Disrupt Church: The Podcast

0:00:13 - (Rev. Peggy): So what is it that we want to do? What's the point of this episode? Let's start there.
0:00:21 - (Jil): We want to discuss what it means to employ a citizen model. What does that look like in churches? Am I right?
0:00:29 - (Rev. Peggy): I mean, yes. And I think we want to talk about subject. Consumer, citizen. Right. So it's really the shifting for me, that's interesting. Like the places where things change, where we recognize who we are and why it doesn't work and then move ourselves into something that works better. So it's like the transition spaces that I find really generative.
0:00:59 - (Jil): Totally.
0:01:00 - (Rev. Peggy): Yep.
0:01:01 - (Rev. Peggy): It's almost like the changing itself is what becomes generative. So that's part of it. But also that the consumer model doesn't work for us at all anymore.
0:01:09 - (Jil): Right.
0:01:09 - (Jil): And when we were talking at General assembly and it definitely, I think that was the thing that resonated the most strongly with everyone who was listening in. Was that shifting? I think there was a recognition of like, oh, wait, where do we fit? I think a lot of folks in the room saw that their churches are fitting not in a citizen model, but very much a consumer mindset. And I think a lot of people didn't realize.
0:01:38 - (Rev. Peggy): Right.
0:01:38 - (Jil): That's sort of the root of a lot of issues.
0:01:43 - (Rev. Peggy): I think the consumer mindset is really killing us. Yeah, I really do. Our churches. But I also think this is true of american society. I think that the whole consumer capitalist.
0:01:56 - (Jil): It'S infiltrated every way we have of being.
0:02:00 - (Rev. Peggy): It's killing our planet too, even.
0:02:01 - (Jil): Yeah, absolutely. The more and more I go on, the more and more I see where that sort of is an invisible overlay on so many ways we have of processing and strategizing and moving in the world. And honestly, I think our churches are so far from the citizen model on many levels, totally living somewhere between actually consumer and subject. Because then we have these power trips and people that are just cling for dear life to what they've always done and the power they hold and the titles that they have and that kind of thing.
0:02:37 - (Rev. Peggy): So for the episode, do we want to talk about what the subject model is, what the consumer model is, and then what the citizen model is? Like, do we want to outline those? Are we sort of assuming people know what that is?
0:02:49 - (Jil): I mean, I think it would be a good idea to break that down a little bit because not everybody heard the workshop.
0:02:54 - (Rev. Peggy): Okay. So I can think of church communities kind of in general around that subject model because it's such an old and kind of tried and true model for how churches have always run and the consumer model, I mean, my lord, there are so many examples, right? I mean, it's. We're steeped in that. The interesting thing is, do we find the citizen model alive anywhere or where do we see it? I think we see it in little pockets.
0:03:25 - (Rev. Peggy): There's also, to me, to be honest, there's something about each of the models that works and doesn't work, right.
0:03:32 - (Jil): Like, actually, when we were just talking about things that keep us stuck. I mean, thinking about that, there are times when not everyone is involved at every stage in the process of everything, right? It is important that when we talk about shifting from a hierarchical structure to more of a horizontal working collective, it is not to say that you throw away structure altogether. It isn't to say that there isn't one point person at different places that would be making some leadership decisions and others who would be following decisions do need to get made, goals do need to be set, and everyone needs to be on the same page. But we have in our faith tradition. I mean, I think a lot of folks tend to forget that we're a living tradition.
0:04:20 - (Jil): It's ingrained that we should be hashing and rehashing and figuring it out and changing and shifting and being open to that.
0:04:29 - (Rev. Peggy): Okay, so when we're talking about the subject model, we're really talking about an old. So it's an old political model, but it was reflected in church life for sure. The idea that somebody is in charge.
0:04:43 - (Jil): And no one else asks questions and.
0:04:45 - (Rev. Peggy): Nobody has a say in anything. I actually worked for a catholic church, a really traditional catholic church. I was the youth advisor there. I only went to one, what they called a board meeting or like a board of trustees. But it absolutely wasn't in any way that we would recognize it. It was more of a lecture. Well, no, it was like this group of people who had a lot of opinions about things, but they talked.
