For Pastors
Vic Francis combines his background as a journalist with decades of pastoring, national church leadership and practising as a supervisor and spiritual director to champion pastors and their holy calling in an uncertain world.
For Pastors aims to inspire, encourage and help pastors and Christian leaders keep saying yes to the call of God on their lives.
For Pastors
Listening Across the Divide
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Vic Francis talks to Michael Frost and Cathy Marston, two prominent "progressive" pastors about how they see life, faith, scripture and where they fit in the church today.
Michael (In the Shift) and Cathy (Changes Ahead) are both podcasters as well pastors, and have a story that is worth hearing – whether you agree with them or not.
For more information on Vic and Solace, check out our website or search for us on Facebook or Instagram. And if you would like to support this podcast, please become a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/forpastors
Kia ora, I'm Vic Francis, and welcome to this episode of the For Pastors podcast. I'm combining my background as a journalist with decades of pastoring, national church leadership and practising as a supervisor and spiritual director to champion pastors and their holy calling in an uncertain world. Today's podcast is entitled Listening Across the Divide, in which I talk to Michael Frost and Cathy Marston, two prominent liberal or progressive pastors, about how they see life, faith, Scripture and where they fit in the church today. Michael and Cathy are both podcasters and pastors, and have a story that is worth hearing, whether you agree with them or not. Welcome then to For Pastors and Listening Across the Divide. Well, welcome today Cathy and Michael.
Michael FrostThank Thanks for having us, Vic.
Vic FrancisIt's always hard, isn't it, to know who listens to your podcast. My hunch though is that For Pastors is probably more in the evangelical camp than you two would identify with, and therefore even through this podcast there'll be some perhaps strong theological disagreements. But this is a podcast for pastors, and you're both pastors, and I would like to hear what you're doing and explore some of those differences maybe and ask what we might learn from one another despite them. So "listening across the divide" is the theme that we've got for today. So let's start by finding a little bit about you. Cathy, maybe we'll start with you. Who are you and what makes you tick?
Cathy MarstonThank you for having me. And I just wanna say, I just love the stance of that we've all got something to learn from each other. What a great place to begin.
Vic FrancisIndeed.
Cathy MarstonSo a little bit about me. I'm married to Sean with two adult children, and we spent the first 10 years of our life together as youth pastors at Glen Eden Baptist. And then both of us trained at Carey College and did our theology degrees. And then alongside theology, I also trained in narrative counselling, focusing on the powerful stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. And it's this intersection of theology and narrative that frames my approach to ministry and my pastoral care with deep curiosity about how people think and believe, and how they navigate their experiences. And then after, um, finishing our training, Sean and I felt like we couldn't just do our faith from behind the pews. We were really changed by the relational aspect of youth ministry, and so we wanted to do something different. Create a safe space for our faith where we could wrestle with scripture, have creativity in our learning, where we could live our lives communally and our kids could learn alongside of us. And so that vision has taken us on a 25-year journey pastoring an intergenerational faith community.
Vic FrancisWhat a story, and I look forward to hearing some more about that as we go through today. Michael, how about you? Who are you?
Michael FrostWho am I? I'm a Les Mis fan, so I always have to answer that question with Jean Valjean, but that's a very niche reference, Vic. You can edit that out if you need to.
Vic FrancisA little bit of Victor Hugo there, yeah.
Michael FrostI, yeah I live in Auckland. I pastor or I help to lead a, yeah, church community, Edge Kingsland. I grew up and spent my young adulthood within Pentecostal charismatic Christianity very passionately. I guess from my late 20s into my early 30s, and from then until the many years until now. I, went on a process of my faith being both provoked, challenged, changing, growing, shifting. So yeah, I ended up at some point in there finishing a PhD in theology as well as then deciding that I would podcast my own journey, in a sense of how my faith had changed over the years. So I ended up starting a podcast called In The Shift, which has been a space of exploring some of the questions that I've sat with, some of the challenges, issues, questions. So yeah, I find myself in, in, in both those spaces now, which is cool. And our church community has, has people within it who have been in, in, at least some of our community has been on that kind of, that journey themselves as well.
Vic FrancisMichael, words are important, and some might describe you as a liberal Christian, some perhaps a little more generously as a progressive Christian. Are those words that you would use of yourself? And if not, how would you describe where you sit within the Christian landscape?
Michael FrostYes, words are both helpful and tricky, like labels are. 'Cause they all have their limitations. And I think one of the interesting things about the kind of space I find myself in is that people have arrived from lots of different directions, and so people have arrived to have similar conversations, but from their Anglican roots or their Baptist roots or their Pentecostal roots or their Evangel- you know, whatever it might be. And find themselves sitting with similar questions, but approaching those still shaped by the traditions they've emerged from. And so I find language challenging to give a name to that. Um, liberal] I tend to avoid personally. And it's not because I think it's offensive or disparaging. It's because I think liberal in my mind is associated very strongly with that kind of 18th, 19th, early 20th century liberal Protestantism, came out of modernity, came out of, you know, a movement toward rationality and reason. And I think although there's threads of that, that, that make sense to me and that I probably connect with and I'm happy to engage with, I guess I see myself as having emerged out of a Pentecostal charismatic background shaped probably more by post-modernity as well um, than modernity. Experientialism and relationality that was deep in the roots of my own spirituality that I don't see so much within the liberal tradition, at least in the shape it's taken in my life. So yeah. So I tend to not associate myself directly with that language. I find the word progressive ends up being the word that gets used more often than not. And so I end up sort of reluctantly using it. And my reluctance is, I suppose, that I think the word progressive implies that I have progressed beyond others. And so there's a lack of humility in the term progressive sometimes that I struggle with. And yet, at the end of the day, you have to use a term, and often it's the term that ends up getting used the most by the most people becomes the term you end up having to use, so I end up landing with that kind of language.
