Panarchy and Creation Care: Recognizing Signals Shaping the Future with Rick Presley

Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos talk with Rick Presley about recognizing overlooked environmental signals and why they matter for ministry and the future. They explore how bias, political framing, and cultural assumptions can limit awareness, often filtering out important signals. Subtle changes such as fewer insects, declining songbird populations, groundwater contamination concerns, land-use changes, and rising insurance pressures can reveal deeper environmental shifts that are easy to overlook. The conversation connects these weak signals to broader system dynamics, helping leaders better understand change, anticipate emerging challenges, and respond with greater awareness and faithful stewardship.

 © 2026 Forbes Nonprofit Strategies. All rights reserved. Signal Café is a podcast of Forbes Nonprofit Strategies, and Incite Futures Labs is a foresight training offering. Music generated using Suno AI, lyrics adapted and produced for Signal Café

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey, and welcome back to the Signal Cafe. I'm Chris Forbes with Forbesstrategies.com and the Insight Futures Labs. And I like our new song. What do you think, Matt?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I I I do. I like it. It's just an like like I told you on the text, I I think it's got a good beat. I could definitely dance to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah, but uh being a Baptist, maybe I wouldn't recommend that.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

No, I'm not going to be that.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Just kind of rhythmically sway.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, even if we're just dancing in the dark, you know, nobody can see us.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

So yeah, we're trying out some new things and uh stick around at the end because we are going to. I'm actually going to use this AI thing that I'm making the music with to make a song based on our conversation today. So you want to stick around for that? That's going to be kind of some kind of for fun thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

That'll be great. So hey, how's how's that weather over there in Oklahoma?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, we had a tornado uh last night up in uh up in Enid, which is a you know it's about an hour or so north of me.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

But you know what we had? What'd you have? Over in West Tennessee, we had an earthquake. Is that weather? I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

We'll have to ask our guest here.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Um you can't forecast it. Huh? Can you?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Well, it depends if people are fracking or not, I suppose. Uh uh, you know, forecast. I think in foresight, what you would do is you would maybe you want to consider uh alternative scenarios if should it like you be on a fault line and there, you know, the uh the advent of an earthquake. What would you do? What's the you know, disaster relief has those kind of contingencies? But they could have a ministry impact. That would be a wild card, wouldn't it? It would be a wild card. One of the things you kind of keep an eye on. You can't really keep an eye on when an earthquake's gonna happen, but you can maybe well, maybe Rick will know when we talk to him in a minute, but um you can be ready otherwise. By the way, speaking of that, I just uh I'm doing not earthquakes but signals. Um I'm doing a series of labs with uh next gen ministry leaders. And uh, you know, one of the things we do, lab one, we we we cover foresight literacy and we learn how to do horizon scanning, and then uh we go away and we scan for about a month trying to identify social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, educational, and spiritual signals. So we scan broadly, but uh, and then we also try to watch out for our own biases and reading, you know, confirmation bias and you know, finding only the things that we want to find. Yeah. And I had to admit that in the labs, uh, that uh, you know, environmental skit signals kind of elude me, partly because I I see so many things framed through this ESG and uh uh environmental social governance that it makes and I see that there's you know kind of an underlying layer uh where they kind of incorporate uh Marxist inner uh dialectics in there, and you know. Anyway, so I have a huge bias about edge about environmental signals, which is not good because it is something that you know God has called us to to be uh stewards of of his creation and and to follow his leadership in that. And I want to talk about that today. That's why I thought of Rick Presley. He he's gonna join us here. He is like I've known him since I think the internet began because he's one of my first friends I ever met online, and uh uh probably one of the smartest guys I ever uh had the privilege of interacting with. And in fact, when I was I sent him a few questions for us to prep for this podcast, and I was like amazed at his responses. So uh hopefully it'll be you'll find it encouraging too, and hopefully it'll raise in you some more interest in noticing and uh environmental-related signals because they definitely can impact. I mean, even like geopolitically, when you have uh uh you know the Arctic has kind of had open more sea lanes now, and that's why they're arguing about Greenland and stuff. So anyway, anyway, I want to welcome to uh the signal cafe, Rick Presley. Rick, tell us about yourself and uh where are you where are you calling from today?

