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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateBody .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent, #yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateBody .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateFooter .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent, #yiv9831754402 #yiv9831754402templateFooter .yiv9831754402mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Branan Robertson | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Becoming A Digital Evangelist: An Invitation For Progressive Christians | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Brandan Robertson April 20, 2023 The following is an excerpt from “Building Your Digital Sanctuary” Edited by Brandan Robertson Progressive faith communities are rightfully skeptical of the language of “evangelism.” In modern history, the word has come to mean something like “forceful conversion” rather than a demonstration of and an invitation to the way of Jesus. The communities that have defined themselves by their commitment to evangelism have, more often than not, been communities that are also committed to launching a social and political crusade to institutionalize their beliefs and values, forcing entire nations to align with and conform to their worldview. This so-called evangelism would more accurately be called “colonialism.” However, progressives fear of being identified with those who stand on street corners screaming at passersby about their hell-bound fate has prevented us from heeding one of the central commands of Jesus- publicly inviting others to his new way of seeing and being. Of course, most of us do not believe that joining the Christian religion or believing certain doctrines is a prerequisite to receive God’s love or saving grace, but we should believe that the message we’ve devoted our lives to is worth sharing with others, right? By letting our fear of being identified with evangelicals drive our behavior, many mainline and progressive communities have forsaken any effort to actively invite others to consider the transformative message of the Gospel of Christ. I am a millennial, which means I’ve grown up in a digital world. I don’t remember a time before the internet or personal computers, and I have lived most of my life with a smartphone in my pocket and some version of social media at my disposal. This also means that as a committed Christian, I’ve often utilized the internet to share aspects of my faith with my friends and followers across the internet. Whether through blogging, making YouTube videos, hosting internet radio shows, podcasting, making memes, sharing on Facebook, or composing Tweets, I, like a vast majority of people of faith on the internet, have talked about my faith and in so doing, invited others to consider the Christian faith path. Since the age of twelve, when I began doing this, I’ve interacted with millions of people on the internet, engaging in robust conversations and debates, sharing deeply personal stories, and forming profound bounds around our shared faith journeys. As my faith has evolved, much of this content creation online has focused on helping people separate Jesus from the institutions that bear his name and discover a progressive, inclusive way of being a Christian. This was just a natural part of my engagement online- my faith was important to me, so I posted about it and often was given incredible opportunities to invite others to this path. I never considered this “evangelism,” though I’d argue it was. In the internet age, where our whole lives are lived as hybrid existences between the digital world and the “real world,” a growing number of us are sharing more of ourselves and are more vulnerable on social media, which is creating profound connections with strangers and giving us opportunities to share “the hope within us” (1 Peter 3:15), even as we offer critiques of corrupt political actions, retweet inspirational quotes, or post photos about beautiful moments of our lives. This is precisely what it means to “evangelize”- to embody good news to the world around us. Everyone is an Influencer In this digital age, every person is an evangelist (or, in modern vernacular, an “influencer”). Every person can reach hundreds of thousands of people every time they engage on social media. The question we must ask ourselves is, what are we evangelists for? A simple scroll through our feeds on any of our social networks will quickly reveal this answer- is it our political party? Fitness? Sports? Parenting? What kind of content are we posting and regularly interacting with? And is it in alignment with the faith we claim as our foundation and core identity? What I am not suggesting is that everyone should devote their social media to religious content from here on out - especially if that would be inauthentic to how you embody your faith. Rather, I am suggesting that progressive followers of Christ be mindful of the messages we are sharing and how we might inject a bit of hope into the cynical world we now live in, and how we might express our faith-rooted values as we engage in social media. This is something “evangelicals” have done very well for a long time- evangelical communities have been effectively using digital media since the early 2000s, live-streaming their services, creating robust social media content, and encouraging their communities to like, share, and create their own faith-rooted content. But the playing field has at last been leveled after the COVID-19 pandemic- virtually every person and community in the world is now connected to social media and has equal access to the billions of people who are on the internet around the world. Why would we not use this moment to articulate a progressive, inclusive faith that challenges the corrupt and diluted versions