christianity, just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He's a core faculty member and dean of faculty for the center for Action and Contemplation and a podcaster with learning how to see. He is also an Auburn Senior Fellow and is a co host of Southern

Lights. His newest book is life after wisdom and courage for a world falling apart. Born in 1956, he graduated from the University of Maryland with degrees in English. His academic interests include medieval drama, romantic poets, modern philosophical literature, and the novels of Doctor Walker Percy. In 2004, he was awarded a doctorate divinity degree from, uh, Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, BC. And in 2010, he received a second honorary doctorate from Virginia Theological

Seminary. Let's welcome Brian to the show. All right, welcome to the Future Christian podcast. This is Loren Richmond, junior, and today I'm pleased to be joined by Brian McLaren. So welcome to the show. >> Brian McLaren: Great to be back here with you, Loren >> Loren: Yeah, thanks. Uh, anything else you'd like our listeners to know about you? >> Brian McLaren: Well, uh, they probably know that I write

books and that I used to be a pastor. I'm a father of four adult children and five grandchildren. And, um. Yeah, that's, um, probably the most important thing. >> Loren: Yeah. So I heard this joke the other day that it comes to mind. I'm curious your thoughts. Um, I forget the woman who said it first, but parents, or, excuse me, grandparents and children have a common enemy. I wonder if that's true in your observation.

>> Brian McLaren: Well, I think the humorous point, uh, obviously puts that word enemy, uh, in quotes, I'm sure. But there is a certain sense that for children, one of their most challenging realities and greatest necessities is their parents. And, uh, their parents weaknesses are very hard for parents to often admit to children. But those parents parents knew the weaknesses. So I think that would create, uh, a certain alliance, uh, and deep, uh, connection.

>> Loren: Well, as a parent of kids, I do appreciate. Appreciate the support of grandparents. So thank you for your support of your grandkids. I'm sure your children appreciate it. So uh, uh, you've been on the pod before, so I'll link past episodes if people are somehow unfamiliar with you. Brian McLaren can hear your kind of backstory, but I'm just kind of curious if you're willing to share just what has sustained you, uh, these past year. Two years.

>> Brian McLaren: Yes. Uh, one of the things that sustains me, Loren, is some friends, uh, and family members with whom I can be completely honest, to just have the space with people to say, hey, look, I need to tell you what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling. It might not be true, it might not be real, it might not be good, but I'll be better off if I can just admit it to some other person. Um, those sort of nonjudgmental friendships are super

important. Um, and then, I mean, this sounds like a cliche, but I guess it's a cliche because it's so true. But just about every morning, I get up and take a walk a mile, two, 3 miles, and the act of walking outdoors and seeing the sun rise another day. And, uh, I have a little saying. I repeat, uh, often to myself and anyone else who's around. I'll say, human beings might be a mess, but the birds are being awesome. Human beings might be in trouble, but the trees are amazing.

And just to be reminded of the stability and consistency and beauty and brilliance of nature, that always does me good. >> Loren: Yeah. And you live still in Florida, is that correct? >> Brian McLaren: I do, yes. >> Loren: So obviously, you get to really enjoy nature, at, um, least, I guess, depends. Some people might enjoy the cold and snow, but I don't particularly love it. So you get to really enjoy it on a, on a

day to day basis, it sounds like. And I imagine that's really what kind of informed this latest book. Yeah. >> Brian McLaren: Yeah, that's true. And I've been this way since I was a kid. I was born in a very cold climate in the, um, finger lakes region of upstate New York. And, uh, one of my earliest memories is, uh, trick or treating in the snow. Uh, but I always loved the outdoors.

And, uh, from flipping over rocks in that little creek beside my house when I was a kid, and virtually every rock was full of fossils in that, uh, part of the country. >> Loren: Oh, wow. >> Brian McLaren: And just gave me a sense not only for the amazing nature that's alive today, but that buried beneath our feet are the fossils telling us

of millions of years of life. So, yeah, I think I've always, that's been always very closely connected to my sense of reverence and transcendence and awe. And worship. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah. I've been hearing more and more of late just about the importance of kids getting outside and exploring, uh, both for their own development. And then I think we could both add, certainly for their connection to transcendence and the world beyond, both, uh, the physical world and then the

spiritual world. Yeah. >> Brian McLaren: So. That's right. And let me just say this is one of the reasons why, you know, the obsession and addiction and attachment we all have to, um, screens just makes it all the more valuable and important when we just kind of look up from the screen, look to our left, look to our right, look under our feet and reconnect, uh, with this beautiful creation we're part of.

