Jack Haberer returns to talk about his latest book, "Swimming with the Sharks: Leading the Full Spectrum Church in a Red and Blue World." Using encounters with sharks as a metaphor, we explore the divisive forces in society and the importance of empathy in bridging divides. Jack challenges binary thinking, encourages partnership over proselytizing, and emphasizes biblical teachings on love and compassion.
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[0:12] Music.
[0:46] We'll be right back. Thank you. Well, hello and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested about the intersection of faith in our modern world. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, today, Presbyterian pastor and author Jack Haber returns to talk about his latest book, which is incredibly very timely, Swimming with the Sharks, Leading the Full Spectrum Church in a Red and Blue World. It's an interesting, um, in our discussion, we talked a little bit about something that, you know, we, in our culture, because it's so polarized, love to talk about and, um, about being purple to being not red, but blue, but purple, kind of a mixture of both. Um but it's kind of interesting you don't hear that talk as much anymore and what's also interesting is at least to me sometimes when i hear the word purple it's actually being commandeered by one side or the other really to appear more quote-unquote reasonable than the other side and actually uh in our discussion jack wants to get away from talking about purple, So, we'll talk a little bit about that in the discussion. Again, I think that this is a timely book to hear about, especially as our presidential campaign is heating up.
[2:10] We talk about the polarized nature of our society and really how the church can truly be church in this time.
[2:18] So, let's listen in to this conversation with John.
[2:21] Music.
[2:57] Well, Jack, I'm glad to have you back. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago I had you, but we did talk about the last time we chatted that we were going to have you on to talk about your book, which I believe just came out recently. It came out just in time for Shark Week. I don't think they planned it that way. Sharks were all over the TV screen, Discovery Channel especially, all last week. And yeah, it came out at the beginning of the week. Although I had to buy my own because the publisher forgot to send me some. So people were reviewing it online before I even had my own copy. But so I missed it for sure. A lot of other folks did. Anyway, yeah, just came out. So I can probably just go ahead and start. One is the title is Swimming with the Sharks. And so tell me a little bit about that title. title, and what does that mean to you, and what are the sharks in our culture?
[4:02] Well, I was well into the writing before I came up with the title. In fact, I did a lot of rewriting when I came up with the title.
[4:10] Behind the story is that a few years ago, I was pulling my hair out, as is evidence on my top, like so many other church leaders, about how in the world does the church survive, not just pandemic, but the polarization around us. It's been going on for a few decades, but it's escalating, escalating, escalating, polarizing, and especially at a place where Christians and politics have taken on a whole nother level beyond what they had in the moral majority and Christian coalition in the 1970s and 80s, it's been so much more extreme. And how in the world can my congregation, where I'm serving, but also churches across the country, survive this? And what I've known and I've considered at great length is how we divide in the churches. I wrote a book 20 plus years ago about that within Presbyterianism, but this is about all across the country. And it so happens there have been some very particular sharks in my life.
[5:17] Our kids were raised a lot of their time on the Florida East Coast, which has more shark infestation than anywhere in the world next to the Outer Banks on the other side of the planet. Bigger sharks other places, more ferocious sharks in other places, but not more than the Florida East Coast. And on two particular occasions, we encountered sharks. One was downright threatening. The other one was bloody.
[5:44] I'll mention the first story, which was that when my spouse, my wife, Barbie, took our two kids, ages about five and seven, to the beach, at one point, they were out about waist deep in the water. She was ankle deep watching them, and someone shouted, shark, and people started racing out of the water, except our two kids. They were still out there. there and my daughter was just holding stand, holding, holding firm while her son's hands were wrapped around her one wrist trying to pull her in and she was refusing to come in. So Barbie ran out herself, grabbed the kids and as she did, they came out and the shark cut right through where they had just been in the water. So she got down on her knees and said, Kelly, what was going on with you? She said, what? I was swimming. No, why didn't you come out of the water? Why would I come out of the water? Well, because people were shouting. Did you hear them shouting? Well, yeah. Did you hear them shouting shark? Yeah, yeah. Well, why didn't you come in? Well, I mean, by then she's got tears going down her cheeks. She knows she's in trouble. She goes, well, I didn't hear the shark. Barbara goes, what do you mean you didn't hear the shark? She goes, I didn't hear the shark. And she goes, what do you mean you didn't hear it? She goes, you know, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
[7:05] True story, exactly that way. Of course, by then, Barbie's cracking up and laughing and also thanking God for our two children being spared the misery of not having heard the sharp. Anyway, it occurred to me that that can be a more metaphor for how we understand one another in the church. Who are the sharks in the church? They're the people in my congregation or in that church down the road that vote for the wrong candidates and watch the wrong TV news channel. Everything boils down to that. What party are you voting for and what is the news channel you watch that interprets the news and the world to you through which you have a complete filter, a closed set of mindset that is so defining but also polarizing and reinforcing way beyond just the simple red and blue categories of party. But a collective true mindsets truly be us and them right and wrong moral immoral Christian anti-christian I mean the categories are so harsh and extreme right now and so I'm saying yeah those other people are sharks to you and you are sharks to them.