of Christianity that have been promulgated so loudly for so long? My TikTok Transformation My passion around using social media for evangelism really emerged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when I decided to download TikTok. With our church closed down, I found myself with some extra time on my hands and I had seen a number of my clergy friends posting fun little TikTok videos on Facebook and Instagram of them dancing in their collars or declaring God’s love for all with some trending song in the background. I figured I would jump on to see what all the hype was about. After I posted a few cringe-worthy videos of me dancing in my collar, I decided to begin an experiment where I would create 30-second videos where I would talk about progressive Christian theology- my true passion. My first video was a fly-by summary of why the Bible didn’t condemn LGBTQ+ people. Then I did one on why hell didn’t exist. I continued to make videos like this, and to my surprise, they began to rack up a ton of views- some of those early videos spiking to 20,000 views within a day or two, and my follower count began to grow rapidly- 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 and so on in the first few months. Then the comments and messages began flowing in - young people saying things like, “If I had a pastor like you growing up, I’d still be a Christian” and “You’re making me want to join the church again.” Again, I didn’t set out to convince people to become progressive Christians or join a church- but what became clear to me is that progressive, inclusive Christians have been really bad at letting others know we exist. My TikTok account became a gateway for hundreds of thousands of people to simply learn that there was another way to be a Christian- and many of those people had been yearning for such a way to be illuminated for them. As my account continued to grow towards 200,000 followers and the comments streamed in by the thousands each day, it became clear to me that I needed to create a place where all of these individuals who were discovering progressive Christianity for the first time on TikTok could come together and have more substantial conversations. One way I began to do this was to utilize TikTok’s “Live” feature (which is available to all accounts that have more than 1,000 followers), which allowed me to go live and chat with my followers in real-time, answering their questions and giving advice and guidance. Once a week, I would log on to TikTok and go live for about an hour- over the course of that hour, 1,500 people, on average, would listen in to my real-time conversation about theology and spirituality with those who had submitted questions. After seeing this response, I began to promote a weekly Zoom gathering for my followers where we could see each other face-to-face and do a Bible Study from a progressive perspective. Within a week of advertising this study, 750 people had registered, and on our first study, about 200 people showed up to participate. There were people from remote parts of the world who didn’t have a progressive church in their country who were so elated to be a part of a digital community, and young queer Christians whose families didn’t support them that were discovering that there were, in fact, Christians who loved them just as they were. Night after night, once the study concluded, I would sit in silence, often tearing up at the blessing of being able to share my understanding of the Christian faith with these diverse people from around the world and actually see it transforming their lives. After nearly four years of full-time parish ministry in a brick-and-mortar church, I, like many pastors, had begun to grow cynical about the faith and it’s ability to have any tangible impact on people’s lives or our world. Yet here, in the digital sanctuary created by this strange little social media app, I was getting to do real ministry that was healing thousands of people. I could have never imagined such an opportunity, nor did I ever think I would find a passion for “evangelism” again after leaving my conservative understanding of Christian faith. Yet here I was, an digital evangelist, being reminded that the good news of Jesus truly was “good news of great joy.” (Luke 2:10) Eventually, the impact of this digital evangelism helped me to step away from my brick-and-mortar church and devote myself to full-time digital ministry. I launched the Metanoia Community, which gathered folks from my TikTok on Zoom each week for Bible Study, prayer, and meditation, and opened a Discord secure chat room for them to stay in conversation throughout the week. Nearly every week, I met one-on-one with folks from around the world who needed pastoral care and guidance and also spent a good deal of time helping folks find inclusive churches in their geographical area that they could connect to. The opportunity of digital ministry became a full-time job for me, and in many ways, was more life-giving than any ministry I had ever engaged in before because of the ability to have direct contact with an immediate impact on hundreds or thousands of people in real-time. An Unprecedented Opportunity Since joining TikTok three years ago, I have witnessed dozens of other progressive Christian clergy and lay people step into digital evangelism, collectively reaching millions of people with a version of the Christian faith that truly gives people hope. The impact of an individual clergyperson or even layperson utilizing social media to share their faith cannot ever be accurately assessed, but what I can say for certain is that everyone who produces content online will reach, influence, and impact someone- whether you ever know it or not. In this emerging digital era, it is an act of negligence to ignore the opportunities we all have to share good news with a weary