>> Loren: Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier this week when I was at a conference and I went for a run, kind of around the block in the neighborhood and left my smartphone. I was kind of like, oh boy, if something happens, I'm in trouble. But also, humans have been taking adventures without smartphones for hundreds and thousands of years and have somehow survived. So I'll survive. >> Brian McLaren: I might survive around the block once without it.

>> Loren: Right, right. Well, we're here today to talk about, uh, Brian's new book, life after Wisdom and courage for a world falling apart. So I've kind of teased it here already, but do you want to just share kind of what really inspired the book, brought it about? >> Brian McLaren: Sure, Lauren? Well, um, more and more of us are hearing and understanding terms like multi crisis or poly crisis. We all have the sense that nothing's ever perfect in the world of

humans. We always have our problems and arguments and so on. But, um, a lot of us are having the feeling that we have a constellation of very big problems and each one is making it harder for the others to be seen,

addressed and solved. And when we face that kind of, ah, of trouble, I think it raises our levels of anxiety, um, it raises the levels of desperation for some people to find a conspiracy theory to explain things or a scapegoat to blame, uh, or some, ah, little, uh, cultic group to help us be in denial about a reality that's pressing in on all sides. So when we have a sense that things, um, ah, that we're in water beyond our depth, um, the word we have for that

feeling is doom. In the title, life after doom. I'm not talking about life after the end of the world. I'm not talking about some sort of literal apocalypse. I am talking about a very real emotion that we feel, um, more and more of us feel our institutions that evolved and have served us very well, for a long time seem to be incapable of helping, helping us face the realities,

uh, around us on many levels. So that feeling, I felt it in myself, um, and I felt it's socially unacceptable to talk about. And then when I have the courage to bring it up and others say I've been feeling it too, there's this sense of relief that comes when we can create some space to face this feeling that we have, and then we can explore how real it is, how deep it is.

Uh, first we need a little space, and in a way that's what I'm trying to do in the book, is create some headspace and heart space to face that feeling, that more and more of us feel. >> Loren: Yeah, I think that's so important and so helpful. So you kind of frame this, the narrative, through the idea of um, climate change, global warming, the very real danger we face both, uh, collectively and individually through um, the planet and the health thereof of the planet. And

I spoke to you about this here before we start recording. But as I read the book and began thinking about it more and more, uh, I thought about it through what you just said there, the idea of the very real kind of collapse or

doom that we seem to be facing societally. You certainly spoke to the client of institutions, and I think I'm glad you named what you said there about this real sense of danger, or that's not the right word. Um, disillusionment, um, I can't think of the right word to frame it. Um, uncertainty. >> Brian McLaren: Yeah, I think danger, disillusionment, uncertainty, disappointment in some ways that the institutions that we thought were going to work, uh, end up failing or at least

stumbling. Yeah, I think all of those words are part of it. >> Loren: So uh, I thought about this book in many ways as like a pastoral care book, and especially in the context that I try to think and be like with this podcast around churches and pastors, you lay out in the book four scenarios around climate, uh, change and the possibility of the future of the earth and really society at large.

But I couldn't help but thinking about that. These kind of four scenarios are very real possibilities for our institutions, for churches. Um, just on a, a, ah, webinar this week about denominational decline as ah, churches individually and collectively, trying to think about what is realistic to plan for the future. So I wonder if you can just talk about first, uh, just name those four scenarios and then we'll kind of just talk through um, the implications.

>> Brian McLaren: Sure, sure. Um, so let me first say, Lauren, that um, that I think we face this multicrisis, a combination of problems, each of which makes the others harder to solve. But at the center of them is this problem of overshoot. Global warming is uh, maybe most urgent example of it, but there are so many dimensions to it we could look at. We haven't

cared for soil around the earth. We thought soil was worthless as dirt, but soil, it turns out, is a uh, precious, amazing, glorious, wondrous reality that we took for granted. We didn't understand. We literally tore it up every year, not realizing that soil is like a civilization in and of itself. Um, what we've done to our oceans, our rivers, our ice. Who knew how important ice was as a climate control center for the

planet? This problem that we're sucking out more resources than the earth can replenish and pumping out more toxins than the earth can detoxify and pollutants than the earth can neutralize, that's what overshoot is. And when you take that seriously, you realize that um, we're going to face a bumpy road ahead. Um, because we uh, we've built, ah, ah, an economy and a civilization that is based on certain things that don't