[8:27] And there's got to be a better way through all of this. So, yeah, so that's where the sharks are.
[8:37] And we all can figure, we can all fill in the blanks of the names of the people that we know that we can't stand to be around, the relatives we don't want to have here for Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving dinner, or the people that we're just simply not going to invite or say or disinvite. You can't be here because you're so obnoxious, we will not put up with you anymore. Families are being torn apart. The Methodist church has been going through the largest church split since the Civil War in the country. And it's basically, those are the sharks. Get rid of them. You go your own way. We're going to go our own way. It's a messy situation, a horribly messy situation we find ourselves in. So the sharks basically become that that we we fear and that in our society, yep that was what we fear our greatest fears the end of democracy the end of the world as we know it the we we either win this or we'll lose it forever i've heard that today on one of on one side of the aisle the um end of democracy on the other side of the aisle um the end of christianity on the one side of the aisle, the end of sanity, and liberal democracy on the other side. Yeah, we really do fear each other, and that fear only enhances the hatred we hold for each other.
[10:06] Well, if you see something as a shark, because basically what you're saying is that shark is a threat, And especially in our church and in our society. That's right, Dennis. We see them as, well, I remember an old cartoon in a book titled Mind Changers by M. Griffin. He was a professor at Wheaton College many, many years ago. And he had these great cartoons in there. At one point, he had a picture of a crusader on his horseback with a sword in hand and a shield in the other hand. And there's a guy flat on the back on the ground. He's holding his sword over the man. And the man says, your religion sounds very appealing to me. It was the picture of repent or perish. You know, either repent and join our religions or we are going to destroy you. That is the history and the form, the core idea of fundamentalism, as the great historians Historians have used the term not just in religious categories, but that there are some fundamental non-negotiables that everybody must subscribe, become converted to, and they're our allies. And if they're not our allies, they are our dread enemies, and we must either convert them or destroy them.
[11:34] And that's where we are. Yeah. And so we hate, we fear, and we hate all the more because we fear so much. So, you know, when you, and you brought this up a little bit earlier, that there's kind of a binary way of how we look at things right now. Right. You know, left, right, good, evil, Christian, non-Christian, all of that stuff. How do you think that that ends up affecting our faith? How does it affect the church as a whole? role because I think it does have a role, at least I see it sometimes in the life of the church. But I mean... Does it end up corrupting our faith in some way, and how does it do that? It truly does.
[12:27] I'm going to get dangerous, and I'll offend some people with this, but I'll take my chance. I've been a part of the Pentecostal charismatic movement for years, Jesus movement before that, Catholic before that, Presbyterian the second half of my life. But one of the things I always struggled with was what was called spiritual warfare prayer, spiritual warfare drawn from the last chapter of Ephesians, where we're told we're fighting against evil spirits, systems of all kinds that have been interpreted as the demonic forces that are against our faith that we must fight against, must put on the full armor of God to fight the foe. In our praying, we'd spend as much time speaking to the devil, Satan stopping doing this. We come against you and the spirits and this and that, but speaking against the demonic as if that was the real problem and that we need to fight. Well, if you read the text carefully, what are the armor? armor, faith, truth, the gospel of peace, salvation.
[13:37] They are actually great Christian faith words that are spoken metaphorically with the language of armor. But then when it says to have your awful armor on, which is the faith, the helmet of salvation and peace, then, having done all to stand, stand. It doesn't say go out and attack. It doesn't say go out and fight. Stand in who you are in faith.
[14:05] The point to this being that if we stand in those things, those things are non-pugilistic. They're not fighting the foe. They're what we do in the growing and living Christian life. But when we characterize our life, taking the metaphors literally and forgetting what the theologically substantive words are, just talking about the armor, we define our faith as pugilistic, a battle against the forces of darkness, against the forces of evil, against the forces of liberalism, against the forces of this, that, and the other thing, and we start our day rearing up, gearing up for battle, for fight. Rather than living in the Sabbath, in the shalom, in the peace that is ours beyond all understanding in Christ Jesus our Lord,
[14:51] we don't live into a life of abiding in the vine, but attacking the other vine. I mean, I mean, and so when we set up a whole pugilistic structure and we do it, and by the way, the easiest way to do pugilistic structure is by two camps, by two categories, because all you need is 50% and one to win, you know, zero sum game, just, just one vote enough to win the whole game.
