¶ Intro / Opening
>> Paul: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in 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. Whether you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member of your faith community, this podcast is designed to challenge, inspire, and equip you with the tools you need for impactful ministry. And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode. >> Martha Tatarnic: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today, Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Clint
Schneckloth to the podcast. Clint is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a progressive church in the South. He is the founder of Canopy nwa, a refugee resettlement agency and queer camp, and is the author of a guidebook to progressive church. He blogs as Lutheran Confessions on Substack. A, uh, reminder, before we start today's conversation, please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review
and share Future Christian with a friend. Connect with Loren, Martha and Future Christian on Instagram. Shoot us an email@laurensonatemediaprouh.com with comments, questions or ideas for future episodes. We appreciate your voice in how we faithfully discern the future of the church. >> Loren: Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren Richmond Jr. And I am pleased to be joined today by Clint Schneckloth. Did I get that right? >> Clint Schneckloth: You got that right.
>> Loren: Thank you. Welcome to the show. Is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know about you? >> Clint Schneckloth: Huh, huh. Well, apparently we're both calling in from cold locations this morning. Colorado and Arkansas. It's ah, kind of rough out there. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Loren: Mhm. Well beyond the weather. Why don't you share just kind of about your faith background, what that looked like in the past and what that looks like today?
>> Clint Schneckloth: Oh, sure. Well, I was born and raised and still am, ah, in the Lutheran tradition. Uh, ELCA is the denomination. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And so I grew up as a kind of a Midwestern mainline kind of guy. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, that's got a whole kind of shape around it, I would say, uh, you know, like, um, liturgical, but also informal and campy.
And um, I've been thinking a lot about this lately too, just because when I was growing up, I remember there being a pretty broad spectrum of politics and kind of perspectives within the one denomination. There, uh, was always the joke that they told, you know, that, um, why are there altar rails in Episcopal and Lutheran churches? It's to divide The Democrats from the Republicans. But it was like a 60, 40 split. It'd be like 60% of the clergy were Democrat and 40% of the
parish. And so I grew up in a large church in Iowa, St. Uh, Paul Lutheran. It was one of those that was kind of like a big church before the mega churches. And my grandpa was a state representative Republican, uh, in the state of Iowa. And so I had a lot of exposure to some, some of that kind of stuff, kind um, of the connection between care and community and political decision making at the state level. Um, and then I went to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. This is where I kind of
um, had a big transformative moment. Had a lot of friends and colleagues who were queer and I made a shift. I started out college being uh, literally anti lgbtq. Like I even participated in campaigns, various uh, sorts against um, more full inclusion. And I ended my college career as the congregation president bringing uh, Luther College in as a reconciling in Christ congregation which is like the movement for full inclusion in the denomination at that time.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And then I went to Luther Seminary, that's up in the Twin Cities and did my seminary and along the way I've just always done church stuff. So I'm just a church guy in a pretty significant way. I uh, worked at a, and then was a camp director at a Lutheran Bible camp in Iowa. My wife and I served as missionaries in uh, Slovakia with our denomination for about three years. Did some youth director
gigs and stuff like that. And then I served some rural parishes up in Minnesota and Iowa or excuse me, Minnesota and Wisconsin before I came down to Arkansas. >> Loren: Yeah. Cool. I can only already hear like in your background perhaps. Hopefully. I'm not making assumptions, but it feels like I can hear how your experience has really shaped the book we're going to talk about here. Share if you can just about some spiritual practices that are meaningful for you.
>> Clint Schneckloth: I don't know if I'm very good at them to be honest. Uh, or I would say that the way that I think about spiritual practices maybe is a little bit different than the um, than than normal. Um Like I am not the get up in the morning and journal. Mhm Kind uh of guy. And um, I'm not very good at meditation. Although when I do meditate or do those kinds of things, I appreciate doing it.