fit with this environment. And as Charles Darwin said, um, if you don't fit, survival of the fittest means survival of those that fit best. And so if we don't fit well with our environment, then we're going to have real trouble. And so, um, the four scenarios that I tried to spell out after, you know, immersing myself in the literature now for something um, like 14 or 15 years, um, the four scenarios are collapse avoidance is the

first. This is the idea that we can learn what we need to learn quickly enough that our civilization won't go through a collapse. Uh, so that's collapse avoidance. The second is collapse rebirth. This says that no, we will not learn our lessons and we will not have the political and economic and social capacity to make the changes

we need to make fast enough. And there will be some kind of civilizational collapse, but we'll learn enough on the way down that we'll be able to have a new ecological, sustainable, wiser civilization be born. Um, from the uh, aftermath of this one, the third is a little more dire. We could call it the collapse survival

scenario. That is where there will be a collapse, but we uh, will cause so much more damage in the process of trying to stop the collapse from happening or attacking each other on the way down that we will survive. Some number of us, 50%, 40%, 20%, 2% of us will survive, but we will not be able to rebuild anything anytime soon like what

we currently enjoy. And then fourth is collapse extinction, the possibility that human beings could knock ourselves and a significant part of, ah, Earth's biosphere, uh, into extinction. So, um, ah, those are the four scenarios. Um, you might say, well, collapse avoidance, that's the only optimistic one. But even people who believe in collapse avoidance, who are working their hearts out for it and using their very best creativity for it,

none of them think it will be easy. So I think we face challenges no matter which scenario unfolds. >> Loren: Right, right. And I think this is where again, I found so much crossover because like you said, like there's so much, there's so much complexity and crossover in these elements. Like we've built systems and institutions that are kind of dependent on this kind of growth at all costs mentality.

>> Brian McLaren: Yes. >> Loren: And I mean, we could say like, oh, that's not so much, at least like in my context in the mainline world. But I imagine, I mean, I think that was fair of the mainline world like 30, 40, 50 years ago. And we're certainly seeing that, we're certainly seeing this trend play out right now in evangelicalism where it's the mega church kind of growth at all costs mentality which has costs.

And I think this is more so in the mainline world now, where there is, I think there are these different schools of thought here is the mainline collapse, is it avoidable? There are some people who would say it's all over, but uh, there's some people saying we can learn and we can try to avoid it. Um, obviously as a Christian, we have some kind of hope that rebirth, the second scenario is

possible. Um, but I think there's still a good bit of humanity, there's still a good bit of us, uh, and musing abroad, us broad, we thinking like, we can define what the rebirth will be, right? >> Brian McLaren: Yes. >> Loren: And then there's some of us who are thinking like, there's going to be a collapse and there's only going to be a small survival remnant. And then there's certainly some who think like, the church is

dying and it's not going to come back. Like God is going to do it a new thing. Um, so the church in itself or the institution of church in itself is all but gone. I mean, those are pretty four heavy things, whether we think about it through the lens of a church or an institution or even existentially, like our climate, the home we live on. Um, I'm not even sure where to go from that because it's so heavy. So why don't you share?

>> Brian McLaren: Yes. Um, well, lauren, first, I really appreciate the direction you're going with this. First, I appreciate you calling this book a pastoral book, because I suppose the fact that I was a pastor for 24 years has left its permanent mark on me. And I think that's just who I am. If I could just tell a quick story that I was participating in a march. It was about in a protest, uh, several, uh,

years ago. I, uh, live in southwest Florida, and we had some companies from Texas trying to come over and frack the everglades. I mean, of all the. >> Loren: Sounds like a great idea. >> Brian McLaren: Oh, my gosh. It's just stupid and idiotic of both the Texas corporations and the Florida government that wanted to welcome these companies in to make some money, no

doubt. Um, just idiotic. And so I was participating in a march, and a woman I respect a great deal, I don't know her very well, but as we're marching together, she turns to me and says, I don't think we're going to win this one. And she said, um, in fact, I've kind of lost hope. And I think she's not a religious person, as far as I know, but she knows that I'm a pastor when I show up for these events. And I suppose she was making a kind of confession to me, and I said, well, you're still

here. She says, yeah, I've kind of lost hope. She said, the only reason I'm here is because of love, that I love the earth, and I have to show up for something I love. And in that moment, I felt what she was going through, described what so many of us are going through in so many different areas.

