Have you ever felt the tug in your heart for a deeper, more unified Christian church in America? Dennae Pierre joins me as we navigate the complex terrain of faith, confronting the cultural entrapments of individualism and consumerism. Our earnest dialogue traverses the landscape of church reformation, emphasizing the transformative power of Christ-centered love and relationships. We delve into the importance of unity and reconciliation within the church, unraveling the threads of identity that often divide us, and weave a tapestry of fellowship bound by the gospel's message of love and freedom.
This episode is more than just a conversation; it's a spiritual examination of the virtues that define Christian life. Patience, kindness, and forgiveness are not just words in our lexicon but the fabric of a relationship crafted by the Holy Spirit. Through stories of personal growth and the embrace of Christ's inclusive ministry, we highlight the gospel's call to welcome the marginalized and balance the scales of biblical and social justice. Join us as we reflect on the subtle yet profound impact of relational ethics in our journey towards spiritual maturity and the rich community life it fosters.
We wrap up this soul-stirring episode by confronting the challenges of Christian engagement in a world marked by division. We probe the intricate role of a multi-ethnic church in downtown Phoenix facing issues like foster care, immigration, and incarceration. The conversation evolves to include gender equality in church leadership, celebrating the diverse interpretations of scripture while uniting under the banner of Christ's love. Together with Dennae, we invite you to partake in a prayerful movement, guided by the Holy Spirit, to live out a faith that is as visible as it is vibrant.
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Have you ever felt the tug in your heart for a deeper, more unified Christian church in America? Dennae Pierre joins me as we navigate the complex terrain of faith, confronting the cultural entrapments of individualism and consumerism. Our earnest dialogue traverses the landscape of church reformation, emphasizing the transformative power of Christ-centered love and relationships. We delve into the importance of unity and reconciliation within the church, unraveling the threads of identity that often divide us, and weave a tapestry of fellowship bound by the gospel's message of love and freedom.
This episode is more than just a conversation; it's a spiritual examination of the virtues that define Christian life. Patience, kindness, and forgiveness are not just words in our lexicon but the fabric of a relationship crafted by the Holy Spirit. Through stories of personal growth and the embrace of Christ's inclusive ministry, we highlight the gospel's call to welcome the marginalized and balance the scales of biblical and social justice. Join us as we reflect on the subtle yet profound impact of relational ethics in our journey towards spiritual maturity and the rich community life it fosters.
We wrap up this soul-stirring episode by confronting the challenges of Christian engagement in a world marked by division. We probe the intricate role of a multi-ethnic church in downtown Phoenix facing issues like foster care, immigration, and incarceration. The conversation evolves to include gender equality in church leadership, celebrating the diverse interpretations of scripture while uniting under the banner of Christ's love. Together with Dennae, we invite you to partake in a prayerful movement, guided by the Holy Spirit, to live out a faith that is as visible as it is vibrant.
JOIN OUR NEW ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORM!
ENTER CODE - 75ULC2023 for 75% off!
Hello and welcome to the brand new American Reformation Podcast. We long to see the wider American Christian Church fall more in love with Jesus by learning from the practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication. We want to hear from you, make sure you comment and leave a review, wherever you're watching or listening, to tell us what God is doing in your life or how you feel about today's conversation. Lord, have your way in us. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray, wherever you're taking this conversation in today. I pray that the joy of Jesus, his love, his affirmation over you you are the beloved Claimed by him in the waters of baptism. You do not need to fear the future. You have a God who holds you now and forever in the palm of his hand. He's not letting go. Today I get the privilege of hanging out with a sister in Christ that I met right when I came to Christ Greenfield over a decade ago, and Denae Pierre. She is a leader of the city to city global church planning movement, as well as a an organization called surge, which our congregation is partnered with over the last decade or so in just lifting our eyes up and out to see the wider kingdom work that the Holy Spirit is accomplishing in the greater Phoenix area. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. Denae, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Great, it's wonderful to be with you, as always.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Likewise privilege is mine. So opening question on this podcast how are you praying for Reformation in the American Christian church today, especially in light of? You get to see kind of all different sides of the church. That's what I'm excited about for you. You've rolled in a lot of different streams of the American Christian church, so how are you praying for Reformation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know I've been joking or not joking, but there's truthfully saying with, with, with the people laughing at me, that my biggest prayer is that the church would be co-opted for Jesus, that it would just be so clear that the thing that holds us together is a deep, abiding action of love for Christ, and that would visibly look like us being able to see all parts of the body of Christ as brothers and sisters, so that we would see anyone who follows Jesus, any tradition, as belonging to the same body that we do.
