I had a conversation with Andrew Root, who is a theologian and wrote the book "Evangelism in an Age of Despair." We explored how evangelism can serve as a way to comfort others, stressing the importance of real human connections during hard times instead of just trying to get people to attend church. Root criticizes how faith is treated like a product and compares evangelism to the care given in hospitals. We also talked about how people are really focused on being happy and how the church should offer love and comfort to everyone, even those who are against us. Root wants people to try this approach, as it can create true hope and healing in today's society.
Evangelism in An Age of Despair Book
When Church Stops Working Podcast
Church and the Crisis of Decline (Episode 142)
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[0:09] Music.
[0:35] Hello, and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. So, I'm recording this actually the week after Holy Week, so I hope that you are having a wonderful Eastertide. Just a reminder that Easter doesn't end on Easter Sunday. It actually continues all the way up to Pentecost. So, I hope that you have a wonderful Easter season. So, there's a word that tends to strike fear in the heart of Christians, even though the word translates to the word to mean good news. I'm talking about the word evangelism. I remember when I was in college, I had to learn how to evangelize to someone, totally made me nervous. And in more mainline Protestant churches, people don't really even want to talk about their faith or to anyone else at all sometimes.
[1:37] So evangelism sometimes can bring up a lot of nervousness and fear, whether you're an evangelical or mainline Protestant. But what if we're thinking about evangelism the wrong way? Today on Church in Maine, we'll talk about evangelism as something different, as entering into sadness and consolation. And to talk about this different way of looking at evangelism, I have Andrew Root returning to the podcast. Root has just written a new book called Evangelism in an Age of Despair. Re-imagining outreach in our modern world.
[2:22] Root sees evangelism really more as a ministry of consolation. It's when people can care for others in their sadness, and that if we can, if people can find ministers of consolation and lean into their sadness, they just might find Jesus. Now, Andrew Root is the Carrie Olson Bowleson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He's the author of over 25 books and co-host of the When Church Stops Working podcast. So, please join me in this, I think, incredibly thoughtful and engaging conversation on evangelism, sadness, and Jesus with Andrew Root.
[3:13] Music.
[3:30] Well, I am so glad to have you back, Andy, to talk about this new book, Evangelism in an Age of Despair. And I think the first thing I wanted to kind of start off with is what led you to write the book? Well, I mean, I guess a level of masochism, of course. Every book is at one level kind of a journey into masochism, but this one particularly to try to pick up and talk about evangelism in this moment. I don't know. So it's probably part masochism, part hubris, thinking that maybe I have something to say to this. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it felt like what has been the kind of trajectory of my project is to try to think of many of the practical operations of the pastor and the minister through kind of Luther's theology at the cross. And so this was my take. Amongst other things, one of the objectives was my take on what would evangelism actually look like through Luther's theology of the cross. So that was, I think, ultimately why I decided.
[4:41] Engaged in the project. And that's interesting because that then leads to this other question because we have a way of thinking about evangelism.
[4:53] That either is something like, yeah, we want to do this or, oh my God, we're going to run away very fast. But that is not the way that you're defining evangelism.
[5:03] It's similar, but it's also different. And so, how would you define evangelism through Luther's theology of the cross? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I think I would stay consistent in the sense of thinking that evangelism is this moment of offering the message of the good news. I think that's true. But I think, you know, in this particular moment, well, two things happen, I think, across the Protestant spectrum is one, our common kind of feeling of what's happened to evangelism is it's become very instrumentalized. So we think of it as some kind of procedure or process that, well, essentially we think of it as lifestyle marketing is what we ultimately think of it as. And the gospel is the lifestyle that we're marketing towards. And I think we've been, some of us at least across the Protestant continuum have been uncomfortable with that. But I think unfortunately that has led to people trying to abandon evangelism altogether and feeling like it's something –, we should be ashamed of, that it's some kind of violation of pluralism and just maybe modern decorum, that we should get rid of it.
