Church and Main

“We know how to be a Disciple in a town full of Baptists.” That was what the head of the search committee said to Pastor Dawn Darwin Weaks they asked her and her husband to consider being co-pastors at First Christian Church in Odessa, Texas. Their saying yes to the church put both pastors and the congregation on a journey of revitalization, renewal, and a renaming: from First Christian Church to Connection Christian Church.

In this episode, I talk to Dawn about the story of Connection, her book which chronicles the journey, and how long-established Mainline Protestant churches can find new life and new mission if they listen to the movements of the Holy Spirit.

Show notes

Connection Christian Church of Odessa

Dawn’s Webpage

Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in Your Church (Dawn’s Book)

Episode 132 with Ben Crosby

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This wasn’t a planned episode, but here it is because a certain podcast recording program decided to eat two of Dennis’ interviews. So, while Dennis works on redoing those episodes, here is one of his videos focusing on John 4 and the story of Woman at the Well and what this passage has to say about churches welcoming, , , bisexual and transgender people.

Show notes:

Why Inclusion Matters (video)

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Superman. Spiderman. Green Lantern. Wonder Woman. Black Panther. Critics tend to think that media based on comic book characters doesn’t really grapple with weighty matters like faith, politics or race, but they are wrong. Some of the blockbuster films, television shows and of course comics aren’t just entertainment, they can also talk about important issues of the day all in the guise of people who wear tights.

In this episode, we talk to Drew McIntyre, the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, NC who is a comic book aficionado about how comics or graphic novels communicate on a deeper level to their fans.

Drew’s Twitter

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This podcast is a labor of love. It’s free to everyone, but there are costs associated with making this podcast available. Would you consider becoming a paid subscriber? It’s $5/month or $60/year. Thanks!

In this solo episode, I read the story I wrote in Substack and Medium about how white evangelicals are not the major factor in the rise of Donald Trump. The real story is more complex and very uncomfortable.

These Are Not the Evangelicals You Are Looking For by Dennis Sanders

In Today’s Political Arena, White Evangelicals Aren’t the Big Story by Musa al-Gharbi

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If you are part of a mainline Protestant denomination, you know that decline has been part of the story for over 50 years. And yet, at times people act like this isn’t a problem. Why is that? Why can’t we admit there is a problem and then come up with solutions that can help struggling congregations?

In this episode, I chat with Episcopal priest Ben Crosby. We talk about the article he wrote on his Substack about church decline. Ben is currently a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec in Canada where he is also the Honorary Associate Priest at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal.

On why church decline conversations are so frustrating- by Ben Crosby

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching- by Terry Eagleton (Ben talked about this article in the interview)

Will the ELCA be Gone in 30 Years?- by Dwight Zscheile

On MAID and the Canadian Church- by Ben Crosby (an article about the Canadian mainline church and Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying law)

Ben’s Twitter

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The Asbury Revival has brought both praise and criticism from liberals and conservatives. But what’s missing is the context from which the event sprung forth which is a university in the Wesleyan tradition. That context matters because it helps define what this revival is all about and how it might differ from the wider understanding of revival.

Frederick Schmidt is an Episcopal priest, but he has spent time working at Methodist institutions which gives him an understanding of Methodism, and the wider Wesleyan or Holiness movement. He’s currently Vice Rector at Good Shepherd Episcopal in Brentwood, TN and taught at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and is the Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation at Garett Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, IL.

Show Notes:

Understanding the Revival at Asbury University- by Frederick Schmidt

On longing and the Asbury Revival- by Nadia Bolz Weber

Celebrating Revival in a Cynical Age- by Russell Moore

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The “He Gets Us” advertisements in the Superbowl and the revival taking place at Asbury University in Kentucky have drawn a fair amount of criticism from Mainline Protestant/Progressive Christians and that has left this podcast and guest Loren Richmond perplexed.

Why was there such animosity towards these two events? What does it say about Progressive Christianity that it can’t view these two events with some nuance?

Join us in the discussion.

Show notes:

Future Christian Podcast (Loren’s Podcast)

He Gets Us website

Shane Clairborne’s Video on Asbury with participants

My Video on He Gets Us and Asbury Revival

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America becomes more religiously polarized.

The United States has always been somewhat of an outlier among highly developed nations.  Unlike Canada or Europe, America has had a strong tradition of attending a faith community if not every week, on a higher average than their Canadian or European counterpart.  For good or for ill, religion has had an impact on American society.  The abolition of slavery and the Civil Right movement would not have advanced if not for people of religious conviction.

Today, fewer Americans attend a faith community regularly. In 2021 Gallup released a poll that showed in 2020 the number of people who belonged to a house of worship fell below 50% for the first time since Gallup started taking the survey in 1937. A recent survey did see how the pandemic affected organized religion and the findings are troubling.  The American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life in conjunction with NORC at the University of Chicago conducted a survey to see who regularly attends a house of worship and they released the findings in early January.  The findings show that there is a growing gap between those that attend a faith community on a regular basis and those that don’t and that has significant implications for American society.

In today’s episode, I talk to one of the researchers, Daniel Cox. Daniel is the Director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), in public opinion and survey research, religious change and measurement, as well as social capital, and youth politics. Before joining AEI, he was the research director at PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), which he co-founded and where he led the organization’s qualitative and quantitative research program.

Show Notes:

Faith After the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Changed American Religion (full report)

American Storylines (Daniel Cox’s Substack)

Breaking Faith (a 2017 article by Peter Beinart)

Episode 110: The Church After COVID w/Sean Chow

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In this solo episode, Dennis shares two videos from his Weekly Check-in video series: one recorded in November after the midterms and the other in mid-January. In both Dennis looks at what it means to be political and also claim that Jesus is Lord in our politically polarized culture.

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Weekly Check-in Videos

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Can Christians in the United States break out of the left-right binary?

In the late summer of 2022, a young Christian public theologian penned a document where he asked the question: Am I Progressive?  That young man was theologian Amar Peterman who wrote this essay where he shared why he didn’t consider himself a progressive Christian. “The conservative-progressive spectrum, I believe, is a false binary used to categorize and make assumptions about those around us,” he wrote in that essay. “Both “conservative” and “progressive” are handcuffs that align us with an in-group and ultimately distract us from thinking and acting with charity, nuance, and love. When we take on these identities as our own, we allow them to form our imagination of faith, our world, and the ideological “other.” We also place ourselves within the social commitments that these labels hold which limit our ability to speak truth in love.”

In this episode, Amar shares what it means to be a Christian in such a politically polarized era and how the Christian faith must break out of the false binary.  Lest you think he is advocating a mushy middle, Amar is aiming for a faith that is not captured by the political definitions of our day while speaking prophetically to the challenges our society faces today.

Show Notes:

Am I Progressive? by Amar Peterman

How My Conservative Christian College Made Me A Leftist by Josiah Daniels (the article Amar is responding to in his essay)

Why I Changed My Mind About Law and Marriage Again by David French

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