Is Pastoring More Like a Startup or a Garden?

Randy and Kyle sit down with Milwaukee pastor and author Matt Erickson to explore a different vision of pastoral ministry: not the pastor as CEO, brand manager, or religious expert, but the pastor as gardener. Matt’s book, The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry, grows out of real ministry pressure, including moral failures, church decline, the pandemic, and the strain of navigating racial justice and polarization in a multiracial congregation.

We dig into why agrarian imagery in Scripture still has bite for modern life, even in an urban church context. The gardener metaphor reframes leadership around cultivation instead of control: planting and watering while admitting we can’t manufacture growth. That shift changes what we celebrate, what we fear, and what we measure, especially when the visible “fruit” of ministry looks strong but the hidden “roots” of prayer, integrity, and interior life are neglected.

From there, we talk about what shepherding can still mean today, why care for the sick and grieving often gets delegated away, and why pastors need space to evolve without being treated like they’ve failed. Along the way we touch Gregory of Nyssa, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and the pressure for pastors to project certainty in a world where nobody can be an expert at everything.

Look for Part 2 of this conversation in a couple weeks.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Matt Matters

Randy 0:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle 0:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink at the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy 0:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to a pastor and a philosopher walking to a bar.

Kyle 0:37

Well, today on the podcast, we're talking to one of Randy's friends, which is a little bit unusual that we uh invite in people that we know well. Um but it's not just a bone that we're throwing on this guy. He is actually a very thoughtful pastor and has recently written a book called The Pastor as Gardener, a renewed vision for ministry. His name's Matt Erickson, and he pastors at church here in Milwaukee. Um, this is my first introduction to Matt. Um, but I'm intrigued. I'm I'm somebody that, as a lot of our listeners know, is mostly outside the church at this point and am quite distant from those modes of thought. Uh, and so what it means to be a pastor is not a thing that occupies a lot of my attention anymore. Uh, but it was nice to kind of revisit these ideas and think with an actual, well, two actual functioning pastors about what it means to pastor in a very strange time. It must what it's a strange time for everybody, but it must be especially strange for pastors in the Christian tradition who are trying to figure out how to embody Jesus in light of all the weird things that are going on in our culture, but but not just our culture specifically, the things that have been going on for the last couple thousand years that have really changed the way the whole world thinks about uh everything that Christianity touches on, frankly. Uh, and we're gonna get into a lot of that in this conversation. But Randy, why don't you set up why you wanted to talk to Matt?

Randy 1:55

I mean, you you just set a lot of it up, but Matt is just like you said, um, it's this is a unique conversation because Matt's a great friend of mine. Um we love each other deeply. We are kind of um we're kind of lifelines for one another in ministry, where um I I need a person, a couple of people ideally, but I need a person to be able to understand what it means to be a pastor, what the the thing the conversations that we have and the things that we go through, the it's just a life-giving relationship for me. And so it's really fun that he's also thoughtful enough and smart enough to write a really wonderful book. The Pastor as Gardener is um really, really, really good and really important for churches and church leaders, I think. It has a lot of potential to reform and reshape the way we see pastoral ministry, the way we see the church, the way we we judge the outcomes, perhaps. We get like Kyle said, we get into all of that. Um, but I think it it's really, really important stuff that we're talking about that Matt wrote about, and I respect him so much as a pastor because he's pastoring a large church, much bigger than mine, um, in the same city. Um we're very different churches, very different churches, and at the same time, we're kind of after this very, very similar things. So it's just fun to be able to learn from one another. I'm really excited that he put this book out into the world, and I really do think that this could reshape a lot of church culture. I think church culture is an underrated idea. We in the church kind of take things for granted and think that the way things are going right now or the way things have always gone and the way they should go. Instead of seeing ourselves as being shapers and creators of culture, that we can transform the way um people think about the church and think about themselves, think about the spiritual life, think about Jesus, think about the gospel, think about the Bible, think about all of that stuff. And so I really think that this could be one of those things, like a church called Tove is a culture shaper. It kind of calls our attention to what's wrong, what's going on, and says there's a better way to do this and might be more ancient way. And so that's why I'm excited to talk to Matt and to have this book live in the world.

Kyle 4:14

The book I'm excited to read about that is How to Create a Church Culture by Randy Nye. If anybody from Aerdman's is listening, uh because they probably definitely are, right?