Um, my spiritual practices are more along the lines of um, how can I pay attention to the world and then um, be annoying in gospel centric ways. M. Um. So a lot of my spiritual practices are around drawing attention to injustice, um, using uh, uh, platforms and communication methods to draw discourses in particular directions. Um, and a lot of my spiritual practice is really trying to be embedded with and know the communities that I especially advocate for. In particular
if I'm not part of that community. So like, you know, we have residents who live at our church. We've started taking in, uh, more and more unsheltered people just into the church building. So some of my spiritual practices are like, how do you build reciprocity between providing shelter for people and also having them really think of themselves as also, um, contributing something
to you? You know, one of our residents the other day had gone and put a frozen pizza in the oven and then she was walking by my office while I was working and she's like, brought me a slice of pizza, you know, um, and so how do I kind of, you know, keep in mind that I'm hungry too. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And um, that we're kind of all in this together. That's a, that's a big part of my, uh, spirituality, I would say.
>> Loren: Yeah. Uh, the awareness, if I'm hearing you right, the awareness of recognizing and receiving the gifts folks are trying to make. >> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah. Or even not just gifts, but like that we literally just are in community together. And so you just shared stuff. >> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks for sharing that. So I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Clint. We're going to talk about Clint's book, A Guidebook
to Progressive Church. Is there a subtitle? I'm not seeing a subtitle. There's not, I guess, no subtitle. Okay. A Guidebook to Progressive Church. Uh, it's out, it's available for folks. So I want to start because I think this is the most interesting. When I first talked to you, when I was first introduced to the book, I want to start by why you chose to write about progressive church rather than progressive Christianity.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah, because I'm committed, uh, my whole life to uh, church community. In spite of the way in which, uh, a lot of the people around me in their spiritual lives struggle with or maybe have even been harmed by, uh, prior Christian communities. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, there's a really, um. There's a good reason why many people have left
church and are never planning to come back. And I totally, uh, like identify with that and can see why some people would make the decision that for their own, like, spiritual well being, personal well being that they just can't cross the threshold of a church. But I've also seen repeatedly how for many people it's coming back into church community. That's been the way that they heal.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Um, I write about this in the book, um, in some of the content around religious trauma and church. You know, there's some really good studies now coming out that show how getting re engaged in ways that are affirming of yourself can be incredibly spiritual healing for people. Um, but I'm also committed to the church because I'm simply not willing to let uh, the abuse of something disallow its proper use. >> Loren: Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Which that's something I say often in the book. You know, just because I mean the analogy would be like so just because you don't like McDonald's therefore you're not going to eat burgers. You know, if somebody can make a really good burger, why are you going to reject all the good burgers? Because McDonald's make fakes, makes fake burgers. You know. And the same goes for like church community.
Um, just because some people really abuse it or use it for the wrong reasons doesn't mean that church rightly organized. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And practice isn't one of the most incredibly impactful and powerful things in the world. Um, so that's why I wrote about progressive church. There's also a thing in publishing. There's, there are more books on progressive values. >> Loren: Right. >> Clint Schneckloth: For progressive. An understanding of
progressive Christianity. But there's a lot less out there just about progressive church practiced as community.
¶ There is a willingness to accept or work within church and Christianity
>> Loren: So I think this kind of leads into. Again, I don't want to get too, too deep into this because I do want to talk about the book but I really feel like this is a philosophical point if even that's the right word that really kind of undergirds the overarching theme or philosophy of your book. Uh, this, this kind of willingness to accept or work within church and Christianity and not kind of throw the baby out with a bathwater to use another
phrase. And uh, I feel like that's a, I'm kind of already getting off topic here in some ways but I feel like this is a trend that I'm seeing at least again and again and again in so called progressive Christian circles. And I that it, that it's almost like folks see, I mean I'm literally like working on a substack on this. So that's why I really appreciate your book that it's like again it's kind of this throw the baby out with the bathwater like
it's all too corrupt. And I think you have a quote to that. Uh, but yeah, what comes to mind for you There. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, I've got this neighbor who recently went to Yale Divinity School. She lived here in the northwest Arkansas and she just recently moved to Yale. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And we, uh, were in a running club together. That's how I met her. And she has never really gone to church.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: But she's going to divinity school. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: And we were talking about. She was asking me for like a guide, guidance or advice on, you know, like, what should I do when I'm going to divinity school. What are your insights? Because she, and she was asking me this because of how I practice Christianity in our church. Even though she doesn't go to our church.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And I was like, well, when you get to Yale you should find a church. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: And you should. And you should connect to a church because that's going to be your incubator, uh, for testing out whatever it is you're thinking about or coming up with in seminary. And her response was, well, is it okay if I, if I just think of my garden as my church? M. And um, I, I'm not
at all dismissive of that. I think that there are probably very spiritual people for whom gardening is the incubator for their spirituality. And that's fine. You know, that's like. I'm pretty respectful of lots of different religious traditions. But if I would argue that if you want to work for uh, justice and progressive values in the world in the way that I do it. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: You have to do it in a community.