If we could have gone back in time to 1960, which was the peak year of mainline Protestantism, and we could have sat down and said to the people, listen, in the next 65 years, um, there will be less than half as many people in mainline protestant churches. There will be about 40% of the seminarians m and a high percentage of them will not want to be pastors. They'll be going to seminary for other

reasons. If we would have told them those numbers, I don't think they could have imagined it to be true, um, because they were right at their peak. Right. And I came from an evangelical background. In many ways, I was like a refugee escaping a place where my life was in danger. And so I've been so grateful for the mainline world, and I had great hope for the mainline world. But here's the thing I have to say. 65 years after the peak and maybe 50 years after, just

about everybody knew that mainline protestantism was in decline. I would have to say that virtually nothing has changed. In other um, words, some people are aware that there's decline, but the liturgies are, are virtually unchanged now, as we speak, Methodists are in the process of making some modest changes to their structure, but by and large structures are intact. Um, we've had to close down a whole lot of seminaries, our concepts of

ordination haven't changed. And so what I would say is, if people normally don't change until the pain gets great enough, I would just have to say, yeah, the pain still isn't great enough. Um, um, and here's the interesting comparison

to uh, issues of the environment. A lot of people don't know this, but a couple of scientists figured out before the american civil war, they figured out global warming, and in fact they made incredibly accurate predictions about what would happen if people continued to burn fossil fuels before the

civil war. And so this was known among scientists, scientists, but uh, it still hasn't, even though more and more people know about it, we still have huge numbers of people, including the dominant party, uh, in uh, at least one house of Congress that still deny it. And so uh, it just reminds us that some of us can wake up to what's going on and change, and more and more of us can know what's needed and yet change doesn't come, and people in our situation

need pastoral care. I guess the circle back to what you said, and we have to take care of each other because we have to look and say, you're not crazy, you see what's real and you don't have to be totally pushed into despondency. Uh, and that's why that woman I was walking next to in that protest m march, I felt like she gave me a phenomenal gift when she said, uh, I've given up hope, but I'm still here because

I haven't given up on love. And of course her words, she probably didn't know it, but they evoked one, uh, corinthians 13. There are three great lasting qualities, faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love, which Paul didn't say this, but I wonder if uh, a relevant application would be when your faith fails and when your hope fails, theres still love. Hang on to love no matter what.

>> Loren: Yeah boy im kind of worried about, like you said, people dont change until the pain is great enough because boy the pain of climate change, I dont think its great enough. Um, so that is what it is. Im thinking about, too. You mentioned kind of, again, im tying this back to church context. I'm thinking about how you said, you're here

to, I can't remember. You said, or the woman said, she's here to show up for something she loves, even though these institutions or structures around her have failed in some ways, yes. Um, and with that, I imagine there's some sense that the opportunity she might have normally had or one might recommend for, you know, community, uh, organizing or, um, uh, lobbying Congress to do the proper channels that really has the power.

So I guess this is a long winded way of saying, like I'm thinking about for churches and pastors, like the normal kind of, like you mentioned, the normal kind of ways of, you know, going to college and then signing up for div school and, uh, getting the ordination track and then going to serve a church. Like those models are falling away, uh, if not rapidly, ever so surely.

How does a faith leader, someone who's passionate about the christian faith, living out both in word and deed, how does one be m. Because how does one, I don't even know what the word to use is, whether it's the pastor, whether it's the chaplain, whether it's a faith leader, because so many of those words are attached to institutions. How does one be that role as a leader in these new contexts? Where to go back to

your woman? That's why I'm resonating with, how do I even show up for something I love? >> Brian McLaren: Yes, yes, yes. Well, so, uh, many things come to mind. Let's see if I can untangle them, to say them in some kind of useful way. Loren, the first thing that comes to mind is when Jesus, uh, said words that we quote, but maybe now we're in a position to understand their context. He said, whenever two or three of you gather in my name there, I'm in the midst. Let me take those words

from Jesus with another thing that Jesus said. When he looked at the temple and he said, 1 st will not be left upon the other, uh, he could see, and by the way, I don't think you have to think that Jesus had supernatural knowledge of the future or that he was predicting something that he was ready to make happen. In other words, he was going to destroy or God was going to destroy the

temple. I think Jesus was smart, and he knew that if, uh, his fellow Jews persisted in their current path, they would have another revolution against the roman empire and it would

end catastrophically. He knew what the Romans would do to the temple if the Jews tried another rebellion. Uh, uh, and so what he, I think is saying is, listen, you can destroy the temple and still survive. Um, it's going to require two or three of you getting together and remembering what this whole thing is about and to live out in a new way. Um, and in fact, that's what happened, ironically, when the Jews rebelled against the Romans. The Romans came in and, and crushed the

temple. And ironically, it was the pharisees that began to gather people. It wasn't just two or three. They gathered people in a quorum of ten. Um, and those groups of ten would then become the basis of the synagogue system that exists until today. So after the collapse of the institution, that they knew a new way, uh, of living and gathering would emerge that was far more flexible, far more, uh, decentralized, far harder to destroy, far more resilient.