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Uh thanks, Chris. I'm in central Ohio. Uh I work in Columbus, but live in a little town called Moringo, uh, which is about three miles north of town. So uh I'm a fur piece from where you are. A fur piece.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah, you know, Matt wears a fur piece on his head, so that's a good thing. I mean, yeah. I'm just glad it's an audio piece.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Well, same, same here. I I never leave the house without a lid on, so I I understand the affliction.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Well, uh, you know, um Matt and I have been talking a little bit about this. Uh, you know, I admit to kind of having a frame that I, you know, I don't notice environmental signals very well. They don't like like a lot of political jumps out of me, legal stuff, spiritual, social stuff. I'm all over. But environmental stuff. I guess I have this kind of a reflex. It's just kind of like, I don't know. So uh what why do you why do you think that is? I mean, how did I inherit this? I mean, I don't want to blame anybody else but myself, but why why are and and also I haven't noticed this in my other labs? That's usually the thinnest layer of the steeples categories of people scan for. What um why do we so often downplay um environmental stuff?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Well, I can I can give you three reasons right off the the bat. First of all, is the stigma that comes with environmental concerns. As uh once again, I I was raised in Baptist all my life, and so I'm always been kind of suspect of anyone that was environmentally inclined, which is interesting because I was a biology major in college. I taught biology in high school for five years, uh, ended up working for uh the American Red Cross Biomedical Services. So biology is kind of part of who I am, but what I found is that churches shy away from it largely because the environmental movement tends to be dominated by either tree-hugging hippies or new age Gaia worshippers. You know, it seems like that's the only ones who are in it. Well, that's sort of a distorted opinion, and it's based largely on the fact that, as you know from other signals, the squeakiest wheels are the ones that get noticed, the ones that are just working, doing their their own job in the biology sector usually don't get noticed unless you're out hunting and the conservation officer pops by and wants to see your license. But for the most part, yeah, it's it's um the social stigma that a lot of us have said we don't want to be a part of either the hippies or the new age movement. Uh, the second thing is a lot of people just they they don't surround themselves by the environment. I live in the middle of farm country, and so environmental concerns are part of what I live. I I lost my last car two years ago to hitting deer. So I do have some environmental concerns. Uh, namely, I'd like to see fewer deer on the road. Uh, at the same time, you know, I'm I'm concerned with what the farmers are spraying on their fields, you know, because my kids grew up across the street from cornfields and bean fields. And so um, yeah, I've not been really keen on uh the amount of roundup that we have in the groundwater around here. Um, and then the third thing is there's political concerns. A lot of times people tend to think the environmental movement is associated largely with the Democratic Party, and a lot of people now don't want to be associated with the Democratic Party. We rarely encounter right wing conservation issues, although if we were to be honest with ourselves, they really do exist. And I think um our current Secretary of Health is the example of a right winger who has environmental issues and environmental concerns, even though he's mostly aiming at the medical field. But we're we're seeing a resurgence in that. We're seeing that um there's some conservative Christians who've been expressing some interesting environmental concerns. We'll probably get to those a little bit later.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, yeah. You know what? And the thing, the you know, we're kind of around the same age. The when I grew up, the global cooling was, you know, the mantra that you know we're gonna experience a new ice age, and then then the next thing was that uh, you know, global uh warming, and then that was the you know, the temperature's gonna raise in 10 next 10 years, the sea is gonna be too high, and that was you know 20 years ago. And then um now it's just climate change, and uh and then uh it's now being framed in terms of um carbon zero carbon neutral, and um it's also framed in terms of uh social uh equity and these other it's blended a lot. So uh you know it's a big jumbled mess there, but like but uh just looking at your you have a science background and gentlemen that speak to this. What are some of the things you've you've uh uh observed like uh in the natural world about the changes in the weather and and and also um in ecology and these things?

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Well, it's uh it's interesting you should ask. I had a conversation just this um afternoon with uh my boss at work, and uh I asked him, I said, why is it if global warming is such a threat that the states that are losing population tend to be in the north, and the states that are gaining population tend to be in the south? Why are people moving south if global warming is going to be such a catastrophe? So uh it's interesting to me that uh if if we are worried about the sea levels rising and inundating us, uh the amount of population growing in Florida makes no sense. So apparently people are not paying attention to what all of the doomsayers are saying. Now, does that mean global warming is not a concern? Um, no, it's it should be a concern, but the question is it well, there's a number of questions that haven't been asked about global warming. One of them is what's the optimum temperature? In other words, what is the best climate for the planet? Because what's the best climate for maybe us in Ohio, we wouldn't mind having a little bit of warming and kind of mellow out the winters a little bit so we don't have to shovel out as much. But at the same token, right, maybe global cooling is something that people down in Texas would like to have a fewer of those triple degree days during the year. So climate change doesn't benefit everyone equally, it doesn't harm everyone equally. So uh I really shy away from the whole idea of global climate. I don't know that there is a universal global climate. The other thing is what you find is a prejudice toward the status quo. If you ask people, well, you know, what's the best optimum climate, and they don't have an answer, they said, well, at least we should get back to the way things were, you know, and and they pick a date in the past, usually about 40, 50 years ago, of the way things were. Well, I remember the winter of 77, 78 and getting snowed in for the you know the entire Midwest. Uh, I would prefer not to go back to that. So maybe we should move it up just a little bit. Well, in night in the 80s, we had some record days of below zero weather here in Ohio. I don't know that that's optimum temperature as a result of climate. So the problem with climate change is A, we don't have a universally agreed upon climate that's beneficial for everybody in an equal amount, and B, we don't really have a a sense of when the the best climate was. We don't we don't know when the best past was, so it's hard to shoot for that.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah. The um whenever I've you know, I was just kind of looking through the signals that we collected over uh the uh different labs I've done. And uh it looks like I'm you know, I've got a 40 or 50 out of my 1300 about add all up. Most of the signals that people notice are related to stuff like water or um related to uh storms of uh because of uh insurance. Many churches are experiencing difficulty with insurance, also environmental concerns related to old churches having asbestos and uh asbestos remediation. They can't even add a new wing without opening that can of worms. So they so those kind of things that, you know, I mean, I think people do see some things, but uh how how can how can ministry leaders begin to start noticing those signals that are around them that um uh you know that are um uh affecting the the future?

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Well, so here's the thing. Um in in the book Panarchy, one of the concepts that they talk about that um with regard to signals is that a lot of times the tipping points in ecosystems that signal a collapse or a change in ecosystem, the signals are very faint and they're not even noticeable until after you've passed the tipping point. So so we have to understand that a lot of these signals are faint and seemingly irrelevant. Um, just you know, give you the example. Um back when you were a kid, did you ever go outside and catch fireflies in a jar?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Uh yeah, I remember doing that.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Okay, have your kids done that?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Have your kids done that?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

I've you know, there there's uh every once in a while we see that, but uh I you know it's in fact my wife and I talk about that before. Like we used to have fireflies everywhere, and you don't really see them. Yeah, and monarchs as well used to have a lot of butterflies, a lot of butterflies.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Well, not just monarchs, uh tiger swallowtails and uh uh the big lunar moths and and all the insects. I remember my dad driving down to Kentucky one time from Michigan, and he had to stop the car and get out and get a squeeze to scrape the window off because he'd hit so many bugs, and when you hit the windshield wipers, you know that it didn't even clean it off, it just turned it into a gooey paste. Well, that doesn't happen anymore. I've I've never had to scrape so many bugs off the windshield just to be able to see. I'll hit one occasionally, but the loss of insects is uh a signal, and it's hard to preach a sermon about the dangers of losing butterflies or fireflies, you know. But many of these environmental signals are aggregated, and there seem to be some serious cracks there forming in the ecosystem. That's just one indicator.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Um like I said, I you mentioned the ludomoth. I think I've only seen one in my lifetime. You know, we we it's like the weakness of the signal, but also the idea that um you don't notice it because if you don't things you don't see, you don't notice they don't exist anymore. Like you, you know, you have to go, oh oh, there's fewer fire fireflies. I wonder if that's you know an issue. Or like bees, you know, that's oh, sometimes they'll come up on people's radar.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

The thing that I've heard from insects basically is about the bees and the fact that if we lose the honey bees, then it would affect the food that we have that's available for us.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Bees are a part of it. Um, I don't think the loss of honey bees is the disaster that it was made out to be. Um, there's other uh apiary factors that are causing hive collapse. Um, we have many different species of bees, and a lot of them pollinate different flowers, so it's not like the flowers are going to disappear. Excuse me, but what they signal um loss of insects in general, insects are food for the birds, and so you'll see fewer and fewer songbirds compared to what we used to have back in the 60s and 70s, and that's because they don't have insects to feed their young. So these tiny little signals have all sorts of what's called trophic cascades. The word uh trophic has to do with uh food cycles. So when we talk of heterotrophs, those are animals that are organisms that eat other animals for food, whereas autotrophs are things like plants that can manufacture their own food. Well, we can't get our energy directly from plants in many cases. We can't go out and eat grass like a cow, and to be honest, even a cow by itself doesn't digest the grass, it has a microbiome inside itself of bacteria that have to break down the grass into usable components. So there's these trophic cascades of energy that cycle through the environment. And if we lose the insects, we could lose the next higher level in the food chain and that escalates up. And who knows what the effect is going to be on us as human beings. Um maybe a small effect, maybe a large effect. It's really hard to tell. But yeah, a faint signal would be the loss of insects.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

The cycle of the moon uh is going to enter its wobble phase in the 2030s. And you know it's uh a pattern that happens every eight years or something like that. I can't remember what the status was stats were, but it could that could infect coastal areas if the tidal patterns are affected, or we live in a world that is uh comprised of these ecological systems, and you see in the New Testament, I mean the Old Testament, Paul, I mean, I mean uh Adam becoming, you know, uh stewarding creation. Um how do we how does a ministry, how do we how do we separate creation care from all this political stuff so that you know what um we should also try to avoid like on on political bias, we shouldn't just only listen to sources that we agree with. We should also see contrasting uh uh opinions so that because they will in fact affect the future as much as you know maybe our uh point of view, if we're uh the opposite of, you know, but also uh the uh reading things and considering uh the future that you don't want is something important. Like how how do we how do we call out the signal from all the political noise?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Well, that's a question, isn't it? Um when uh The fact is, every decision we make has either a political bias or has a political impact. So one of the problems here in our county is the state is proposing building a bypass from one freeway system to another freeway system. They want to cut through farm country. Well, that's that sounds like an environmental problem. The loss of farms would reduce the amount of food we have, it would affect quality of life and so forth. But the only way we have to deal with that is in the political arena, is you know, contacting our senators, making sure that uh government offices are aware of our opposition to it. The problem isn't separating politics from what we're doing, it really is having a holistic integrated view. So if we look at the question you started with, why is it that we haven't been preaching on the environment? Part of that is based on the fact that in Western thought, we separate humanity from nature, and that has colored our interpretation of the Bible. We tend to distinguish between the natural world and the human world, between nature and society, or nature and politics, or nature and the economy. If there's anything that the the panarchy book has taught us, is that all of these things are interrelated, they're all part of a cohesive whole. Yes, it's complex, yes, it's difficult to understand. But if we look at um, I'm trying to think of uh of a good example that everybody can um identify with. When we look at creation care, we don't think of it in mundane terms. Um, I had a conversation this morning with uh a lady, and she's talking about the responsibilities of creation care in her area. And I said, Well, you benefit from the fact that you have dogs that you can feed your meat food waste to, and you can compost your plant waste. Well, the reason you do that is twofold. One to reduce the amount of waste that goes in the landfill, that's responsible. The other is you can use compost to build up your soil, you don't have to buy fertilizer. And if you buy fertilizer, put it on your lawn. I don't I don't fertilize my lawn. I don't believe in it, I guess, is a way to look at it. That fertilizer that washes off the lawn, washes into the groundwater, ends up in the streams and lakes, and causes uh eutrophication or it causes clear water to become turbid because the fertilizer feeds the growth of microorganisms that turn ponds into muddy ponds that that the only fish that live in there are catfish and cart rather than the bass and bluegill and trout. So the the decisions we make at the simple level of whether to fertilize our lawn or not, whether to throw away food or not, um, the textiles we wear, all of these things, to my way of thinking, have not just an environmental impact, but they also have a spiritual impact. Do we really want to spray Roundup uh, you know, out there to kill the weeds that grow in the cracks of our sidewalk because it's the easiest thing to do instead of just you know digging out the grass? Because that Roundup has all sorts of deleterious effects on wildlife. That that's a moral question, but we often shy away from approaching those from a moral standpoint. It really is a stewardship issue. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