0:05:07 - (Rev. Peggy): All of them talked, and they all had their opinions, but it didn't matter because then the priest showed up and he was like, these are the three statues that are going to be where they are. And then these three were moving, and that was the end of that conversation. They were like, thank you, father. Right? That's the subject model of like, daddy is here and he's going to take care of us and we don't really need to have opinions.
0:05:29 - (Rev. Peggy): And there's something, if it's in fact true, that daddy can take care of everything all the time and you can just live a simple, happy life. That's why that model worked, because there were plenty of benevolent leaders out there, and it was okay, but it kept people very passive.
0:05:51 - (Jil): Right. That's really quietly disempowering.
0:05:54 - (Rev. Peggy): Totally. Well, it's intentionally disempowering.
0:05:56 - (Jil): Right.
0:05:56 - (Rev. Peggy): The idea is you have no power and you just do what you're told, and in return what you get is to be safe and fed.
0:06:04 - (Jil): Right.
0:06:05 - (Rev. Peggy): That model theologically mirrored the idea that there's a God.
0:06:11 - (Jil): Right.
0:06:12 - (Rev. Peggy): God is in charge, God will make everything…
0:06:13 - (Jil): Everything comes down from there. Everything goes back there in the end, and everything you do here will be measured by judgment.
0:06:23 - (Rev. Peggy): Right. So churches were designed in the way that they understood the world to be designed, but that's not the congregational model, but the United States, and really the whole planet shifted away from that and into this consumer model, which was incredibly empowering. Now people got to make choices. It wasn't that you were told, this is what you have. And religiously in our churches it changed. Even before the consumer model completely saturated American culture, we still had this idea, this like, people get to choose some things, but consumerism became synonymous with American culture by the end of the 19th century, and definitely in our churches. So that now we have…
0:07:20 - (Rev. Peggy): I think that one of our huge issues is that we have such a consumerist model, so that those people who work for churches are so much in this concern. I mean, I've heard ministers say they can't preach certain subjects because people will not pledge.
0:07:40 - (Jil): Right.
0:07:40 - (Rev. Peggy): Like this idea that I'm paying for a service. I'm sure you know of DREs who have salaries cut because people don't like what they're doing or don't like, oh, you're losing kids, right?
0:07:59 - (Jil): They're measured by the numbers and only the numbers, not levels of engagement, not anything other than numbers. You have people that are on RE committees and hold titles like chair and those things and wield that power, thinking they are the ones who get to make the decisions about who stays and who goes. That consumer model creates a weird thing. It's sort of under the guise of free choice. But then we're human after all, right? So we fall back into those same power structures right from there, because there's in, there is no sense of collaboration ever.
0:08:37 - (Rev. Peggy): It's hyper individualistic. It's really like, what do I want? I want to get what I want, and I'm going to bend the institution to my will.
0:08:48 - (Jil): It foregoes the value of interdependence.
0:08:51 - (Rev. Peggy): Absolutely. So for a citizen model to really work, you have to be willing to look at the whole system and you need to be able to do it together, and I think you need to be willing to name and even in some way hold up the people who are preventing the process. So I was in a congregation, and we wanted to talk about Covenant. This congregation desperately needed covenant, and one person felt strongly that covenant was a way to control people.
0:09:28 - (Rev. Peggy): Yeah, he had some issues there, but he was able to stop the process from happening so that we couldn't move forward on covenanting as a congregation. Even though the board chair wanted to do it, even though the board wanted to do it, even though the minister and the DRE and people in real leadership wanted it to happen, and most congregants didn't know what it was, so they were sort of open. This one person wielded enough power to stop it.
0:09:58 - (Rev. Peggy): If we're going to work as citizens, we need to say collaboratively. It isn't okay to just stop a process that we're going to learn together. We're going to think together. We're going to decide something together. And one person not liking something, one person who just wants to respond with a no to everything, needs to step out and let everyone else work together and decide, maybe interdependently, we don't want to do this, but decide together rather than just sort of yielding to the loudest voice in the room.
0:10:34 - (Jil): Right.
0:10:35 - (Rev. Peggy): Part of this whole citizen thing for me is like, what does interdependence look like? Moving from "You aren't doing what you said you would do" to "How do we do that together?"