Speaker 3:You know, I think also that very much would then look like the church visibly living in such a distinct way from the culture that we're part of, but also in friendship with the culture, so able to affirm the beauty and the good that's all around us. But also, just, you know, we have a lot of challenges in the US, whether it's incredible individualism and consumerism, the ways that polarization, nationalism, racial divisions, economic challenges are in the culture devices, but sadly, in the church and that's probably what concerns me the most that the church would be able to have the ability to live into deep union and reconciliation with each other and have eyes to really see and care, even if there's differences in how to get there. There would be a shared, passionate desire to center the most vulnerable beliefs among us as core to showing hospitality to Jesus and living into our faith. So that goes tend to be the things that I have long for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is it about the human condition? And then, as people start to organize the church, what is it about us that wants to find our center in things other than Jesus? I think this is one of Satan's biggest ploys. Right, and you can throw out virtue signaling on this type of a Christian because we do these types of things or we stand for these respective causes, many of which are biblical. But what I've found a lot of times today is that we end up organizing around the law and then distinguishing ourselves law and gospel and Lutheran. So law and gospel distinction is a big deal for us. Right, we organize ourselves around the law, but there's no freedom in the law, like it's just a ball and chain, even if it's a good thing. But then our hearts are trying to distinguish ourselves as better than another brother or sister, someone maybe even outside the faith created in the image of God, rather than just focusing on Jesus, the affection of Christ for us and for the world, just talk about that desire to prove ourselves according to the law Donne.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you see Christ again and again in the Gospels. The New Testament come back to being controlled by fear or love, and I think that fear and the spirit of religion asks us to seek out. We all want a tribe, a place to belong, a community to know that we're not alone in the world and in the midst of fear, especially anxiety, we're looking for our people, that we're not the only ones, that we're not going to be left out, and I think that a lot of times that happens is no matter where you are. So people who have the most passionate disagreements can both show up in the spirit of religion, looking to an in-group to give them their identity, and therefore you have an enemy that you point to as the adversary.
Speaker 3:And yet we see scripture talk about our war is not against flesh and blood, it's powers of principalities, but the structures and systems we set up to protect and to help us maintain a sense of community safety. Equilibrium quickly takes on the powers of principalities that are about protecting us and our people from outsiders, which, of course, the gospel comes up against in every single way. And so we look at what it means to be controlled by love and there being no fear and love. Then we are able to be drawn to people radically different than us, even our enemies, and with this completely different organizing way of being relationally with one another. And then we're not looking to religion, shared traditions, shared theology to give us a shared identity, to protect our group, but these become important gifts to the broader community.
Speaker 3:So we're not like saying, okay, well, let's just be so vanilla that we all kind of just believe very, very broadly, broadly, in something that kind of encompasses all parts of the body of Christ, like we want your distinctions, your views, your culture, your theology, but within a spirit of love that has the ability to have deep, abiding friendship with each other and love towards the world and move towards our enemies. And so I think those two things, and I just think human nature again they get, no matter what religion you're part of, no matter what type of human history, the waves of society, culture evokes such anxiety and fear of what's changing, who's against us, who's going to take away our rights, who's going to trample us. And we just see Christ again and again call us to a different path, to the path of physicality, to death, and that his spirit would then allow us to experience this incredible love for the world.
Speaker 2:Well, that's it, Dene. It's a Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3:What's the?
Speaker 2:role of the Holy Spirit. I mean, I'm a part of a tradition that is very Christocentric, and that's a very, very good thing. Right, jesus is the center point of all of human history, and yet Jesus enters into our broken reality. This is probably being aired in the season of Christmas. Moving into epiphany, he takes on flesh for us, but when his ministry starts, the spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and he hears the declaration you are my beloved son, I'm proud of you. I've ever been around here. Listen to him. If Jesus needed the power of the Holy Spirit, how much more so do we? You know Gary Kineman.
Speaker 2:Gary's a leader here locally, and he talked about the difference between the spirit in us and the spirit upon us. I don't know if you've ever heard that kind of wrestle, but I found it theologically very, because it wasn't like the Holy Spirit was apart from Jesus. I mean, he was conceived in the Holy Spirit, right. But then there was this descending of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at baptism which mobilized him for this mission of love and care, the fearless call from his father to go and then multiply disciples who would carry on when the Spirit fell upon them at Pentecost, crossing over all of these cultural divides just in an audacious way. And then you look at the book of Acts and it is the church crossing all of these former boundaries that you can't, that's not, it's not for them, and it's going all the way back to that call at the very beginning from Genesis, chapter 12, for Abraham to be a light to the nation. So just talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in our move toward unity and love rather than fear and control.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just gonna talk off the top of my head because I'm definitely not a Holy Spirit theologian.
Speaker 3:No, no, no but you know, I mean I've thought a lot recently, especially the last. I mean, yeah, I've thought a lot recently as we've walked through multiple different at this point, six, seven years of different types of division, conflict, brokenness at all scales. My husband and I are ministering downtown Phoenix. It could be a couple that's buried, just falling apart in his office. It could be a church conflict that has elder teens in division with each other. It could be citywide, where there's. So it doesn't matter the scale, there's these similar patterns that show up, and I just thought so much that the Holy Spirit in the Trinity seems to be this bonding agent between the Father and the Son and the way in which God's desire for, yeah, the Father and Son's desire for one another and the Spirit's drawing and holding and interconnecting, and the three in one concept seems to be in our own journeys with Christ as well. They're doing with each other. The Spirit is drawing us to Christ, drawing us to be awakened to our union within, stirring our affections for the Father and even reorienting how the Father's voice actually sounds, compared to how we might think it sounds, and so I think that the Holy Spirit in us there's this.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of mystery around what that means.
Speaker 3:But practically, when you look at the epistles and you look at the Just if you just were to go through and write down all the lists that Paul gives us around how to behave towards one another these aren't moralistic do this, don't do that, don't get drunk, do Tie.
Speaker 3:But it's not. I mean, when you read it just plainly you could interpret it that way. But I actually think these are relational ethics to allow us to walk in step with the Spirit. And when we don't do them, when we're not patient, when we're not kind, when we don't believe the best, when we don't forgive, when we slander, when we do all these things, we are grieving the Holy Spirit and in us and in the union that we have with one another. And so I think a lot of times that our lack of spiritual maturity and depth tends to treat the Holy Spirit just like an experience that we would get to enjoy, when really the purpose of it is to move us towards one another and the Christ in the other. I don't know if that's exactly what you're talking about, but I just think yeah, I know, I'm good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just think that there's this deep need for us to be in such communion with Christ that the very way in which we behave towards one another, not for moralistic reasons but for the full breath of what it means to receive the blessings of Christ if he's poor, so so the the practice of being patient at the fruit of the spirit it like having the spiritual muscle of patience developed is challenging, but experiencing the fruit of it in a relationship that you've been engaged in has been really difficult for six or ten years. It's, it's heavenly like when you get to taste that, and I just don't know that we've really thought through the Holy Spirit as being the trainer of our, of our souls and our relational practices, which means it just kind of stays surface. We have this great experience. You know me and Jesus, my music, my cup of coffee, but it's not like deeply forming us in ways that are leading to this abundance route. That tastes and smells like heaven.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, man, you drop. Patience connected with the Holy Spirit? Dene, I don't. I think the Holy Spirit is the comforter, and patience, the root of patience, is Latin to suffer with, and the Holy Spirit is the only one and it is just Expectation for the future. There's, there's a coming day of, of hope. That's what, in our tradition, what Advent is all about, right, the recognition Christ came and Christ is going to to come again. And now you have the comforter who helps you be Patiently waiting, as well as patient with each other through the crosses, through the suffering, through the trials of life. That is just the way it is. But man, aren't humans so prone to? I want to reject suffering trial. Give it to me. Give it to me now.
Speaker 2:You've entered into a number of different conflicted Spaces and I'll let you just kind of share a little bit of your, your story, respecting, obviously, confidentialities for those who listen to this, but God's given you that ability to connect people, and One of the I'll throw it out one of the Areas where I think you walk through struggle was this justice conversation. What is biblical justice look like? And the social justice gets thrown out, and it was just so conflated, so polarizing Today. So how would you, as we enter into maybe a an area of Conversation where we're gonna need to rely on the Holy Spirit here today, how would you help us understand social justice and biblical justice today and even tell a little bit of your work Then, with surge, if, if you, it's good.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, you know, I saw I was born and raised in West Phoenix. My family emigrated from Honduras, of my mom's side of the family, so she was born there and by the time I was born on my all her family was here in the wet and most of family was here. And so what's interesting about the way that the whole Conversations been framed politically and at a national scale of conversations Is that it's such an, it's such a like idea, it's a frame in a way that you can. You can pick a side and debate at a dining room table, dining room table. But I think that what's so beautiful about what Christ does in the gospel is he's walking around and pumping in, you know, bumping in, or pursuing or inviting the least and the overlooked into Communion at his at a dining room table, reclining with, you know, wealthy people, people who are In positions of influence or power or kind of the tax-collecting middle middleman and and there's just this Relational approach that never lets you put someone in a box. And so Because I was, you know, kind of coming up through the church and engaging in At the time, initially it was really working with birth parents who were in the foster care system.