[15:16] So if you have, if you have five parties or you have multiple parties like Italy and some of those other countries that have a whole lot of parties that have to find up a coalition, resolutions it's much more complicated but in america with our republicans and democrats and in the church with the christians and the non-christians the people of true faith and the and false faith that um we have every chance of getting the majority and winning the whole enchilada and so it is just so much about winning the battle winning the votes winning the war, And it makes our lives so much more conflicted, so much lacking in the joy of our Lord, and so missing out on the goodness of the gospel of our Lord's salvation.
[15:59] Does that make sense? Did I lose you in that? It does, yeah. Yeah. I also wonder, does it kind of cause us to lose a sense of seeing where God is working in someone who might be different from us? It sure does. It's kind of a way of curiosity. Who is that person like? What are they? Where, you know, that they, I may see them, they may have different views, but we can, you know, where can we find agreement and all that? I mean, does it, it seems like that kind of thinking robs you of that, of, of seeing that person as another human and seeing that person as another child of God.
[16:49] Absolutely, Dennis. In the missional church movement that emerged in the last 30 years, they were addressing what had become, had been so much the great white hope, literally white skin people from America and Europe going into other parts of the world to bring the great answers to all the problems of the world. And with the assumption that we're bringing God to those people who are godless. In the missional movement, there was a whole emerging of an idea that says God is at work.
[17:19] Wherever we go, and we've got understandings that we can bring along with us. But when we go into foreign fields, our first job is A, to get to know them, B, to see where God is already at work within them, maybe give them some other vocabulary, some other ways to see what God is at work, but not as the ones introducing something, but as ones that are applauding what God's already been doing. God's already at work at all around the world, applauding that, working with it, affirming it, strengthening it, and seeing how we can function in a partnership way. By the way, I can brag that while I was in the evangelical movement in those years, mainline denominations came up with the partnership language first. That was really coming out in the 60s and 70s, I know, because I thought it was stupid. I was on the other side of that mentality. I thought, oh, those folks are just humanists. They're just going there to do nice stuff. They're not giving on the gospel. Well, eventually all my gospeling people started using the same language. I said, wait a minute, what have I missed here? And so it was that, that what was being done among the mainliners now became more truly and regularly done among the evangelicals of a fuller world and of the major mission schools. Let's go where God is, see what God is doing, join in it, befriend them. And, you know, if they don't want us, if we've done our work, move on. We don't need to...
[18:45] We proselytize them. We don't need to make them part of our empire. Let's, you know, yeah, yes. It's a whole other way of seeing. And by the way, the other, that is so much what we define as the binary category. It's whatever is us in our tribe, whoever is not in another tribe. The teachings of Jesus and of Moses first about loving the neighbor as ourself or doing unto others as you would have them do for you. The original language was the strangers, the aliens, the outsiders, the immigrants, the illegals. It was those neighbors. They were being taught to love as themselves in their own tribe. Those of the other tribe, love them as if they were yourself and treat them as if they were your kin. And they were the rabbinic studies of the ancient world. When they even translate, love your neighbor. The vast majority of the translations are stranger or alien or outsider. That's the way the Bible would have us treating the other, at least as we would put that in casual categories of our own circles of friends, our friendship group, our cliques in high school. Love them as you love yourself.
[20:05] Here's something that's also I find fascinating at times because I will hear people talk a lot about and even especially in mainline churches about, loving our neighbors and loving the enemy even loving the stranger, but it kind of comes from this point of chastising others that they aren't doing this, that they aren't loving their enemy, they aren't loving their neighbor, all the while that they aren't doing that themselves with the people that they may not agree with, or as you say, listen to the wrong cable news channel. That leads me to ask a question about when we're kind of talking about swimming with the sharks and living in this kind of politically polarized environment, where does confession what role does confession have in all of this.
[21:14] Well, of course, when we say we confess, we mean two things, confessing our sins and confessing our faith. But I think both of them are essential to this. First, in the churches that have actually a prayer of confession in their worship service or in the Catholic faith where you actually might go to see a priest in advance, a lot of folks have asked me, why do you have to start your service out in a depressing way by thinking about your sins? And my response is, it's the happiest part of the service. Every time when we get together, whatever crap we're carrying around that we've done wrong or others have dumped on us, it can be not just our own sins, but other sins against us. Whatever we're carrying around, we get to throw out, we get to put it on the table and hear the pastor say, sisters, friends, brothers, who are you, whoever you are, your sins are forgiven. Thanks be to God. To me, that is the best part of the worship service and the greatest privilege of being a pastor is to be able to be the guy that, the one that gets to say that. It's a wonderful thing.
[22:22] And when it comes to loving our neighbors and the failure to do that, and also the judging of others' failures to do so.
[22:29] What we need to recognize is that, A, yes, we have failed at doing that, but we've also failed in our judgments of the others. Jesus said the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and of judgment.