Um, and something like that, it seems to me, could be helpful for us to imagine. If I would translate that into slightly more abstract terms. Here's the way I'd say it. I think we have to, at least for a time, imagine the christian faith less as a series of institutions and more as a series of movements. >> Loren: That's good. Yeah. >> Brian McLaren: And we shift our confidence from the

institution to the movement. Now, for those of us who are clergy, the institution pays our salary, the institution pays our health insurance, the institution pays our pension. And so we've become highly dependent on the institution. But there are ways to be christian that function in a movement mindset rather than an institutional mindset. Uh, and I mentioned I have a background in the evangelical and fundamentalist and charismatic, charismatic

world. And, you know, for all their serious problems and dangers and all the rest, they have been operating as a movement for 100 years. And it's the movement mentality. I don't think it's their theology that was so great. I think in a certain sense, they jumped ship and started working as a movement, while others, other parts of Christianity stayed in an institutional mindset. So those would be a couple of thoughts, and there's a lot more we could explore then, I'm sure.

>> Loren: Yeah, that's good. Uh, and I think I can even bring this back to the broader climate topic. Thinking about, you know, I feel like that's what's going to have to be is small groups of people, two to three people, ten people, like, saying, like, hey, life is not about just like this ever. This never ending pursuit of stuff and consumption

and the bigger house and the bigger car. Um, it's going to have to be small groups of people saying, hey, boy, isn't life more simple and meaningful when we're sitting together in conversation, enjoying the beauty of nature, not hustling here and there and everywhere. >> Brian McLaren: As you say, that reminds me of a story, something that happened to me some years ago. I was in France, and I was at a gathering that was, uh, called. That was convened by catholics and evangelicals.

Uh, uh, and I gave a few talks. They were translated into French. My French is, uh, bad enough that I should never inflict it upon people, but good enough that I can usually catch most of what goes on in a conversation. So we open up for q and a. Uh, and I had someone sitting beside me whispering in my ear if I needed a translation.

Um, a woman stood up and she said, uh, I'm a Baptist, and if I say my last name, all the Baptists in the room will know it, because my name is royalty in the baptist world. In France, she said her name. Everybody shook their head. She said, what will shock you is for you to know that for the last seven years, I have not gone to church. I was a leader in my church. My husband and I were on

every committee. We were the backbone of the church in many ways, she said, but seven years ago, I reached a point where I said, uh, I'm totally burned out. I'm totally. I remember she said, uh, complaisment fatigue. I'm completely worn out.

Uh, and she said, so we took a sabbatical from church, and after a few months, my husband said to me, darling, we have a problem. We still love Jesus Christ, but we're not going to church. And he said, I have an idea. He said, I love to cook. I will cook a meal every week. And he said to his wife, you are a

wonderful hostess. He said, let's have a meal, and we'll invite some of our friends who are not religious, and we'll just see if over some good soup and some good bread and some good wine, that we could talk about things that really matter. And so the woman said, I have not been to church, uh, for these last seven years. She said, but around my table, uh, every Sunday night, we have a meal. And she said, I think this is the greatest

experience of church I've had in my life. And then she added, in all of my years of being a baptist leader, um, I never really saw people come to faith in Jesus Christ. She said, but around my table, many people have come to faith. And, uh, she said, so she said, I don't know what you will do with that. I don't know what you will say about me or if you will judge me, but that's what's happened to me. Then

she sat down. And I just remembered at that moment, I just thought, a wise woman has spoken, and maybe we're all getting a little, uh, message about even if our institutions fail, it could be not the worst thing that would happen by any stretching. >> Loren: Yeah, that's a beautiful story, because the same principles could apply, whether it be climate, uh, change, just making simple changes together on, uh, a neighborhood block amongst a family.