[6:20] If we're not going to throw it out in the garbage, we should lock it in the church's back shed next to the hair shirt and other accoutrements of penance or something and be done with it. But this odd thing has happened, and I don't know if you've had this experience too, Dennis, across the church, but all of these particularly mainline progressive people coming up to me and being like, wow, maybe, I mean, I hate to say this. I mean, I actually feel almost ashamed saying this, but maybe with our church so small, we need evangelism. They almost whisper it to me. Maybe we just need to do that. And so there's these kind of two ugly ditches I'm trying to avoid here is one thinking of it as lifestyle marketing and the other, well, it kind of comes all the way around to being lifestyle marketing again, even though we don't want to admit it. It's like, well, we need more people here, so maybe we should try evangelism or not be ashamed of evangelism. So I'm trying to get back to this place where evangelism really is very interconnected and close to discipleship, that evangelism is ultimately a response to the call of Jesus Christ to follow.
[7:26] So this is where, you know, this project is similar to my other work, where I'm trying to ask, like, well, where is God in the midst of this? How are people brought before the presence of a living God? And that ultimately then evangelism is the direct participation or invitation into that. And I think the kind of the unique element I'm trying to get at through Luther's Theology of the Cross is that it isn't some kind of marketing strategy that says, if you believe this, then all these good things will happen for you. That really in many ways that the location, the stage, the pitch in which evangelism happens is in being near to our neighbor's despair, in near to their deep unhappiness, their sadness, that there is a sense that what it means to evangelize is to seek for Jesus Christ together with someone,
[8:16] to seek for Jesus Christ in their sorrow. And that's kind of what I'm trying to develop. So it's really a theology of consolation interconnected with a view of evangelism. Yeah, I think it's interesting that with people, whether it's on the evangelical side or the mainline side, it's that sense that we have to do evangelism, but it doesn't always feel like it's directed at the people. It's not really entering into another person's life. It's.
[8:49] We need to get this person into our church. I mean, it's, again, it's marketing. So it's seeing someone more as someone that can buy this product instead of as what you were kind of talking about. And then maybe I think what was kind of found in the Bible where people actually had relationships.
[9:10] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I do think that this is the ultimate danger. And back to our thinking of evangelism instrumentally, is that what happens in instrumental thinking, when we think of everything as an instrument, then you lose the real people. You lose encounter with people. And I do think one of the only ways to avoid that now, and I think the beauty of this potential way to avoid it is there's a deep theological tradition of how we encounter God in it, is to try to put suffering and sorrow more as a central reality. And so if the objective is the church to journey with people, to join with people and witness how God is present in the midst of our sorrow,
[9:56] and to actually give the gift of consolation, and the gift of consolation has no instrumental end. It is just being with you in your grief. I guess what I'm trying to say is let's avoid ever making that instrumental, but there's also an inner reality to that that calls into a new reality that delivers a message, a deep message that the very God of the universe suffers with you, shares in your depth, shares in the depth of your loss, and is working to bring life out of death. And the way that the church can participate and bring that message is in the real embodied sense of walking with people in their real moments of loss.
[10:38] Do you think that that's more of a challenge these days? And I think, when I think about that, I think about that twofold. One, we seem such more atomized as a society than we have been in the.
[10:54] And I think you get at this, especially with the subtitle about the failed promise of happiness, is that we seem to be – we don't want to talk about suffering and sadness, but we talk a lot about happiness or its cousin, wellness.
[11:10] And so, I mean, how – are those the two big challenges of entering into this? I think absolutely. And one of the other kind of direct inspirations for this book is that I came across a colleague recommended this book that she had seen or her daughter had worked on it. It was a kind of popular New York Times book, but it was called The Gospel of Wellness.
[11:37] And it was written by a New York Times writer who had been writing for the Times about wellness. And for the most part, she'd been completely evangelized by wellness. You know, she was all in and doing every cleanse and every, you know, weird exercise technique, all of these stuff, all these meditation apps. And then the way she writes the book is that she says, she starts it by saying, my father died. I was all in on this and my father died and I was all alone. There was no one. There was no one who sat with me. There were no practices to be with me in this grief. She essentially says, like, my yoga instructor did not come and sit with me and pray with me in the midst of this. So I think you're really right that at kind of two levels, we've built a whole kind of cultural reality where we really just don't have time or even awareness of kind of people suffering.
[12:33] Like social media is not such a good tool for consolation. If you post on Facebook that you're in the midst of some deep struggle or that you've just lost someone important in your life, you will get a lot of emoji sad faces and cry, tear come down. But pretty much people are scrolling past it and it's gone.