[22:44] Not just convicting us of a sin that we've committed, but the judgment we've held against others. Convict us of our own judgmentalism. And by the way, Jesus' most harsh words weren't for the wicked sinners. It was for the judgmental, conservative, holy roller types. He was brutal to those people because they were closing the doors of the kingdom, the doors of the home of God to those who needed it most and most desperately were ready to get it. Now, in confessing our sins, that levels the playing field because we all enter in that same way. And then when we profess our faith, we get to profess the core center of the faith, which most of us pretty well hold in common. We really all, every Christian I know, believes in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Jesus brings grace to bring us right to God, whether it's Catholic or Baptist or anybody else. We all believe in the love of God, the agape, perfect love of Abba, Jesus' nickname for God, as Daddy, or which we also know to be, uses imagery for God as Mother to the Mama who who brings the chicks to her breast, the hen that brings the chicks to her breast, and also Holy Spirit as the presence, the fellowship of God. We all hold that in common, and that's the essential of the faith. And so when we profess and confess that aspect of what it is we believe, it also brings us together. It tears down the walls and puts bridges in their place.
[24:13] Yeah. Yeah.
[24:17] So, the other thing I've kind of been thinking about, too, is you talk a little bit in the book about ecclesiology. And it's kind of interesting when you do that, because I'm trying to think, okay, what does this have to do with political polarization?
[24:36] But I do think it does have something to do with it, and what is the nature of the church? church. Could you kind of suss that out? What does the ecclesiology, the work of the church have to do with our political climate, and how can it challenge political polarization? Let me tell you what my book doesn't do. It doesn't write a diatribe against white Christian nationalism. I've seen at least one book a day published on that subject in the last month. There's a lot of folks writing brilliant work. It's important and essential work being done. I did not try to tackle that. I don't know my politics as well as I know my theology and my ecclesiology. What I did tackle was how do we deal with those people within our community? How do we do those people in our families? So mine is a how to be present with those that are the sharks in our own minds, rather than to just write all the bad things about the sharks.
[25:49] Because The books about white Christian nationalism are really great books for the people that hate it to read about, but it's not going to win anybody over any more than books about wokeism is going to convince progressives to change their mind to be more conservative. Not that I would take away from any of that, but I'm not trying to do that. I am trying to talk to how to be together in the church. Church uh i've lived my life in the church and i do think that unless we begin to build bridges in the churches and between the churches our culture is hopeless it's hopefully lost hopelessly lost i had i met with a dozen leading imams um in pakistan just three weeks ago and um they were cracking jokes with a couple of us christians i couldn't understand of it but but they didn't do what they were saying because it was a foreign language Urdu along with some Punjab mixed in, no English, until finally when they started introducing each other. And one thing that came through to all of them, from them, was unless we clergy, Christians and Muslim, in a country where it's mostly Muslim, unless we find the way.
[27:02] Our country can never find the way. So if we can find the way in our churches and within our families that are divided politically and find that there are some really essentially important ways in which Christians differ that have legitimacy to them, what I do break out in from the book from the binary thinking is to suggest that there are five different ways that that Jesus speaks, five different themes, that come through in his ministry, what I call Jesus' passions for us. Like Martin Luther said, Jesus has a passion for me. That was the great eye-opening moment when an older priest said to Martin Luther, who was so guilt-ridden, "'Don't you understand that Jesus died "'for the sins of the world?' And he says, "'Yes.'".
[27:53] "'Well, if he died for the sins of the world, "'are you a part of that world?' "'Yes.'" "'Does that not mean that he died for your sins?' Oh, did he? Yes, he died for your sins. Did you get it? And he said, he died for me. He did this for me. He has a passion for me. He has a love for me. Ah, that was the conversion of Martin Luther. Well, he has a passion for all of us, but it takes five different shapes. A passion for us to know the truth, that is to get the things right about what is God's will and ways in the world. But for others, but it's also a passion for God, that we would have a love for God, know the love of God in our lives, the grace of our Lord Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit, that we would have a real love with God and a prayerfulness and a worshipfulness toward God. But it's also a passion that we would have for one another, that expression one another is not used by Jesus until the Last Supper.
[28:48] In the new commandment. He hadn't used that before. In fact, it is a new commandment. It's not the old commandment. It's the new commandment that you love one another. And he's speaking to the 12 around the table as he's doing that. Now, it might be 11. Judas might have slipped out by then. But in either case, it's love one another in the tribe. Your people, don't split your church. Don't tear apart the fellowship. Don't let factions and divisions break a congregation apart or a family apart, because they're your people, love one another. But he also said, passion for loving the neighbor, which is not our tribe, it's the other people down the street, the others. And then there is also a passion for us to change the world.