What talk about the you know, like what are the scriptural patterns you see that inform, you know, it's uh it always helps me when I think about you know uh foresight. I I try to I try to I try to be a good steward. I see foresight as part of stewardship. What do you what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Well, I guess if we're talking to Bible-believing Christians, it probably helps uh relate to the Bible, right? Uh since that's supposed to be our sole rule of faith in practice, or or whatever the the watchword is now. Um you you can start at Genesis 2 that when God created man, he put him in the garden to keep and dress it. Now, King James Version readers tend to see that as dominion, as we can lord over the creation. More modern translations kind of shy away from that language. Essentially, though, what it speaks to is that we're responsible for. If we're going to rule over something, that means we're responsible for how that turns out. And the next question is well, if God did that, then it's up to interpretation how we care for the earth, right? Well, that would be true if God hadn't given us the entire book of Leviticus and uh Deuteronomy and given us clear instructions. We uh, for instance, you if you're out in the field and you find a bird sitting on a nest, you can take the eggs, but according to biblical law, you have to leave the bird alone. So that'd be like here in the United States. If I were to find a quail or a pheasant or a turkey sitting on uh a nest, I could take the eggs from that hen, but I can't take the hen and the eggs because if you do that, then you lose out. If I take the eggs, the hen can go ahead and lay more eggs. That's good conservation sense. Well, does God really care about quail and turkey and pheasants and you know tweety birds? Uh I believe he does, because that's an example of the fine distinctions that he made. And that's not the only one. He uh tells farmers if you're gonna use an ox to run your millstone to grind your grain into flour, yeah, you can't put a muzzle on that ox. And the reason is because the reason you'd want to put a muzzle on is because you don't want the ox eating the grain or the flour that you're grinding, because he would, you know, that cuts into your profit margin. God said, No, you you can't put a muzzle on the ox, you have to let it eat the grain. So any grain that falls to the ground or any flour that the ox wants to eat, he can eat it. And we would think that's just an odd thing for God to put in the law if it weren't for the apostle Paul in First Corinthians saying, Did God write this because he cares about oxen? No, this is a law that applies to all of us. So I think it behooves God's pastors to study the law, to read it, and then to ask, what's the big issue that God's dealing with here? God Jesus Christ said he didn't come to replace the law, but to establish it and to fulfill it, to live it to the fullest. So, what does it mean to live to the fullest? To not muscle the ox that treads out the corn, because we don't have oxen treading out corn. What does that mean for us? Well, people in pastoral ministry use it to justify for pastors getting a paycheck, but that's much broader. It's that the laborer is worthy of his hire. In other words, if you hire someone to do a job, pay them. If my kids are out weeding the garden and they want to eat some peas off the vine while they're over the garden, I shouldn't stop them. I should let them eat because they're working in the garden, they should be able to eat of the garden. That's a biblical principle.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

The um yeah, I think uh that that's it's very convicting when you think about God uh expecting our stewardship. Uh you know, we think of uh God us giving an account for how we live our lives, but uh it feels like the scriptures really saying we're gonna give an account for how we steward what uh you know the world that he put us in.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Are we getting better at different frame? Are we getting better at it? Because it seems like you know, I was watching a madmen episode. You remember that show? Yeah, and they had a picnic, and after they were finished with the picnic, they just kind of did a little swoof of the blanket and left all the garbage there. And it was just kind of, I think the directors and writers were kind of giving a nod to the fact that uh litter today is a whole lot more serious thing than it was back in the 50s and 60s, and and now my uh young adult uh sons are concerned about microplastics and they don't want to use plastic straws. Uh and so it seems like there's some evolution uh toward this consciousness about uh environmentalism. So I'm wondering if we're going the right direction or if uh the crypto and all the the carbon that it takes to make things these days and computer and hardware and natural resources if we're going the other way.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Well, it's so yes. I remember the Cuyahoga River catching on fire up in Cleveland. I remember Lake Erie being declared dead, and yes, the environmental consciousness that awoke in the 70s and took over, I think has had a benefit. The Keep America Beautiful campaign that uh told you that every litter bit hurts, yeah, as you're referring to there, Matt. But yeah, yes, oh yeah, probably the best advertising campaign for public service announcements that there ever was. Um, yeah, you know, despite the fact that he wasn't really an idiot.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, um I said we have we have to lay that trash, don't lay the trash on Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Well, it's it's uh we we used to joke when I was in school, you know, it's uh keep a Michigan beautiful, dump your trash in Ohio. Um, but you know, now that I live in Ohio, it's like, eh, wait a minute, you know. Um I I will have to admit, Michigan did have a very strong Department of Natural Resources. I used to joke that that was the strongest branch of state government because no one could do nothing without getting permission from the Department of Natural Resources. Uh, here in Ohio, it's not like that at all. We're a much more business-friendly, industrial friendly type of state. Um but yeah, I I think well, that is a good signal that as we see our kids being more environmentally conscious, environmentally astute, um, and environmentally uh aware, our churches need to be aware of that. And it probably needs to be reflected in the ministries that we have.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I agree. I think that is one thing that people like uh you know, my generation, you know, we might have these kind of biases against environmentalism, but they're taken as given for uh different generations. The the younger, you know, probably even more so after the Gen X on down, and that expectation uh and the credibility of a ministry can you know be uh it's a moral question about how we steward the environment when we get down to it, and uh we uh may if in during a period we uh neglected that that theme, the theme of stewardship bel of the of the uh creation is a Christian theology. It's richly in Christian theology. Uh uh one thing uh you know, in terms of uh the patterns and the uh complex adaptive systems that you can see so much in nature, this is kind of how we got on this topic, you and I, was the book The Panarchy, which you have alluded to a couple times. Can you explain in kind of terms because I think panarchy emerged from this environmental kind of world, what is now be now being applied in the um you know social context and other other other contexts? So, like can you kind of unpack your your understanding of panarchy?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Well, I'll I'll be honest, Chris. I hadn't heard the term panarchy until you brought it up, which is really odd for someone that's a biology major and has top biology. Uh, I think part of the reason is because panarchy attempts to equate natural cycles with sociological cycles and economic cycles as well. So uh back in 2019, I was doing a seminar for an organization on the topic of change management, and the example that I used was ecological succession, the idea that uh, and and hopefully everybody's taken 10th grade biology and they know what that means. But just to give a reminder, the classic uh example of economic excuse me, ecological succession is pond succession, where a pond uh exists, and as the fish and plants die, it eventually builds up sediment in the bottom, and the pond gets shallower and shallower and until finally the pond fills in and becomes a marsh. And you'll have instead of the water plants, you'll have cattails living there. And then as the marsh fills in with the dead cattails and uh the marsh animals that live there, it becomes a meadow, a grassland, and uh grasses grow instead of the water-loving plants. And uh, as the grasses grow, they establish a situation where young shrubs and bushes can grow. And so as they grow, they shade out the grasses, they compete for sunlight and they form this scrubland, which then eventually creates enough shade for trees to grow. As the trees grow, it forms a forest. And so this is the classic example of succession of natural cycles where an ecosystem actually creates the conditions that make its continued existence in that form impossible. In other words, the pond fills up with sediment until you can't have a pond anymore, the marsh fills up with sediment until you can't have a marsh anymore. And so you go through what I thought was a straight line sort of thing. But in reading Panarchy, he pointed out some interesting things. That in addition to this growth cycle in every ecosystem where it grows into a different form, and it has a uh climax stage. We we're used to that term in in forest, that's the peak of growth. That the end of succession is you end up with a forest, and that forest is supposed to be or used to be seen as the the ideal or the end stage. But what happens is in actual natural systems, those climax stages make it to the point where you can't stay in that climax stage. There's some sort of intervention. It could be as simple as a beaver cutting down trees and making a dam and starting the pond all over again, or it could be as we've seen, we've got wildfires going right now down in the south. And so uh you you have acres and acres of trees that are burning. Well, that sets back the ecological cycle, it makes it reset to a prior stage, and so it has to come back. Now, the interesting thing about panarchy is sometimes these disruptive events make it impossible to reestablish the ecosystem that you have. Uh, for instance, just because you start with a pond and you end up with a climax forest, if you have a fire go through, that's not necessarily going to take you all the way back to the pond level. That may just burn out the mature trees and you start growing different kinds of trees. You you have the the aspens and the poplars and the cottonwoods and things like that instead of the beech and the maple and the oat. So you you have these natural cycles that haven't happened within ecosystems, and they follow a predictable pattern. And this is a pattern that takes place in panarchy. If we were to diagram this, you'd take the figure eight and lay it on its side, and on the left side, the the bottom part would be the growth side. And as you go up the figure eight to the right at the top, that would be your conservation side. That's the the stable area where we tend to see ecosystems and also societies. Um, that's your uh your consolidation or conservation side, but then an event will happen that will cause it to crash. And what's interesting, sometimes those events are created by the ecosystem itself, other times it's created by outside events that cause a disaster, cause the population to crash. And then as that crashes, you go down into a uh sort of a destructive phase where all of the elements have to be reorganized, and then that's built up into a new phase of reorganizing the things that have been destroyed and broken, and that begins the growth phase all over again. So that's sort of the cycle of panarchy.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

We had talked about a little micro part of that uh in during the pandemic because it seems like there was a sense that once everybody started sheltering in place, that uh you could see mountains that you couldn't normally see. Is that the same thing?

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Yeah, so so yes, the uh uh pandemic is an example of a uh perturbating force, it it interrupted the smooth transgression of uh the Trump and Biden presidency, which was was a smooth transfer of power, as you recall, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Uh yeah, it was just uh sincho yeah, just no problem.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

But uh yeah, uh okay, so backing up when we talk about panarchy, it's easy to see the cycles in natural systems, but we sometimes fail to see those in sociological and economic systems, and so the COVID pandemic became a uh an interruption in the normal stream of events or in the stability that existed, uh, both in the markets, uh in schooling, in how we saw a change. If you had a lot of money in the oil industry and that's where all your future was tied up, all of a sudden no one's driving anywhere, no one's going anywhere. What's going to happen to the price of oil? Well, it's gonna drop because the demand is gone. So you have an environmental event, which is what COVID was. Essentially, it's something in the environment has an economic impact. And it's not just the oil industry that was impacted, it also impacted the political climate, and so you ended up with the rise of uh you you you had the antifa movement, you had the Black Lives Matter movement happening at the same time. On the right, you had the uh anti-vaxxers coming on strong, and the uh the people protesting against COVID. So the a natural event had political and economic repercussions. This is part of what panarchy is, it's the interrelated relationships that occur, and these occur at different scales and at different speeds. That I gave an oversimplified definition of panarchy or description of it, but panarchy happens, um your body cycles through a life cycle. You're uh conceived, you're born, you grow, uh, you reach a plateau of adult size and height, um, and eventually we're going to break down. It's you know, we can't maintain that structure forever. Uh, and then our elements go back to the earth and are recycled. That's a a microstructure, even though it happens over a lifetime, but at the same time, we're part of a larger political structure, we're part of an ecclesiastical structure, we're part of church history, you know, if we look at movements in church history, uh, like you said, you and I have known each other since the internet started. So we've already seen the rise and fall of uh of movements, whether it's uh the emerging church, um, you know, that grew very quickly, reached a plateau, ended up crashing. Um, you know, there's there's podcasts out there if you want to follow the the history of the emerging church and what happened to it now. We don't even talk about that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Well and uh when we do signals um uh in our uh foresight labs, the uh we we talk about panarchy quite a bit because you know the idea of the R de K, the the idea of the where the the growth phase reaches its max, like you you said, climax forest, it reaches its max, and then something has to give. And uh that give when it gives way, it releases uh sometimes the term is collapse, and it's very brittle at that point, and you can start noticing the signals of brittleness around. It's like if you were see a forest and uh with you know so much uh you know, brush and stuff at the bottom of the floor, and then if lightning strikes it, you know, then uh that changes the forest. And like you mentioned earlier, uh new kinds of trees emerge, but there's also uh so there's this kind of aspect where things are changing, and for uh Pinarchy calls it revolt, and then there's also a a sense in which what uh has been continues as well, which is more of like a remember. And whenever we talk about that, you know, I'm usually not even talking about environmental stuff like we have, uh, but as you mentioned, the the political stuff, you kind of see it in churches. You everything has a life cycle, even a local church. Um, and we've seen like like there's you know, with one time megachurch that used to be, you know, uh a really going uh uh church, and then uh the community changed around it, the uh the economy changed around it. So many churches are so focused on what they're doing operationally, internally, that they miss out on what's going on externally. And uh so what gave way to that church that used to have 5,000 and has like 300 that you know rattle around and meet in the uh the old uh uh choir room, uh, but they still are there. So there is this kind of um there is that kind of aspect of of change that is related to panarchy. What are you know, does that make sense to you guys?

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Well, it the if you study the panarchy enough, you realize that that collapse is a necessary part of progress. Um it so so thinking ecclesiastically, I I'm a fan of church history, and one of the things I do that sort of irritates church history purists is I tend to look at church history from a sociological point of view. In other words, I believe churches are situated within societies and cultures, and they rather than transforming the culture as we like to think we're doing, you know, especially if you're a pastor, you especially think you're driving the culture. Actually, the culture is shaping you. And you know, what what you preach on Sunday morning and and what you tell people uh is shaped by our culture. So uh just thinking back to to my lifetime, which uh I I like to think it's not been very long, but apparently my kids are informing me that it's it's it's extended. Um, because when I talk about what life was like in the 60s, they're like, Dad, you know, the 60s. Well, as you recall, in the 60s, there was a little bit of civil rights unrest. And um I remember going to church, and aside from the fact that the deacons and the men of the church used to stand out front and smoke all the time and put their cigarettes out before they went into church. Uh, you know, so we described it as a shekinah glory. You walk through the cloud, you know, and you couldn't even minister by reason of the cloud that was uh in front of the church door. But that's because uh, you know, uh a lot of these guys are from Kentucky. Uh it the church I grew up in was a transplant in Kentucky, um, uh farmers who raised tobacco so they didn't see any problem smoking. But at the same time, um, we had the riots in Detroit in 1967, and our church was located a quarter mile from Detroit. We were right across the border of Eight Mile Road, and we had men say adamantly that there is no way that they're gonna let a black person come into church, you know, that that that was not going to happen in their church, and they they were gonna make sure that we stayed white. Well, you we don't do that anymore because the society has changed. Thank god, you know, for them it was yeah, it was a moral question for them. Uh, the mixing of the races was uh frowned upon because of their biblical heritage. Now, that's changed over time, but at the same time, we've seen a lot of sociological things take place. We've seen uh I mean, right now the Southern Baptist Convention is dealing with you know whether what the role of women is, and it's interesting, in my opinion, they've always struggled with that. There's always been uh a contingent of Southern Baptists who've ordained women pastors and put them in the pulpit and not had a problem. Uh, you know, it wasn't to me a major issue until the conservative resurgence, and then you know, like everything cycles through the panarchy. You you have those controversies happen, they come up, they go through a plateau phase, uh, that controversy falls by the wayside, and another controversy picks up. Um, back when I was younger, uh they didn't argue a whole lot about uh Calvinism and Reform doctrine, but over time that became a hot button issue. Um, same thing with a conservative resurgence. I have a feeling that uh, you know that it's going to get less and less conservative over time and until we reach a point. Um there's a a term that they use in in uh the book Panarchy, um, where they talk about when a situation reaches the tipping point, when people are uh they they can't take the situation anymore, and so they have to change it. It's uh trying to remember what that's called, and um it's it's not the minimum viable. Well, they'll make a point where it happens on the um situation, but um when you look at change that takes place um within the panarchy, the minimum threshold value that's I was thinking of uh the minimum threshold value is the point at which you have to take action. In other words, pressure builds and builds and builds and builds until you reach that minimum threshold value of whatever the issue is. In ecology, that has to do with um you know how how many microorganisms can you have in the lake making the water look cloudy before you shift it from being a clear pond to a muddy pond that has only catfish and bullheads? In social circles or in churches, the minimum threshold is what's the point at which the church is going to change? How uncomfortable do people have to get before they get rid of the hymnals and start putting the words on a screen? You know, that's that's a tipping point of culture, you know.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

Some churches have passed that will that last before uh we're taking them off the screen and putting them back to the hymnals.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

That's it. I mean, what what does it take to get rid of the piano and organ in the church and go with the worship band? You know, right.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

And then but but then also you know, we see signals, early signals of people moving a uh toward back towards more of an analog and more of a digital fatigue. And if anybody can like, you know, I'm gonna create a song on this. Anybody can create a song, anybody can be high production performative, then that whole that whole uh shift reaches that stagnation point. Like if everybody is, you know, a broadcaster, then it's time to move you know back. And one thing I think about when you when you were mentioning about panarchy was um the uh covet, the the when covet hit, it had some negative effects, you know, like we couldn't meet and those things, uh, and some crazy law things that were going on were just way off. But it did help us because a lot of programming that we uh churches had, that's the time they stopped doing some things that were they've been doing for years for no reason. Also created it pushed some of the churches that were more hesitant to adopt uh uh digital like you know, meeting on Zoom, like my my Bible study, uh my Sunday school, whatever you call it, my small group. We met on Zoom, but then also digital giving and these uh like we didn't see the kind of you know, so like in that phase after the collapse, there's that experimentation where something something new emerges that a different set of trees, you know, maybe some of the so uh the old trees, but also a different species of trees, so different you know, innovation and things like that that make uh the church go. Whenever you look at that, um you know the signals around for the church, uh I I think of when I think of panarchy, I try not to use it as a timeline. Like uh I try to use it more as a quality, a heuristic that I look at a signal, I kind of place it on the panarchy. That doesn't mean that everything that is around me it is in omega because I think in general we're in omega or in late K, but and you'll have to look up the panarchy to catch that or or call me and I'll help you. But the idea is it's a quality, and at different there are different scales of things, panarchies happening on different scales. So that's different panarchies happening at the same time, but as a quality, yes, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

All right, I was just asking, so you can have different panarchies happening at the same time and different, like you could have conservation happening in one sphere of the world while there's uh exploitation in another?

SPEAKER_02 55:20

Well, yes, they're they're nested cycles, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

So uh I would get an example of that would be the global south, because while our church is in kind of late K and brittle, um, and a lot of a lot of things are going to have at some point give way, the global south, the church is really uh exploding and growing and uh showing signs that the epicenter of of Christian missions and Christianity is moving to the global south, you know, the uh the Asia, South Asia and the uh Africa and the uh South America are really experiencing revival, whereas our churches are uh you know kind of plateaued. Uh, you know, so like where looking at that um panarchy and stuff, where where do you where do you see where do you see we are in that system? Like if you could maybe define this the phases of the of the panarchy and then help you know give your opinion and maybe Mac a weigh in on his.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Well, it's um so I I think you you hit a point with the digitization of church. And I'm seeing this in the social media sphere. Um, anytime that anyone puts up what is derisively called AI slop, whether it's uh an AI-generated video or AI generated conversation, or uh, I I think Facebook's gonna be suffering big time because they're trying to spark engagement by using AI, and my kids barely even go on Facebook anymore. What they're looking for, so I I think the digital amusement is reaching a peak and it's about to crash. And where it's gonna land is I think, Chris, I think you're hinting at this, is authenticity or sincerity. In other words, people are not looking for a digital experience at church, they're looking for an authentic encounter with real people. I can have a digital conversation anytime I get on my computer, so that's not doing anything for me. I've got chat GPT and Claude and and all my other AI buddies to to do the AI thing to pat me on the back and tell me what a wonderful person I am. But who do I have that's really holding me accountable for who I am as a person and what I'm doing? And I think as churches, if we I don't want to say capitalize on that, I don't think that's the right word. If we become what it is that the apostle Paul taught us to be in Ephesians 4, that we gather together so that we can do the work of the ministry, that we can build one another up in love, that's that's where we can see results. Um, but in in thinking about panarchy with relation to the church and keeping it on the scale, so my wife and I have been attending our current church for over 20 years now, and I've seen a cycle, I'd loosely call it churn, of there's people that come in, they sit in church for a while, and then eventually they leave. And so when we came, we saw some people that they were part of church. Uh, we had a change-in pastor shortly after we got there, and so there were some people that left as a result of that. Now, the fact is, our church, uh, the biggest problem we have at our church is that the parking lot's not big enough to hold all the cars of the people that want to come to church, and we've had people actually miss Sunday service because they couldn't find a place to park their car. Okay, but it's not the same people year after year after year. We have new people coming in all the time, we have other people uh who just drop out or go to a different church, and the reasons are never the same, it's always a variety of reasons, but the church itself still stays there. Um, one of the things I do is I try to keep a record of all the church directories that we produce every year, just excuse me, just to see who's come and who's gone and who's come back and that sort of thing. So there's a cycle that happens within the church, that the church will always be there as long as you go through the the panarchic cycle. You the K phase is stability, but at the same time, you should anticipate that there will be some sort of disruption. Now, for some churches, they reach their capacity. Basically, if you have 80% capacity of your building, you are essentially at the limit of what you can get because you the only time people pack in 100% of what the sanctuary or holding capacity is on Christmas and Easter. Um, but outside of that, most Sundays you never want to get past 80%. So there's a limit to growth. Well, what's your strategy? Is your strategy to run off all the malcontents? Well, no, because if you did that, then the pastor's wife wouldn't be there, right? Okay. No, no. Well, but but what you want to do it, the model in the New Testament was okay, let's go ahead and start another church, you know, because if if you split off some of your people, say, okay, we want some of you to go form another church here, and the rest of us will stay here. If you don't do that, you're gonna have churn, you're gonna have loss just as a natural byproduct. Um, I think the panarchic cycle is deeply embedded into creation. I think God, when he rested on the seventh day and set the pattern of a seven-day cycle for the week, and when he talked to Israel, and he said, All right, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna plant your ground for six years, and on the seventh year, you're gonna rest, and you're gonna do that seven times, and then after you have a rest, you're gonna have a second year of rest called the year of jubilee, in which all debts are cleared, in which all land holdings that have been mortgaged returns back to the original owner, and basically it's a reset. In other words, God built a 70-year cycle, or excuse me, uh a 49-year cycle of renewal of uh you know, of growth, stability, and that Jubilee year, the Sabbath years were artificial crashes. As I said, they happen on two different scales, and it's basically a reset. And Israel didn't follow that, they didn't obey God, and so what happened is after 490 years, God said, That's it, we're gonna give the land its Sabbaths. You guys are all marched into captivity in Babylon, and you're gonna stay there for 70 years, and once the land has had its rest, you can come back. Once again, that's a disruption, and so we see a a massive change in the nature and the stature of Israel. Is it's interesting to note that after the Babylonian captivity, Israel never had a problem with idolatry, it was never seen as the national sin that it was in the years leading up to that. Now, that's not to say that they became perfect after that, but that reset fundamentally changed who the Jews were, and ever since then, that's not been a problem. When Jesus came, he didn't preach against idolatry uh in the same way that the prophets did in the old testament because they had had that reset. I think the churches in the United States are probably uh on the verge of a reset that we're we're seeing once again, even if it's not the Western church, individual congregations go through these cycles and they experience change over time. I I think it's inevitable.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

Yeah, and and you know, looking looking back on that reset, you see, like somebody needs to do the study of panarchy and explore it uh in the cycle of the judges, or the idea that the church really took um its uh uh took off at the uh 70 AD is when it really started uh expanding as the diaspora took hold and and that that created uh the impetus for so many of the churches around the globe. And so like this, uh it's a fascinating study, the whole idea. Um and I I I love I love the panarchy uh heuristic, I love the uh you know treating it not as prophecy but as qualities that you can watch for. It's way more um uh realistic way to do it. Um and um, you know, we just we we hold these concepts loosely. We of course let the the Bible speak and we uh submit to the authority of God's word and we submit to God's sovereignty in in all things, but at the same time, we notice around us the signs uh around us that like Christ says you can recognize the seasons, but you can't recognize the time you're in. Well, I mean, that's kind of a panarchy reference, feels like yeah. So well, we could go on and on. I I I really appreciate the the the time that uh that you've shared here, and uh hopefully people will get interested in reading about the panarchy.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:16

And um so Chris, I want to just from a pastor's perspective, uh if a pastor wants to dive in some more on this topic, uh what are the first steps to do that? Other than I think uh along with calling you and uh and well, I I think there's plenty of stuff about panarchies uh on online.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

Ask your local robot, you know, because it also could uh you know it it can communicate. The um one thing one I was gonna say panarchy wise is as as the uh digital world and AI continue to expand and their in its influence. And it merge especially when when it merges with robotics. The question uh people will have is what does it mean to be a human? And the churches that do spiritual formation and help people uh understand and have a deeper account of anthropology of what it means to be a person, they're gonna sort of they're gonna be the ones that in that alpha phase and that you know new RDK phase. They're gonna be the ones who are able to minister, and there's always that kind of that Kairos moment, that opportune moment for uh evangelism. And Paul definitely capitalized on that moment, not saying that he was like, hey, this is the panarchy, I better do my thing. But that moment was there, and he he as he said, redeeming the time because the days are evil, he recognized it and he sees that moment. So yeah, I think I think we're just like introducing this vocabulary and the thought, and there's a lot smarter people than me, like you guys, for example. Um and so I I hope that we've uh inspired some thoughts here. Uh I want to ask you, Rick, uh what is your favorite kind of music?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:25

Oh music?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

So who what I'm gonna make a song of this, so give me a song.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Oh goodness, um, you know, it's you know uh against uh any of that old Detroit sound, you know, that's the trouble with uh my early boyhood was in the Detroit area, so I was uh influenced by uh more of the that Detroit hardcore industrial rock and roll. Um as I got older, I yeah, old time rock and roll. Uh when I was in college in Indiana, that was when uh uh John Cougar Mel Campbell was coming on from Seymour, Indiana, and he he had more of a country flair to his rock and roll, but it's like nah give me Motown sound and and uh you know, I I do like some of that old funk stuff, but uh yeah, Bob Seeger.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:33

I'm gonna what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take uh our conversation, gonna feed it through and develop some lyrics, and then I'm gonna you know talk about AI slop. I'm gonna put some AI slop at the end of this, which is a song based on that. I just think it's kind of fun because I mean it's a technology declared you know kind of thing. And uh we'll probably do that in future episodes too, just to kind of stick around after the ending. Uh thank you so much, Rick. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:04

Yeah, Rick, one of the things that I take away from this is that just stick around, the the cycle's gonna change. So don't change churches, just stick around.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

Well and it's if you anticipate the change and you plan for the change, then the change isn't gonna be bad. So um I didn't even get into John Boyd and his destruction and creation philosophy. But as I said, the destruction and the reconstruction is a necessary part of renewal. So my wife really does lament the loss of hymns and piano, but you know, we do have throwback services on Sunday morning, you know, where we sing some of the old hymns and I I I feel like we're in Little House on the Prairie, you know. It it's it feels quaint and anachronistic now to go back and sing the old song. So we've moved on. And I I think if we can adjust to that, if we can not only accept it, but actually plan for it. You know, and and pick out the good songs, because there's good new songs are out there or uh as Chris does just have AI rights you want.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

I think actually we're gonna come back around because uh if everything can be slick and everything then uh the and you already see this kind of craving for the ancients, and I think people you actually think the revival in some places of hymnals and those kind of things. So I think uh you know embodied what what's unique about uh people is they are people and it will become more apparent to people that the machines don't get it and um they'll want to be with people, and that's a good opportunity for the church. There's very few places in this world where you can sit around with actual other human beings and discuss meaning and that would be very appealing to uh uh to this generation that is just oversaturated and then the whole digital overshoot of just outstripping outstripping the humans' ability to keep up and uh with all this technology when uh we we're designed our identity is received from God, not curated by our uh you know our algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Just circle back around as we close. I'm I'm gonna head on out because I need to go see if I can.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:37

Okay, well, uh thank you so much. And we'll be moving fireflies. Yeah, go get your get those fireflies and uh and uh go ahead and recycle that dog meat back there in the compost pile, and we'll see you next time on Signal Cafe. God bless you.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:21

Talk and change like we always do Social, political, spiritual, trying to read what's coming through Put out past the edge of town Where the cornfields used to home Which you stay clean on stone Hot Dights Home Used to chase those fireflies to the job and watch 'em go. Now the night feels kind of empty. Something we don't know. We can't stand it just noise. Something I like to stay, but the quiet parts of creation just slipping away. Draw the line, talk the water, talk to code, do to get lost. We can dry, but nobody could tell you where the stuff just right, be while beat the work, need the boy, step, down on the door, didn't the door stack the day, don't be able to do it. Never stop it. I don't understand that the turning in the stock or not just slipping through. Now the screens keep getting loud. Every voice is fighting through. Anybody can be someone, anybody can sound true. But that's something people miss You can feel it in When the lights go down Nothing cuts through the glue People looking for a real thing. Not another all this time Wal ahead, they can hold on to Wallet's nice feel that's Baby all this noise and push It's just pushing that wanna do that we're gonna do it, I wanna do that, don't start the break, get a tie start we want that story Creation care is calling me Yes who keeps on turning Well do we understand But the garden still wait for faithful hand And the standard keeps speaking Even now Even now If we learn to listen we can see again