[12:54] So the consolation comes as, sorry, man, hang in there or something like that. And it doesn't go much further than that. And for the most part, people are just alone. And then it just kind of projects them or pushes them to have to perform their own grief, like to have to now go back on Facebook and talk about how sad they are to win some attention in an attention economy for being really heartbroken. I mean, so it just it does not do good for us that way. And then at the other level, we just do because we're so sad. Hell-bent on being happy. And this is a unique human experience, I think, that we're in here in late modernity, where we think the highest good of human life is to be happy. And I often tell my own students, happiness is like money. If it comes into your life, don't deny it. It's good. No one should be against happiness. The last thing I would want to be as perceived as anti-happiness, I'm all for happiness. I'm all for going to the mailbox and having a check for $5 in it, anonymously given to me. If money or happiness comes into your life, be thankful, take it. But is it really worth living for? I mean, does it have a deep enough narrative to it?
[14:11] Does it connect us into something bigger to one another?
[14:16] And for the ancient Greek philosophers, they didn't think so. They did not think happiness was worth living for. Maybe you'd be lucky enough to have some in your life. And maybe when you die, you die with a sense of happiness for the life you've lived. But to aim your whole life towards happiness, they didn't think was a strong enough reality to seek. And yet most middle-class people across the West right now, their concession is they just want to be happy. I mean, all they want for their kids is just to be happy. And at one level, this drive to need to be self-fulfilled and happy makes us really quite miserable. And it also makes us not want to have anything to do with our neighbor who might be in a moment of suffering or grief because we do think their suffering and grief contaminates our happiness.
[15:06] And yet the Christian tradition to be near someone in grief is an experience of joy as much as it's an experience of sorrow and sorrow and the uh or the deepest experiences of joy in union um come from shared suffering yeah i mean one of the things that has been fascinating is, in our culture is we don't seem to i mean we do obsess a lot about happiness um and want to run away from any type of sadness. And I guess the thing that always makes me wonder is.
[15:44] Why? Why are we so obsessed with happiness? Because I think in human history, that hasn't always been the case. And I didn't wonder, is it because of things like our lives are a lot easier than, say, a century or two ago, which when life was a lot harder, death was much more constant?
[16:06] I just wonder, what is it in our that we feel like we have to be happy all the time? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I think it's a combination of things. And one is living in certain kind of forms of civilization and society that are really unique, where we can push death away, where we can forget death, that death even happens behind kind of sanitized medical institutions and things like that. And we've kind of lost the sense that you're going to die in your own home, that your family members are going to be there in the midst of that, you know, that deaths around you all the time. If you live in an agrarian society, even still today, animals are dying. You have to shoot that wolf that's trying to eat your chickens. Like, you know, there's a sense that most of us never deal with that. And the thought of even having to kill a wounded rabbit in our backyard is overwhelming to us. And we're not sure we could even do that. So part of that is true. And another part is our imaginations. And in the book, I do try to trace how we get happiness caught in our kind of cultural DNA. And I trace it back to the French late Renaissance thinker, Michel de Montaigne, who really, in his essays, tried to make this huge shift away from a kind of sense of nobility and duty, particularly to the crown or to the church, to this sense of being happy. Yourself contented.
[17:30] At home in your chateau. And so there's this kind of sense that what it means to be happy is to leave public life and be alone and be happy with yourself. And when you garden, you really garden. And when you sleep, you really sleep. So there's this kind of sense of a contentedness. And it's really fascinating because one of the great fanboys of Michelle DeMontagne was a little guy named Thomas Jefferson. And one of the reasons the pursuit of happiness finds its way into the founding documents is because Jefferson particularly is really thinking of America as a land for people like Montaigne, that we could all go to our, we could all go to our chateaus, our little farms, and we could have, and we could be, we could read and be happy.
[18:17] I mean, of course, you know, he's thinking very narrowly of who gets to do this, which is white landowners get to do this, male white landowners that get to do this. But his vision of America is a land of – this is why he has problems with Hamilton and Adams from the beginning because his view of America is a land of chateaus of happiness where people are kind of their own bosses to be nonchalantly happy. And that has filtered into our DNA that we think that what it means to really
[18:48] be happy is to be contented in this sense. And that's a pretty unique kind of reality like duty and nobility and even heroicism start to dissipate and being happy and contented starts to take more weight I think starting in the 18th century, when you talk about kind of the theology of the cross of course that leads more into about Jesus himself and talking about.