[29:30] If we in the church can open our eyes to the fact, and it's true, that every one of us, of those five mindsets of Jesus, those five messages of Jesus, every one of us has a Jesus we adore, but we also have a Jesus is we ignore.
[29:48] We adore the part of the Jesus story that rings true to us. And when we read our Bible in the Gospels, those are the words that jump off the page. But there's other words in the Gospels that just kind of become background noise. You don't notice them. I'm not saying that's because we're sinners. I'm saying that's because we're human, because we have passions with our own self that Jesus resonates with. But when we recognize that Jesus was all of those things. And that some of these people in my congregation that make me crazy or that make me crazy down in the other church are listening to the part of Jesus I ignore.
[30:21] And oh my, I guess I need to be around them so I'm not so blind and dumb and stupid by missing that part of Jesus that they're lifting up. If we can work on those kinds of relationships in the reality of Jesus, multiple voices, by the way, he needed four TV news networks to tell a story. They're called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. One wasn't enough. One perspective wasn't enough. They pick up on those different kinds of themes of what Jesus' passions are for us. When we see the variety of those as being intrinsic to our faith and that we can't drop any of them about because they're inconvenient or they sound too Republican or they sound too Democratic, sorry, that's all there. Don't walk away from the Jesus and any of his voices. Become a more complete Christian and become a more complete Christian community that welcomes those Lutherans or fundamentalists or Pentecostals or Catholics or Orthodox, you name it, in one place. And so that thereby also invites us to be able to talk with people about our differing favorite candidates rather than to hate each other or just to try to sneak things around their back so they don't get the votes. Did I answer your question?
[31:45] Do you want to press that? Yeah, you did. Well, I think what I would want to press and think about as you're talking about this is, you seem to be talking a lot also, I mean, you haven't said it, but idolatry.
[32:04] And kind of the role of, you know, we have our own version of Jesus, as you say, the Jesus that we adore versus a Jesus that we ignore. And, you know, I kind of talked earlier about confession, but we also have kind of the Jesus that we want to view, which is very different sometimes from the Jesus who is, who may do things that we would not like. Um, you know, I, I think a little bit about the, some of the, the different parables, like the parables of the workers in the vineyard. Um, you know, you think about the ones that got in really early and, um, they were working really hard all day. And then there were the ones that worked an hour and everyone got paid the same. And there was just a lot of anger about that. And, you know, we want the Jesus that loves us.
[33:08] I don't think we necessarily want the Jesus that loves that other guy. Or at least we want to ignore that Jesus loves that other guy.
[33:17] Well, actually, when it comes to calling people to war, you define your enemy as a single being and as a single entity. And we dehumanize them. We don't speak about them as persons.
[33:30] We take the human out of them. They're a movement. They're an army. They're guerrillas. as they're not humans. And the dehumanizing of them, we also make idols of what we like and love and adore and consider to be most important and so good about ourselves, we turn into idols. It's a crazy thing, but you know, the greatest, the most treasured relic in all of Israel was the Ark of the Covenant, made out of pure gold and other amazing things. Where'd they get that from? they got them from the egyptians when they left when they're in the exodus coming out of egypt, they took the spoils of the egyptians to the victor comes go the spoils well they got the spoils out of egypt and they went into the garden into the land of sinai went to the mountain and what did they do with that was the gold and all of those um gems they made an idol out of it but then when they got in trouble and to burn it did nothing then they took the rest of the gold and made the the Ark of the Covenant. I mean, you know, that which could be most wonderful for the greatness and glory of the presence of God could also be used as the sign of rebellion against God and ultimate idolatry. All of that we have, that we most treasure, easily becomes an idol.
[34:56] John Calvin said a lot about idolatry as at the heart of our sinning, because we basically take anything, any relationship, any idea as being the answer for all things or the greatest gift of all things. And we hold onto it and own it and hoard it. And we hate anything that's not that. It's the same, the othering of what we have or, and the, the glamming onto what we have and hating what we, what those others have. It does become a form of idolatry and all of that. Yeah. And all, All of us are so inclined. All of us are so tempted. All of us commit those sins. It's, again, we're on the level ground when we come to pray our prayer of confession because not one of us is innocent of idolatry.
[35:48] One of the things that you say in the book, you kind of talk about a little bit about kind of congregational, I want to say congregational renewal because you kind of talk a little bit about some consultants and all of this. And one of the things that you kind of conclude with is that, you know, a lot of consultants will say that you can't be everything to everyone. And you kind of echo Paul, the Apostle Paul, by saying that you try to be basically everything to everyone for Christ. Can you kind of expand a little bit about that? And what are you trying to say there? And what does it mean in the context of this book?