world through social media. The goal of course isn’t to convert people to our religion but to show people that there is a better way to orient our lives, a way that brings about a sense of purpose and that helps make the world a more just and beautiful place. This message- the true message of the gospel- is being drowned out by so many other messages that saturate social media spaces. We need as many people as possible to use their voices and perspective to create social media content that equips and inspires the seekers, cynical, and suspicious. It has never been easier to share our faith, expand our digital sanctuaries, and reach millions of people with hope and help for their lives. If we do not seize upon this opportunity, we can be certain that the end of our churches is imminent. The future of the church is a hybrid of a local community connecting to an international digital community, but in order to create such an extensive digital reach, we must be willing to step out into the digital dimension without fear, with creativity, and with commitment, to showing up as our full selves, with our unique perspective, and trusting that God will use our voice to reach all whom it needs to reach. Whether you realize it or not, if you’re on social media, you’re a digital evangelist- the question, again, is for what? May we rise to the challenge and opportunity of this moment together.~ Rev. Brandan Robertson Read online here About the Author Rev. Brandan Robertson is a noted spiritual thought-leader, contemplative activist, and commentator, working at the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social renewal and the author of Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light and writes regularly for Patheos, Beliefnet, and The Huffington Post. He has published countless articles in respected outlets such as TIME, NBC, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, and Dallas Morning News. As sought out commentator of faith, culture, and public life, he is a regular contributor to national media outlets and has been interviewed by outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, SiriusXM, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Associated Press. He leads Metanoia, a digital spiritual community at MetanoiaCenter.org | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Peter The perfection of nature amazes me, while the imperfection of human beings continues to disappoint me. What will it take for humans to learn the lessons of Jesus - that love is the only way to guarantee the survival of the world and its inhabitants? A: By Rev. Matt Syrdal Great question Peter! Love is a great word. Love as a verb is active, dynamic, inclusive, relational, and vulnerable. I would love to move us away from understanding love as an abstract noun or simply a virtue or emotion toward an ecology of relatedness, like how the systems of the human body work together for life and growth and greater consciousness. Jesus’ love was not soft, and he was not a pushover. He demanded hard things of his disciples. He spoke fiery words to the elites, the upper castes of the Roman world. His love towards others was not sentimental or rescuing, but focused and deliberate. Some languages have dozens of words for love. Jesus spoke of four primary types of love, with the whole heart, soul, mind, and strength... that is with the centered presence of the heart connected to deep emotion and feeling, with the soul’s imaginative and visionary faculties, with the heart-centered intellect, and one’s erotic vitality put into decisive action. Jesus modeled this four-fold way of loving God from his own wholeness of being. The second command is like the first, “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.” We have all heard that in this command is also the injunction to love oneself. It is pretty hard to really love someone else if we don’t love ourselves. What we have not wondered more about is the question, “who is my neighbor?” Does my “neighbor” extend to the more than human world, not just the human species? And if so does my self-hood extend beyond to the world itself? Can I love the world as myself? What would happen if I did? Poet David Whyte gives my favorite definition of sin when he says, humans are “the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our flowering.” By this he means the dark-side of self-reflexive consciousness, that is, of choice, is that we have the freedom to choose death rather than life. We have the freedom to live unconsciously, or selfishly. It is not just individuals either. It is systems and structures we have created that are hardwired to reward selfish greed and exploitation of Earth itself. I don’t think it is not that we have not learned the lessons of Jesus, it’s that we value our own personal comfort and gain over the survival of the world, even beauty and life itself. We are choosing to refuse our flowering. But one thing must be clear, choice is not fate, until it becomes too late to choose. ~ Rev. Matt Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Matthew Syrdal, M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, a visionary, founder of Church of Lost Walls, and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt has begun a new venture called Mythic Christ, a mystery school and podcast for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country and his mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery, and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world of which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in discovering “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives, cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. 