[19:21] The role of consolation, how would you see Jesus as one that really entered into that sense of ministry of consolation with people? I mean, I can think of some examples. Obviously, I'm thinking Mary, Martha, death of Lazarus, but what other examples are there out there? Yeah, well, you basically stole the one I was going to start with.
[19:45] Because it is really fascinating, especially, you know, we're recording this just right before Holy Week, or in Holy Week here, and right before Good Friday, just 48 hours, less than 48 hours before Good Friday. And there is really something interesting in that story, that Jesus grieves with him. And I don't think that's just show, but when he does say, I am the resurrection, it is next to the need to give consolation, to receive consolation, to bear the grief of this loss. Like resurrection, Jesus isn't like, eh, it's cool. Don't worry about it. You know, like this is nothing. This is just all an illusion. And I'm just going to make this all right here with my magic. It's not that at all. Like there is a deep sense of what it means to grieve here. And I think the other one in the kind of, in Luke is the road to Aramaeus, where Jesus is actually revealed to the men on the road to Aramaeus in the midst of discourses of consolation, that it's when Jesus consoles them and it leads to the meal, that when they break bread together and give conversation over consolation, that they realize that this is the resurrected Jesus Christ before them. You know, that there's this, I think, this deep sense that that text particularly points to Jesus being revealed and known in these communities of shared disappointment, the need for consolation.
[21:15] And Jesus sends those disciples back to Jerusalem to go to the disciples and to wait with them. And this is where the Spirit descends, that the Spirit really descends and starts the church as a community of consolation, living in disappointment.
[21:32] And here comes the resurrected reality, that it really comes out of this deep sense of consolation. So I'm kind of mesmerized by that element, because I think if you don't have a theology of consolation next to your theology of the cross, then your theology of the cross becomes disembodied. It becomes solely a kind of atonement theory, and it doesn't become a, to say it broadly, kind of pastoral disposition that the theology of the cross invites us to see God as active and moving with and for our neighbor who's in grief. or in need or in longing.
[22:14] Looking and reading this book, there was, for me, kind of connection points.
[22:21] The first one is one that's personal, and that was within the last year or so of my mother dying. And so I kind of understood and saw some points of a ministry of consolation that took place that was beyond just something on Facebook, but people actually entering in and doing things and coming to the funeral or things to that extent.
[22:48] And I think on the other hand, and I know that you have an interest on a lot of different TV shows, and I have not been watching as much TV as usual, but I really got into The Pit, which is on hbo max and what i'm finding out about that is how of course it takes place in an emergency room so if we're going to talk about sadness and suffering it's it's all over the place but it's also how people especially the doctors enter into that those moments especially of sadness and that it isn't all clinical. There is actual relation happening between the doctor and the patient or the doctor and the family of a patient or things to that extent that, makes me kind of wonder if there are sometimes in our culture hints of trying to point to another way that it's not just all wellness and happiness all the time.
[23:55] Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, you know, we, we, I did see a, a kind of ranking once, oh, this is probably a few years ago of professions that people trust. And what was, of course, fascinating is clergy had fallen way down the list, you know, like 20, 30 years ago, it was, it was, you know, top three. Now it's like, you know, under 10, you know, like 10, 12, 15, 20. But at the top of the list was nurse that nurse was uh uh kind of most trusted person which is also fascinating compared to doctor because doctor wasn't on there or surgeon wasn't on there and that's the one who's person who's opening up your brain and doing the surgery on it but the reason people trusted the nurse is because the nurse consoles you know like my experience of a nurse is you come in anxious about what's going on and the nurse says it's going to be okay or you know or communicates in some way as much as he or she can that they see you, that they're with you.
[24:55] Or you get the diagnosis and the nurse is the one who's like, okay, this is what you're going to do. And too often the doctor, and this is maybe a stereotype, but I think it plays out too often that the doctor really sees your body as the stage they're going to fight the disease on. And the nurse sees you as a human being who now is on a journey. And you're now on a journey with this diagnosis or you're on a journey with this illness. And there's something really beautiful about that. So I do think that this shows up again. And I think, you know, back to your point about funerals, I think one of the reasons most pastors, a lot of pastors I know would say the most meaningful thing they do is a funeral.