Randy 4:24

Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm excited. Uh that that'd be fun, but uh I'm excited to have this conversation with Matt, my friend Matt Erickson, so enjoy, friends.

Matt 4:49

Matt

Meeting Matt Erickson In Milwaukee

Matt 4:50

Erickson, welcome to a pastor and philosopher walking to a bar. Thanks so much, Randy. It's great to be with you guys. Thanks, Kyle, for letting me be here.

Kyle 4:57

Yeah, nice to meet you. We're doing this in person for anybody that cares, which is rare for us as you get into the.

Randy 5:01

I think this is our second, no, our third something like that live interview. So I love it.

Matt 5:06

You know, it's way better for me being in person. I I just love it so much more.

Randy 5:10

Absolutely. Well, Matt, tell us who you are, tell our listeners who you are, which will help inform why you're in person here.

Matt 5:17

Yeah, I'm senior pastor at Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, and I've been there for the last 15 years, been in Milwaukee since 2003, and our paths have crossed back and forth in different times in those years, and um, yeah, serving in different ways in different church settings. I've been at this church, Eastbrook's uh a church in the city, it brings people together, city and suburbs, a multiracial church, uh, people across the political spectrum, lots of different backgrounds. It's been a fun place, a challenging place to pastor. And um, yeah, written this book called The Pastor's Gardener, and we've been talking about it. So grateful to talk with you guys.

Randy 5:57

Yeah, and Matt and I are bros. We meet together regularly as peers and colleagues, pastors in the same city, and just have grown to love each other and um yeah, developed a really wonderful friendship that's a blessing to me. So it's really fun to have you in this world.

Matt 6:13

It's really fun for me to step into this world with you guys. And uh yeah, feelings mutual. We walk through a lot together, so it's good to be able to have this conversation too.

Randy 6:22

Yeah, well, let's hope it's somewhat good rather than we're gonna have a good time. We'll feel good about it. Yeah, yeah. Who cares about everybody?

Kyle 6:28

Regularly, if I ever get like too heady or nerdy about something, he'll like cut me off. So I'm gonna do the same. If you guys get too spiritual, if we get too spiritual or just like too much heart, enjoy each other a little bit.

Randy 6:42

So uh Matt, you wrote this book, The Pastor is Gardener. Yeah, a renewed vision for ministry. Um, I I loved it, but I'm interested in where this came from and where how long this has been incubating inside of you and uh this idea. Just tell us a little bit about where the book came from.

The Crisis Behind The Book

Matt 7:00

Yeah, I mean, I think with anything we write or music we make or creativity, it comes from probably a long, longer germination than we realize. But for me, the book came kind of as a result of some crisis moments in ministry. Um, walking along some other friends who had massive uh moral failures, watching some of that happen and beginning to ask myself some questions about what's going on with pastoral ministry in the U.S. And then seeing some of those things repeat at kind of across the national scene. And then seeing church in decline, pandemic, huge crises about racial justice around the time of the pandemic, which really hit our church hard, and just asking questions about the way I thought about what it means to be a pastor, even the way I thought about the spiritual life. And I was sort of like falling down a shaft looking for hand holds, and started to see scripture in some different ways through the agrarian imagery, and that helped me get some handholds in my own spiritual life as well as in my ministry, and then really went into a deep dive around that, which led to the book and helped me reframe a lot of what I've been doing in more organic imagery, and that kind of rescued me from a few different trajectories that I thought I had stepped off of, but I think I found were still inside of me. We can talk about those later.

Randy 8:26

Yeah, yeah. Where did the agrarian metaphorical imagery stuff come from? Because I love it, but it wouldn't be a go-to for me.