>> Brian McLaren: In fact, there's been a movement among, um, people sort of on the avant garde edge of christian ministry. And they've called the gatherings that they create different things other than churches. Sometimes they call them urban monasteries or, um, an abbey, an urban abbey or something like this. And it reminds me that at the end of another civilizational era, when the roman empire's relationship with the Celts in Ireland and Scotland, uh, and Wales, is a

complicated relationship. The roman empire enforced their control on the Celts right as the roman empire was falling apart itself. And so the Celts, in a sense, had to submit. But then, in another sense, they still carried on some of their own, uh, independence. And that continued when the roman empire was severely weakened. And what happened is these celtic monasteries became the basis, uh, around which people would build

little villages and towns. Many of the really important towns that still exist in Ireland and Wales and Scotland are towns that grew up around monasteries. And one of the attractions is all around us is violence. All around us is ignorance. Um, but in the monastery, they preserve wisdom. They're actually copying those manuscripts that other people have been burning. And of course, as someone who lives in Florida, when we talk about burning manuscripts, that has an interesting

resonance for me. Ignorant people want to burn books because they don't want the past and they don't want other people's knowledge to be preserved. But here's an island of sanity, and in a monastery, you couldn't bring your weapons inside the monastery. It was a gun free zone, we might say. It was a little island of sanity and a little island of peace. And it just strikes me that that's a lesson from the past that we could be involved with in the present

and in the future. Uh, and in some ways, if our decline continues in many of our religious institutions, the people who have nowhere to go or who drop out will either just sort of fade into the woodwork or they will find ways to create those little islands of sanity and peace and love and wisdom. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Here, let me ask you two more questions before we take a break.

One, as you're talking, is just as I think about the realities both in church and in what feels like where our world is heading as a climate and really, frankly, as a global economy, I feel like collapse is inevitable in some regard. So I'm wondering, do you think that humans in some sense control the outcome? And I mean that by humans have some measure of volition about what can come about from that collapse? And I love your example about the monastery example. That's what I'm thinking, yeah.

>> Brian McLaren: So my deepest and most honest answer, Loren, is I don't know what will happen. I don't have some, some clear sense of what will happen. It could be scenario one, two, three or four. I think any of them are possible. And it's, ah, human beings that are the unknown, because human beings have surprising, astounding capacities for stupidity and human beings have surprising, awe inspiring capacities

for creativity and love. M my most honest guess is that we should expect both of those things to exist simultaneously. I think we see right now levels of stupidity that are, uh, I mean, you would think it was a comedy or a movie script, but it's reality that people are acting this foolishly, cravenly, pathetically, ridiculously, uh, and at the same time, the capacity is there and it's happening. It's not happening enough, but it's happening where people are saying, forget it. The

worst things get. I'm not just going to let that suck me down, I'm going to stand up for something. And, um. Yeah, my, and so I suppose I dare to hope, and I bet you feel this way too. It's the reason I write books. I bet it's the reason you do a podcast and the other good things you do is we dare to hope that we could together inspire one another to stand up with that kind of creativity and love and, uh. Joy. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah. So

one more question here before we take a break. I'm thinking about, and I've heard this in some context, where when we think about climate change, there's this idea that like, we need a prophet who's going to warn us of the impending doom, or we need a wizard. So there's this idea we can either trust in the prophet and respond to the prophet and change our behaviors, or we need a wizard who's going to magically, like, carbon capture and,

uh, renewable energies. It's, uh, kind of the wizardry thing and we need to trust in the wizard and we can don't really need to change our behaviors because we can trust in the wizard. Um, so I'm again, tie this back in the church. And I think the same kind of thinking can go into church. There's the prophet mentality that we need to trust the prophet that everything is collapsing and respond accordingly, or trust in the

wizardry. And obviously there's some faith aspect that God can and might intervene, but still, sometimes this can look like in churches, is trusting in a dynamic personality or over an amazing, uh, new system or structure that will save us. So I'm curious whether it be in church world or thinking about climate change. Do you like one of those or the other or. Certainly there's limitations to both. Do you think there's a third or fourth, uh, mentality we need to think about?

>> Brian McLaren: Yeah, I, uh, really love that question. And, uh, maybe we could come back tomorrow. Let me have 24 hours to think about that because it's such a good question. I suppose the first thing I'd say is we definitely need the profit. Dear friend and colleague, Richard Rohr is writing, just finishing up what he says will be his last book. >> Loren: I, um, hope not.