[25:35] And I think one of the reasons for that is because they are enacting and participating in a theology of consolation within it. And it feels incredibly important. And it is incredibly important that they are actually, with words and acts and symbols and rituals, bringing consolation and pointing to some kind of deep meaning and deeper story in the midst of this sorrow. And my guess, and I don't have any research on this, but the pastors who hate funerals are probably the pastors who make their funerals some kind of instrumental something, or they're just doing it for the money, or whatever. You know there's a lot of money in it but you know uh but the pastors who actually find it really meaningful i think whether they can name it or not is that they are they're deeply in a theology uh moving out of a theology of consolation and it becomes a kind of deep sense of realizing that they that they matter and not in a kind of narcissistic way but in a in a kind of way of of service and i think in a really really uh cruciform way.
[26:48] Yeah, I mean, I've had experiences of my own in the hospital and other experiences where the people that I really connected with were the nurses. They were the ones that, as you said, they were the ones that were consoling. And it's not that the doctors didn't necessarily care, but I think you're right. They see something to be solved. Whereas the nurse is there, they see you as a person. And that's why I've kind of always gravitated or had a lot of respect towards nurses. So I can see why that would be so high up for them. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And probably why they should be paid more. Yes. You've heard it here. Pay nurses more.
[27:43] So one question i i'm kind of curious about and you hinted this in the book and i know the book was written before or probably maybe around election time but it's really how does this book speak to our current political and cultural context as i say you kind of get at it? Because you kind of talk about things such as authenticity, and you'll also talk about the fact of, I think there's somewhere where you referenced Charles Taylor about some fear of what he would say is soft despotism.
[28:24] I will leave it to others if that's where we're at right now, but um how would you kind of speak to that how how is our current cultural and political moment kind of speaking to that sense of despair and how can the church also be, engaged in a ministry of consolation in this context yeah yeah so to me our moment and yeah this book was written. Oh gosh. Yeah. It was written well before the election. I think maybe, maybe, maybe Trump 2.0 was on the scene and starting to, starting to run again. But yeah, it was, it was, it was long before that. But I think this is, you know, deeper than just one person at play here. I mean, I think this is a whole cultural change here, but I do think one of the ways to look at our very contested, very outraged, very angry society is that it is a kind of response to a deeper...
[29:29] Existential level of sadness. And that people are just so damn angry because they are so damn sad, you know, like they are, they feel alone. And, and so everyone's a threat. And I think that we see that I think the outrage is based in the fact that, you know, I really need to know right now, are you for me or against me, and I don't really have time to listen to you. And if you become conflict for me, that just starts to radiate some kind of deeper level that you're going to be a blockage to my self-fulfillment. And if I can't fulfill myself, then I'm unhappy. And if you're not allowing me to do that, then you're the problem. And I think that's kind of the interesting dynamic here is the way happiness becomes the gauge of self-fulfillment. You know, I think there's a deeper drive than people are just obsessed with happiness. I think that is what we say and that's what we're about. But ultimately, a kind of deeper level to that is we all want to have fulfillment. We all want to have a sense of fullness in our lives. But for us late moderns, we think we have to do that ourself. So it becomes self-fulfillment. Well, one of the biggest nightmares we might have as late modern people is to getting the things that you thought would give you self-fulfillment, like that job, like that car.
[30:46] Like this lifestyle, and then realize you're not happy um and that is utterly despairing and so then we start looking around at who's to blame for that you know who who's actually keeping from that and it becomes really easy to make enemies um out of that reality and so i am this is you know like i've been a pretty big fan of charles taylor and still am of course and and he he plays a in a chapter here in this book plays a pretty significant role but i i actually uh think that it's more of a critique of taylor and and and what i mean by that critique is i think taylor was too positive that he thought this authenticity and this uh well he talks about these malaises he's worried about individualism he's worried about instrumentality which we've talked about and then he's worried about the loss of freedom or what he calls soft despotism. And I think Taylor thinks authenticity can be a better, it can keep us from falling into individualism, into a hard individualism. And we can, if we really have an ethic of authenticity, we won't, we can keep from falling into kind of despotism and instrumentality. And yet I think what Taylor didn't realize is that.
[32:07] That some of these things couldn't hold. I just don't think he could have imagined we would be at a place of – we may not be at a hard despotism like Mussolini-Franco, but we're surely at something more than a soft despotism. It is a coalescing, hardening despotism. And I think Taylor really did think authenticity could be an ethical good, but it would have to avoid certain traps that he just didn't think we would fall into, that I now think we've fallen into. For instance, assuming that he thinks, well, authenticity will hold as long as we have the commitment that everyone has a right to speak of their authenticity. Well, once we enter into a competitive landscape where we say some people can talk and other people can't, and there's a ranking of who gets to be a most authentic voice here. Well, now we've infused competition into this, and now we've entered into a kind of ranking system, and authenticity and the desire for recognition can turn on us. And so, yeah, and that all becomes political, where our politics.