Speaker 3:So we're a multi-ethnic church in downtown Phoenix. We are seeing families in our in a neighborhood just down south from us that we've spent a lot of time in be impacted by the foster care system and All kind, because we were so proximate and embedded in these families lives. The challenges and the justice issues Were so complex and it wasn't like you could just point to one person. You could have a caseworker who Really dropped the ball, but if you really sat with the caseworker it was a hundred systemic reasons way beyond her control or the judges control. It's just the complexity was so overwhelming. But I think it allowed us to See from all these different angles and engage to advocate to make things better. I think you know similar with immigration Challenges and church members who aren't documented and how do we kind of walk through this Individually, love them and care them, but then like if there's a court hearing or if there is kind of a law that needs that that's gonna be Decided on, that massively impact, impacts Someone who's not documented or people who've been impacted by incarceration. So kind of just like administering in a particular context if you're working with it doesn't put you into one issue for all the issues, right, because they're all interconnected.
Speaker 3:And so what we began to see, what I began to notice as 2016 was really probably two or three years into growing Division around how do Christians engage? And we were bringing together as surge, pastors from very different contexts suburbs, urban, inner city, majority, you know, white evangelical churches, which would kind of be what a lot of the traditional Domination that are that had been connected to surge would be. If you walked into their church would be 90%, either because of where they live or their tradition right, and their theological tradition, I mean, or, and then we would have churches that were historic African-American, hispanic, spanish-speaking churches. So we were beginning to bring this mashup of people together and and I don't know that people fully appreciated I think we knew it was rare and unique, but in the scope of the nation, we were seeing something a lot more mature and more relationally deep than other places. And so, as Politically, things began to heat up on the national stage and pastors began to get challenges in their own congregations, people went to put opinions to free ideas and language began to be described oh that's, that's woke, or that's Social justice or that's, you know, and there's arguments no, this is a biblical justice. And there's all these papers being written, journal articles, and I would just say, like if you're in Proximity relationship and walking with friends who are impacted by poverty and mental health and you know generational Poverty and housing policies that are hundreds of years old, that are still impacting rents today, like if that's a A mom sitting next to you at church with her three kids Um, it isn't so simple to say which box do you fit into now?
Speaker 3:Well, now, the temptation in me, though, was, as things heated up, was to look out the broader landscape and hear the language of the people group. I was drawn to and to identify with them, because I shared so much of their Language, their ideas and policies, how to make changes I mean never a hundred percent for anyone, but in the, in the midst of fighting and seeing sides, for I'm like, oh, I'm far more this group versus that group, or, if I have to pick, I'm gonna pick that, and I think, I think we have to, as, as leaders, train ourselves and our church members to recognize that internal pull to identify with a people group as opposed to the body of Christ, because the body of Christ is going to require identify with people, whose, whose ideas of how to impact my end. Might some of my family members who might up yeah, documented may actually be an act of Harm, like it might actually be their decisions or language or Facebook posts there, their advocacy Politically may actually hurt Someone in my family. We've seen it, we've experienced it. And yet my internal pull, that tribe that I want to help me feel less afraid and more safe, is going to look to a broader group that shares my political identity or my language or my ideology or my philosophy, and there has to be a spiritual practice to say no, I'm going to root deeper in Christ and deeper in union with my brothers and sisters and practice the relational practices to be one not just to dialogue.
Speaker 3:We do need to love our neighbors. We do need to address the issues on the Jariff Road and make sure someone's taking care of these hospital bills for that person that got wounded. Like there's actual, like present care for those who are hurting and systemic care. That has to happen, but never at but never. It has to happen through my lived practice of embodied forgiveness, union with my brothers and sisters, speaking truth and love, believing the best, hearing their story, sharing my story, not just fighting but also saying hey, let's engage in this together.
Speaker 3:And so I would say how that's been held, with also saying and it doesn't mean I'm going to stop and wait Like if someone's hurting and there's issues that need to be addressed, as a Christian I want to advocate, if I'm going to be dismissed because that fits into your box of whatever you think is evil politically, then I'm going to show up and when I'm around you, try to engage and love you. I can't stop what I'm doing, which I do think is another mistake we can make, where we think our whole job is just to have everyone get along Like well, that doesn't make our neighbors worse, just us. Spending all of our time in a church trying to get all these people to get along Doesn't act, doesn't necessarily, it can't, but it doesn't necessarily produce a better a city that's flourishing. So whatever that tension which is why you need the Holy Spirit right, like whatever that tension is between those things of walking in love who are primarily identified with, and how we then behave towards each other, outsiders and enemies, I think is key and massive.