>> Brian McLaren: Uh, we all love him so much. Uh, and he said this several times before, but Richard is getting up there in years now and his health is frail. But the book is called the tears of things. And it's about the prophet. It's about the role of the prophet. And we need. And the good news is we have many prophetic voices out there now. But as is typical, prophetic voices are usually listened to by a very small minority. Mocked, rejected, uh, excluded, maybe even crucified by the

majority. So there's not a shortage of profits. We also have a lot of people claiming to be wizards. I'm thinking about a certain presidential candidate who several years ago said, only I can fix this. That's the kind of thing that a person claiming magical, supernatural powers makes. And, uh, it's, uh, the truth is nobody has that power. Um, and so I think the idea of a wizard, in that sense, a magician, the modern day, the term for that is an authoritarian or a demagogue.

And I think authoritarian demagogue con artists will have a very profitable future for a significant amount of time, because desperate people always turn to con artists and demagogues who give them someone to blame, someone to hate, someone to fear, and then they can cast themselves in the drama as an innocent victim or as the warriors who are going to take things back and make everything right again. Um, and so what I would say is, uh, the thing we need right now is

the prophet. And then the thing we need, uh, let me switch religions for a minute from Christianity to Buddhism. Someone asked the Dalai Lama, uh, I believe it was the Dalai lama who will be the next, um, Buddha or Bodhisattva to lead the way. And he said, the next buddha will be the sangha. And what he meant by that? The sangha means the people. And I think what he was saying is what we need now is not a great individual. We need a movement of people.

And to come back to that theme of movement, what we need are prophetic voices and then people willing to form, uh, movements that are full of leaders. So there's not just one leader, but many leaders who learn how to play as a team and fly in formation, so to speak. That's our great hope in every different endeavor. And no matter how bad things get. >> Loren: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I think that's so helpful and really tracks with what you've been saying here.

Before we move on, I just want to kind of. I think this is a fair wrap up. Like, uh, I'm still thinking back to the quote you shared about the woman showing up for something I love. I feel like. I feel like in our current context, there's just this temptation to kind of be stuck in the misery and awfulness. Um, and there's not that this. It's not untrue, right. There's plenty of bad stuff

happening. But I believe at least, like, if we can show up for something we love and maybe show up for love, that might be a good place to start. >> Brian McLaren: Yes. To be able to do that, I think, requires a certain kind of death within ourselves. >> Loren: Mhm. >> Brian McLaren: And it's a beautiful death. It's a needed and good and life giving death. And it's the death to the assumption that life is all about me. Um, and

of course, we're all in pain. This organization that I gave my life to might not be able to pay my pension or might be able to pay my pension, but can't do this and this and this. Right. Um. Well, what that's really about is I banked my efforts on something and I'm disappointed that it didn't work out for me. Um, well, that's understandable. We feel that way. But eventually we need to get over that. We need to grieve it,

acknowledge it. And then what we have to go through is this death to where we say, oh, but life was never about me. I'm about life. And for us to outgrow an obsession with our own career and our own security and all the rest but for us to say I'm about life, I'm about something bigger than myself. This might not get fixed. This might not last through my lifetime. This might not get

fixed during my lifetime. But the things I love, I love enough that I'm going to devote the time and energy I have for people who aren't even yet born to bear the fruits of. And that to me, is a beautiful kind of death and rebirth that can happen within us. >> Loren: Boy. And that's really applicable. That's really applicable here to, again, the theme of your book. There's going to need to be some death to the belief that life is all about me, and there's going to

be some willingness to. I tried to write it down here for people who are not. Say that again. This idea that living for people who are beyond me. >> Brian McLaren: How do you say that? Yes. So life is not about me. I am about life. And that means I'm about the lives of people who haven't even been born yet. Um, I want to sow seeds, I want to create conditions for a better life for people. Generations yet to come. >> Loren: Yeah, well, this is good stuff.

Um, let's just roll into here some final questions. Since, um, we're running long here. Let me phrase the question this way. >> Brian McLaren: Um. >> Loren: If you were, I guess we spoke, this is really antithetical to what you've been talking about here, so I'm struggling to even answer. Ask the question, as you already spoke, against authoritarianism, but let's say you were an all benevolent, I don't know,

a ruler. Uh, or maybe you could say one thing you want to change, whether about the church or about humans, um, response to living in our climate, what would that be? >> Brian McLaren: Okay, yeah, we'll get rid of all benevolent dictator or anything like that since. Yeah. Uh, but if. If I had the chance to whisper something at everyone's. >> Loren: There you go. >> Brian McLaren: The hope that they would give it five minutes of consideration. Uh, here's what it would