0:10:48 - (Jil): There's compliance, complacency, and enabling that has also been taking place. And what role do you think you might play in that, and what changes and shifts are you willing to make? And then we can work together to make that happen.
0:11:02 - (Rev. Peggy): If you're trying to shift to a collaborative model, what you really need is partners. You need to be able to say, I mean, honestly, anything I've ever done, well, I figured out who are my people? As an organizer, if I want to create real change in a society? First, it's grounded in relationship. You can never knock on a door and say, here, sign this petition and think that that person is engaged.
0:11:31 - (Rev. Peggy): It's really about who's on the front line, who really needs this change, building the relationships with them. You start those relationships, and then more and more people get involved, and you build more and more relationships, and you move from there into building a movement. If you want to do this in a church, you start with those relationships, and you build a movement. But every person you talk to has to become part of the hive.
0:12:02 - (Rev. Peggy): Nobody is going to be kind of served. Nobody is going to be just a petition signer, right? That's sort of the subject model or the consumer model, but more like. And now you're part of the circle, right? You move in, and more and more people move in along the way. You keep moving, you keep building more relationships, and you change your goals because each new person has another idea, something to add. Right? So you keep shifting what your vision is.
0:12:30 - (Rev. Peggy): What is it that you really want? How are you going to get there? And with each new person? So I think if you were in a church and you want to start to really change the culture, that's what you do. You start with these. Start with coffee, with one person, two people. To me, changing the church is changing the world. I really feel like I am genuinely afraid about what's happening in this country. I really think that we are looking, the possibility of a Trump presidency is a real move into authoritarianism and that fascism is just not far. And I know that we're throwing this word around and a lot of people think it's hyperbolic, but I know way too much about these kinds of systems to think this is.
0:13:14 - (Jil): Yeah, it's very real.
0:13:15 - (Rev. Peggy): Yeah, this is very real.
0:13:16 - (Jil): It's very imminent.
0:13:18 - (Rev. Peggy): But if we could build strong, healthy, collaborative, citizen based, hive mind churches where people are woven together…
0:13:30 - (Jil): I was just thinking weaving. That's crazy. Sorry, that's crazy. I was.
0:13:36 - (Jil): It is. It's a weaving and it'll be a
0:13:39 - (Jil): Tapestry in the end. It's all the things, right?
0:13:41 - (Rev. Peggy): A tapestry of relationship.
0:13:43 - (Jil): And it's an affirmation of our first principle, inherent worth and dignity of every person. Everyone has something to bring to the table. And we can't possibly know all that that person's gifts are. They don't even know, I don't know what all my gifts are until I'm invited in. And we explore and there's some moving. It's a dance that we do.
0:14:02 - (Rev. Peggy): We're weaving and then we have these really strong, we have a real fabric of community, and that's what holds us together.
0:14:10 - (Jil): And the great thing about that is one thread can be snipped and the whole fabric is not lost.
0:14:15 - (Rev. Peggy): Right.
0:14:16 - (Jil): That's important.
0:14:16 - (Rev. Peggy): Right!
0:14:17 - (Jil): That's really important. And I honestly believe our World is calling, crying out for us to make these switches in our churches. We have to.
0:14:30 - (Rev. Peggy): Right, in the same way that the consumer model is killing our planet, that we keep thinking that every quarter you have to make more and everything has to be bigger and better, and that we can just consume endlessly… We now know that the planet is near exhaustion, that we cannot do that, that the systems are breaking down. We're doing that in our churches, too. We are just consuming endlessly, and the system is breaking down. Ministers are leaving.
0:14:57 - (Rev. Peggy): DREs are leaving. Members are leaving. People don't want to be part of it anymore. It is exhausting, it's depleting. If we start building this, building relationships, being in genuine, authentic relationship with each other, in dynamic, generative relationship with each other, building a community of care and of justice making in the world together…
0:15:24 - (Jil): Right.
0:15:25 - (Jil): That's the healing energy that's so desperately needed. And that really we're going to need in a year from now, depending on what happens in this election, we're going to desperately need very strong communities held together in love.
0:15:42 - (Jil): Yeah, for sure. I mean, I wonder what things would look like if, when you entered a church, folks said, I need you, and I want you to be able to need me too, and understand that. That's all right. That's great. Let's go. It's a commitment. It's a commitment between yourself and strangers.
0:16:01 - (Rev. Peggy): Right.
0:16:02 - (Jil): And that's so necessary to start building that way.
0:16:05 - (Rev. Peggy): But I also think, I mean, just as a human being, life is so busy, we've created, and honestly, experts will tell us that this is part of the point that if you want to create a really strong authoritarian system, you make the citizens exhausted.
0:16:25 - (Jil): Yeah, for sure.
0:16:26 - (Rev. Peggy): You keep them distracted, you keep them guessing, you keep them a little bit afraid. So everyone's sort of afraid of going broke, afraid of being alone, that we're just moving way too fast to try and keep up with everything. It's hard for us to pay attention to all the details. So given that life, I work full time, I'm a parent of a younger child, I'm a wife, I'm a daughter. I've got all this stuff going on.
0:16:56 - (Rev. Peggy): I walk into a new community of any kind, and I feel like I need you to just give me the thing I'm here for. There's no way I'm, like, joining your collaborative community here. And at the same time, it's what I desperately need.
0:17:12 - (Jil): Right.
0:17:13 - (Rev. Peggy): It's what everybody desperately needs.
0:17:14 - (Jil): And you kind of don't know until you're in it.
0:17:16 - (Rev. Peggy): Well, even if you know it, you feel like I can't do it.
0:17:19 - (Jil): Right.
0:17:20 - (Rev. Peggy): I mean, it just happened to me. I was just interviewing. My son is looking at some other schools, and I was interviewing, and he said, what can you bring the school? And I was like, really? Nothing.
0:17:30 - (Jil): True story, right?
0:17:31 - (Rev. Peggy): Like, how much do you really need? Because I can't. And yet, while we were talking, we started talking about climate work. And just out of nowhere, which was a casual conversation, I was like, oh, well… And he was like, really? And I'm like, oh, my God. And then it became, the energy increased, and I thought, yeah, I would love to work on that with you. That would actually be fun. And that feels like that gives life. That's what our churches should be doing, right?
0:17:58 - (Rev. Peggy): That gives me life. I want to be there.
0:18:01 - (Jil): It's both and. It's having the opportunities. But also recognizing that joy is critical. Building in joy, embodied rituals in a service, those are the things that will help reenergize and energize people that are completely tapped who feel like they have nothing left to give. When they do, they do, but there has to be some kind of replenishing, right? So I feel like that's where joy and embodied ritual comes in.
0:18:25 - (Rev. Peggy): Now I'm totally spacing on who said it, but churches are the place where we practice being human. I feel like churches are the place where we practice creating healthy, strong, human community.
0:18:35 - (Jil): For sure.
0:18:37 - (Rev. Peggy): We start it here, we work on it, we figure out how to do it, and then we move that into the world and in a world where we desperately need it.
0:18:46 - (Jil): Yeah. And those of us in church leadership, too, I think, have a responsibility to be able to recognize when somebody is tapped. And maybe saying, I need you is going to be really pressureful and off putting and being able to have the room and flexibility to say, you know, come anyway. And if you could just witness and be a part of, just be present would be great and have some kind of welcoming elements. I mean, that's why when we create programs, we try to have a little food, let's do a little potluck, let's have a little music, right? Let's sort of have some opening words.
0:19:20 - (Jil): Create some kind of a welcoming environment for those who they can unfold in that space. But first, there's a welcome and an invitation that feels like not one more thing for the schedule, right.
0:19:34 - (Rev. Peggy): Because it gives you so much life. It's so great. I feel like church should be the thing that is so great. You don't want it to end. Yeah. You want to always be part of this community, always be part, always with these people.
0:19:47 - (Jil): And it doesn't leave you when you go out into the world and do everything that you do out in the world outside of your church community. That church doesn't leave your heart, your soul, your spirit, your bones, your actions, right?
0:19:59 - (Jil): Yeah.
0:20:02 - (Rev. Peggy): Okay, so we just solved the world. We're good. It.