Vic FrancisOkay. Cathy, how about you? Progressive?
Cathy MarstonI'll just add one thing about the liberal word. I think what I've really disliked about it is that people think then anything goes. And I've been accused of like, "Well, you, you can just do anything." And I go, "No, I am still governed by a very strong ethic of love." So that's why I dislike liberal. And I agree with Michael about the progressive word. I wrestle with it as well. I've never really thought of myself as that. I've just thought of myself as just growing and rethinking. And so I asked a few friends, and here are some other words that we can just throw out there. Open, process Christians, questioning. We can be a little disorganised, and also we feel on the fringe. And so again, I just wanna thank you for even just talking to us because we can feel like we're not asked what we think.
Vic FrancisYou're welcome, and it's a learning from this side of the microphone as well, and I'm sure for anybody who's listening to us today. I think I'm gonna use the word progressive in the interview at least just so that there's a continuity. But it's good to have explored that and recognise that no word actually fully describes. Uh, I'd love to explore both of your journeys of faith, what first drew you to Jesus, and what keeps you following him now. Um, Cathy would you like to tell us a little bit about that?
Cathy MarstonYes. Like I said earlier, I grew up in a Baptist church. But what actually drew my heart as a young person was a book called Cross and the Switchblade. Do you guys know that?
Vic FrancisMe book? too. Me too. Nicky Cruz.
Cathy MarstonYeah, Nicky Cruz.
Michael FrostAnd the movie
Vic FrancisAnd the movie.
Cathy MarstonAnd I think that story about a pastor moving out of the safety of his church to share about Jesus with the New York gang members and Nicky Cruz. I was 13 when I read that, and honestly, I was so struck by the way that their lives were changed by God's grace and love and by the Spirit on them, that I remember thinking, "I wanna know a God like that, a God that changes us like that." And I think that has stayed at the core of me. It's why I keep following Jesus, even with all of my doubts and questions. And I think, too, is the sense that Jesus is worthy of my risk, the risk of my life, and a direction of something that is bigger than me and gives me purpose. And so even with all my questions, Jesus is worth it. And I trust that's the very nature of faith, that faith is about seeking understanding, and that we don't have to have all the answers. And so that's where I land at the moment, that I want to be a lifelong learner, and that being open to different perspectives, it keeps me hopeful.
Vic FrancisMichael, maybe we'll ask you now. Tell us about your journey of faith. What first drew you to Jesus, and how have you followed since?
Michael FrostI still remember sitting on a bed in a motel at the age of three with a little book that had no words, but just had coloured pages.
Vic FrancisColoured pages, yep.
Michael FrostThe first one would have been green, I think, for creation, and then the next one would have been whatever it was, black for sin, and then red for the blood of Jesus, and then white for being clean, and then gold for heaven. I think that's the way it went. And I still remember praying my prayer. So I grew up immersed within the church and in that space, I guess like I mentioned earlier, as a kind of Pentecostal charismatic Christian the emphasis on experience, on experiencing God, on experiencing Jesus in a real relationship. These kinds of things were very important to me. My life oriented around that. And so yeah, my, my love of God, my love of Jesus and who Jesus shows up to be in the world and what that means for me, that was shaped in me at a young age. And so I grew up within that. In my young adulthood, I left home and I came to the big city and I participated in church passionately and enthusiastically. Trained in science, did a couple of years, and then left my science career to work for the church. And that was in part motivated not just by the fact that my life was centred around Jesus and always had been. But also, I became really interested in the way in which Jesus and his ministry calls us to care for those beyond the borders of our church community. So I was starting to wrestle, I think, at that time with the kind of breakdown of the kind of the, the, the kind of more binary way I had thought about things. And then over the years, I suppose a few things happened. By the time I hit my late 20s, early 30s, I started bumping into some intellectual questions about my faith. But also, I think probably more importantly than those were the experiential questions of the lives of the people that I had been 18, 19, 20 with, and the way in which their lives were playing out and the ways in which that didn't fit how we all imagined this would go. And that caused me to ask some different questions. And they weren't because I was ready to abandon my faith. They were because I was deeply committed to this idea that, that faith in Jesus mattered and shaped our lives. And so I was interested in how my faith in Jesus could respond to the experiences of those around me and the way that they were playing out. And so
audioMichaelFrost21685502355yeah,
Michael Frostboth of those things have shaped an evolving trajectory of what my faith looks like, but it still finds itself centred very much around the person of Jesus, the God I see in Jesus. And then what that means for me and my life and the world. So that's, that's still very much deeply part of my life.
Vic FrancisYeah. Would you be able to summarise how your theology has changed over the years? Is it more complicated than that?
Michael FrostLike I said, it started with these questions that I was sitting with that, that popped up from time to time and then I would shovel back down again. And then the experiences of people around me who I could kinda no longer make sense of within the framework I had. Interestingly, it was really bumping into studying Trinitarian theology that fundamentally reshaped my vision of God. And so if I have to sum up the way my theology has changed, I think it fundamentally starts with how I think about God. And I realised as I was studying Trinitarian theology that even though I technically knew it, I still had God as the sole figure, the, the old man in the sky really was still, subconsciously at least, the conception of God that I had the kind of, the pretty closed, judgmental, binary God was probably the God that I believed in. And what Trinitarian theology did is it opened me up to a relational God. It opened me to this idea that God is that love circulating between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and poured out into creation. These kinds of things radically opened me up. And then if God was that good, then I was free to explore my other questions that came with it without being worried or afraid that I was gonna then get in trouble with God for asking those questions. And that's connected to Jesus again, because I also bumped into the idea around that time that God must be as nice as Jesus. If Jesus is revealing God to us, if Jesus is God as the Christians claim then God must be at least as nice as Jesus. And so those, those ideas really opened me up to be able to give me permission to explore the questions that I had. And yeah then things have evolved and changed over time, and so I'm much more comfortable with questions that I don't have answers to, with not knowing certain things, but not being overly worried about that. I explore them. I love the conversations. I engage in those from a faith perspective, but I'm not nervous about getting them wrong or not having the right answer, and that has given me, yeah, I guess an openness to God and to the world that I've found really meaningful. That's theologically and experientially.
Cathy MarstonCan I add to that?
Vic FrancisYes, Cathy.
Cathy MarstonJust picking up what you're saying, Michael, I find really interesting, is the Trinitarian um theology. When I studied at Carey, that was one of the big things that stood out for me as well. Really changed my understanding of the deeply relational God and the incarnation of Jesus, and the same sort of sense of I can really trust in that. I can trust in a God that doesn't expect me to have it all sorted. Because faith inherently is bigger than me, and I can trust that as long as I'm doing the best I can to live out of what I see in Jesus, that's okay. God can hold me in that. So that Trinitarian way of thinking is a huge thing that I have kept and taken with me. What's changed for me, it's due to my experiences. So our youth work really exposed us to a few tragedies. We lost an 18-year-old who just died suddenly, and then another really good friend who died at 31, who was training to be a doctor and was hoping to go overseas using his medicine. And so that just caused us to have to rethink. That sent us on a journey of what does it mean to have a theology of suffering when everything doesn't work out, when it's just tragic and you can't make sense of it? And to be honest, in recent times, that journey has been reopened up to us in the sense of my daughter lost a child to stillbirth, birth this year. And so experience does matter. Our faith has to relate to what our experience is. And so I think then that's the invitation to rethink.
Vic FrancisYeah. That's a, a heartbreaking thing for your daughter and for you, Cathy, and for your whole whanau. Your journeys that you describe have taken you out of what we may call evangelical, again, words are not helpful at some stage, but as you think back, Michael what is it from your evangelical roots maybe that still remain important or precious?
Michael FrostYeah I think, it was Jesus-centred and it remains Jesus-centred. I think what I gained from those roots was this interest, passion for relationship with Jesus. So that's one thing. I think this idea that life was inherently deeply meaningful and mattered, and that what I did with my life mattered to God and to the world, I think that's something that has stuck with me, and that's probably why I still find myself here having these kinds of conversations and involved in church. Yeah.
Vic FrancisCathy, you've talked about feeling on the fringes I think was the word that you used. But what do you love about the church? You are a pastor. You're still part of the church. What do you love about the church?
Cathy MarstonI think when we do our community life well, then that feels like the embodied presence of Jesus. When we actually are able to love each other and do good in our communities and be the hands and feet, that feels a little bit like heaven on earth, and that's what I kinda keep aspiring to. And I think too, when our communities can hold us, like I'm so grateful to my community that when my daughter went through a period of not knowing if she believed God was real, and there was this freedom to ask questions and to explore. And because they held her so well, she said that is how she's remained having a faith. And so I'm really grateful, and grateful that when we do our community life well and hold each other in places when we don't know what we think and we're in places of unknowing, then that just gives me hope.
Vic FrancisFinal question for you both before we take a break. What does following Jesus today look like in, in your life? Cathy, we'll start with you.
Cathy MarstonIt's created for me a wider definition of who is my family. We took Jesus's words about who is my brothers and sisters, they're the people that follow him. We took that really seriously. And so for us, it's more than our biological family. It's all the people that we've journeyed with. It's the young people who have become part of our family, who have lived with us. And now that they are married with children, we're like their uncles and aunts. So it's this whole idea of an extended sense of who family is, and that's how we live our lives. The other one is I really take seriously Galatians about bearing one another's sorrows. And so it's providing a place of refuge where people can find rest with us, whether it's living with us for a short period, or whether it's just offering a listening ear. And so for me, it's the presence of my time, making space in my life so that I can just embody loving people. So we have a lot of people in our home. And also when we're talking about pastoring and mentoring we do that in a volunteer capacity. So we've shaped our lives so that we can do that, so that we can give of our time, give of our space in our lives.
Vic FrancisThank you, Cathy. Michael, how about you? What does following Jesus look for you today?
Michael FrostIn some sense there's just the rhythms of the spiritual life. It's the rhythms of prayer and of community and of care, and the, the things that, that we're probably reasonably familiar with as just a part of the rhythms of life in a following Jesus kind of way. But I think increasingly I've been disrupted by the upside-down kingdom. That kind of idea in various forms, has disrupted and re-disrupted me over the years. I, I think a big part of my own evolution was moving from really the Jesus story was mostly about miracles and then Easter. That was Jesus. And now I'm so interested in and compelled by and disrupted by the words and actions of Jesus in his life. And so for me, following Jesus, and I'm certainly no model exemplar, but I'm doing my best, is to go how does that reshape the way I see other people, see those around me, see those who are on the margins and the fringes and the edges, like those who Jesus seemed to direct his attention towards so often. And ask myself, especially as a reasonably whatever the labels are struggle again here, but privileged or middle class or, a white man who's married and, my life is like from some perspective reasonably settled, reasonably good, right? And what does it mean for me and how does it disrupt me to try and follow this Jesus who somehow calls me beyond that little bubble that I happily exist in? And to orient my attention towards those who, yeah, who are suffering, who are sitting with hardship, or who have been pushed to the edges of things. And that means I, yeah, because I'm trying to follow Jesus, I see other people and the world around me very differently than I would otherwise, or at least I'm trying to, and I'm trying to let that seeing change my actions. And that's the harder bit. So yeah, that, that's me.
Cathy MarstonI just wanted to pick up on that word disruptor, 'cause I think one of the sayings that we have used in our Sunday at 4 is this word "Bisty", which is taken from Matthew where Jesus does all his "Bisty" sayings, "But I say to you." And I think for us it's the real discomfort that Jesus is the ultimate disruptor, and constantly disrupting our assumptions about the way we think life should be. And so one of the ones, and I'm nowhere near sorted on this, but asking the economic question. What does it mean if Jesus said, "But I say to you your economics keeps the gap wider between the poor and the rich"? What if it's challenging our deep assumptions? And yeah, the, the, the "Bisty" sayings to keep us looking at what have we just taken for granted as just the way life is, and it's very uncomfortable.
Vic FrancisIt is uncomfortable, and I'm delighted that we've just created a new word, or we've just heard new word that you've created. We're all called to be "Bisty" it seems. But I say to you. That's a good point I think for us a break, and when we return we're going to explore where progressive Christianity might fit with the wider church, be it the liturgical church, or the evangelical, or the Orthodox, or Pentecostal, or whatever it is. And so we'll be right back. Welcome back to the For Pastors podcast and our conversation across the divide. Michael, I'm wondering if we think about what progressive Christians see or perhaps they talk about, what is it do you think that the wider church sometimes misses that progressives perhaps see more clearly?
Michael FrostYeah, there's a couple of things that come to mind in particular, and these kind of spin out into lots of other things. But a couple of things at the core. One would be that I think there is more emphasis on, you think about the beginnings of Genesis and the, the story of starting with Genesis 1 or starting with Genesis 3. And I think my experience of evangelicalism or, the wider church, not always, by any means, but has often been to start the story with Genesis 3, if you like. To start the story with what is wrong. The heart is deceitful. Humans are sinners. But the emphasis, I think, at least in, in my experience, and I can only really speak, from my experience of progressive faith and so I'm not speaking for everyone here, but that there's more emphasis on beginning with the sense of the image bearers. That God created human beings good. And yeah, then there's some stuff to wrestle with. But what comes first in that conversation? And so I think there is more attention paid to what is to be named as good and beautiful and affirmed within people, not necessarily jumping straight to what is not good with people. And again, I don't want to say this is all evangelicals, it certainly isn't, but the old, evangelistic kind of methodology of, going out and asking people, "Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever..." "Oh, so you agree with me that you're a lying, murderous, adulterous And I certainly don't mean to, to tar everyone with that brush, but it's indicative of kind of this mentality that the fundamental thing is the problem, and then what's the solution. And I think what progressive Christianity is often offering is a perspective that says, what if we began with naming what is good? Even if we go to Romans, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But you go later in the letter, and it's like your heart, I know that your hearts are good? And that's not talked about so much. So I think there's this emphasis on naming what is good and beautiful in humanity and in creation that sits within progressive faith. And I think that's a beautiful thing because it is naming the good, which I think matters and I think is incredibly powerful actually, in terms of our human experience. So that's one thing. I think a second thing that I'll mention is I think we progressives probably tend to think about systemic and structural problems more than, let's say, evangelicals might. I think there's been an influence of liberation theology in progressive thought that says, let's not just pay attention to individual salvation, but let's think more collectively, structurally about like what's going on. How do we understand the Kingdom of God? How do we understand what Jesus was interested in this bigger sense? And again, there are not tight lines between these. It's not like other people don't care about those things. And it's probably, why progressives tend to end up more left politically and evangelicals tend to end up righter politically, I think is the emphasis on individual salvation and individuals and personal responsibility, or the emphasis on like what are our kind of collective systems and structures and, so very shaping on me was, yeah, bumping into liberation theology and thinking about the Exodus story as this liberation from a whole systemic system of slavery, and that becomes symbolic of empire and Babylon and, these kind of big images of when harm gets done on this large scale. And I suppose all of that probably then connects to the more difficult questions of who we then wanna be able to say get to be a part of this. And because of some of those fundamental leanings, I think progressives are going to have a much wider collection of who gets to be a part of this, and I think that's actually a really interesting challenge to other parts of the church.
Vic FrancisWe'll have a look at that a little a moment. So that would be a contribution that progressive thought could add to the whole church, I think of those things you're talking about. Are there things that the progressive church does need and still needs from the wider church, do you think?