Matt 8:36

I mean, I grew up in the Midwest, in western Illinois, Mississippi River Valley, a little area called the Quad Cities. There's two cities in Illinois, two in Iowa straddles the Mississippi River, and it's where John Deere's headquarters are. So there's that part, it's kind of an atmosphere of where I grew up, a lot of agricultural world. And then my dad's family grew up in that kind of farming community. My grandfather was a corn seed salesman, and we did a lot of gardening growing up. And so I think that was sort of in my mind. And when I started reading scripture in that time of crisis and reevaluating things, some of the imagery just popped in a new and fresh way for me. The Garden of Eden, hearing Israel described as a planting of the Lord through the prophets, uh, rethinking some of what Jesus was saying about being the vine and the branches. And really Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 3, when he says, I planted Apollos watered, but God's the one who gave the growth. I always thought about that in terms of church planting, because that was a little bit of my past. Uh, but suddenly I realized that isn't really what he was talking about, and it just became a doorway into that connection of the agricultural imagery for the spiritual life and ministry. How much was Wendell Berry an influence? He's a huge influence. Yeah. Um, I mean, he's in the book. He's in the book a lot. His poetry is really honestly my entry point to Wendell Berry is probably more through his poetry. And then getting into some of his essay writing and last of all, some of his fiction, which I love. Um, but unsettling of America, his essays around agricultural life and how we think about what's happening in the U.S. and the crisis of farming. Some of that um kind of opens some things up for me. Eugene Peterson kind of takes Barry's thing and says he has this famous quote people reference a lot. Whenever I hear Barry say farm, I put church in place of it. And and so Peterson helped me maybe take Barry's work and connect it with my life and with ministry and with um spiritual life as well.

Kyle 10:41

So,

The Gardener Metaphor In Practice

Kyle 10:42

what is the function of the Gardner metaphor as opposed to other metaphors? So I'm I'm pretty distant from the Bible at this point and thinking of my life in terms of what the Bible says or anything like that. Yeah. Um but I I'm wondering, like, can you give me an example? Maybe you were starting to give one a moment ago, of a material difference that the metaphor would make to the understanding of a particular passage that someone then might act differently as a result of cashing it out that way as opposed to a non-agrarian way. Does that make sense?

Matt 11:14

Yeah, absolutely makes sense. So I think I think one thing it's really spoken to me, and this would be again, Kyle, it might be more in terms of ministry, but I think it relates to other domains of life. As Americans, I think we're so fixated on control and what we can do and how we can influence everything. And so one of the things that the agrarian imagery, when I think of that first Corinthians three passage that Paul says I planted Apollos water, God's the one that gives the growth, it helped chasten my pride and realize there's a lot of things I don't have any control over. And so, in a culture that's so fixated on control, it really helped me just be able to release some things and realize there's certain things I can do. I can till the ground, so to speak, I can plant seed. Um, I'm a big gardener myself, you know, I can I can make compost, I can put this into the soil, but I can't make plants come up. I can't make my life become fruitful. There's a there's a bit of a letting go within that that I think is instructive for me as a pastor, and I think it's a lot broader than that, though. I think we all experience that. There's so many things that we experience beyond our control. And for me, um, looking through those agrarian lenses into scripture as well as just at my life has helped me with some of that. I think another example which I talk a little bit about in the book is the coherence between what's visible in our lives and what's hidden or invisible. And I use the imagery of a plant, what's above ground that people may see, and then the hidden roots that nurture the plant. For me, one of the examples of somebody who had had a massive blowout in ministry, I think the visible things looked amazing. But like maybe a really tall tree in a win uh windstorm that falls over because its root system isn't very strong under the ground. I think that was part of what was going on, at least that's my interpretation. And so giving attention to the nurture of what's unseen and not just what's seen, that's also been like a little bit of a picture for me of coherence between rootedness and fruitfulness above the ground. I don't know if that's answering your question at all or not.

Kyle 13:36

No, it's helpful. Yeah, examples are helpful. And I mean, Jesus talked this way all the time, right? So, how much of this is getting in tune with just the context? Like, we talked to a lot of people who are biblical scholars who are very interested, more interested than I am than I am, frankly, the at like getting into what it would have meant to the original audience, right? And a lot of the metaphors that Jesus used would be agrarian metaphors for very obvious reasons, right? Um, do you find that most of your parishioners probably are not farmers?

Matt 14:07

I most of my parishioners are not farmers, that is for sure. Yeah, yeah. We're an urban church, yeah.

Kyle 14:13

So my my understanding has always been that Jesus used the metaphors that worked, yeah, right. And if he were living in Milwaukee in 2026, he would have used different metaphors. Probably wouldn't have been agrarian. Yeah. So, like, how I guess how essential do you take the metaphor to be? Uh, or is it like the point can be made in any number of ways? I just find this one useful because it's like importantly different from my current context or something like that.