And um, it might be that that community has very loose, uh, porous boundaries with other kinds of organizations. But to ground it in the gospel of Jesus Christ and to influence the world in the ways that I think church uniquely does, you're going to want to commit to a local church. That's kind of a deep, uh. And that comes out of my lived experience, you know, like, of uh, of how I've seen. And there's like, there's so many
just practical examples like at ah. One practical example would be churches are third spaces. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: They're not a business and they're not the government. And so they are able to provide this kind of space and intersection that other organizations can't do because like a business is trying to make money so you can't look political because you
know that's. Politics is bad for business. You know, they always say, right, so businesses are always going to test the winds and see what's going to be most marketable. Same with politics. You know, politicians have to get elected. Um, it's only the Church. And you saw this illustrated super well last week with this Bishop Budi, how to say her last name. And in D.C. it's only the church that can kind of whimsically step out and do that. That she did with all the
attendant risks. I think that's part of what I really deeply believe. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm reminded of this quote and I'll read it here. Uh, you write this in the context of the importance of worship, which again I think is interesting.
¶ Why worship matters in progressive Christianity
And I want to talk more about this, why worship matters. Because I think this is a key aspect of church in this kind of progressive sphere that seems to get diluted as either unimportant or less important than the so called work, justice, being on the streets, whatever. So you're right. Progressive Christianity is much more this worldly than other forms of Christianity focused on the imminent frame and action in the
world. Worship, which is assumed to be primarily about the transcendent frame and otherworldly focused, is to those of this perspective simply perceived as at best a waste of time and at worst a distraction from the weightier matters of social justice and love and love of neighbor. So I want to stay on this point because this is something I feel strongly about and this is one of the reasons I really resonated with the
book. Um, I think that we are seeing this trend where again, as you say, worship this kind of gathered community to worship God is seen as at best a waste of time or at worst a distraction. So you argue really in these pages, from what I read, from what I understood really as the importance of grounding oneself in these Christian and spiritual practices as a way to then go forth and do justice. So talk more about why this worship and such really matters.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Well, one thing I try to say to progressives who aren't sure that they want to go to church every week because this is a huge dynamic. I think this is a huge split on the conservative, liberal Christian side, You know, conservatives are all in on weekly worship. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Sometimes it's because of demand, like it's an actual Roman Catholic law, right within canon law that
you're supposed to worship weekly and go to the Eucharist. And I think a lot of fundamentalists and conservatives on the Protestant side probably just have an internal legalism around that similar. >> Speaker E: Yes, right. >> Loren: Uh, sometimes it's sometimes explicit legalism of you better show up to church.
>> Clint Schneckloth: But on the more positive side, also a lot of conservative Christianity, it takes place in rural areas where people don't have a lot of other community Right, right. So people are like, this is where they get it. Progressive, uh, liberal church tends to be, uh, a little bit more on the, oh, urban, uh, diploma. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Ah, busy.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Side of the equation where they've got a lot of other social connection and so they're uncertain whether church is even necessary for their total social life. And then, and then does it have any value when so much of progression, progressive Christianity is focused on love neighbor. So my first point to progressives is you should show up to church for other
people. H m. Uh, if you really think that progressive Christianity is primarily about love of neighbor, what better way to love your neighbor than to show up every week with other people and check in with your fellow community members? Um, that might mean that we need to redesign worship so that there's more capacity to do that because so much of worship in our traditions is very passive. >> Loren: Right, right.