Speaker 2:Oh, Dene, so much there. Thanks for articulating the tension of living out the truth and love in a beautiful way. And I'm drawn to the book of Galatians a lot recently and it's Paul's kind of you think of Romans. Dene is kind of his magnum opus, kind of theological treatise. But then Galatians is this raw and gritty book about Jews wanting their social custom, circumcision in this case, to kind of be something that's put upon the Gentiles and the Apostle Paul opposes it says I oppose Peter and then James, brother of Jesus, to their faces because they were putting on these heavy burdens of the law.
Speaker 2:Paul's call was always for the nations, that Jew and Gentile. His mission now was to the Gentile and yet at the very end, so you got the fruit of the Spirit they get talked about in Galatians 5, at the very end he says something that's just magnificent and in so much as it relies upon you, live at peace with everyone, especially those within the body of Christ. And he said all of these very hard words and then he goes and remember that I have on my body the marks of Christ. He's kind of there's this very human reality. I'm suffering for this, I'm walking that middle way, you could say, or carrying the cross of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:And so some of you actually may be very upset with what I said. You may come from a Jewish background and you may even want to take my life. He's kind of saying don't do that, I care for you, I love you, I'm going to walk in unity with you and I pray, based on how you've seen me live my life, that you can receive these harder words, Any clarity around the Apostle Paul and his journey and how that kind of helps us walk biblically faithful and yet never compromise. And then I'm drawing to 1 Corinthians 13, which is a live verse. I mean, if you understand all of these mysteries and you don't have love, you're a clanging gong. I think that's the tension you're trying to articulate. Is that right, Denay?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think, live at peace with everyone. I think you know I'll just speak to pastors and leaders directly because I've been working with for a while is, I do think the pastorate draws people who have stories of brokenness where making peace as a diplomat or a middleman or a, let's negotiate and like lowest common, let's just like, let's just get along. You know it's like, whatever the anxiety is in the system, let's just, let's just get along, even if it means overlooking the, the most vulnerable in our midst or those who are bleeding and wounded and hurting and need us to take action, which I don't think is what Paul was saying. But I think I think there is a radical call to live at peace by walking that. First, maybe the 13 passage, moving to look at the sermon on the mount, even the ways in which we engage our enemies, and so I think I think I think there's a real important moment that we've I think God has kindly brought the church through the last eight years and we're going to probably have eight to 30 more years of it intense, intense conflict, where you can't, as a pastor, keep the peace in a congregation or keep the peace just by dialog and talking about it and, looking at it for every angle, it's like we actually have to move away from talking and walk like follow in Christ steps and where did Christ go? And that's how we're going to keep, that's how we will be good news people and invite people to to thank what's you know, a feasting around peace, right, and I kind of just think that that is the, the call to be able to live at peace in ways that that gets really silent about justifying ourselves and the actions that we take, always submitting to a community, a community of people to look at, to ask questions, to walk with us, but not needing to just kind of continue to dialogue and debate and argue and advocate for our position, but really to say, hey, let's invite you to join us in this walk with Christ and this journey of of peacemaking as we go to the people you most, you seem to most despise based on your rhetoric, your language and and that's in all directions you know some people that's in more politically.
Speaker 3:You know in our American context, maybe politically conservative spaces like what does it mean to embed yourselves with progressives that you disagree with and really go love your neighbors a little bit better together, and some of the, you know, justice spaces, advocacy spaces that have a lot of hurt towards religion or whatever. Like what does it mean to engage and practice nonviolent communication and enemy love and like walk with Aunt you know, aunt Betty, who is watching TV shows that you can't stand and using language you don't like? Like what does it mean to actually like know her heart and love her and walk with her so that when I think of like live at peace, it is not a neutral position but a very active faith? That I think we have very little. We have a lot of work to do to develop those kind of skills.
Speaker 2:Well, it's all about relationship and time and trust across whatever the spectrum. Spectrum may be politically, spiritually, et cetera. And pastors would I'm praying for?
Speaker 3:yeah, go ahead, denay, feel free to let in and attentionality that we will naturally drift towards people who agree with us and actually resist those who don't.
Speaker 2:And pastors just to land that plane. I'm praying for pastors who are confident in who Jesus has made them and then remarkably humble to engage, to engage struggles that are around them within their congregation. You know, if a pastor is overly passive, they're probably going to be just more internally focused and just caring for the sheep. But that's not the way the good shepherd Jesus led. He always moved us up and out into spaces that were uncomfortable. He continues to do that today. So I'm praying for pastors who are better handling conflict and the conflict starting within, not wanting to upset the apple cart and then to cross into spaces and people groups that are. That are where Jesus would go the least. The loss, the lonely, the hurting, the marginalized, and those who even share different, different worldviews, different ideologies, different political persuasions that we would listen twice as much as we speak. I'm so grateful for you, so help us. Shifting to another topic here, I'm Danai. Are you called in your tribe or are you called? You're ordained as a pastor, right?
Speaker 3:No, you're not.
Speaker 2:You're not Okay. Well, I want to speak to women's leadership.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if you were or not, but our tribe, doesn't the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod have women pastors per se. We have women in various leadership roles and we base that largely on the order of creation argument Adam first. Jesus took flesh as a man and I'm not trying to debate at all though some in our tribe would love to debate but help us understand from scripture how some denominations make the case not just for women's ordination but for women in leadership roles in general.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's a big question so I'll say you know, just as a case study. So I'll do this really quickly. Yeah, my husband is part of a tradition and network and his theological belief would be all people in leadership, men and women. But yeah, when it comes to elderlying ordination, that's male Elder, probably similar to I would assume. Similar, yeah, complementary frameworks that is what the word we would use that your tradition would have.
Speaker 3:I was an Assembly's, a God minister, heading towards ordination when we met and we married and so I have existed in a complementary church with a broader, much broader interpretation of what I think women biblically can do. And then I've been serving with a network that has a crossover with Phoenix. In general is we have very, a lot more of my East Coast churches that I work with would have a lot of women ministers and egalitarians would be the other word that's used, but not Phoenix just has very little of that. And so, just to kind of go back to the earlier conversation, this is an issue that there has been such passionate division on, where complementary and church to say it's a gospel issue, which is kind of a divisive way to position egalitarians, and egalitarians will say it's a justice issue which can kind of be demeaning and not really often, but not really like nuance, and that's a couple of Ontarians, so I will. I just kind of always gone back to what does it mean to live in union and to allow each other to wrestle with these important decisions and then and then flesh them out in ways that reflect the body of Christ and respecting that.
Speaker 3:Different traditions, different hermeneutics are going to land you in different places, and if we're all trying to be faithful to scripture and this is an area that the church has been historically divided on or different, also different then could it possibly be that how we hold that tension together could be a beautiful witness to Christ. And so the networks I lead locally and nationally have complementary and egalitarian pastors. We've got pastors who don't ordain women in their churches, supporting female church planters and other denominations. There's a lot of these things happening in Phoenix that are very unique, that I'm very proud of. So that's just backdrop, I think I'll. Secondly, I would say the way that I can't necessarily I think you're asking me to give, to explain biblically why people think so. I think you're saying like we state the question in terms of like I love it Theologically.
Speaker 3:are you asking me I?
Speaker 2:mean for women, because we have. We have women in a variety of different leadership roles and we have deaconesses, we have educators in our tribe, but we've kind of drawn the line at ordination as being the male role right.
Speaker 2:So help us understand those that may say well, there could be a little bit more of an open understanding of ordination. Yeah, let me. Let me give this caveat for those of you who are very conservative LCMS, lutherans. I am not personally making this argument. I'm just asking this question so that we can understand more more deeply.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I'll use my, let me just I can't necessarily unpack that well, partly because I told you about my marriage and we spent, I think, the first eight years reading. I think he read every possible book imaginable. He's a high, he's very intellectually wired. I'm like, how do we just figure this out and love each other? And you know, and I read plenty, but that's not my.
Speaker 3:My strength would not be ever arguing for specific positions. But I'll say two things. The one is there's two conversations that get meshed together. That I think is really, really important for it. I'll just speak to women directly who have a burden and calling and longing to minister, to teach, to preach, to vocationally engage in these things.
Speaker 3:One is theological how do you understand scripture and where does that in the existing structures we have? What does it mean, right? So we just have to honor and respect the different hermeneutics and how people hold their Bibles together and interpret it, that if people are taking the Bible seriously. So I could spend two hours with you and give you my position on why I think women can preach and it's great to have. We shouldn't have all male anything. I think I can give a lot of well, I think, five hours talking about that, maybe five days, but but but at the end of the day it's I have. If we're all taking scripture seriously and we know that about each other, we have to respect that. It's not just like, oh you're, you don't care about the Bible or you're a sexist. I know like this is how we understand within our hermeneutics what it means to live this out a church having mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters faithfully, and it's so complex, based on your ecclesiology, how you structure what, what roles, different habits, is very complicated. So I think that's one that we have to live in the tension of all the time.