[36:33] Looked. Last chapter is kind of somewhat tongue-in-cheek, although sincere, other points, charge against church leadership consultants, because I think a lot of church leadership consultants are leading us down the wrong path in the wrong direction and doing more harm than good. And I think a lot of their $30 consulting fees are a waste of time and waste of effort and collect a lot of dust when they're done. I'm blunt about that. People are saying, well, you ought to be consulted. No, no, no, no, I can't do that. But the story behind that story, I'll get, and I'll come back to this, you can't be all things to all people. What I say that I gained from the Pentecostal experience.
[37:17] And a major life study on the work and person of the Holy Spirit, I did a doctorate just to write a dissertation on the story of the Holy Spirit from Genesis to Revelation, and so happily got good grades for that, but a good response for that, but that is that the Pentecostals really don't believe in Father, Son, and what's its name. They really believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and many other movements through the history of the church have, but most every time one of those movements broke out as an awakening or a revival, they always become fanatical, a little bit crazy. And then the rest of the main churches say, no, we're not going there. Holy rollers swinging from chandeliers. And that whole thing gets lost. But what does more essentially get lost is A, that the Holy Spirit is in the life of all believers and that the Holy Spirit is in the life of all believers. First and foremost, to simply put us in relationship with God in the way that the Ark of the Covenant brought to the high priest in Israel, but only once a year. And this is an abiding presence. But the Holy Spirit comes also with power. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, says Jesus. And you'll be my witnesses here in Jerusalem and Judea and north into Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. How does it come in power? Well, the Holy Spirit simply becomes the infilling force.
[38:44] The empowering, the gifting, the calling and commissioning of all believers. I say that's the rest of Luther's promise about the priesthood of all believers. Well, there's also the infilling, empowering, gifting, calling and commissioning of all believers. And that everybody in the church is gifted by the presence of the Holy Spirit. And that the job of the pastor then is not simply to put all the kitties in the red wagon and mommy pulling the wagon along. I will take you all where you need to go because I, your pastor, know what you need to do and what we need to do. And this is our goal and this is our vision. And we're going to focus it and we're going to cancel all the other programs that don't support that and all the ones that don't have a big turnout. And I say hogwash, hogwash. A, what when every program you cancel is another person that gets canceled, that you're telling them, you don't matter, you don't count, your gift isn't important here. Hogwash. But more than that, hogwash to the ministry that should be what you should be doing and could be doing as a congregation if everybody were empowered and given the Greek word exousia, the authority to to exercise their gifts without having to get your pastoral permission.
[40:05] God has gifted those members of your church to do things that might even disagree with you because you know what? God is not linear.
[40:14] God is not single-minded. God's not just going in one direction at all times. God's going in 360 directions. Well, actually 360 times 360 because it's actually a global perspective of God's work in the world and even in the congregation of 3 or 300 or 30, that God wants to work in all kinds of directions, and that the role of the pastor and the other leaders is to launch people, not to lead people, but to launch people. I served 22 years as pastor of astronauts and rocket scientists in two churches next to space centers. I love a lot of their language. But our job is to launch people into fulfilling their gifts and callings. And that means the pro-choice person and the pro-life person in the same church. And I had advocates of those positions in my churches and I affirmed and supported them, challenged them to learn from each other, to not become jerks in the way or reckless in the way that you promote what your protection of pre-born children or your protection of the right of women to choose and to have control over their body, but that you learn to do these things in the best sorts of ways. And as a result.
[41:26] When the consultant says you can't be all things to all people, I don't say hogwash. I say heresy. I say heresy. One of the greatest heresies of our day is you can't be all things to all people. Because in fact, Paul said, I have become all things to all people. To the Greek, I've been Greek. I learned to speak Greek and Roman as a matter of fact. To the Jew, I've lived as a Jew and I know the language of Aramaic as well as Hebrew, which is the classical Jew. To the Gentile, I'm a Gentile, to the Greek, I'm a Greek, I have to the slave, I'm a slave to the rich, I become rich. I have all of these things and I become all these things for all people so that by whatever means I may win some. And for whatever means I might bring glory to God through Christ. And that that's my goal. Now, by the way, he did not literally become all things to all people because I'm pretty sure he didn't learn to speak Swahili or Chinese or Portuguese.
[42:27] But we, when we're not just one person, but 30 or 300 or 3, we can be all things to all people exponentially beyond what Paul could do himself.
[42:40] And when any congregation, truly of small size, middle or large, is unleashing their gifts, they can be reaching people and serving people and making a difference in lives in ways, as well as enlarging the depth of our worship and expanding the way we care for one another and have a 100% care rate. No one in the church that's in the hospital that's not visited every day of the week by somebody in the church. Nobody in any kind of loss not being cared for overwhelmingly all the time by multiple people in the church, particularly those particularly gifted in those sorts of ways but unleashing all of our gifts becoming all things to all people the heresy can't be the gospel says the commissioning of god says go out and be all things to all people yeah and i think that that in some ways could line up to your talk about political polarization and I think too often sometimes churches try to be a progressive church or a conservative church where basically only certain types of people are kind of accepted and you know you want to be a church where everyone truly is finds a place and finds minds knows is able to know Christ.