[33:15] Evangelism, lifestyle evangelism, our politics become lifestyle politics. You know, it should be expressed to how my lifestyle is. That's how I choose it. And I want my politician to punish the people who make me unhappy as much as I want them to make my life better. And so it leads to this, I think, this firming despotism and this acceptance of a loss of freedom in instrumentality and authenticity potentially turning into a competitive game of, well, into a gladiator war.
[33:52] So then how does the church respond to that? Yeah. Well, I think the church responds to it by primarily engaging the world to give consolation. I mean, I think there's the humility of the cross in that sense, is to try to be called to pray for our enemies, however we want to do that, because our enemies are ones who are up against a great battle of sorrow, and Jesus Christ is for them. I mean, I think the church has to accept there's an utter offensiveness of the gospel, which is that even the people we hate, God deeply loves. You know, like, I don't know. I don't know if this is a fair thing to say, Dennis, but, you know, like, it rattles me. It rattles me at a deep core that God and the person of Jesus Christ loves Donald Trump, like adores Donald Trump. Like, that's offensive to me, and yet it is the heart of the gospel. I would love a God who hates Donald Trump as much as I have a tendency, especially when I look at my 401k, to hate Donald Trump.
[35:02] It is offensive, but the depth of the gospel that God not only likes Donald Trump, God loves Donald Trump and even looks upon Donald Trump and adores Donald Trump. That's the offensiveness of grace. And yet Jesus calls us to pray for our enemies and love our enemies. And we can only do that if we see them not as competitions in a lifestyle war, but see them as fellow human beings who are up against a great sorrow.
[35:31] And that Jesus Christ binds himself to those who are in moments of sorrow. And so if the church desires to be where Jesus Christ is, which is why else is there a church if it's not seeking to be where Jesus Christ is, then we have to be with all those who have experienced deep forms of sorrow. Whether they're from our political party or not, whether they are people pushed out of this country, or whether they are people who are doing the pushing out, that Jesus Christ binds himself to those who are up against sorrow. And there is an offensiveness to that.
[36:05] Yeah, I think you're speaking to something I've been wrestling with for a while, and it's the whole thing about praying for the president. And there are days I just like, could we pray about something like something happening to him instead of praying for him? Like a meteor coming down. Exactly, exactly. But that's not how God operates. And I think that that's something that is offensive and that is hard. And I think that that's hard for the church, especially certain parts of the church right now that on either side, that that's not what we feel that we're called to and that we're kind of called to is a game of competition.
[36:53] But it's not where God is leading. Right. Which we lose our humanity in that competition. And I think what a theology of consolation calls us back to is the humanity of our neighbor and the humanity of ourselves, and ultimately the humanity of God that brings salvation through the body of Jesus Christ.
[37:16] So... What is, and if there's something that you want people to take away from this book, when it comes to evangelism, what would it be?
[37:29] The kind of the one thing. Yeah, I think the main thing I want people to take away that continues this kind of project that I'm working on is really the power and the – well, it's a very backward kind of power, a kind of hidden power that reveals and transforms that comes through consolation. And that there is a sense that what we're called to be as Christians and as the church is to participate in what Jesus Christ is doing. And that we are called, I think, if we see evangelism in some way, I want to see it through the watchword of the church being, the Christian being, the one who follows Jesus Christ into sorrow. And when we can bear sorrow with others, there is a sacramental event where we're pulled into the working of God.
[38:25] It's interesting you use the word sacramental because I think about communion.
[38:30] And it's easy to kind of just think about communion as just an event, something that we do. Yeah. But there was also a lot of pathos and consolation in that event of the Last Supper and also then the crucifixion. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the words of institution themselves, this is my body broken for you. This is my blood poured out for you. Do this in remembrance of this sorrowful experience. To do this in remembering this last meal we have over sorrow and anxiety of the cross itself, and through that, the great hope, the overwhelming joy that what is broken is made whole, what is lost is found. I mean, that's the – if we want to call them positive emotions, the positive emotions of Christianity that is pure joy is the lost is found and the broken is made whole. And all that is taken away is given back. Like that's an incredible reality. That's something very different than if you do this and you punish those people, then you'll be happy and you'll be self-fulfilled. And, yeah, I hope what evangelism is is the invitation into that kind of sacramental move over something else.