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If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | | | | This Week's Featured Author Rev. Roger Wolsey Discovering Fire: Spiritual Practices That Transform Lives Igniting a spiritual expansion that bridges religious and non-religious sensibilities, this is a deep and intimate dive into a profusion of spiritual practices. Promoting diversity, respect, and a deeper connection with the Divine, Roger explores the intersections of Christianity with shadow-work, dream work, the Enneagram, yoga, astrology, tarot cards, shamanism, ecstatic dance, psychedelic plants, and more. With passion, cultural sensitivity, grounding in tradition, and the heart of an explorer Roger offers a go-to guide for the 21st century seeker, be they religious, spiritual, or anywhere along the spectrum of that human experience of longing for healing encounters with the Mystery some call God. Read More ... | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part XII Matthew: Matthew Introduces John the Baptist-The New Elijah Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong January 30, 2014Matthew has thus far mined the Hebrew Scriptures for texts that will advance his thesis that Jesus has fulfilled the Jewish messianic expectations. In the opening genealogy, he has made Jesus “the son of Abraham,” the son and heir of King David and portrayed him as one who with his people survived the Babylonian exile. Only then did he flesh out his story with the narrative of Jesus’ miraculous birth, based on a text from Isaiah. When he introduced Joseph into his story, he patterned him quite intentionally on Joseph the patriarch, whose story fills the chapters in Genesis between 37 and 50. Matthew’s Joseph serves to bring together the Hebrew nation, uniting finally the two sides that had split apart after the reign of Solomon. Every one of his Jewish readers knew that this was a major expectation of the promised messiah.The messiah had cosmic implications, so his birth was announced with a star, the light from which shone all over the world. It drew Gentiles in the persons of the magi, suggesting that messiah will not only heal the divisions among the Jews, but he will also bind Jew and Gentile together in a single human family. They would bring symbolic gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for a deity and myrrh, which presaged the fact that the messiah would accomplish his purpose through suffering and death. The story of the magi, we now know, was based on a text from Isaiah 60. Matthew was weaving an interpretive narrative around the one who would be called Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew then proceeded to tell a Moses story, designed to remind his readers that Jesus was a new and greater Moses. Like Moses, Jesus was not only God’s deliverer, but he was also one who would be called out of Egypt. Next Matthew quoted Jeremiah who had portrayed Rachel, the ancestral mother of the Northern Kingdom, as weeping for her children, who had been destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. After all of these preliminaries, Matthew has properly set the stage to introduce the pivotal character we know as John the Baptist who, for Matthew, would stand as the life upon whom the Old Covenant would be transformed into the New Covenant. By this point in our study of this gospel, we ought to be aware that Matthew is not a historian, eager to set the literal record straight; he is rather one who proclaims the good news that he has experienced in the person of Jesus. His task is to interpret the significance of the life of Jesus and he will bend the record and history wherever necessary to serve this interpretive purpose.There was, quite clearly, a historical, first century itinerant preacher named John, whose movement was symbolized by an act of baptism. This John of history is, however, not the person we meet in Matthew’s gospel. As we piece the fragments of the historical record together, we can see the shadows of the one called “the Baptist” begin to emerge. We share those shadows in this column in order to put Matthew’s story into a context.The John movement was both independent of the Jesus movement and connected with it. There is much historical evidence to support the fact that the two movements were competitive at the beginning. A reference in the book of Acts indicates that the John movement existed late into the first century quite independent of the Jesus movement. The fact that the earliest three gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus being baptized by John suggests that Jesus actually began his career as one of John’s disciples. Certainly some of Jesus’ first disciples appear to have been former disciples of the Baptist. The constant references in the gospels to the priority of Jesus over John reflects the discomfort that the followers of Jesus appeared to have that John came first in history and that Jesus built on John’s ministry. That is why Matthew and the other Christian writers spend so much energy in the scriptures trying to diminish John the Baptist. Matthew has John say things like: “I baptize you with water, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Matthew, perhaps embarrassed by the fact that John actually baptized Jesus, has John say: “I have need to be baptized by you and you come to me?” Later writers will have John say, “He must increase, I must decrease.” Luke goes so far as to suggest that even the fetus of John the Baptist leapt in the womb of its mother Elizabeth to salute the fetus of Jesus, still in the womb of Mary. So it is interesting to watch how Matthew interprets John. He takes his cue from Mark, who in his opening verse says, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare the way.” That is a quotation from the book of the prophet Malachi (3:1). Malachi had been re-interpreted in the light of the Jesus experience. Malachi actually closes his book with the identification of that messenger as a forerunner of