>> Clint Schneckloth: You can sneak megachurch, uh, you can like sneak in and sneak out and not talk to anybody, you know, um, so maybe that needs some reshaping. But the point is still valid. And when I raise that with people, they're frequently surprised because I think the majority of people that think that worship is for you and your spirituality. I go to get fed is like the most common, um, thing that people say. And I kind of want to be like, don't go to get fed. Like, go to like,
take care of somebody else. Somebody has gone to church who's alone, who's recently divorced, who's traumatized by the inauguration in this new regime, whatever, go to church and, and care for somebody. And you do it weekly because that's about the rate that a lot of communities care for each other. The German Stamtisch or the, you know, whatever the thing is that you do, that's, that's about the pace you need to keep up. But man, that is a hard sell for progressive
Christians. Yeah, on average. >> Loren: Yeah, it is. Um, I want to move on here to, to kind of stay on this theme. You write about why a strong Christology and theology really matters. And I guess this really kind of ties into something else. You wrote about the problem of Christian progressives abandoning faith commitments. Uh, and I think this, this broader trend, at least as I understand it, of like, we want to be as
inclusive as possible. And being inclusive, kind of that, uh, translation means like, let's just remove all barriers and any kind of, I don't want to say boundaries, but also kind of like markers of who we are and what we're about. Does that make sense? And in the book you really, as I understand it, you really argue for, I wouldn't say like firm or rigid but also pretty solid theological foundations and groundings. Is that fair? Am I understanding you correct?
>> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah. Uh, I like to joke that we're where people come sometimes when they've been going to the Unitarian Church and they need more Jesus. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: You know, our, our social perspective, our values or whatever is very aligned with the Unitarians. So um, I'm often um, showing up in spaces where there's Unitarian leaders and we do similar things. But Unitarians are literally. You get to pick and yes, yeah.
Progressive Christianity from my perspective is still grounded in the theological tradition that ah, comes out of scripture and is grounded and centered in Christ. And uh, I do think that I like, I try to flip that around and say like our openness comes out of our groundedness. >> Loren: Mm. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, because I feel secure. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: In Christ in the sense of who
Christ is. For me. It allows me to be open in my stance toward a lot of other things and also a lot of the things I'm opposed to and that Christ kind of teaches me to be opposed to. It's not like tarot card reading or my Muslim neighbor. It's more things like the divide between the rich and the poor and how many billionaires we have and. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, how we treat immigrant neighbors and all those kinds
of things. That's where I get rigid is around those things. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
¶ The importance of leadership in progressive circles
So I think again I'm just going to keep mentioning these kind of random things but because I think again this is what so stood out to me from your book because uh, of how anti cliche it was for like a book that's written as from a progressive lens. You write about the importance of leadership. And again, I don't want to like broad brush here but I feel like in progressive circles leadership is seen as this like oh man, we can't have any leaders. We can't have anybody like you know, an
authority. There's just this anathema toward leadership or authority. And it becomes, I think like you said about that UU church, we're just like rather than you can pick whatever, just everybody just doing whatever because there's no one like offering any kind of vision or leadership. What? Talk more about that. >> Clint Schneckloth: Well, I think that my perspective on this is shaped by my commitment to phenomenological realism.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: It just is the case that leaders matter. You don't see major movements for change in the world that gather significant energy behind them. >> Loren: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: That don't have a face of a person at the front of it or it's very, very rare. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: Every once in a while you'll get something like Black Lives Matter, which is more like a team. But most of the time it's a person.
Martin Luther King Jr. For civil rights. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Donald Trump for MAGA. Uh, who, who's everybody like me looking back to and thinking, oh, man, we wish this would have happened eight years ago? Bernie Sanders. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Who's our last remaining light right now? Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. You know, it's like, I mean, it's a
person. It really is a person. And in my church, uh, I would say that if you talk to people, they would be like, everybody feels super empowered. They think it's very lay level. And if they, if you really press them on it, they would be like, the church is like this because of the way Clint has led it over 14 years. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And for better or worse. And that what I mean by the phenomenological realism is it
just functions that way. And so you can either try to deny it or you can say leadership really has a kind of charism to it and try to handle that in as, um, ethical a way as possible. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Which is what I would encourage. >> Loren: Yeah. So talk more about what does that leadership look like for you in that context? What are some kind of best practices? What are some ethics you try to stand by? What are some
ways you try to empower others in leadership? What does that look like, practically speaking? >> Clint Schneckloth: Um, I can tell you what a couple of my parishioners have commented on about me. To me that I think are hallmarks. Uh, one of my council members recently said that I'm the most available, uh, lead pastor they've ever encountered. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: I don't separate myself off from the congregation. I'm in the mix.
Um, and another new member said that one of the things that had her coming back was simply the fact that I am not, I'm not, uh, avoidant of helping in with whatever needs done. You know, you're as likely to find me in the kitchen doing the dishes as preaching. And um, um, I. So I think that part of this spiritual practice that's different for me as a leader maybe has, uh, to do with functioning in a lot of those grassroots roles.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: While also serving as the. >> Speaker E: Uh, the. >> Clint Schneckloth: Lead on things, you know, like, uh, queer camp. I'm both responsible for having started it and I also entirely step back and then behind the scenes just doing grunt work the week of because I'm a straight white guy. And it's not really ideal for me to be the main face of the camp. Uh, so I'm more likely to be like running security or volunteering, uh,
to lead a DND session. Uh, or you know, some other thing. And then there's other people who are actually the face of the camp. >> Loren: I feel like it goes back to what you said earlier about the abuse of something does not disallow its proper use. Because we could say the same thing about leadership. Right. Like the abuse of leadership does not disallow its proper use. Is that again, kind of your argument here? >> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah, I think that's.
Yes. And I think there are some communities that kind of pull this off, um, in a different way. Probably the most famous would be like the Quakers. >> Loren: Sure. Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: So I think there are some emerging ways or some ways we could explore that might be, uh, leaderless movement organizing. So I don't want to completely. >> Loren: Right. >> Clint Schneckloth: Undermine, uh, like those as
a alternative. I just don't see normal communities most of the time sorting out how to do that. Um, and, and I see, you know, and you. I just see over and over again how like a school that has a good principal runs better. >> Speaker E: Mm mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, the, the police department's better if the police chief is a. Is a good guy or gal, you know, like that. That just is a real frequent thing. I don't know how to get around.
>> Loren: That country that has a good president. >> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah, yeah, right.
¶ Place sharing as a model for mission and evangelism
>> Loren: Um, I don't want to take this off the rails here. I think one thing I really liked here is you talked about place sharing as a model for mission and evangelism. M. So talk more about that because again, I feel like we're in this context where like a. Anything E word. Evangelism is obviously very seen as problematic and sometimes for good reason in progressive circles, but so much so that again, it kind of like they want to throw it all out. So I really was intrigued by
your idea here of place sharing. So talk more about that. >> Clint Schneckloth: Well, like a good example of this, it's been emerging at Good shepherd over the last number of years is we are now the, um, location where Food Not Bombs cooks meals. Uh, Food Not Bombs is an organization that um, it's
a mutual aid organization. It's a group of people who oftentimes they do food recovery and sometimes they buy food and then they prep big meals and they go down to like Walker park, which is where a lot of our unsheltered people hang out when the weather is okay. And they, so they, they go to where people are and, and take meals and um, they cook on Sunday mornings. So our church smells like the meals they're preparing while we're getting ready for church and they're around while I'm doing other
stuff and getting ready for worship. And so I've got to know them. And um, now they've started having like their organizing meetings there. And when the cold weather shelter opened this winter, um, there was a shortage of groups that were going to serve breakfast. And I was talking with the executive director of the shelter org and they had a couple of breakfasts that they needed served. And so I messaged the leader of Food not Bombs and I was like, hey, we'll take a day. Do you guys want to
take a day? And so then we started coordinating together. And I would say in some levels they've started thinking of themselves as a member org of Good shepherd. Even though none of the people that are in that funat bombs go to church at Good Shepherd. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: But uh, when I serve the breakfast with people from my church, half the people that help volunteer for the breakfast are also people who don't go to worship on Sunday morning even though they're
connected to the church. And I kind of ask myself like, well, who's being more religious here? The people who show up for worship on Sunday morning or the people who make the biscuits and gravy on Monday morning for the cold weather shelter? You know, but the, the better way to describe it is there's all these kind of like network effects.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: People are using their time in the way that they believe has value and we're building community together in these kind of loosely affiliated ways that I think preach, you know, uh, and I think can have really good long term impact in terms of if you want to talk about evangelism, like I think that shaped the perception that that group of people who are largely irreligious, uh, their perception of what church can be.
>> Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. >> Loren: And it seems like that's far more likely to have an impact than folks working alongside you, for example, rubbing shoulder to shoulder, seeing how you live out your faith is going to be far more appealing. Then you know, again, imagine walking up to like someone in Walker park and being like, hey, accept Jesus and come to church. Like that's going to be a hard sell. >> Speaker E: Mhm.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Well, yeah. Not to mention the fact that really most of the time when I go serve meals anywhere like that, uh, they are more religious than I am. >> Loren: Right, right. >> Clint Schneckloth: And much better at preaching the Gospel to me than I am ever preaching it to them. Yeah, yeah. I served a meal the other day and one guy came up and I was like, how are you? And he says, uh, well, the world isn't fair.
>> Speaker E: Hm. >> Clint Schneckloth: But God is good. And all the progressives would have just stopped with the world isn't fair. >> Loren: Right, right. >> Clint Schneckloth: You know, uh, uh, so yeah,
¶ Why should progressive Christians retain faith as a church
so. >> Loren: Let me ask this question then. And I, I think it's kind of like I'm kind of repeating the same question. So forgive me if I'm, I'm beating the same horse. But again, I feel like we're in this context, broadly speaking, in progressive Christian circles where it's just like we want to, we want to like kind of push out any kind of religiosity and worship and kind of
turn. I mean I literally saw this the other day of like a church wants to be a food pantry that worships rather than a church, which feels like a whole other conversation. But why, Just why. Again, repeat this if anything for me. Why should progressive leaning Christians and faith groups like retain, I'm not sure what the word is ground themselves still in as a church, as a worshiping community?
>> Clint Schneckloth: Um, yeah, I, I think I have a complex and evolving understanding of this, uh, that's developed over time. Um, I have one parishioner who we were working on a grant and the way she phrased it in the grant was that we are a community center that has a chapel. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Describing Good Shepherd. >> Loren: Right.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, because we do radically do way more community, ah, center type stuff than a lot of churches. We're, you know, uh, and because people are used to church being almost exclusively church. >> Loren: Right, right. >> Clint Schneckloth: Even doing some of that seems really large to them. And then the amount that we do it is like next level. And so you could see where people would come to that
perspective. But the base, like the base of people who still support our church like that, make it happen with their donations and that kind of thing is still the group that worships there, you know. And I think that the part that you're asking about that I haven't really talked much about is the way in which having a posture toward God. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: Is related to the posture that we have toward uh, our fellow humans and creation.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And I do think that if we're fully materialist in our perspective as a church, uh, that the one problem there is. Well, one problem is I don't think that the world is fully materialist. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah. And that's something that you just kind of hint at your book Which I again was really intrigued by. But go on.
>> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, even though that's my main posture, like I've been calling the church back to prioritizing neighbor love and neighbor care. I do think that there's much more than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. You know, like that's really true just on a scientific level. But from a Christian perspective, uh, Jesus's freedom towards his neighbors in love was grounded in the freedom that he felt and experienced in relationship to his father.
Those mhm. Are related. At one point he even says they're the same thing. You know, what's the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. And the two are essentially the same commandment, you know, uh, so I think that when we let go of the worship side, sometimes that can be a problem too, because then it makes the neighbor without remainder and never puts you in this,
uh, posture of the bigger. It can result in a number of things that are probably problematic, maybe not the least of which is, uh, perhaps a good focus on God can remind us that neighbor is not just the human, but all of creation. M. You know, uh, that somehow that uh, the ground of being posture shapes how big our perspective is in terms of our values. >> Loren: Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting stuff. I really want to recommend the book. There's a lot more in it that we
haven't really touched on, I think. So again, the book is a guidebook to progressive church, I think Clint, I said this on social media. I think one of the things I really appreciate about the book was just like, it was simple, but not in a simplistic way. I found it quite brilliant, but in a very digestible, readable way. So I really encourage folks to go check it out. Um, um, let's, uh, let's take a break. We'll come back with some closing questions.
All right, we're back with Clint Schneckloth. Thank you, thank you so much for your conversation. Really appreciate, uh, your insights and points, uh, here. So closing questions. We always tell folks you can take these as seriously or not as you'd like to. So first question, if you're Pope for a day, what does that day look like for you? What do you want to do? >> Clint Schneckloth: Hope for a day? Does this take place in, uh, the Vatican?
>> Loren: I mean, I leave it open. We leave it purposely ambiguous. >> Clint Schneckloth: Okay. Huh. >> Speaker E: Huh. >> Clint Schneckloth: I, uh, guess that I have. I, I, I. All I can think of is that I love Rome enough that I Kind of just want to go have coffee and some pastries. Yeah. And I think I might get distracted by being in Rome or the Vatican and forget to like, actually do anything serious or helpful. >> Loren: That's fair, that's fair, that's fair.
Um, a theologian or historical Christian figure you'd want to meet or bring back to life. >> Clint Schneckloth: Oh, wow. Well, I probably have to say Alan Eccleston because I've been doing a lot of work around him here the last couple of years. Uh, Alan. I went to England last November and visited with some of his family.
Uh, Alan was a, ah, Church of England clergy person who was also a lifelong member of the Communist Party in England and understood those two to be directly related to each other. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And uh, uh, just had a very unique way of leading, uh, parish life in, uh, Sheffield, England, where he served. And, um, I came as close as I could actually in. By going there to, you know, like, meeting him in person because I got to spend
time with his son and his wife. They're now in their 80s. And then I went and went back to London and spent a few days walking around London with his granddaughter. >> Speaker E: Hmm. >> Loren: M. Wow. All right. Another ambiguous question. What do you think history will remember from our current time and place? >> Clint Schneckloth: Wow. That we allowed the, uh, oligarchs to win. >> Loren: I mean, I hope. I hope they have not won, but it does appear they are winning for
sure. Present tense. >> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah. Uh, well, and we seem to. At least so far. One of the most prescient novels I've ever read around this whole thing is the Circle. >> Loren: Okay. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, by, um, Dave Egger. >> Loren: Okay, I'm gonna check that out. >> Clint Schneckloth: It's a. Ah. Basically the premise is that like, Facebook buys Google and they become the Circle. That's the company.
>> Loren: Oh. Cause they did a TV show on this, didn't they? >> Clint Schneckloth: Maybe. I don't know. >> Loren: I feel like I. Or there's a movie. I feel like I saw something could be. >> Clint Schneckloth: But there's like the main character, she infiltrates the company and she keeps introducing really bad ideas because she thinks that'll tear it, finally tear it down and every single one of them. Instead, they take it and they run with it and everybody loves it.
And I think this is the way. This is the big problem of neoliberalism is it can take all of its opposition and bring. Subsume it into itself like the Borg, and just make it part of itself. And that's what we're seeing over and over again. >> Loren: Yeah. Oh man. That's kind of. What's the word of Dystopian. Uh, that's kind of dystopian. Uh, how about something positive? >> Clint Schneckloth: Oh yeah. >> Loren: What do you hope for the future of Christianity?
>> Clint Schneckloth: Um, well, what do I hope for the future of Christianity? I think that we are seeing right now, uh, on some level, some increased interest in it. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And I guess my hope is that. My hope this week is that the counterbalance we saw that was so shared so widely from that sermon of uh, the bishop in dc.
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: Will be understood to have arisen out of the grassroots life of the church, uh, in progressive communities. That that wasn't just some vague, idealistic thing that a woman in D.C. said, but arises out of the culture and the community that has lived out, practiced that enough that she was free enough to say that there.
>> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: And I've seen some of that in the media that's been following up where they point out like, you know, this is not just a one off. This is also the woman that brought, uh. >> Loren: Yeah. Matthew Shepard. >> Clint Schneckloth: Matthew Shepard's remains to the National Cathedral. This is, you know, she's, she's been in this. >> Loren: Yeah. This is not just hot takes by her. >> Clint Schneckloth: Right.