[44:08] Which is why I use the language of full spectrum. I was actually talking with a publisher about what I was writing. He says, oh, what you're talking about is the purple church. I've been looking for someone to write about the purple church, and I hadn't thought this through until he said it out loud. I thought, yeah, purple? That's like milk toast or lukewarm. Compromise? No. And it's also the glorifying the bell curve. Oh, we're not going to be the church of the crazies on the left after there's crazies on the right, we're just going to be the church in the center. Yuck. I know politicians would say, oh, he's just got to be moderate. You got to do the golden mean. Yuck. The right answer is the right answer. And that might be an extreme position. And in fact, if we're going to have prophets in the church, they're not going to come from the moderates. They're not going to be in the middle. They're always extremists. We catch, we kill them. That's why we want to get rid of them. And that's why Jesus said, you Jews, you killed the prophets. Well, so we've continued to kill the prophets ever since. It's not an any different. We don't like them. But if we don't have the eccentrics, extremists in the conversation, then we're all going to miss out some of the most important things that we're blind to because we're so surrounded by trees that we can't see the forest. No, the full spectrum is a church that has the reds and the oranges and the yellows and the greens and the blues and the indigos and the violets, all given a microphone.
[45:31] Welcome to our new member class. We're passing that were passing around the microphones today, you'll all have your own microphone to bring to church on Sundays. Well, obviously I'm speaking metaphorically, but for the church to encourage people to speak out what they feel and think they're important.
[45:47] I will say back to our party situation, there are great reasons for Democrats to be Democrats. There are great reasons for Christians to become Democrats. And there are great reasons for Christians to be Republican Republicans because both of those parties have ideals that are lofty, that are noble, that are great, meaningful ones. Both parties do stupid things. Both parties have an underbelly and a negative side and even a destructive side that hurts the cause that they're trying to accomplish, if only because that's going to be the way to stop the other people from doing what they ought to do. Well, if we can affirm not only those two parties, but the five dream visions of Jesus and the hundreds and thousands of spiritual giftings and callings that people have, then we broaden and improve so much. And we can have real learning and conversation learning among us so that we're being informed by all of those voices. It's like a liberal arts education. One of the best things about that is it forces you to take subjects you didn't imagine you'd want to learn. Even seminary education, they force you to take courses that you never thought you would need, but that's what we need in the church as well, full spectrum.
[47:03] You know, I think that that brings up something. I've been listening to some podcasts with Yuval Levin. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He is a commentator, a thinker, intellectual, works for the American Enterprise Institute. And he's written a book about the Constitution. And one of the things that he brings up is, you know, the Constitution, especially in our society, the way that it was written, was to help us how do we, not that we all agree in American society, because that wasn't happening, but how do we disagree better, and how do we work together? Absolutely. Great language. And I feel that there's something about our society today is that we don't know how to disagree well.
[48:02] And I think that it seems like scripture has taught us how we can disagree well, and that sometimes it's okay to disagree, but we've also made it almost a sin to disagree. Yes, it is. And that is so critical. And by the way, most of us can name other churches and traditions that do that, but we don't realize that we're doing it as well. We see how those people, all our group think, they're all thinking and being told to do the same thing. They all just have a little ring in their nose, and they're all being dragged around. We can see it at a distance, but we tend to do it where we are. I've had the privilege of serving churches that already had diversity in them. And yet we also could find I could by having this mindset by the way this is a mindset I latched on to, when I was a seminary student, having gone through a couple of church splits before going to seminary, I knew I needed to learn about Greek and Hebrew and biblical exegesis, but I also needed to learn how to be a good leader. And because I had an undergrad degree in religion, I got to skip most first-year students and take force courses and take a lot of electives. And I did a lot of electives in leadership, how to lead churches. And I came upon this model of the church with the giftedness of the membership and the unleashing of those gifts.
[49:21] And so I've lived this out for 40 years, five different congregations, as well as the National Magazine that served, in denomination across all of those, every part of those differences, and publishing across those differences.
[49:39] Yes, we can do that. It is possible. There are places where it's done. It has been done well in the church. And I will lift up one church that we forget about, most of us, that are not them, and that's Roman Catholic. Where we Protestants have our different denominations, which are enclaves of agreement, great expression, not original to me, enclaves of agreement, the Roman Catholic Church, if you've got a new idea, okay, start a new order. The order of the Augustinians, order of the Carmelites, and the order of the Jesuits. By the way, you'll give an accounting every year to the Department of Orders in the Vatican, so you can't stray too far, but you're free to have your own passions, your own visions, your own gathering folks that are like-minded, but be assured that we will also have you meeting with those other orders regularly and giving an account to the head honcho in the Vatican. But that's a model that I think we Protestants really need to learn from, and could even in our own denominations, particularly larger larger denominations where you have more variety to really elevate those voices rather than try to mush them all into one consensus group.