the messiah. The messianic tradition had assigned this role to Elijah. So Malachi wrote: “Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers.” In the messianic tradition of the Jews clearly an Elijah-like prophet would prepare the way for the messiah’s arrival. The followers of Jesus, probably between the writings of Paul (51-64) and the creation of the first gospel Mark (ca. 72), had decided that John the Baptist was in fact that “new Elijah.” This idea had been introduced in Mark, but now Matthew would take it over and develop it to a new intensity. It is fair to say, that in this gospel we do not really meet the historical John the Baptist, we meet the John of Christian interpretation. Yes, John came first, they were saying, but this does not mean that John was primary. His role, as far as the followers of Jesus were concerned, was clear: He was the forerunner not the principle figure. Matthew now proceeds to develop this character.John the Baptist is described by Matthew as one who came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Every Jew knew that Elijah was a preacher in the wilderness. Matthew then moves to solidify this identification by giving to this wilderness preacher the message: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” To make sure that Matthew’s readers got his point, he clothed John with the clothing of Elijah. Elijah was described in I Kings (1:8) as one “wearing a garment of haircloth with a girdle of leather about his loins.” Matthew says of John the Baptist that he “wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle around his waist.” The identification is clear.Next, Matthew described John’s diet. It was the diet of the wilderness: locusts and wild honey. He then records John’s message to be like Elijah’s. John is quite confrontational. Elijah confronted King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel. John the Baptist will be portrayed as confronting King Herod and his Queen Herodias.The story of the ultimate confrontation between Elijah and the royal family of Ahab and Jezebel was told in the first book of Kings (18:17-46). It took place on top of Mt. Carmel in the Northern Kingdom. It took the form of a dramatic contest pitting Elijah alone against 450 prophets of Baal, who was the God of the Canaanites and the God worshipped by Jezebel. The contest was to determine whether Yahweh, Elijah’s God or Baal, Jezebel’s God, could bring fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice that each side had prepared and laid on their respective altars. The prophets of Baal were invited to go first, so 450 prophets of Baal came out praying, singing, dancing and cajoling their God to send fire from heaven upon their erected altar. This went on for quite a time while Elijah taunted them from the sidelines, urging them to cry louder, suggesting that perhaps Baal was asleep. When their efforts proved futile and their time was up, and no response from Baal had been forthcoming, it was finally Elijah’s turn. According to the biblical narrative, Elijah stepped forward in the style of a great showman. First, he erected his altar using twelve stones, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Next, he laid his wood on his altar before placing the sacrificed animal on the wood. Then he built a trench around the altar and followed this by his ordering four cisterns of water to be filled and then poured over his altar. This procedure was repeated three times until the altar, the wood and the sacrificed animal were soaked and even the trench around the altar was overflowing with water. Only then did Elijah pray for God to answer with fire from heaven that would be of such strength that it would consume the offering. According to this story, the fire of God fell from heaven immediately and consumed the offering, licking up the water in the trench. Vindicated, Elijah then turned on the 450 prophets of Baal and beheaded them on the spot with his sword. It must have been a gory sight! When Queen Jezebel heard of this, she uttered this vow about Elijah: “So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life like the lives of one of them (the prophets of Baal) by this time tomorrow.” Elijah, hearing this treat fled and so these solemn words uttered by the queen were left unfulfilled. Eventually, the sacred story tells us Elijah escaped death altogether by being transported into the presence of God in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses.The Christian tradition now asserted that Jezebel’s solemn vow had finally been fulfilled on John the Baptist, who died the death vowed for Elijah. John was beheaded with a sword on the orders of Herodias, the new Jezebel. His identification with Elijah was now complete. We are not reading history; we are reading interpretive writing by Jewish followers of Jesus, who are reading the Hebrew Scriptures in such a way that they seem to find their fulfillment in Jesus. To literalize these stories would have been nothing short of nonsense to this gospel writer.Christian scholars are not modern people seeking to destroy the scriptures by declaring them not to be literal history, they are rather people who are discovering the original meaning of the gospels themselves, a meaning that was lost when Christianity became a totally Gentile movement. Biblical literalism is nothing more than Gentile ignorance. We turn next week to the baptism of Jesus. It is a new Red Sea experience.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Futures We Inherit: A Conversation with Larry Rasmussen Join us for an earth-day-dialogue with renowned Christian social ethicist and Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics (emeritus) at Union Theological Seminary, Larry Rasmussen. April 21, 2023 - 3:30-4:30pm EDT - Yale University READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |