Episode 5 | August 25, 2025
This episode of Credible Witness with Nikki Toyama-Szeto features Mark Labberton reflecting on the credibility of the church in today’s fractured culture. Drawing on his pastoral experience in Berkeley, his leadership at Fuller Seminary, and his response during the AIDS crisis, Labberton challenges listeners with the urgent question: Will the church live its peculiar Jesus-centered identity? Themes include Schleiermacher’s “cultured despisers,” the scandal of small-making, public credibility, curiosity, and the Rethinking Church Initiative.
Ep. 5 | Curiosity, Community, and the Beauty of the Church
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Will the church live its peculiar, Jesus-centered identity?
Will the church live its peculiar, Jesus-centered identity?
In this episode, Presbyterian minister and former Fuller Seminary president Mark Labberton joins Nikki Toyama-Szeto to wrestle with the urgent question: Will the church live its true identity? Reflecting on his ministry in Berkeley among “cultured despisers,” his pastoral experience during the AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and his convening of the Rethinking Church Initiative, Labberton describes the church as a “peculiar community”—one that must embody love, justice, and mercy across difference.
Together, Nikki and Mark explore the scandal of the church’s self-delusion, the urgent need for public credibility, and the role of imagination, curiosity, and presence in cultivating transformative communities. Labberton insists the church is meant to be God’s chief apologetic in the world: a living witness of Christ’s love across cultures, identities, and divides.
Key Moments
About the Contributors
Mark Labberton is a Presbyterian minister and served as president of Fuller Seminary from 2013–2022. Previously, he was pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California. He is the author of The Dangerous Act of Worship and a leader in rethinking the church’s mission of love, justice, and credible witness in today’s world. Listen to his weekly podcast, Conversing.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto is Executive Director of Christians for Social Action, where she works with leaders from across sectors to catalyze faith into action for justice. She hosts Credible Witness and writes widely on the intersection of faith, justice, and global engagement.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Credible Witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative. Hosted by Nikki Toyama-Szeto. Produced by Mark Labberton, Sarey Martin Concepción, and Evan Rosa
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative.
Mark Labberton: In my mind, I grew up really outside the life of the church. and it was my rough impression as a kid growing up that that was more or less the narrative of churches, that they were closed communities and tight circles I really had very, very, very little to do with them. And as a result, I was an outside skeptic and came to faith as I was entering college. And one of the things that mattered to me about that process was the way that I saw Jesus. Inviting unexpected people into a community. That seemed like a close circle, ,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: This is Mark Labberton, a Presbyterian minister with decades of service. Mark retired in 2022 from his presidency at Fuller Seminary, So when I discovered that in fact Jesus’ longing was not only for that community that’s inside the circle to be newly formed and reborn in Christ, I also became aware that. Jesus had this incredible capacity to draw people from different tribes and tongues and ethnicities and circumstances and politics Out of that came this desire then to say, how does the church actually escape its bubble?
Mark Labberton: I was just amazed at how the thing that cracked open the universe was Jesus’ teaching of the kingdom of God
That it was about reordering and recreating everything, and that if you wanted your heart and your compassion and your intellect to be challenged, it was to move deeper and deeper into the kingdom.
And along the way, one of the things that I began to be aware of was that there were so many people who I think were scandalized and outside the church, not because they really didn’t wanna believe often. I still would say many people not in the church want to believe, but they find that the church is one of the great hurdles.
Later, as I eventually encountered it, a a 19th century, theologian named Friedrich Schleiermacher, I became aware of, of a phrase that he uses that his work called the Christian Faith is addressed, or especially attentive to what he called the cultured despisers of the church.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: this phrase, he’s using cultured despisers. I find it so provocative and glaring. Who are these individuals who stare, who glare at the church from the outside? These who mock Christianity, Who discount it? Who are sure that it’s a virus in the world rather than a healing presence?
Mark Labberton: What that group meant was people who were outside the church, outside the faith in that way, and who despised it and why they despised it, is a complicated thing. There’s many, many elements to that, but when I first heard the phrase, I thought, yeah, those are my people,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mark wants to listen to the culture despisers of Christianity. He wants to hear their stories and understand them because he thinks there’s a new set of imaginative possibilities that might be realized when the church starts reaching out in humility, curiosity, social action, and a desire to live our identity as a peculiar community defined by the love and justice of Jesus.
Mark Labberton: and I think it’s because I was aware that.
The enormity of God’s heart and mind and purposes can so tragically get reduced to something very small and myopic. And often the church shows a gospel that seems frankly pathetic as opposed to one that is intimate, personal, but profound, profound, intellectually profound, emotionally profound, relationally, profound culturally, and that if.
The so-called culture despises of the church could come to imagine the possibilities of believing in a God who actually engaged in the same questions, the same dramas, the same crises, who shares the reality of those things, then surely that would at least give them. A fairer hearing and opportunity to consider the meaning of the faith.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I’m Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and this is Credible Witness, A collection of stories and wisdom from faithful people, wrestling with and bearing witness to the credibility of Christian life today. Each episode is an invitation to listen generously and courageously to one person navigating social tension and moral complexity.
Negotiating doubts, struggles and fears, overcoming obstacles, and pursuing justice and living out the convictions of their faith. And every voice reminds us that the church is called to be a credible witness to Christ, a living reality of hope, justice, truth and love.
Mark Labberton can be an intimidating guy when he stretches up to his full height. He’s pretty tall, but it’s his kind of hip, slightly funky, dark glasses that hint at both the whimsy and the friendliness that I experience in Mark. He asks great questions. He notices interesting things, and he makes connections about trends in the church that are fascinating.
But what strikes me most about Mark is the way he shows up as a whole person, a whole being. He’s candid and astute. He tells great stories and he laughs hard, but he also has an extraordinary capacity to sit, to be present to pain, mess, and complications
Without apologizing or getting rid of the discomfort, it’s this ability to stay in the tension. In the midst of complexity that plays out in one of his books, the Dangerous Act of Worship.
In this episode with Mark Labberton, we discuss Jesus’s teaching on the Kingdom of God and the reordering and recreating that implies for our world what it means for the Christian community to live a peculiar life that embodies love, mercy, and justice, what it was like to minister in the 1980s in the California Bay Area during the AIDS epidemic.
the importance of curiosity and how to cultivate a deep interest in the story of others. And finally, the question of whether and how Christians will live their true identity and calling.
Mark Labberton, thank you so much for joining us here on this conversation.
Mark Labberton: I’m delighted to be here,
Nikki. Thanks
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: before he became the president of Fuller Theological Seminary in 2013, mark was the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California. A stones throw from Telegraph Avenue the birthplace of the free speech movement of the 1960s Sprawl Plaza. Mark described his love for the people of Berkeley.
Mark Labberton: Berkeley, California was a natural landing spot for me, since it’s a community of cultured despisers of the church and of the faith. So I was, a happy camper in that context at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and, and very, very grateful for those years.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: As you were ministering at first pre Berkeley. What was it that helped guide you in terms of, as you were working with these culture despisers, what was the thing that your pastor’s heart was, kind of holding for this community?
Mark Labberton: I used to walk the streets of Berkeley on prayer walks and all over the campus, many, many, many, many, many, many times. And. I was trying to just see people, to see people’s faces, to register what I was hearing, to take in the pathos, and that’s a lot of different elements. As anyone who’s visited or spent time in Berkeley
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: There’s a lot of pathos going
on. There’s a lot
Mark Labberton: Yeah. As one writer once said about Berkeley, it’s the kind of place where you can have a lifestyle without necessarily having a life. Because there’s so much pathos going on. so, and at the same time, I found it really profound that people were struggling and challenging and wrestling with such raw issues.
I remember one time walking into an art store in Berkeley looking for something that was a little unusual, and I said to the clerk, you know, I’m looking for something that I’m not sure exists. And without pausing, he said. Aren’t we all? No, I love that. I love that. It was a one of so many, so many, so many Berkeley moments, but when you walk around it.
Community like that and ask yourself the question, what are people looking for? What is it they’re hungry most for? Those are, to me, ultimately gospel questions. So that meant that when you come to the preaching or teaching task or the other elements of the ministry of the church, first Presbyterian, I was really aware of hungers and, and the demands that faith would have to fill at least engage in order for people to take it seriously.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mark described. A gripping, visual, imaginative practice. He used every Sunday that he preached at First Press, Berkeley with a pulpit visible from the street and surrounded by glass walls he imagined looking out to a sea of protestors, demanding of him. How dare you?
It became an intimate question, one that he would ask and answer. Over and over again. the church has clear glass walls and I used to regularly envision as I stood in the pulpit to preach.
Mark Labberton: A lineup of imaginary Berkeley protestors holding a very long banner that always had on it the exact same question, which was simply, how dare you? And it was a question about how dare we make the claims of faith? How dare we gather in this city and make the claims of faith? How dare we make the claims of faith?
And attempt to live a peculiar life that doesn’t look like Churchian, but looks like the embodied reality of the life and love and mercy and justice of Jesus. That was exactly the right question, and it felt to me like as a preacher, I needed to engage that in some way every week
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Every Sunday How dare you.
Mark Labberton: That’s right. How dare you do this? On what grounds to what end? For what purpose with what people? Right. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you? How dare you. In 42 different directions. Right. I welcome that because I thought it really put on edge both the urgency and the implications and, and frankly the accountability, the public accountability.
So this is when I began to. Even more deeply grieve, frankly, during those years, the way that the church shoots itself in the foot or discredits the gospel by its own doing not, not because of the scandal of the cross. Mm-hmm. But because of the scandal of small making, the scandal of. Self delusion. The scandal of certainty, the scandal of, of claims, that a certain kind of cultural vision is the same thing as the kingdom of God.
Those sorts of assumptions that come from all kinds of different places in our lives.
I remember being so struck by. The fact that during the AIDS crisis, suddenly as it was unfolding so vividly and painfully and agonizingly in the whole Bay Area, certainly in San Francisco, and definitely in Berkeley, there was this sense that the national rhetoric of the church was condemning and distance making and uh, Wrongly piousin the context of suffering and pain and, an epidemic that was of extraordinary reach and would of course affect ultimately tens and tens of millions of people around the world.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: in 1981, a mysterious disease broke out in the San Francisco Bay area, seemingly linked to a rare cancer Kaposi sarcoma. That summer, patients began arriving at local hospitals with lesions all over their bodies.
The AIDS death toll in the United States rose from approximately 10,000 per year in 1985. To 50,000 per year in 1995, and we’d go on to kill 40 million people across the globe to date. But the AIDS crisis of the eighties and nineties unfolded along the lines of the brewing culture wars of the time, deepening not only political rifts, but widening the chasm between the church and the broader culture. AIDS quickly went from a haunting and deadly disease that killed half of everyone and infected to a symbol of immorality and sin.
For two decades, the conversation among the Christian community about its response to AIDS generated far more heat than light as the country and world roiled from the impact of this deadly new disease. But across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, mark encountered AIDS in a different way by sitting and praying with men in AIDS hospice, all of them, HIV positive, and all of them expecting to die within months.
Mark Labberton: So you’re trying to serve in a community that is taking human need and experience? Honestly, courageously, compassionately, absolutely. Every, every question about anything gets is considered fair game and wants to do that as we were trying to do at First Press. Wants to do it really? With as much courage and faithfulness as possible.
There was a, a young African American man in our church who was one of the most extraordinary musicians I’ve ever encountered. One form of his musicianship was singing, in a kind of jazz style that was just so remarkable. And. I was aware that we weren’t seeing him around and that was unusual and I didn’t have an explanation for it.
Eventually, word came that he had self isolated with HIV, which became aids, and he died. and very, very few people at First Press had known this story and knew that he, who was known by everyone because he was so beloved and his musicianship was so honored and he was honored and loved treasured, the church would’ve, I think, rallied.
But his perception, it seems either was that he wasn’t sure, or that he was sure that it wouldn’t.
What that did for me, and I think what it did for many people at First Press was to hold up a mirror to really ask ourselves, are we, are we truly leaning into this moment or are we not? and it changed a lot of things that began to happen at First Press, and there were people.
Particularly one person named Art Ahman, who was the, the physician and scientist who had first discovered and, and, affirmed that mother child transmission of HIV was a reality. And that changed his life. His work, his ministry had changed for press. As a result, it
changed everything about the way that we began to think about.
the global church.
It caused me as pastor, it caused us as a congregation to have to face and see things that had not been part of the kind of work and ministry of the church and and needed to really lead us into a new place. And it did and it didn’t. We made major headway. Of course, like any traditional congregation, there were ways that that was still unfinished work.
by the time I left it was still unfinished. But I do think that the, the power of that as an example of trying to say that they were among the culture despisers and they’re looking at the church capital C and seeing what’s really going on and to migrate, And, lifelong gratitude. There’s a young man who was listening to the radio broadcast of our services during that period, the early eighties, and he, began to write me a response whenever I would preach So we began to engage with letters and he didn’t seem overly self-disclosing, so I wasn’t trying to,
invade his territory. But gradually our relationship had gotten to the point where it was natural to ask more personal questions. Where do you actually live and what are your circumstances and are you working?
Just ordinary sort of get acquainted things. And it turned out that, that he was not working, that he was now living in an, an AIDS hospice. and that, he, and. many of the other men that lived there were all HIV positive. Oh wow. And that they would sit together to listen to the service.
So I said, well, you know, could I come over because. I would, I would love to meet you, but I would also love to meet the other men that are in this place. Yes. And to try to be as available simply to listen, but also to offer whatever blessings I can. I would be happy to, I. To lead them in prayer. I’d be happy to offer communion.
I’d be happy to share some words of encouragement, if that would seem appropriate, whatever it might be. Well, this ended up developing, into an ongoing visiting pattern. and ultimately every one of those men died in that hospice. it was a very, very profound and transformative experience for me and.
It underscored the essential risk of moving out of our comfort zones and into new places of, of hopefully love and mercy and support.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: As a longtime pastor and teacher and mentor of pastors, Mark’s hope for a church rethought. Is based in belonging in the community. Transformative relationships between unlike people, unlikely to have been bonded in the first place, centered around Jesus.
But Mark points out a dangerous and beautiful and essential question, will we live our identity?
When you think about rethinking Church from your vantage point, what do you feel like is the thing that God is trying to get our attention about, and is there an invitation in that to respond or to live that out?
Mark Labberton: To me, the issue at stake is really, will the church live its identity? And by that I mean it’s Jesus centric. Follow Jesus as living disciples in communion of unlike people, will we be a peculiar community of unlike people who come from different backgrounds, different generations, different race and ethnicity, different.
Social locations, in whatever ways those might be defined. Will we live in that kind of community, not a homogeneous community, and will we live out what it means to be faithful followers, embodying intangible actions of love and mercy and justice, the character of God? Will we make Jesus visible? World for culture, despisers and for anyone else, including the church itself.
And I think it’s, it’s that vocation that I think is most in need of recovery. The ecclesiastical industrial complex in America is historic, long-term, complicated, compromised, beautiful, wonderful, horrible tribal, you know, it’s, it’s all it,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: it
is.
So you’re just driving this whole, the system in which our churches are formed and fueled and educated by and supported that whole system. Exactly. All of these
Mark Labberton: adjectives,
all of that,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: that,
uhhuh of that
beautiful, wonderful, and
Mark Labberton: and yes.
yes. And broken and tortured and decept. Deceiving and deceptive. yes. So the question then becomes, will we live our identity? If we lived our identity not as institution or social club or social association or racial tribe or whatever it might be, if we lived our peculiar identity of an identification with Jesus and wanting to make Jesus visible by how.
Act and yes, audible, how do we proclaim and speak about Jesus and speak words that are Jesus like words into a world of pain and suffering and chaos and violence. If we do that, then the church is actually embodying its identity in ways that are meant to say, gosh, how, why are you the kind of people that you are?
Mm-hmm. And it, it is the, the case that Jesus said that we are to be known by our love. That the church was known for its love. And of course it needs to be said urgently that in many, many people’s lives that is exactly what they experience. And I was talking to someone just yesterday who was expansively describing the profound multi-generational love of the church that they had been part of, and how it had completely allowed them to thrive in an otherwise really hostile context.
Mm-hmm. It’s a beautiful picture and not an uncommon one, but it is is still too uncommon compared to the presence of industrial church, denominational church institutional church. Rhetorical church. Mm-hmm. That doesn’t necessarily connect up in any evident or plain way with the reality of the peculiarity of Jesus that saw people as they really are, that named them as they really were people with honor and dignity.
Mm-hmm. And. Served and loved them as he did, calling them into life in the kingdom, into this new and unexpected communion with God and with each other. That picture of the church, which I, I do think is the living core of what the whole enterprise of church is, has gotten buried inside. Institutional industrial church that, too often names many of these things, but then creates distance at this very same moment because it, there’s not a resonance between the depiction and this living reality of, being with Jesus.
This is partly why I think, well, of course it became a truism and a, and a. A phrase that was used in a way that became inauthentic. The, so this is the phrase of what would Jesus do? Mm-hmm. Is really a Christian question. Mm-hmm. That is actually what we’re to be asking. What would Jesus do? And it’s not meant to be, a cute bracelet.
It’s meant to be actually a phrase that describes and motivates and defines how we actually
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: a tool
Mark Labberton: reflection. Indeed, a,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: a,
a tool for
Mark Labberton: guidance
and,
and
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: discernment
Mark Labberton: and
action.
Right? Yeah.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yeah. I’ve
heard you describe, some of the people that you collect around you as folks who look at the church and, and say, this beautiful mess.
Mark Labberton: Yes,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: yes.
Can you say more about what it is that you think, the church living out its identity?
What might that actually look like?
Mark Labberton: Over the last number of years I’ve been serving as a, as the president of Fuller Seminary and for more than a decade, I’ve been teaching at Fuller as well and not serving as a pastor. And, seminaries have lots of unusual people. But one of the things that I love about being a pastor is that it is just, it is just full of its own grab bag of people that, that find themselves walking through
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: the
door.
Uhhuh
Mark Labberton: And, and
I.
IFI find it profound myself just to s to observe my congregation. And the longer you’re there, the deeper, you know, the eccentricities of people’s stories and. The way that those stories are sitting next to other stories, and those two stories may not know each other’s story. There’s something about all that that I find both hilarious, profound, moving, challenging, all, all the
things, right?
what, but what I do believe is really important is to cultivate a curiosity about people and about God. Having made and shaped them and wanting to understand and know them. So when I think about people that have been significant people in my life that have helped shape how I see others, how I name others, how I respond to others, it’s people who have a relish of that same kind of experience,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: How can we cultivate that curiosity? It really takes so much courage and stability and to truthfulness, to maintain that attitude, that posture of longing to learn from others. Letting them surprise you. Allowing yourself to make new discoveries and simply hold them.
And if you know Mark or have listened to his podcast conversing, he asks the most wonderful questions, the kind of questions that not only disarm and melt our cynicism or suspicion, but even make you excited to answer,
Mark reflected on the value of hearing and understanding stories. That are not his own.
Mark Labberton: I think of people throughout my whole Christian life that have provoked me to take another look. Mm-hmm. Or to mm or three or move toward the person or the circumstance or the reality. Mm-hmm. In ways that.
My own personality, which tends to be more shy and introverted, doesn’t necessarily find easy. But which I’ve now become not only much more prone to do, but really. Eager to do. Mm-hmm. Because I’ve realized that it’s in that, in those risks of engagement in the beautiful mass of church, the beautiful mass of Christian communion, which can include pain and anger and suffering and confusion and, wrong.
And at the same time, right in the middle of it, the extraordinary beauty of a human being. Mm-hmm. I mean, I can think of so many, people who, who I. Would see in one way, and by God’s grace over time, I would come to see utterly differently. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and they became in my mind and heart what they already were to God, which was gems.
Mm-hmm.
Fearfully and wonderfully made to quote Psalm 39, each one. Mm-hmm. And yes, they have their own peculiar story, as do I. And so in that, I just think there’s just been tremendous joy, discovery, amazement, humility, When you see people who really have almost nothing that would be considered socially impressive mm-hmm. Or noteworthy, but then you come to actually just listen with to them. Sit with them, hear them tell their stories. Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. The number of times I’ve just been reduced to just a completely different frame.
And you know, it was a tall, white, educated male, blah, blah, blah. That can hold its own social location, which can be very blinding. To really hearing and understanding people’s stories
that are not
my
own.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mm-hmm. And, and recognizing these treasures
Mark Labberton: completely. treasures.
Yeah. No. And that
I am now
eager
to
discover Uhhuh
and think, how could you not want to know somebody who is utterly not like you and relish. Who they are. Yeah. Not because it’s always easy or pleasant, but not because it’s not easy or pleasant. I mean, often it takes very little time. I, I think of so many instances where, especially in random social contexts, where again, in my normal sort of Mark, Labberton mo I would sit quietly and,
and
read a
book
or, read my email and that’s fine.
And I do that for sure, but there’s also a provocation of the spirit that I’ve come to recognize. Mm-hmm. Where I want to be in more continuous attentiveness to the people that are around me, and to find my own way of being able to break the initial ice so that the potential conversation can actually unfold, and I have to say.
I have very seldom done anything but give thanks for that. I think I’m not alone in this one experience. For example, Uber rides are perfect contexts to be able to have unexpected conversations and because so many Uber riders, drivers rather are. People of color and are many times immigrants. One of the things that I have come to eagerly look forward to in my Uber rides, which are sometimes too many, is to almost immediately break the ice of conversation, almost the moment I get in the car.
Mm-hmm. And if there’s a potential, for being able to advance in some way. I’ve had some of the best conversations in the last eight or nine years
in
Uber
rides,
and they
have.
It taught me lesson upon lesson upon lesson about immigrant experience, about cultural experience, about racial experience.
Mm-hmm. It’s very comfortable to sit in the backseat. They’re the driver. They are totally in charge. I’m just the person in the backseat and I often will ask something like, so. I’m not from this city. What is it like to be black in this city? Mm. What is it like to be Asian in this city? What are the challenges and what are the things that you’ve have found suit you well?
That easy entree? Mm-hmm. Sitting is the person in the back with No agenda. Honestly, no agenda except wanting to see if they’re willing to show their story, which. To this day, I have never had anyone not do, I mean, they have always been willing to tell their story, and then it’s about getting lost in their story.
Mm-hmm. And the wonder of their story. Mm-hmm. Just this week in Fab, I had a, an Uber ride like that, and I, I said at the end of it, you know. Quite truly, this story that you’ve just told me is something that will linger with me for a very long time, and I’m humbled by. The detail that you were willing to share, and it changes the way that I’ll see other people that are like you and I.
I really, truly want to express my thanks. That was a change that, you know, mark Latson in his little internal cocoon would never have known Uhhuh. Why would I not wanna live or lead Uhhuh in a world where those realities are at hand? Almost every day. Wow. Yes. And then how do you motivate a congregation?
How do you motivate a, a community of seminary students? How do you continue growing in this yourself while you’re aware that others are needing and
wanting to grow
too?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Mark is a gatherer, a curator, a convener. He loves to operationalize a group of people to make an impact, and he’s a magnet for interesting people and conversation partners.
But he’s doing this with a clear mission in mind, and that has everything to do with the central question he raised a few moments ago.
Will we the church, live our identity? Will we live into it? Live up to it will we live from deep within a commitment to that identity?
Anytime he draws people together. It’s aligned to this mission to gather around this identity informed by the life and teachings of Jesus in order to ree the world for the gospel.
You’ve gathered a community of conversation partners around you. trying to ask questions about the church, about what faith communities look like, what God is doing now.
And and is there a moment to respond to? Can you tell me a little bit about how do you think about curating.
Pulling together different perspectives or different experiences and, and how is it that you, you make those choices? Or, or what is it that you looked for in, in a community of conversation partners around this conversation of rethinking
Mark Labberton: Such a good question.
I think what happened for me was that basically a decade ago, what I’d already carried for a long time as this concern for how the church is disinfecting people from the gospel. Not because the gospel’s disinfecting, but because the church is disinfecting. Mm-hmm. What does it mean to regain the identity of the church?
And, and by that I was, evermore, increasingly convinced that that church is a. Highly diverse church, that it needs to be highly diverse in its interaction and character as much as possible. Mm-hmm. That it needs to listen to voices that are and are not in my normal sphere or in anyone else’s normal quote sphere, whatever that might be.
Mm-hmm. Where we all have our social location, which has its own. Energy and its own boundaries, and then it has the dynamics of how all those things interact with other people and their boundaries and so forth. So this concern was really something that was just very, very heavy to me, and especially, toward the last half of, of, the, from 2010 on.
I became more and more aware of how the public rhetoric of the church and the people that were being sought after as the primary spokespeople of whether it was evangelicalism or whether it was just Christianity in America, that increasingly those voices were voices that were shrill. They were voices that were divisive.
There were voices of of political. rhetoric that I found, misrepresenting. Mm-hmm. The nature and character of God and of Jesus Christ. Mm-hmm. And out of that, then I began to think, so what, how do you even begin to get your mind around this? Well, first, acknowledging your own poverty of imagination, so mm-hmm.
Realizing I need lots of people
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: to
join me
in
this
conversation. Uhhuh help
Mark Labberton: help think
this through.
So, yes, exactly. So then let’s think about people who would stimulate
that.
And I began to dream about, convening of people who would share a common heart for being earnest disciples, followers of Jesus, but come from really different.
Backgrounds than my own. That was ethnic, that was racial, that was gender, that was geography. It was denomination. And all of those filters began to be, in my mind as I started just making a list of people that I thought, gosh, if there could be a convening of these people, what would make it possible?
What would make it. Valuable and constructive and what would make it more than just, self-indulgent so that it wasn’t just about finding an interesting conversation group, but trying ultimately to do something that might lie beyond the conversation group. So I, I did begin to really build a kind of matrix, but I didn’t want them to come as representatives of something.
I just wanted them to come as themselves. So as I began to do this work and, and begin to. Brainstorming or fine who I thought the people, me, I asked others to join me in this process to think about, what an interesting group might be, and so forth. But then like any group, you have to have some degree of standing, sort of assumptions.
So one of the assumptions was we do in this moment where the church feels as though it’s in crisis, maybe from my point of view, at times a four alarm fire. In that moment. How do we make sure that we’re centered in Jesus Christ, that we’re not thinking that anyone else but Jesus is Lord of the church?
That we come to it ourselves as disciples and not as representatives of whatever organization or church or movement we might be. Responsible for, because I was, I was particularly thinking of Christian leaders, but I didn’t really want them to come as, as an agent of that organization or whatever it might be.
I felt like all organizations have their alignments. Their, places of identification, their constituencies. Mm-hmm. They’re donors. How do I instead ask you for people to say, let’s just have a private conversation where we’re not asking our organization’s questions, we’re asking questions as thoughtful Christian people about a crisis moment in American church history, and how do we do that as honestly
as
possible?
Ah,
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: spaciousness for this
without having to worry about
the implication.
Right,
Mark Labberton: right. It was a space without implications because I didn’t know where, where this might go and I, I didn’t set it out with a quote objective that a certain outcome was the only thing that would validate it. I was more curious to say, do, can we bring this commonality of faith?
Can we bring an earnest of heart and spirit? A simplicity about it, honestly. Mm-hmm. In the face of the complexity mm-hmm. That I knew we would end up discussing. Mm-hmm. And then would you come honestly? Mm-hmm. and, and be prepared to be candid. Mm-hmm. And will you come with as much trust as you can possibly bring to a group that you’ve never been with before?
Yes. To have honest conversations that capac that you’re describing felt to me. Very, very important. So invitations went out. To, a number of people and we gathered approximately between 20 and 25 people from all kinds of different contexts for some initial conversations that were originally going to be for three months.
That became a year, became, close now to two years and more than two years. And, that group has been this group that then congealed around this idea of rethinking church.
And rethinking Church was a phrase that developed, not so much to try to say this is a cerebral exercise, as though it’s about just applying a problem and problem solving.
Mm-hmm. It does involve careful thought. It does involve, unapologetic. Intellectual rigor about understanding what’s really going on and trying to thoughtfully engage it. But it also, of course, involves every other dimension. our emotional experience of what’s going on, our, uh, location, experience, whatever that might mean, the journey, the narrative, the particular stories, the places of joy, the places of pain, the places of of crisis, So the invitation was, can you bring whatever you have and, and then be present? And that was what occurred. And. The initial conversations were profound and I think they landed in exactly the zone that I was hoping for. And I think for all of us, we, told stories that were really painful and joyful and beautiful.
It’s that beautiful mess theme again and. It was in those that we began to identify some of the areas of, or patterns of concern that we had, and then began to think about what might we do around those concerns. But there was no doubt ever that the core of the whole experience was the community that was emerging.
Out of this collection of very unlike people who were simply willing to trust in Jesus’ name, that this was an earnest enterprise, that nobody was trying to win here. Mm-hmm. There was not a, mm-hmm. A, a win or loser objective. Nobody was trying to, defend or protect. Mm-hmm. That we were trying to simply own name, be present for, reflect on.
pray over. Yes. Uh, a variety of concerns and, and to me that is just an ideal environment to then go on and ask questions about what are we learning? What do we think might be worth exploring more? What might we write? What might we produce? What might we say? What. Could be harvested. And we came back fairly quickly to, to, uh, understanding that a lot of what needed to be harvested were really the stories that we had been living ourselves and the ways that those had shaped us, and the ways that we wanted to share those stories as nothing more than the stories that they are.
Mm-hmm. No sense that we were holding up our stories as the best stories to be told. but as exemplary stories of, of divergent. Realities with a shared heart for Christ and for the church that, for which Christ died and for the world, that God loves and pursues. And how do
we bring
all those
things
together?
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I hope you caught that part of the story where it was Mark’s convening, an invitation to gather. To listen to one another that founded the initial community that became the Rethinking Church Initiative, including this podcast.
The gift that Mark gave to this community was to bring us together.
Of us, each of us as our whole selves, even when that meant disagreement or collision bumping into each other, but always in order to stay a group of belonging and love igniting new ideas to see what impact might result.
I, I think, that in the invitation was this invitation to show
up as
a
full self Yes.
Pointy
parts and all. Yes.
And
in that space, yes. To let those pointy parts find their, their place. Yeah. can you, outline some of the ways that.
You had folks present that were maybe, you know, kind of contrasting each other, like I think that there were some, for example, that were very much embedded in institutions or denominations, and then you had folks who really, said yes to an invitation to really work outside of those sort of structures for good reasons as well.
what, what were sort of, some of these different, tensions or, or, or ends of the spectrum of people that. You had in that, in that community?
Mark Labberton: Yeah.
Well that was part of the matrix making, right? Of how do we. We deliberately try to draw people with those different backgrounds and experiences and, and therefore presumably values and, and, perceptions that would come together. And, and knowing that it would be a spicy conversation and that, that I wasn’t looking for something that would be smoother, easy and, but I wasn’t looking for it either to be inflammatory.
Mm-hmm. for the sake of. Drama. I, I just wondered an honest range of conversation. It, it ultimately became a group primarily of people of color. It became a group that had just this very wide, dynamic and therefore it did, did have exactly what you’re describing. I love that, that, that word pointy.
There were lots of pointy conversations and I think for me personally. I genuinely, for reasons I’ve tried to explain, I genuinely relish the otherness of someone. And I, I want that to be fully present. On the table. On the table in the room. Yes. Et cetera. And I think what happened in that was that people believed that too.
And they entered into that too. And what that naturally then brought about was an exposure of some definite collisions. And a collision of experience, right? A collision of theological or biblical perceptions, a collision of, assumptions about what really mattered. if you bring together people that are highly institutional with people that are much more.
independent minded, free form, perhaps Pentecostal, perhaps people who in any case are, are pushing against the system. And then you have people that are not in this group. Defending the system, but are living in the system. They just breathe different air and they have different assumptions and their reference points scripturally are different.
And the assumptions about what would cause the church to find its new life. Mm-hmm. So there’s people that would say, for example, the church will find its new life only by revival, by by God. Spirit simply encountering and drawing people. And even as we’re recording this, uh, there are signs of revival among various college campuses, Christian college campuses, that are full of both the mystery and joy and beauty of God’s capacity to meet people and to renew them.
So some would say that’s, that is the only kind of revival and that’s, that’s renewal period. There would be other people in the group that would say, well, it must be. A work of spirit, there’s no doubt about that. But it can meaningfully involve careful thought planning. Mm-hmm. you know, resource creation, conference holding, program developing.
so sometimes in that, encounter, then there’s differences that can feel pretty profound
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Our conversation closed on the question of urgency. What I wondered did this patient and peaceful and present man think was most urgent for the Christian community at this very moment.
He brought it back to the church’s responsibility to reveal the love of God. Through a surprising community of difference and diversity and sacrifice and justice, a peculiar community convene and gathered around the lordship and the life of Jesus.
Mark Labberton: Well, the urgency for me continues to be a. The way the church is meant to be God’s chief, apologetic, that is its chief evidence in the world that Jesus came, lived, loved, died, rose, and the. That is God’s plan A, and there is no plan B, so there’s no other way that this is going to actually unfold except the church living out its identity.
We always know throughout history that the church does not live out its identity, but in this moment with the particular vortex of issues around power. In the world in general technology and its controlling presence, the, the deepest kind of secularism which has consumed the church so that the church and people like us in the church are every bit as marked by the secular culture of consumerism and power and money and beauty and, and health and fitness and youth.
All of those things that are so significant in the culture have engulfed every person that’s in the life of the church. And in the context of that, then the question becomes how do we actually come to see that pivot? In the light of a new sense of, of a call from Jesus to actually be faithful disciples and to let those realities be redefined.
That’s the urgency inside the church. The urgency outside the church is for the church to answer the question. How dare you? And we don’t get to answer the question by saying simply because God lets us. Because even God called us, that’s not really an engagement. The evidence is the fruit. Not the call.
The call is what, what initiates it, but it’s the fruit that demonstrates it. And if the church doesn’t demonstrate the fruit of the spirit by showing up in places of pain and suffering with humility, with honesty, with confidence in a, in a good and faithful and loving God with a, an ability to name a God of justice, who, who shares the, the deepest burdens of injustice in the world whose.
Calling the church to be a reflection of a justice seeking God of an enemy loving God. those are the transformative things that cause the culture despises of the church to sit up and go, oh my gosh, this is a community of love, of deep sacrificial action That does so. Losing self-interest and focused on the one that they believe is God revealed in Jesus, and they do it in a community unlike any other community because it’s not established by race, ethnicity, wealth, education, and so forth.
It’s defined by this peculiar community that is marked by a collection of unlike people who are drawn together. Around the Lordship of Jesus Christ who holds us.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: mark. Thank you so much for joining us on
this conversation.
Mark Labberton: Thank you.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I loved that picture that Mark painted and the distinction he made between a calling, which is so often the justification people give for why they do things. The fruit or the impact to the culture. Despisers, that picture and the description that he had of a church of a community bound together because of their differences, hashing things out, and yet demonstrating so many wonderful characteristics of God.
These characteristics of compassion, of presence, of love, and of healing that I think so often get hidden. I was stirred by his description of this peculiar community, the church. It was compelling.
And I began to recognize it is peculiar because where else are people connected across economic lines, across generations, across geographies? Where else do people press through things that are uncomfortable because of the refinement that comes to that community of people?
Where else is it that people find such extraordinary? Welcoming and transformative love.
I began to recognize the way that he was describing a church that was ordered so differently, centered, so differently, and it began to help me to understand some of what he did in the convening of this Rethinking Church initiative
It wasn’t a place to air out grievances and to build up arguments, but rather it was a place. To tussle with, to wrestle with the competing truths, the competing loves, the competing things that we knew we had to be honest and faithful to in the midst of following Jesus.
To say that Mark convened and brought together is only to say a part of what it was that he did, because lots of people can be invited.
It takes a totally different thing to create a space to hold a space that recognizes all the obstacles someone might have to showing up as a whole person and then bending the rules to make it possible for that whole person to show up.
if you can imagine a room where the chairs are all different sizes, all different heights, all different colors and shapes, so that each person in that room would feel comfortable where some microphones amplify and some dampen just a little bit so that all voices are heard.
And to be quite honest, he created a space where we could fight cleanly and wrestle. Beyond politeness, beyond Christian niceness in pursuit of following Jesus more closely
Credible witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative, produced and edited by Mark Labberton, Sarey Martin Concepcion, and Evan Rosa. And I’m your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto. Thanks to Fuller Seminary, Christians for Social Action and Brenda Soter McNeil for sharing her book title with our podcast.
Special thanks to all of our conversation partners in the Rethinking Church Initiative and Network, both public and private and above all, thank you for your own courageous listening and your own credible witness to the gospel. For more information, visit crediblewitness.us.