Michael FrostWe need each other, don't we? Always. And so I think, one of the things is probably the conversation we're having here is that I feel like it would be helpful for the wider church to be able to create some room for progressive people of faith to be, I don't know, considered a part of the family in a sense. I think that would matter. I think that would matter for kids whose faith goes progressive, and then that creates difficulty in their family or their family's church, I think that would matter to people experientially. It's not that I desperately need, "Oh, won't you just accept me and say that I'm okay?" It's not so much about that for me personally, but I can see the places where that would matter. I think there's a kind of potency or an energy in the wider church that sometimes more progressive forms of faith can lack. And I think there's room to learn from that. There's a kind of a drive and it's probably driven by certain theological things that progressives are less likely to believe. But there's something really interesting in there for me that I, as yet can't quite put my finger on terms of this kind of energy and drive sometimes we see within the evangelical space that, that progressives can sometimes be lacking. Yeah. So I think there's some things to learn there for sure.
Vic FrancisCathy.
Cathy MarstonI was just thinking in terms of the richness of our traditions. That instead of chucking everything out, we can go back to some of those beautiful rhythms and rituals that hold us when we can't hold ourselves. And I think there's something beautiful about the interplay of that. So I really still hold quite deeply to some of those beautiful traditions across all our denominations.
Vic FrancisYeah. Let's talk about the Bible, because if you pit evangelicals and progressives against each other, probably they're gonna land in an understanding of scripture somewhere along the lines. So an evangelical accusation for someone who's progressive is that you're so, uh, taken with culture and the values of the day that you interpret the Bible accordingly. Michael, do you understand that sort of as a concern and how do you respond to that?
Michael FrostI do understand it as a concern, 'cause I probably used to hold that concern. Young me would be just shaking my head very disapprovingly at older me. I, but one of the things I bumped into was the realisation that I think we're all doing that,
Cathy MarstonYeah.
Michael FrostRegardless of what tradition we come from.
Vic FrancisExplain.
Michael FrostI think about the way the church has, you know, like even the church tradition that I came out of, changed its views on, I don't know, like divorce or head coverings. And in many respects they were post-rationalisations. The change was happening culturally, and then the church had to figure out, "Oh, I think we're gonna change our view on that," and then develop a biblical theological argument for it. But in a sense it was responding. So I think I started to see the ways in which it's always happening all the time. So in that sense, the question is not does it happen or doesn't it happen, but what is the process for that conversation? Like, how do we engage with scripture? How does it speak to us? How do we relate to it? How does it form us and shape us? I think the other thing perhaps I bumped into, the fact that scripture had more perspectives in it than I expected. So I remember studying the fact that Ezra and Ruth were written around the same time, you know, even though they are set in very different times, and Ezra is advocating for this incredible kind of ethnic purity. All the foreign wives get kicked out to the wilderness at the end of the book, upon the return. And Ruth, which is written about the same time, is telling a story of how the line of David has this foreign wife embedded into the story, and that in fact these two books were a conversation that was happening within the community, one advocating for very tight ethnic purity and one advocating for more openness, and that they were both preserved within the tradition scripture and the conversation meant that I think my, my view of scripture has changed in that regard to, to recognise that, oh, we're always engaging in judgments about... And Jesus himself, was engaging with his scriptural tradition and seemed to side sometimes more with some perspectives than with others. This is the kind of process I went through. He quotes Isaiah in his Luke 4:18, but he leaves off the day of vengeance of our God. And I'm so fascinated by that. What's he doing there with his engagement with scripture? And we could say, oh, he's leaving it for later, but you don't get the sense from Jesus that's what he's doing. So all of that means, okay, I'm engaging scripture in a sense of the classic kind of hermeneutical things of when was this written and what kind of community was it written to and what were they wrestling with and what conversations were they having, and how were they thinking about God at that time? But I am, and I have to be honest, I'm very happy to let go of words like inerrancy. And so no, I think what's happening here is we are being invited into a very long conversation that holds authority for us as our story, but in a way that doesn't lock us in always to say
Cathy MarstonThat it's just this one thing. And I love what you're saying, Michael, because take the Bible really seriously, that it is inviting us into a conversation to keep wrestling, because it's written at different times. And so we need to understand it for a different period. For example, I think what happens is that we know bits of the Bible really well, but we don't know all of it. So if I ask you, you know, the Proverbs women, woman. Do you know that one well?
Vic FrancisProverbs 31? Oh, yeah.
Cathy MarstonYeah. So this is a picture of what a woman looks like. But do you also know the prophetess Huldah that's recorded in Kings, 2 Kings? Have you heard her?
Vic FrancisTotally familiar, totally familiar.
Cathy MarstonAre you familiar with her? Do you know that I've only just recently learned about her. And so it's about King Josiah goes to her to authenticate that there are some scrolls of the law that have been lost, and are these real? And they go to her, and it's like here is two completely different pictures of what a woman can do. And so I think part of it for me is I take that really seriously, that we probably don't know the diversity and that there are so many different perspectives, which is, I know, uncomfortable, 'cause it means then we have to wrestle with scripture, and we're saying, "So what does it mean for us in our time, and what might it mean?" And so I think for me, it's that, and I think for a lot of people, they don't wanna see that. They see that as, oh no, there's something wrong with our Bible. But I actually think that's the beauty of that it's all recorded there for us so that we go to it to seek wisdom.
Vic FrancisCathy another criticism I guess is that progressive Christians become uncomfortable with the language of sin. So for you, what is sin in your understanding and as an extrapolation of that, what do we need saving from?
Cathy MarstonYeah that's a really good question and when we started our Sunday at 4, we reframed that question to not what are we saved from, but what are we saved to? And so then it invites a whole pile of different questions about who are we meant to become, who are we becoming as the community that reflect this life of Jesus? So it's what we saved to, and so all our questions around that. I really like N.T. Wright's perspective on the Lord's Prayer. That again, it's like he talks about that it's about heaven on earth, and what does it mean to participate in bringing heaven on earth. So it just orientates you differently. The question about sin, I have to be honest, I am still deeply wrestling with that. My pastoral concern has been that sin has become the bigger thing than grace, and I continue to still have so many people that are unable to receive grace because they do not feel they're worthy of it. And so I think what you said before, Michael, about our starting point, we've made sin the big thing, and Jesus is the answer, rather than the starting point is that we're worthy of being loved. And so I am wrestling with that. The only word I can attach to sin at the moment is that sin equals harm, so maybe it's the harm we do to ourselves and to one another. But yeah, I'm really I'm wrestling. I want to have more dialogue about this. And when I was studying at Carey, we were doing the Book of Romans, and we had a choice, and this kind of shows you where my head went. Most of the other students did the doctrine of sin, Paul's response to sin. I decided that I'd much rather do Romans 14 to 15, Paul's pastoral response to diversity in the church.
Vic FrancisYeah.
Cathy MarstonBecause I wanted to know how to actually walk with people when we've got differences.
Vic FrancisWhere does Jesus sit, Cathy, at the centre of progressive Christianity?
Cathy MarstonI can't speak for all progressives. I can only speak for myself, and I'm hoping that what you've heard is that Jesus is at the centre of it, and Jesus' call to love God by loving ourselves and loving one another.
Vic FrancisAnd that, that's your testimony. We've talked about how far you've come or changed whatever, but at the end of the day, Jesus is still the centre here.
Cathy MarstonYes
Vic FrancisHow about for you, Michael? What would you say?
Michael FrostYeah. As I've been listening to Cathy share, I was thinking, especially in relation to sin and how, I think you probably wouldn't find many progressives who have a penal substitutionary approach to the atonement, right? But there are some other approaches that are very much a part of the Christian tradition, whether it's Christus Victor or some form of that, or kind of more Girardian scapegoat kind of stuff, there's lots of different ways to approach that. But I think probably moving away from penal substitutionary atonement means that Jesus does take a different kind of centre place rather than as the one who yeah, took all this punishment that we deserved. There's a different way of thinking about how Jesus sits at the centre, and so I think for me it's it's this radical person. I see the gospel as the person of Jesus is, is the gospel in a sense. And so then the encounter with the Christ becomes salvation in that sense and what that does in us and through us in the world. And so, funnily enough, I think probably for at least a good chunk of my former life, can I call it that? Before I was saved for a second time. No, I'm being facetious now. No. No. I think I talked about Jesus all the time, but I didn't actually know very much about what Jesus really cared about. And so Jesus was a bit like a mascot figure for me in, in some sense. And I think that I could, ironically, going back to an earlier question, could plaster then a whole lot of stuff that I thought on top of, because I really had Jesus died and rose again, and that was it, and then I can shape Jesus into an excellent 21st century capitalist. So to be more again, going back to that word of disruption, disrupted by, yeah, the words and actions of Jesus and the way in which he saw people like that has become pivotal. If God is like Jesus, then this reshapes everything.
Cathy MarstonSo we talk a lot about his encounters, eh? A lot about his stories and his parables and how he actually lived his life, 'cause then that matters. Yeah.
Vic FrancisAnd it's still relevant right through life that we are living today, and I think an evangelical would agree with that at that level at least. Let's take another break. And when we come back we're going to ask what we can learn from talking to each other, and I think probably more importantly what we can learn from listening to each other. So we'll be right back. Let's imagine for a moment an evangelical pastor is listening to this podcast. And let's assume that they probably still disagree with you on significant things. But Michael, what would you hope that he or she will have heard? What would you want to say to that pastor today?
Michael FrostI think to recognise the breadth of the Christian family. My hope is that we are slow, very slow to drawing too tightly the, the lines of who's in and out, whether that applies to me as who might believe differently to you, or whether that applies to somebody else whose experience of life is very different to yours. So I think, and I am challenged by that also because, there are some parts of the Christian tradition and the Christian history that I would like to say, "Those people don't get to belong," but they are also a part of the story and the family that we have to sit with. I guess to hear perhaps that we're not a danger, or people who just left the way things were because we just wanted to go and live sinful lives, or because we just wanted to do things and the church wouldn't let us. Sometimes those, those stories that flow very easily about what, why progressives might have ended up in this kind of space that can be told from a distance. And I think instead to recognise that for many folk who are in our kind of space, it is our faith in Jesus that has led us here. And our desire to be authentically faithful to that journey. So yeah I hope they've heard that. I hope they've heard that it is our deep abiding trust and love for the story of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the person of Jesus, and the way that shapes us that's at the heart of things. And yeah, I think if that's heard, that's a beautiful thing.
Vic FrancisCathy, how about you?
Cathy MarstonYeah, I would just echo that in having this conversation, that people are hearing real people, and they get to hear our hearts. Because it's so easy to go, "Those people over there," and make assumptions about what they're really like, and we actually don't know them. And so the fact that you're having this conversation with us and you're hearing us, and I hope that pastors and whoever's listening hear our heart, that we are the same in the sense of wanting to faithfully follow Jesus in the best way we can. And I kinda wanna bring that aspirational vision of Galatians 3 that brings diversity together. Greek and Jew and slave and free man, and male and female. If that's at the centre, then I hope they're hearing that, hearing our heart, that can we be a part of that, that kind of transformative community that brings difference together and can hold it all. Not make it the same, but hold it all. Wouldn't that be an incredible witness to those around us?
Vic FrancisCathy, do you consider evangelicals who may strongly disagree with you, do you consider them to be your brothers and sisters in Christ?
Cathy MarstonAbsolutely. If you take what I just said about the wider family of God and that it's about bringing us all together, yeah, I do. But I think if I'm honest, I've felt it on the other side that I am considered less Christian because I'm not holding to the same central ideas.
Vic FrancisHow about you, Michael? An evangelical, somebody disagrees maybe somebody that you used to be like, still a brother and sister?
Michael FrostYeah. Yeah. I think often about my younger self and how my younger self would see me and how I see my younger self. 'Cause there are times I'm incredibly frustrated with people who are like my younger self. And the temptation is to totalise by one or two differences what a person is. And I think about my younger self and I think, "What kind of person was I?" And I disagree with myself about many things, that version of me. But that version of me was, without developing multiple personalities in this moment that version of me was, is my brother in Christ if I was to meet them now. In one sense, the question is, are we a part of the same faith story? Are we part of the same faith tradition? Are we part of the same family in that sense? And I need to be able to say yes, at least from my perspective. And then, you know, I, I probably broaden that out and I'm gonna name people as brothers and sisters in Christ who probably don't even know it. 'Cause I think that's the kind of expansive nature of the kind of faith that, that I've been shaped into.
Vic FrancisWe've talked about disagreeing and there is disagreement in the very stories that we're telling today. And I'm wondering how we might disagree well. What would it look like for evangelicals and progressives to have some serious theological conversation, maybe others as well, without disparaging each other or pretending that their differences don't matter, without it being a prerequisite that we have to all, I don't know, agree on everything. What do you think, Michael? Is there a possibility that we could disagree well, and would that be helpful?
Michael FrostOh, I hope so. There's always a point at which it depends what we're disagreeing about. Now I say that as in, there might be really abhorrent views that someone holds and you wanna really strongly disagree with that and say, "Look, I don't even wanna sit down and have a conversation about that," right? But on the whole, let's say on the whole yeah I would like to think so. I mean, I know, that the kinda ecumenical space in the church is always a little bit challenging, isn't it? What can we come together around, and what disagreements can we hold, and how can we hold those in ways that are healthy? Again, I guess it comes back to that kinda totalising thing. Can we hold disagreements about something without turning the other person into the sum of that disagreement, and in that sense then dehumanise them? Can I hear someone's point of view who I strongly disagree with and still see them as a human image-bearer of God who is loved by God and by me. And if that can sit at the heart of disagreement, then I think that really helps. And I, I think it's important not to minimise difference when it arises, 'cause that's not honest either. there are gonna be things that we do really disagree with that mean there are certain thing, and this happens all the time, right? So if you're in a church and you wanna kinda hold space for different people with different perspectives, and some people in the church don't believe women should be allowed to speak from the front, and others do, right? You can hold those disagreements within that community, but the choices you make as a community to let women do that or not let women do that will make a kind of statement about, in this community, we are gonna go this way. Which doesn't mean anyone who disagrees with that must leave, but anyone who disagrees with that might be disappointed by those actions and have to accept that. And so those kinds of things will come up in community, so it's not always possible just to hold space where we can all just disagree and still do everything together. So I don't think the, the aim can be to do everything together because we'll bump into those things all the time. We'll have a queer person leading worship at our church that someone else might not be comfortable experiencing, right? So those differences will come along. But how do we talk about them in a healthy way really does matter. In my younger life, especially as a young adult I think about certain people who would be, "That church denomination is having a disagreement about LGBT," for example, and the churches who come to a different conclusion are seen as no longer being Christian, because they've changed their mind about a particular thing, they're no longer part of us. They're no longer in the family. They're spoken if they've lost their faith, because they've got a disagreement with us on that. And I feel like that's a fundamentally unhelpful kind of stance to take in either direction of these kinds of conversations. To go, "Oh, if you disagree with us, you're not really a Christian," that you can't disagree well if that's if that's sitting there on the table all the time. So yeah. I think to come with curiosity, openness and an ability to hear the areas where we disagree and why, but to be able to still humanise and respect and love the other
Vic FrancisCathy, how about you? Disagreeing well, what do you think about that?