be. Um, well, uh, let me say it in a short version and then a slightly longer version. The short version would be, many things need to end for better things to begin. Um, my dear friend Valerie Kaur, a Sikh activist, says, uh, that the darkness of the womb can become the darkness. I'm sorry. The darkness of the tomb can become the darkness of the womb. What feels like death could actually be, uh, what's necessary for something new to be

born. And it's so funny. This has been in the Bible my whole entire life, and I never really noticed it until recently, but in one of those apocalyptic passages where Jesus, we, I think, grossly, foolishly misinterpreted that he was talking about the end of the world. He was really talking about the end of his civilization, um, of his society. Mhm. Um, it wasn't the end of the world. It was the end of the world as his

contemporaries knew it. But here's what he said. He said, look, things are going to get bad, and then they're going to get worse, and then they're going to get worse, and this still isn't the end. They're going to get worse. But then he said, these are only the beginning of birth pangs. >> Loren: Mhm. >> Brian McLaren: What's so interesting? He didn't say, these are the final death throes. These are what's

necessary for something else to be born. And what I could whisper to people is they're going to be grieving about what beautiful things that are being lost in a destabilized, turbulent time. But at the end of the day, our lives will either be about doom or they'll be about a dream. And the dream is for what can be born in a time of doom. And, um, so that's what I would want to whisper in people's ears. >> Loren: How about a word of. Again, I'm going to phrase it this way.

Pastoral wisdom or encouragement to. Whether it be pastors leading struggling churches, institutions, whether it be climate activists, leaders, whether it be, um, folks seeking justice, causes in their communities, um, a word of wisdom to them when they're just struggling with so much of this doom.

>> Brian McLaren: So I just had a conversation recently with a woman about my age grandmother, who first her stepson and then her stepdaughter abandoned their children because of mental illness and drug addiction. And so at an age around 70, she and her husband found themselves having to take in their grandchildren, and they had a very happy retirement and a very

happy retirement plan. And that was interrupted by a sudden need, driven by love, to make sure that their grandchildren have the best life they can possibly have in a horrible situation nobody would ever choose for them. Right as we were talking, I said to her, people, in your situation, you first have to, in private and for a few moments, congratulate yourself for taking on a tough assignment. Um, you could have walked away when social services called. You could have just said, well,

I can't help you. Um, but you heard the call and you responded. And so part of what I want to do to every activist and every pastor is I want to put my arms around him and say, God bless you for hearing the call. God bless you for hanging in there. You don't have to do this, but to the degree you continue to. And, uh, you do it out of love. I love you, and I appreciate you, and I hope you

feel that deeply. The second thing I said to her is that you have to take care of yourself so that you'll be in good enough shape to take care of these children. And part of taking care of yourself means processing your own feelings. And to circle back to this book, one of the things I think all of us who are in leadership in these times feel is this feeling like, am I wasting my time? What do I do, uh, if things aren't getting better on my timetable? And so being able to process those feelings,

uh, that becomes really, really important. And the thing, I guess, the promise I'd want to make to people is that I think if we go through the process in a careful way, not alone in isolation, I, um, think we will find some deeper wisdom and some deeper and wider perspectives that will need. And I would want to say to a person, you're worth it to go through that kind of deepening of perspectives. >> Loren: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I hope our

listeners appreciate it. Again, the book is life after wisdom and courage for a world falling apart. Brian, I think this is out for purchase. Yes, yes. >> Brian McLaren: And it soon here. It started arriving. It started arriving in people's mailboxes already. >> Loren: This episode should hear release soon, so I think it's available for purchase. Brian, how can people connect with you? Uh, otherwise, sure.

>> Brian McLaren: My website is just my name, brianmclaren.net brianmclaren.net dot. And there's links there for the book. And I have a podcast and other resources they might be interested in. So, yeah, that's the one stop place to make the connection, Brian. >> Loren: So thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom. And, uh, I wish God's peace be with you.

>> Brian McLaren: Thank you. And Lauren, I say that to you as well. And thank you for the good work you do of, uh, providing this context for conversation. God bless you and all the listeners. >> Loren: Thank you. >> Paul: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast. To learn more about Lauren or the podcast, visit future dash christian.com. One more thing before you go. Do us a favor and subscribe to the podcast. And if you're feeling especially generous, leave a

review. It really helps us get the word out to more people about the podcast. The Future Christian podcast is a production of torn curtain arts and resonate media. Our episodes were mixed by Danny Burton and the production support is provided by Paul Romaglevitt. Thanks. >> Brian McLaren: Mhm. >> Paul: And go in peace. >> Brian McLaren: It's.