Matt 14:35

Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. Um, I think that there's some aspects of the metaphor that can be just, yeah, okay, this is this is helpful because it's out of the it is part of the context. Um, and then it's also sometimes helpful because it's not part of the context. It's so different. I I do think there's something so pervasive about organic imagery, even if we take agrarianism out of it from sort of a Wendelberry move out to Kentucky into the rural parts. Like most of us aren't going to do that. But part of what I'm trying to open up is, you know, here we are, I can see out a window as we're doing this podcast, and there's a gigantic tree out the window. Like we have organic life all around us. And in my neighborhood where my church is at, in in Milwaukee, there's community gardens all over the place. And so it actually, I think, getting connected to some of that organic imagery actually is pretty pervasive. And it's and it's different than mechanistic metaphors. Uh, mechanistic metaphors oftentimes still put us in a lot of control as human beings. We're the originators of those things. But I think the organic images and metaphors help open up both things that are beyond us and also the nature of life that we are in a part of, we're also in touch with. We can influence it, but we can't control it. So I think I do think that um even if Jesus walked in 21st century Milwaukee, I still think he might use organic environmental metaphors, maybe in a different way. And I think he uses a lot of relational metaphors too, the parable of the prodigal son and things like that. Um, but I still think a big part of what he would do would be reference nature and creation.

Pastors As CEOs Versus Shepherds

Randy 16:25

I I In the beginning of your book, you talk about the power of metaphor, yeah, and you kind of flesh out why we use metaphors. Um, and as you did that, I found myself just then imagining what metaphors besides Gardner do we use for pastoral work for pastors. And instantly my mind went to a CEO, uh business leader. Right. So sad. Yeah. But that's instantly what happened. Like, tell me if you think I'm off here, but I mean, I think not even just metaphorically, I think what churches, and when I say churches, I'm talking mostly in our context, which is evangelical or post-evangelical, which feels still pretty evangelical. Um churches with elder boards that are mostly businessmen, right? Successful ones at that, that's kind of like the criteria for many, many churches. We we both were on staff in different ways at a church um in the area, a mega church, who I know I don't know what they do now, but I know that they at least used to look for elders who were successful business people, lawyers, doctors, CEOs, whatever. Um, so I would say uh the most apt metaphor for pastoral ministry in the United States today would be a CEO who's a a uh charismatic speaker. Right. Um would you agree or disagree with that?

Matt 17:47

I think that's I think it is probably one of the predominant metaphors. And I don't think it's just in evangelical, post-evangelical spaces, I think it's in mainline spaces as well, um, unfortunately. Less so it I kind of think, but and uh the other ones I think I might include in with that are uh basically like kind of counselor therapists.

Randy 18:08

Okay.

Matt 18:09

And sometimes, and this is I would see this maybe in more um urban context, more like community organizer. And there's ups and downsides of those things. Um, but I definitely think in in maybe the predominant, dominant culture uh churches we're gonna find the CEO because it is tied to numbers, it's tied to growth. I think the church has just imbibed growth as increases of numbers a lot of times. And that's a a fault. The other one, I mean, I think we know biblically would be shepherd. And I think that's a valid image and metaphor. I don't want to set it aside, Jesus says I'm the good shepherd, but that's one of those metaphors that most of us have no real contact with. Correct. And so because we don't have real lived contact, most of our knowledge of it is through biblical commentators commenting on shepherds, or maybe reading a book like a shepherd talks about, Psalm 23. But I think actually we do have contact with agrarian imagery through at least things like gardening or caretaking for a plant or nurturing a tree in our yard. And so it's actually something we can relate to, and it makes the metaphor still be a living metaphor for us. Whereas for shepherding, for most of us, again, probably most people are listening to this, it's not a lived experience, which makes it a step removed in its power as a metaphor, I believe.

Kyle 19:30

No. How many pastors? This is a question for both of you, see themselves as CEOs?

Matt 19:35

I don't know. Are honest? Yeah, probably I think I think there's a lot. I mean, some who maybe feel pushed into that role.

Randy 19:45

Um wouldn't say it out loud, I don't think. Probably. I think if you look at how they function in ministry a lot. You know, if actions really do speak say more than than our words, I would say a lot. Um and that being said, I I I think we both know many, many pure shepherds. Yeah.

Kyle 20:05

Um like what does that look like, like practically?

Randy 20:08

I think it for me in when I'm like a person I'm thinking of looks more like an old school pastor, even though he's in a context of uh mini megachurch, um evangelical mini megachurch. And he um he cares about people more than he cares about the bottom line, and he kind of just like accidentally had an explosively growing church because of some some because he he's awesome, but some because he's in a community that's explosively growing, and people are in the phase of life where they're settling in and they're wanting to go to church, and there's it's not any one reason by but I think it looks like a person who cares about people more than he cares about his sermon. It looks like a person who um knows his people, his the people in his congregation well and stewards a staff really well, isn't just looking for the bottom line, but is looking for health and goodness. Um church called Tove, I think is a really great way to think about it or a shift. What what what would you say, Matt?

Matt 21:12

Yeah, I think the same thing. I think a a a pastor who's a shepherd, people would say is attentive to people over programs or people over numbers, knows people, is relational. I think that again, sometimes in that it can come down to the person. Um, I remember a story I was traveling in Jordan several years ago, and we have a friend, a long time a pastor who's Jordanian, who's been there his whole life, actually Palestinian in his family background. But we were seeing as we were traveling down from Mount Mount Nebo down to the Jordan River Valley, there was a little kid with a flock of sheep around him. And it's one of the most barren places that I had been. Although I know he's going down to the Jordan River Valley, which is lush, and I was like, Wow, how is this kid gonna make it? Do you know, do we need to stop and give him some water, help him out? And my friend Yusuf said, don't worry about it. He's part of a of a community. He's meeting up with them down in the Jordan River Valley. And I realized in that moment, my default, even when I think of Shepherd, is very individualistic.

Randy 22:17

Dude, how many times have you used this story in a sermon? That's so good. Oh man.

Matt 22:21

It was a very memorable experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep going. I cut you up. No, it's good. I mean, just tell it from your perspective the next time you preach. Just like make it yours, make it yours. Thank you. But it was it was just an amazing thing because I realized, oh, my interpretation of the shepherd is an individualistic metaphor. My actually seeing that through the grid of North American Western individualism versus seeing shepherds even as a community. And I think also for me, the gardening image and the community of gardening, Barry talks a lot about this in his writing, has helped me reframe some of this within community so I don't just take the burden on myself. And even friendships with other pastors who are not at the same church helps with some of that as well.

Kyle 23:05

Yeah. So when I think of what I thought a pastor was when I was like a kid or a teenager, it would have included things like caring for the sick, um, giving money to the poor, taking up collections for the people in the congregation who needed help. If there are any widows in the church visiting them regularly, I remember my pastor did that. He would take the youth group with him and we would regularly visit the the elderly widows in the communities, a small town. Um you know, visiting the sick in the hospital, praying with them by their bedside, doing the funeral, being there with them, holding their hand when they died, that sort of thing. How much of that and when I think of a shepherd, it involves that kind of thing. Yeah, right. Absolutely. So how much of that is still a normative expectation for pastors? I I realize I'm asking two either evangelical or post-evangelical pastors, so that's a little unique, but yeah.

Matt 23:54

I think it's still there. But I think as that CEO mentality comes in, sometimes pastors, maybe it's based on the size of their church or their understanding of their role, might delegate those things off. If they're at a multi-staff church, they might delegate that to a pastor of care, or they might have a team who's doing that. And and some of those things then become gutted out of maybe like a lead pastor or senior pastor's role. But I think it's still essential. Um, and I think that is maybe cutting against the grain a little bit. What do you think, Randy?

Randy 24:30

I don't know lots of pastors in rural settings. Yeah. So I think that you have to set part of my answer aside for that. Um, because I've seen rural pastors do what I'm about to say, but um I would say by and large, it's like pastors these days aren't looking to be traditional old school pastors. Um, most of us get into it because we love the sound of our own voice and we're pretty good at talking and we're charismatic and we have we love the scriptures. It's more about preaching and leading and efficiency and teams and strategies. Yeah, I could keep saying words, sure, but I'm I know that you're familiar with all these words, Matt. Yeah. Um, those are the things that uh like when you think of pastoring a decent-sized, successful, I put that in square quote scare quotes, church. It's I think it's going to be looking for a person cut out of that mold rather than a person who is really wonderful with people and wants to sit at the bedside in hospitals and serve communion to uh, you know, in hospice to to people who are on their deathbed. That's not what pastors are looking to do, and that's not even what churches are looking for so much anymore. Yeah, I would say.

Matt 25:41

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there are people who people want that. Exactly what you described, Kyle. I think that a lot of people want that, but they also want so many things else from their pastors. And in the I don't know, the balance of different responsibilities, I think sometimes the emphasis is more on just preach an amazing sermon, have good vision, organize things well. Eugene Peterson called that shopkeeping. Um that, and that's not a good term, right? Like religious shopkeeping. Um, and what we I think there is a movement, I mean, I I believe there is of pat people coming back to classical pastoring. That's part of what I'm trying to do in my book, is get in touch with that great tradition, reclaim it, and then be able to bring it into touch with our current moment. Um, because I think a lot of people are sick of uh megachurch evangelical Christianity. It hasn't nurtured the life people hoped for. They're wanting something more deeply rooted that's also alive and um shaped and changing in this time. Um, I don't know. So I think I think the pastoral role is in a crisis a little bit, and I'm hoping we can have roots in the deep tradition, but also be able to extend into this moment in a meaningful way. Yeah.

Forming Pastors Who Can Change

Kyle 26:59

Have you ever read Gilead by Marilyn Robinson? Yeah. Okay, so when I read that book, I had the reaction I expect a lot of probably um post-church but also unchurch people had, which was if pastors were like that, yes, I might be interested. Yeah. Right now, she set him a little, probably a little out of reach, like he was brilliant in a way that most pastors probably aren't realistically. Um, but the the wisdom there was earned through the other kinds of practices we've been talking about. Um, and he was, you know, fatherly without being patriarchal, and he was um just loving all the way down, but also really humble, and all the things that uh you would think of a good pastor ought to be, but seem very hard to find. If you visit, if you pick a church at random and visit, you're unlikely to get anything resembling that. Not only that, you're unlikely probably to get anybody who would see that as a vision worth pursuing. At least that's my sense of it. Yeah. Um so I don't even know how to ask, like if most folks are like me in that, which maybe they're not, right? Um, but it seems like if you're gonna get an unchurched person back in first the church probably shouldn't be all about the pastor, so that's a separate conversation, I guess. But yeah, if the model of a pastor really kind of just looks like a moral exemplar, because that's kind of what you get there, it's not just that he's good at preaching, he's a good person, which means that whatever it takes to form a pastor has to be forming a moral character. And that doesn't seem to be how most pastors get formed. So, like maybe you cast a vision of this in your book, but like how do we it seems like what you want is to fundamentally change the structure. And how realistic is that? Uh and how can we start?

Matt 28:38

I mean, I I I do. I I want to see a different kind of formation and nurture of pastors, um, men and women who are going to be shaped into that coherence. We're not just teaching them to preach, we're teaching them to receive the word of God in a transformational way. We're not just teaching them how to be public prayers as like a a circus exhibit, but actually that their life of prayer is deeply transformational for them. Um, not just discipling people or whatever language you want to do for formation, but they are also letting God and others speak into their life in formational ways. One of the things that's beautiful in that book, Gilead, is is uh the the pastor's deep friendship with the other pastor, and I think there's a humility in that because you see inside of his letters of writing, he is wrestling with deep things, and I think a lot of pastors hide that, but I think that's an essential aspect of our formation, and we don't need to be afraid of those things. Uh, they're actually beautiful shaping.

Randy 29:43

I mean, in as much as I agree with you that like a pastor should be that moral exemplar that has, for instance, a rich transformative prayer life. Also, on the other side of the coin, I I hope pastors are able to say, at the moment, my my prayer life feels like a dry well. It's got nothing in it, and I can't do it right now. And I think you can still be a moral, you know, you can you can be a good morally upright person and say prayer. I don't I'm confused about prayer right now, and still be a pastor, even.

Kyle 30:16

I'm also like personally unsure if if having a if that's too high of a goal, right? The the standard of you should be a really good person. Maybe that's not what a pastor is supposed to be, right? And how many how many pastors would we have if that was a real standard? And is that even what we see in the New Testament? Like the the disciples weren't unusually good people, as far as I can tell.

Randy 30:35

Yeah. I mean, I do like I would like to f if we were going down this rabbit trail more, I would like to flush out the idea of what it means to be good. Because I think good is a better idea or word than moral, even perhaps. But I I got a few questions from the book that I want to do. Go wherever you want to go. Is that all right? You good, yeah? Yeah. In one I don't remember what chapter page 50 is, but in one of it's the chapter where you're talking about change, and um, you know what I'm talking about? Do you remember the title of the chapter? No, I don't remember anymore. So on page 50, you talk about interior life change in pastors. In that section, you're talking about John the Baptist a bit, and so you're talking about repentance and confessing sin, the healthy and beautiful reality of a person in a position of a pastor being able to confess and of your sin and repent of it. And I'm all for that, 110%. But I want to take it even a step further, where I wonder if that interior life change, what what are your thoughts on interior life change of pastors in ways that move beyond sin and repentance and look at look like what I would call spiritual evolution will look like how long have you been a pastor now, Matt?

Matt 31:45

Uh 24 years.

Randy 31:48

Yeah. So I'm like 1920 in myself. Over those 24 years or 2020 for me, um, like for me, I can say I've changed a lot, obviously. You know, very obviously. Sure. However, I don't think you have to go through like a radical deconstruction or spiritual evolution to be a just a person who changes and grows. I'm just not sure that there's a lot of space allowed for in the pastoral ministry for change and evolution, especially if we're talking about spiritual change and evolution and growth. Um, interior life change, the way you put that, what are your thoughts on just in general interior life change and also how can we give our churches a bit more of a healthy understanding of what it looks like to be a person as a pastor? Yeah, not just a person who's static, caught in that moment, has everything figured out, and now forever and ever, you're gonna tell us how to live our lives as followers of Jesus.

Matt 32:50

Do you know what I mean? I do think I know what you mean, so I'll take a crack at answering, and I'd love to hear your thoughts too, Randy. Um, I think that part of what it means to be a good pastor, or or maybe it's just to be a good Christian, which sounds so weird to say that phrase. But what I mean by goodness is that we are also displaying uh change that's happening in us, uh being on the journey. Um, uh Gregory of Nyssa, who I was mentioning before we started, he's one of my heroes and big conversation partners.

Randy 33:20

We just talk about church fathers like Gregory of Nyssa. Yeah, just like left and right.

Matt 33:24

Uh, but but I've just been I've been like reading him a lot over the last three years, and one of his main ideas, one of them, is just that we're constantly pursuing God and we never arrived. And that there's this ongoing journey. And he uses um the story of Moses seeing the the backside of God, like that we're always following God, but we can never really get there. And some people find that unnerving. I find that really satisfying, that there's always more to know, always ways to grow and deepen. And it connects with me for uh the idea of like the Psalms of Ascent, that there's this pilgrimage that we're on in our life that involves different sorts of territories in our lives, in our chronological lives, but also our spiritual lives, and that it does things to us. Um, and so I think part of our goodness is exhibiting that and giving people vocabulary or example for even things like you said, hey, I prayer for me is confusing right now. There's things I thought I understood, now I realize I don't understand them. And that that's actually something I think we as pastors can open up to ourselves. Sometimes that's actually the problem. We have a hard time admitting that, and then open that up to our congregations to say, this is part of what's going on. Um, I was on a sabbatical uh not that long ago, and I and I came back and people would say to me, You're different. And I was like, What does that mean? I don't know, but there's something about you that's different. And it wasn't because I was talking about all these things that are different. I think it was some of the ways I was talking, some of the ways I was communicating, even just in prayer, let alone in a sermon, just seemed different. So I think part of that is that gave space for my congregation to also be on the journey. One of the things you and I have that's unique compared to maybe some other pastors, we've been at our churches for a while. That also gives us, I think, more trust to be able to both exhibit that and then also invite that within the people that are part of our congregation. Sometimes pastors don't get enough time to develop that trust.

Randy 35:36

Yep.

Matt 35:37

So that you can have, you know, to use your term, evolution of your spiritual life or those sorts of things. Um, so I think sometimes pastors are afraid to show that stuff. Yeah. Um what do you think?

Curiosity Over Certainty And Closing

Randy 35:50

Yeah, no, I mean, I think, and you talk about the great resignation at points in the book as well, and I think the two have a lot to do with each other because I think a fair amount of the pastors in the last six years since the pandemic, and especially in 2020 and 2021, who resigned, a part of that was because they were repulsed by what they saw in the church and pot probably in their church, and wanted to do something uh you know substantive and their church ran them out of out of town, whatever. But I think a fair amount of that was actually the way I see things is actually changing qualitatively now, which is bound to happen when you go through a global pandemic and a you know civil rights crisis, super. I mean, just like our world was exploding and still is to some, you know, to in many ways. Um things that you had previously thought shift, yeah. Beliefs that you currently held change or pr previously held change. Um ways that you saw the see the Bible, see Christianity, see following Jesus, see the person of Christ, see the gospel, they change in moments like that, inevitably. And I think personally, not enough pastors get the leeway, like you're you're hinting at, yeah, to actually change. That that becomes a failure uh to a congregation or to a leadership board. Would you guys agree?