Cathy MarstonI think it's actually at the very centre of it because, like even what we're just doing now, the fact that you are asking us such thoughtful questions in itself made me feel like you're interested in me. You're actually interested in what I think. You're not just telling me all your beliefs, you're actually interested in my ideas, and that makes me feel like, ah, I feel seen. And what happens to people when they feel seen? They feel like they, there's a place for them to belong, and I think that's at the heart of feeling loved by each other. So we have to cultivate probably one of the basic things, but it's a really difficult thing to do I think, is be genuinely interested. One of my favourite questions is, "Oh, tell me what you think." And if we just applied that one question, "Tell me what you think," where did that come from? What formed that for you? Be interested in the background because people have stories as to why they think what they do. And if we could hear some of that, that one might open up compassion towards each other. "Oh, is that what happened?" Like me telling you about our family stillbirth. That brought compassion, and then you go, "Oh, that's why she's rethinking some of her ideas, because she's had this deeply traumatic experience." So curiosity, we are not curious enough. We're so busy forming our reply that we forget to just listen.
Vic FrancisI ask everybody on the podcast what gives them hope. We get a, a wide range of wonderful answers really. So Cathy, maybe start with you. What gives you hope? And then Michael might pick up from there.
Cathy MarstonFor me, having a community that I can do this life journey with, where we can do what we're just doing on this interview. That we can wrestle, we can talk. Having younger people to give us their perspective, that gives me hope, because they're showing us things that we can't see for ourselves. So I love hearing other perspectives. That gives me hope.
Vic FrancisThank you. Michael.
Michael FrostI think about the very volatile changing world we find ourselves in. And I've got a seven-year-old boy, and I think about what kind of world he's gonna grow up into. And I have some concerns about that world. I have a few concerns about what, this doesn't sound very hopeful so far, but I'll get to it.
Vic FrancisYeah, get the wrong question here? We're talking about hope.
Michael FrostWhat gives you despair? I have some concerns but I think, what gives me hope, yeah, is this kind of, and this is hope for the church, is that I hope that increasingly the church becomes a place where people find genuine, warm, human connection with one another in community. And whether that's as an alternative to the kind of technological revolution that actually separates people from one another in embodied ways and leaves people very lonely, or whether it's from the rabid kind of individualism of modern Western society that I think is leading to a lot of social disintegration. Again, back to hope. I think the idea of gathering in community and cultivating creativity and beauty and love and hope and solidarity with one another. Like the churches could be places like that. The churches could be communities like that. That gives me hope for what that can create in a world that desperately needs all of that, that needs people to be gathering and seeing the good in one another, seeing one another with eyes of kindness, that care for one another in ways that now many people are lacking, so I see perhaps more than ever the need for the church. And so that gives me hope that the church could be that and will be that, at least for some. And I think that's really important. I think, did I get there? Did I get out of despair, Vic?
Vic FrancisI think we got, think we got to hope in the end, eh?
Michael FrostOkay, good.
Cathy MarstonCan I just add an idea about hope is that hope is an action word, and so being the hope we long for. So one of the things that I am enjoying with our community is that we go and do some restorative work in our local reserves. And so doing things together generates hope. Being the hope that we long for in our communities.
Vic FrancisI wonder if you'd pray for us. Surely that's a point of connection regardless of what part of the church that you're from. But to pray for our pastors in particular. It is the For Pastors podcast. You guys are both pastors, and I wonder if I could ask you both to pray for the pastors of New Zealand, and indeed anybody who may listen to this. Michael, can we get you to kick off and Cathy to round it out for us would be lovely.
Michael FrostSure. God, I think of all of those working in community and in ministry, looking to find their way, as most of us are. And and I just pray that there would be a grace for the work, a grace for those who find themselves sitting with grieving families and people with questions and who find themselves sitting with communities who have different opinions about things, and the leader sitting there in the middle trying to navigate it all and hold people together and love people and lead them. So yeah, in, in all of those places, would there be grace. Would you strengthen and encourage those especially who feel isolated or lonely in that work or who feel like they don't know if they can do it or if they don't have the people around them to offer support. God, would you bring some of those people into their lives to be friends, to be those who can share the load and share the burden? Yeah. For any of the pastors who feel a little bit of crushing weight coming down on them, I just pray, yeah a sense of solidarity of your spirit, of your presence, of your liberating love that does invite us to find our anchoring and our grounding in you.
Cathy MarstonAnd I just wanna lead us out with like a benediction. This is a creative adaption of the Lord's Prayer: Our Father, who is in the world, blessed be your presence in us, in animals, in nature, in still air and wind. May justice and peace dwell amongst us as you come to us. Your will be our will. Your will that we be sisters and brothers to one another. Give us this day the bread we need, and give it to those who have none. Forgive us when we fail our promises, as we forgive others. Deliver us from the evil that excludes, and liberate all that is good. For the wisdom, the presence, and the goodness are yours. Amen.
Vic FrancisAmen. I wanna thank you, Cathy and Michael, for coming on the podcast. I haven't met either of you before. Still haven't met either of you in person, but it's been a pleasure to talk about the podcast and what we might be able to talk about when we get together in this recording process. But thank you for loving your people and for following Christ as you have felt led to do. Thank you for being part of the church even though we might have differences. Thank you for the strengths that you offer that I might learn from. And so in your work and in your calling, I champion you in this uncertain world. God bless you.
Michael FrostThanks so much, Vic.
Vic FrancisThank you for listening to this episode of the For Pastors podcast. Before you leave, how about liking or rating the podcast and passing it on to a pastor you know who may benefit? Meanwhile, I'll be back in a fortnight with something different again, talking all things mental health with the Reverend Silvia Purdie, mental health and ministry and mental health in the church. I hope you'll join me. God bless.