[39:58] Do you think that people don't want to kind of deal with sadness or anxiety because they don't think that they can bear it or that they can't survive it? Well, I think two things. I think one is that we fear that it's contagious. And it may at some level be contagious to happiness, but it is not contagious to joy and union and blessing. It is the very place where it happens. So I think at a certain level, we've conceded to just take happiness over joy, over a deep kind of sense of joy. So I do think we worry that if we get too close to suffering, we'll never be able to be happy. And if we can't be happy, then we'll be terrible. But I do think there's another sense of where we just feel, well, we've been kind of formed in a way culturally that we just feel inept. Like we're not even sure what to do or what to say or how to even move our bodies when someone is in a moment of grief because so much of it is pushed away.
[41:05] And so I do think there's a sense of feeling like we're an imposter or that we just feel so awkward around it because we have very little practice of it. Which, again, could make the church's witness all the more profound that we're just the ones who walk into sorrow and are willing to bear the awkwardness and even willing to disciple our own people to not fear the awkwardness and be awkward and be present. But just be with the people. Just be with the one in sorrow because Jesus Christ is the one who is with and for us. So just be with and for. Kind of like Job's friends early on that, for days, just sat with him. Yeah.
[41:52] Yeah, yeah. And then moved awkwardly and tried to figure this thing out, and that's when things go wrong. Just be there. Yeah, when in some ways they give up a theology of consolation for an apologetic, either for God or for Job's own action, and that's when things go a bit wrong.
[42:12] So this is a kind of evangelism that isn't apologetic, that's a non-apologetic in some sense.
[42:19] That the apologetic is our lives. yeah of course this all makes me think about the movie inside out yeah you know the the kind of battle it wasn't a battle but the things between joy and sadness and you know the pivotal moment when joy has to realize that sadness is just as important and yeah and in the binding of those two they created something different and better yeah yeah and there's just something to that there's something really prophetic and profound about that i think yeah i i remember the first time i saw inside out within seeing that very reality at play and thinking yeah that there's something really really true about that but i have to confess isn't there uh inside out too now i don't know i haven't seen that i haven't seen it yet that one's intro i guess supposed to be interesting too of course of course it includes anxiety um so um i need to to check it out someday because i think it does have some something to speak but that first movie was just it was very profound it very very profound so if people um kind of want to know a little bit more and i will definitely put a link for the book um in the show notes but want to know more about you where can they go yeah probably the best place to go is uh just i have a website that is andrew.org and.
[43:46] They can head there and uh there'll be some stuff there about the book or uh other you know i'll definitely put this podcast there and other podcasts and um so maybe some other pieces about uh different stuff i'm working on will be there so that's probably the best place to to find me okay well andrew Ruth, thank you for coming back. I hope to have you back sometime soon. I'm kind of curious to see what other books you're working on, because I know you are working on another book. It's a disease. It's a disease for sure. So when that comes out, we will have you back. All right. I appreciate it. Thanks.
[44:22] Music.
[44:52] So, as is the custom, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are about the episode. How would you define evangelism? And what do you think of Andrew Root's vision of evangelism? Hopefully, that will be something that you can think about as this episode ends. If you'd like to share that opinion, please feel free to send an email. You can do so by going to churchandmain at substack.com. I will put links in for the book if you would like to purchase it. I'll also have links to a, I believe it was a 2022 episode I had with Andrew, and then also links to his podcast, When Church Stops Working, which I think is a very good podcast. The episodes are not very long, but they're very engaging. So, I hope that you will consider listening to them.
[45:53] Also, if you want to learn more about this podcast, listen to past episodes or donate, go to churchandmain.org. If you'd like to read articles that are related to this podcast, go to churchandmain.substack.com. I hope that you will consider subscribing to this podcast on your favorite podcast app. And I'd also hope that you would either leave a rating or a review. Those are pretty easy to do. When you do that, that actually helps others find this podcast. And I hope that also that you would share it with others to get the word out. So that is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. thank you so much for listening take care godspeed and i will see you very soon.
[46:47] Music.
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