Kyle 37:10

I mean, yeah, we talked about this a lot how pastors are supposed to be experts at everything, right? And they're supposed to project confidence about all of those things. And confidence to a lot of folks just means never admitting that you were wrong, never being wrong.

Randy 37:22

But if you were certainly never saying it out, which means I can't say I don't believe that anymore, because that means I would have been wrong before, which is a silly way of looking at it, anyways. But anyways, sorry.

Kyle 37:30

No, that's yeah, that's it. And they're they're like um, you know, they're the authority in the room, and so therefore they have to be the authority on all the topics. And this goes hand in hand with thinking of faith in this doxastic way where it's really about belief and signing on to a creed, and you know, we we have the orthodox view of things here, you know, those folks down the road have a slightly different version, but I but they're wrong, right? And we're we're right about this. And uh, if that's your way of thinking about faith, and if you think about church in a hierarchical, authoritarian way, then it just leads naturally to the pastor has to be the informed person who knows all the answers to all the questions, and we're talking about questions about God and the afterlife and everything important, you know, everything of universal importance. So that's untenable, that's not sustainable as you found yourself, and it doesn't allow for any kind of evolution.

Matt 38:16

So good. Yeah, and and again, when you when you read um somebody like Gregory of Nyssa, you see even development in their thinking. And and if we can recognize that in some of the greatest theological thinkers of other times, then we should give space for ourselves to have that too.

Randy 38:34

Absolutely. I mean, you've studied many, many thinkers as a philosopher. Do you know of any good thinkers who you would say um their understanding of what they have expertise in remains static from like you know?

Kyle 38:50

This is maybe an unfair question. The answer is yes. Okay, but uh they're the minority. And they're they're famous for being the kinds of geniuses who would um have an insight, systematize it, and then die. Sure. Oh boy, in general, and uh, you know, Descartes would be one of those people, right? For example, Kant would be, although Kant probably changed his mind about some things. I can think of a few living too, but all of all of their peers think they ought to have changed their mind about something in recent human history. No, because things are so complex though, it's not actually possible to be a polymath anymore. It's not actually possible to be a polymath. Somebody who is who has wide and deep knowledge about you're an expert about just about everything that you're interested in. That's literally not possible anymore, just because of the the depth of specialization in every part of every facet of the world at this point. It doesn't matter if you're as brilliant as Kant, you can't get as far as he did because we know more now, right? Um, and so it's really unfair to pastors to expect like it it entails, meaning it necessitates, that whatever view a pastor comes out with in a context like that is gonna be hokey. It's gonna be it's gonna be a pretense, yeah, right? It's gonna be something kind of weird that then you double down on uh and it makes sure the whole system relies on more and more insulin. And the more you do that, the more rocky your relationship with the outside world becomes because knowledge progresses, it moves on. Uh, and the only way you can obtain control over that many topics is by just picking a kind of narrow view and doubling down on it and saying, you know, this is God's view, and we can't deviate from it and make it an issue of obedience rather than an issue of like curiosity. Yes. Or like actually wanting to know the truth about the world. God told us this, we have to obey it. That's the only way to do that in the long term, I think.

Matt 40:42

And and how strange to set aside curiosity for the world that is made by God. It just seems strange to me. So, so creating a curiosity or cultivating curiosity of spirit, mind, and heart is seems like an essential aspect of what it means to be a God lover, a Jesus follower, um, and and uh delving into those things. Yeah. Yeah.

Randy 41:10

We're uh we're figuring some shit out here tonight. Maybe I should be a pastor.

Kyle 41:15

I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Matt 41:16

I want you to be a pastor like the pastor Ames and Gilead. There you go. Kyle, we'll see what happens.

Randy 41:21

Matt, we're having a lot of fun. I've got more questions. I know Kyle does as well. Do you mind if we do this again and turn this into a two-parter? Let's keep doing it. Okay, all right. Friends, uh, can't wait to talk to you next time with Matt Erickson about the book The Pastor is Gardener. Thanks for listening to a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar. We hope you're enjoying these conversations. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us at patreon.com/slash a pastor and a philosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being a good person.

Kyle 42:04

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Randy 42:12

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Kyle 42:20

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