[50:58] So as we kind of wrap up, what message do you have for pastors of congregations, especially as, you know, we're kind of in the middle of one political party convention right now with the Republicans as we are taping this and meeting in Milwaukee next month, the Democrats will be meeting in Chicago, and we're heading into the fall and with the campaigns. Pains, what advice do you give to pastors as they are facing a challenging few months ahead and maybe a challenging few years ahead?
[51:37] I said this before, but when you said, ask the question the way you did, first thing, don't lose your sense of humor. Find funny things to say about some of the things that are going on, the dynamics out there so that people can actually laugh at themselves, in ways that are not shaming them, not cornering them with mocking humor. Don't take no prisoners kind of humor like you have in a lot of comics, professional comics or cynics, but find ways to say in a lighthearted way.
[52:18] Highlight some things that are going on that are laughable. But at the same time, seriously, be prayerful.
[52:25] Find ways to continually look for the good news of God in Christ in the midst of what you're saying. It's so easy to get pulled into the negativism, the negative crying out against. I mean, I do a lot of Facebooking and see a lot of that outcry, and I do some of it myself, I'm not going to say I'm not that way, but I'll cry about how terrible this, that is, or that other thing is, or how those are. I try not to say how those are because I don't want to do the othering, but to try your best not to be using the hate talk or the negative talk. Find hopeful ways to see how God is at work, can be at work, may turn these things into work, In all things, God is at work. Not all things are as God designed per se, but in all things, God is at work to bring good and bring glory for the good of all those who love God and according to God's purpose. God is at work. See God at work in the positive, creative ways and really, really work to befriend the people that you don't agree with. I heard someone saying, it was a news commentator, who said he had last major election, 2020.
[53:50] He had an open house at his house for anybody that's been involved in any of their politics. Everyone's welcome to come, but they have to bring a good friend of the other party with them.
[54:06] Them. A lot of people wouldn't be able to come because they wouldn't find anybody, wouldn't have anybody to bring. But what a great idea for us in the church, find someone of the other party and spend time having conversation with them and find ways to introduce each other to themselves in ways that they're going to say, aha, you get me, you get me. Stop the the tarot, stereotyping about them, listen to who they are, what they really want, what they really hope for, what are the passions of Jesus that are their own passions, and be friends. Build friendships across the aisles. Don't drive those other party people out your door. You're not serving the cause of Christ. You are not building up the body of Christ. The body of Christ is multi-party. It's multicultural.
[54:52] It's multi-flavor. It's multi-racial. It's multi-sexual. It's It's all of us together. We need one another, and we need to build friendships with one another, within and with the neighbor, the stranger, without.
[55:10] So, Jack, where can people find your book? Well, right here. I got my only copy because the publisher's shipping department got to send me any. They're in the whale somewhere, but I bought this from Amazon full price, as a matter of fact. It is at Amazon. It's Barnes & Noble, all the major publishers. In fact, actually, Barnes & Noble, I'm sorry, Amazon has a whole lot about it, which a lot of quotes and responses. Is it has a forward by Will Willeman, one of the greatest Christian thinkers, particularly in Methodism, but all across the board in America that encourages all Methodists to read it as well as the rest. But yeah, go to the Amazon, Wipf and Stock. There is one group that has a 10% discount. The other one is selling at full price, sorry. But they do also have the Kindle version for those looking for that. And eventually we'll get the recorded one as well. So, but yeah, Swimming with the Sharks, leading the full spectrum church in the red and blue world. Well, Jack Haber, it's great to have you back again, and we will definitely have you back again at another time to talk. So, and thank you for this really engaging conversation. Thanks, Dennis. Really a joy to be with you. What a great host you are. Good man. Well, thank you. All right. Take care.
[56:33] Music.
[57:07] So what did you think about the conversation? Can the church get past its polarization? Is there polarization? What do you think about his views about the purple church, that it's really wanting a full-spectrum church instead? I'd love to hear your opinions on the topic. Feel free to send me an email at churchinmaine at substack.com Or you can also leave a comment on our Facebook page, and the link is in the show notes. By the way, if you want to learn more about the podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, check us out at churchinmaine.org. You can also visit churchinmaine.substack.com to read related articles. You can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app, and please consider leaving a review. That really does help others find this podcast. That is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. As usual, thank you so much for listening. Take care. Godspeed. And I will see you very soon.
[58:17] Music.
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