>> Loren: She's been practicing mercy her entire career. >> Clint Schneckloth: Right. There's still an issue, I think there's still an issue that, that came from the most elite of the, uh, mainline denominations. There's a lot of other, like, horror, uh, less prominent. You know, the Episcopal Church is a little bit the state church kind of thing. >> Loren: Right. >> Clint Schneckloth: Uh, but so there's that issue
to deal with. I think we, we're gonna have to figure out how to translate this into ways that make sense to people who are poor and uh, and country in ways that we haven't figured out yet. So I guess those are aspirational hopes of mine too. >> Loren: Let me stay on this. Even though we're supposed to be wrapping up here, let me just
ask you, because I feel like this is a huge disconnect. Uh, we're seeing it from data like Ryan Burge and others about this huge class disconnect where folks who are more wealthy and educated are more likely to go to church. Folks who are less educated, less wealthy are increasingly less likely to go to church, less likely to be involved in community organizations, church, et cetera, et
cetera. Maybe closing question this, like, how do we make this progressive Christianity, especially as I, uh, love the way you wrote about it throughout the book, accessible in a way that really resonates, communicates, impacts folks who are low income, working class, you know, struggling to pay their bills, less educated Et cetera. >> Clint Schneckloth: Well, that's interesting. I had, I, uh, just
thought of something. I, I, I would have to process whether I, I'm going to agree later with what I'm going to say right now. >> Loren: Sure, sure. >> Clint Schneckloth: But a lot of times liberal elites are asking me, what can we do to overcome this divide? >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: So is it really dumb of me to say go to church? I mean, if you want to like, identify with the rural poor.
>> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: Or people on the other side of the aisle, you could do a lot worse to move toward them than to be as religious as them in practice. So that the way you live appears like the way that they live in ways that they can kind of understand and could cause some certain level of cognitive dissonance. Yeah, um, I'm always suspicious of saying that because it's maybe self serving because I'm always wanting to grow the progressive
birch. It is an impulse I have. >> Loren: I suppose it wouldn't be growing your church though. It'd be growing Southern Baptist, Independent Baptist type, these very conservative churches. And I think that cognitive dissonance is, if I can soapbox from it, that's essential. We're going to have to see each other not as these evil caricatures, but as human beings who have many of the same wants and needs and desires and cares as one
another. And I'm also again to bring it back to your book and what you said earlier. I'm reminded of your point about place sharing. What's more literal about place sharing in evangelism than going to meet your neighbors? I mean, it's kind of like you said about going to Walker Park, Right. You're going to a place to share in life with them. >> Clint Schneckloth: Yeah. Although I think I wouldn't go that
far. I don't think I would tell people to go to Southern Baptist churches because I generally am not going to encourage people to go to bigoted churches that don't allow women in leadership or queer, uh, people to be married. Um, so I was being selfish in the sense
of you should go to progressive churches. There's a meme right now of like, if you're uh, hey guys, just so you know, there's a church with a woke lady pastor within walking distance of your house and if you're under 50, they're going to be super excited and they're going to give you free donuts, you know, like. Yeah, so that's the meme I have in the back of my mind. But I really identify
with that. But so what I mean is it does make it Harder for, I think, for the uh, for either side to entirely dismiss each other if a lot of their, ah, practices and communal practices are the same. I mean, it's not, it's not inconsequential that the place where Donald Trump heard that challenge have Mercy was in a liberal church. >> Loren: Yeah. >> Clint Schneckloth: You know, like that's, I think that's huge. He had to go there. It was part of the
whole inauguration thing. And so like. >> Loren: Well, and this gets, gets me on my other soapbox, which we don't have time for, which is the essentialness of these institutions, these liberal churches continuing to exist so that people can go to them and hear these have mercy messages. But we don't have time for that. >> Clint Schneckloth: Perhaps that's why I'm a progressive pastor in Arkansas. >> Loren: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Clint Schneckloth: And it's hard to convince my colleagues to come here. It took four years for the church to get a pastor. All my, all my, all my liberal colleagues like to stay where there's more Lutherans, you know, so Minnesota, Iowa and. >> Speaker E: Mhm. >> Clint Schneckloth: There's a lot of reasons for that, you know, family and jobs and whatever.
>> Speaker E: But m. >> Clint Schneckloth: It's, it's, it's really crucial to, to be a witness in some of these places. >> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me do one last. I think this is kind of a Lutheran thing too, right. Leave you with a word of peace. You all do that, right? Speaking of a shared practice. Well, let me leave you with a, uh, word of peace. >> Clint Schneckloth: May God's peace be with you and also with you.
>> Loren Richmond: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast. The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate Media. We love to hear from our listeners with questions, comments and ideas for future episodes. Visit our website@future-christian.com and find the Connect with Us form at the bottom of the page to get in touch with Martha or Loren. But before you go, do us a favor. Subscribe to the POD to leave a review. It really helps us get this
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