Speaker 3:The other one that I think is far more important is the way in which the existing systems and structure and the American church is just massively harmful to women in its lack of, in its blind spots to what we've described as Christian leadership or pastoring, and it's really just a hyper male, american kind of like picture that not even all male leaders fit into. That, I just think is harmful for the whole body. So there is. You know, I've been the only woman in all male pastor settings for two decades and each time over time, lots of women end up, end up there, usually the first three to five years. It's just me and it's. It's mad. It's been massively toxic and harmful and and just and just, I don't even think godly at times, because all male settings don't have the ability to even see what's cultural, what's what's just kind of like our, like our locker room culture that we've now Christianized and we call it this is bro club of pastors, and we love it. We get to hang out with our bros, but like there's no women here actually helping us engage with mission. So that would be that's the bigger thing where I think my, my hope is always to untangle the conversation so say, okay, your theology does not actually determine how you treat me as a sister in Christ and what it means to relate to me as a, as a woman who has gifts to offer and to work with. And so I, so many of the women I work with, I just kind of say the for me personally, I'm like I I don't.
Speaker 3:I've spent a lot of my early years fighting, advocating, pushing, trying to help people see what they're not seeing blind spots and I do think that God has used that.
Speaker 3:I also just don't want to fight anymore.
Speaker 3:So I'm like you know, there's actually something very kingdom and beautiful about serving where we can serve, and those who are in positions of power half or leadership like are like elders have to be radically curious and uncomfortable all the time with how their structures may cause that, how their structures and their own cultural blind spots may cause them to overlook high quality women who would never make it to the table.
Speaker 3:I am only in the room doing all these roles in different places because there's about this, two different brothers, christian brothers who have intentionally opened doors for me over the last two decades and that's out of hundreds and over time I think in the leadership spaces we've seen differences, but those two brothers had not, like come down to where I was and not seen me as a secretary or treated me like one, and allowed me to really have substantial leadership way before I was even ready, and then helped me through all the different translation and cultural challenges.
Speaker 3:I never would have been able to be in these roles and I wouldn't. I didn't have the muscles to even like hold it well because it was so hard, and so I think I think pastors really have if you're in an all male setting, you've got to be very intentional to go look for sisters in Christ and bring them in. And all the barriers. You know all the fear, all the risks, all the rules that keep us out of the room. We've got to be very intentional about working around them and creating new pathways.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for being you and for your courage and staying in the conversation and using your gifts beautifully. We have many female leaders within our church body who share your sentiments and I'm praying for those that listen and have areas of influence that you would, men, be one of the two of the hundred I just heard you say within the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate who would recognize the gifts of the entire body of Christ, women and men, and invite them into the room Right now. Some of our struggles within our tribe today, I think, can partially be attributed to the Brose Club that you were talking about and the power dynamics that are there when it's all men in a room rather than and what I've heard in this conversation, what I've known to be true and over the years as I've listened and read you the sensitivity of inviting many different people with many different gifts to be present. And that is the female voice generally, right, and that has that sensitivity, that necessity to create safety, and we need one another, right. The male voice and I'm speaking very generally here is more.
Speaker 2:You know, let's go, take it, get it done, drive, do it. You know, and it's amazing, just rounding back to Jesus, how he speaks and lives with both of those voices consistently, doesn't he? He models, and how counter-cultural it was for Jesus to have invited many, many women to the table. And then the first evangelist, or apostle to the apostles is Mary, as she goes back, and Martha, too, going back. We've seen the Lord, right, we've seen the Lord, and these guys, they don't. Yeah, just go off on that.
Speaker 3:Well, besides John, the beloved the most, his most intimate relationships are women at the foot of the cross, his mother Mary, women who were ministering to him, watching his feet with tears, and I just, in a system and a structure no matter how you interpret it, whether he chose only 12 men or could only have male disciples he has intentionally included female disciples in the broader community and given them roles, been in relationship, interdependent with them, and so I think that what's happened with there being such a lack of female presence. Leadership is that those who can get to the table might have to push and fight, and there's something that in me wasn't developing in my spiritual development and my leadership, because I was doing that work. Now, other things developed that were really great in resiliency and skills I wouldn't have developed had it had been easy for me. But when you have to be a prophet, you don't get to be a creator. When you have to advocate for all women, you don't get to build and innovate and design out of a way that you that you might if you didn't have to, to kind of be the agitator. And so there's been, I think, a growing desire for me to see more depth in women being able to have a sense of confidence of who Christ has called us to be, so that when we show up in these spaces and we feel the need to be prophetic or the all of that, that we, there's just a real deep wisdom in the sermon to know what to say when and to just live into our callings to create and cultivate community, no matter what it's called, what it's named, what's resisted, that we and when we feel the internal hurt, the tiredness, the erosive, you know, feeling of being the challenger or that, whatever those are, that instead of it just being about the system which is quite very well true, we let that be an invitation for us to have deeper knowing of God and ourself and who we are and who he is.
Speaker 3:Similarly, I would mirror that to the brothers is when we say well, we have, you know, often they'll say to me we don't have women ready to step into that role. Or I would hire women, but she or that woman's a great leader, but she's really struggles here and here. Well, when you've been in that, when the environment is what it is, you don't necessarily have the same full. You know you're, yeah, you're going to have to be very intentional to meet people where they're at and let them experience that, that healing and that growth, and let their, their presence bring healing and growth to your own system and structure.
Speaker 3:And that's one thing I really respect about how my husband Vermon has led Roosevelt as an elastic 16, 17 years each female leader, or even as a person from a different culture, who's who's come in to our existing space. You know I'll I'll look at you later and see how the entire team meeting the, there's all these little things that begin to adapt and change based on that new person's presence and wanting them to be able to contribute. And I think that that has to be. You know, we can't just plop in a different culture or different gender, different age person into existing community and say, okay, the community has to stay the thing, you have to adapt. But we've got to say there's a reciprocity. That has to happen. That's part of our all growing up into the fullness, the full maturity of Christ.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for just sharing vulnerably the the wrestle right now and thanks for staying engaged as a gifted leader with lots to offer, to shape, to challenge appropriately and yet to do so with a spirit of of love. Final, final. I could ask you so many other things. What let me? Let me allow you to brag on surge a little bit and and what Jesus is doing with surges. We close.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, man. So Surge has been organized as this, as this really is a movement of brothers and sisters in Christ, different churches, different denominations, who really are giving a lot of their time and energy to being a leadership of a vision, of a city movement. We want every church member and everyone who identifies as a Christian in Arizona to see their life as making Jesus visible, individually and collectively. And so the thing I'm most excited about is there's probably 20, 30 leaders probably maybe 50, who are giving weekly, monthly time leadership to the vision of mission and a lot of places that not as quote, unquote Surge, the nonprofit, but as Jesus followers. And so I'm really encouraged by what's happening in Arizona, way beyond Surge. There's different partners and all kinds of different city movement spaces, evangelism and campus ministry and public schools, foster care. But I'm just like man and it's just sweet friendship and respect happening.
Speaker 3:So I would say, just more than Surge, what's happening in Arizona, this burden for unity and Christian witness is really encouraging. And then, with Surge specifically, the ability to really help churches make disciples and think through what it means to be a holistic disciple in every part of their life. That we're 16 years in, as we've got several thousand church members now who've been through our different training programs and to see visibly businesses, non-profits, buildings, houses like, visibly see government positions. This guy was telling me Sunday he's got a job advocating for water policy and how eight years ago Surge really shaped that his whole trajectory. And just to think that we have people actively thinking through the future of water in Arizona through this gospel lens of yeah, it's really powerful and so I'm very thankful and I would just always love more prayer for us to be discerning what the Spirit's saying, quick to repent and align with God's vision for us in our lives and that we walk in the Spirit.
Speaker 2:This has been so much fun. Dene, thank you for your generosity of time, your spirit, the gift that you are, the friend that you are to me. I have to say this just to give just high respect to you. When I entered into the valley as a pastor, I came from Denver, I came from kind of a city movement environment, and when I met you I was like, oh, here she gets me and she gets what the Holy Spirit is up to in the city.
Speaker 2:And I don't just want to be a suburban pastor, I want to be a part of seeing what God is doing, celebrate what God is doing across the entire city of Phoenix. When I met you, we wouldn't have probably started La Mesa, apart from recognizing, hey, there's a huge need for the lower income, the hurting and the marginalized, those who are identified as kids in the kingdom of God, not as just homeless individuals, but those that are experiencing homelessness and addiction and poverty and despair. And we're really close right now at Dine to opening up the first tiny house community in the state of Arizona, in partnership with a whole bunch of different networks. And so, serge, you may not know it, but the ripple impact of Serge when I entered in here is having a radical kingdom impact. So praise be to Jesus. If people want to connect with you, dine, how can they do so?
Speaker 3:And Serge Website surgenetworkcom, and I think there's an email address for me somewhere on there, but I'm not. Yeah, my name is Unique, so it's easy to find me.
Speaker 2:So for me yeah, D-E-N-N-A-E for sure. This is the American Reformation Podcast. Sharing Is caring. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in podcasts like this, Greatly appreciate it and we promise to continue to have compelling conversations that stretch us, that open us up to what the Holy Spirit is doing all around us. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thanks so much, Dine.
Speaker 3:You're free to be with me, thank you.