The Great Evangelical Hand-Off (That Never Happened) with Jake Meador

Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts host Jake Meador for a wide-ranging conversation on why evangelical institutions struggle with leadership transitions and long-term succession. They explore how evangelicalism's emphasis on discontinuity, charismatic personality-driven leadership, and brand-over-institution thinking undermines durability. The discussion touches on the boomer generational bottleneck, the producer-consumer framework shaped by technology, and what healthier models—like RTS or long-tenured churches—might teach us about building things that outlast their founders.

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Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction & Framing the Problem
• 02:48 – Evangelicalism's Built-In Bias Toward Discontinuity
• 06:34 – Charisma, Personality, and the Exoskeleton Problem
• 08:46 – Brands vs. Institutions
• 11:22 – RTS as a Positive Case Study
• 15:24 – Market Forces and Media Adaptability
• 17:33 – Long-Tenured Churches and the Mold vs. Platform Distinction
• 24:18 – The Boomer Generational Cliff
• 30:16 – Carson, Piper, Keller, and Golden Age Expectations
• 39:23 – Evangelical Anxiety About Institutional Betrayal
• 43:31 – Technology, Formation, and the Performing Self
• 51:26 – Birth Rates, Legacy, and Thinking About Succession

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Lexim Press, who publishes books that love the Word, love the faith, and love the church. Lexin Press was recently acquired by Baker Publishing Group, and there will be more news to follow. Our February book of the month is 30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity, inspiring true stories from the early church around the world. You can receive a 30% discount on this title and all previous books of the month by visiting Bakerbookhouse.com backslash pages backslash Mere Fidelity. You can find that link in our show notes to get 30% off our book of the month from Lexim Press. Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Rushmaui, and I'll be your host for the day. Uh with that said, I am joined by regular cast and crew member Aleister Roberts. Good to see you again, Alistair. Good to be back. And we have a special guest with Jake Meeter, our buddy from Mere Orthodoxy. Actually, he did not force himself onto the show. We actually did ask him. It's good to have you on, Jake. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So today we thought we'd have you on in order to talk about an issue that was brought up, I think, by one of our other cast members. I it gets all blurry a little bit in the chat, Brad East. And the issue is essentially the challenges, problems, and like the necessity of succession and transitions within evangelical institutions, probably broadly institutions across culture and society, all of us, I think, ha can recognize there is something of a challenge of succession within broader American culture. I think I can't remember what year the last four presidents, last four U.S. presidents or four of the last five presidents have have been born or something like that. There's there was some sometime back in the I mean not Obama, not Bush, but there's been a there's been a lot of of of essentially boomers who we we can't seem to get a Gen Xer in. We can't seem to get uh that that generation is lost. It we probably should have had a Gen Xer on the show, but we can't find them to be on the show, right? Alistair, are you you're not Gen X, right? You're at the edge, right? Are you an Xennial? Xennial. You're Xennial.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

You're on the edge, right? But I mean it's it's this issue of of thinking through um, A, is it a problem? B, if it is a problem, uh how do we manage this this in a sense coming this coming baton handoff that never seemed to happen? And then how do you actually prevent that in the future? Like how how do you start to think ahead? How do guys who are currently uh people who are currently across various fields receiving the bat batons start thinking about actually handing things off? So with that, um Jake, I'd love for you to maybe continue to set the scene a little bit uh with the challenge with institutions and handoffs uh or how you see the problem, uh, and then we'll kind of take it from there.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Yeah, I guess so I I can understand the generational framing because it's not very difficult to identify a lot of prominent boomers who, in many cases, actually did attempt to hand off leadership and it didn't go well, or they didn't hand off leadership, they held on to it too long, and by the time it was kind of out of their hands, it was too late to have a healthy transition. So I think that's a real issue. The question I've been wondering about more lately, though, is how much of this is unique to one generation versus how much is kind of a feature of evangelicalism broadly speaking. Uh what I mean by that is like if you take Bebington, the much cited quadrilateral. So Bebington says the four characteristics of evangelicalism are biblicism, activism, conversionism, and crucicentrism. I think that's the four terms. Um depending on how those are framed, arguably three out of those four are defined by a relationship of discontinuity with the past. Activism is changing the world from what it was to what we want it to be. Biblicism is often effectively a rejection of creeds and confessions in favor of a kind of nuda scriptura approach. Um and then conversionism, then I and the point here is not to say discontinuity is always bad. Like sometimes you you want discontinuity. There needs to be a rupture from something bad and an emergence into something better. But conversionism is also going to be something that emphasizes discontinuity with what came before. And so as I was thinking about that, I was like, if so much of what defines your movement is a sense of break with the past. We don't need creeds and confessions, we have scripture, um, we don't need the world that came before us, we're gonna fix it and make it better through our activism. Um I'm gonna kind of lean more into this adult conversion experience I have than the idea of someone who just grew up in the faith and never knew a day that they didn't know Christ as friend and brother. If you have so much of your movement that is built on discontinuity, how does that affect your ability to build institutions? Because institutions, I'm I'm actually reading Yvonne Levin's Time to Build right now, and Levin about how institutions are the durable forms of a community's life together. Durable forms almost inherently for a lot of institutions mean like two to three generations of life in them. And what I see right now is lots of uh I and I don't want to name names here because that gets awkward, but it just in my head, I can think of lots of prominent evangelical organizations, churches, colleges, seminaries, where it seems like they have a like one and a half generation golden age window. And then that second, third generation doesn't really materialize. And so my question is like, and maybe this is a unique thing with boomers wanting to hold on too long. Maybe it's something with a lack of obvious successors, but also maybe there's something in the way evangelicalism tends to understand itself that makes it really hard to think in terms of continuity with the past rather than kind of start up, we're breaking from the past and doing a new thing, kind of terms.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

I have one feature of evangelicalism in mind that breaks out of the quadrilateral that it it's more just the big personality individualism uh charisma, right? You don't have to be a charismatic for charismaticism, uh, you know, and uh a notion of authority as charisma. And I haven't read it yet. What's uh Molly Worthin's got the recent book on that? Yep. It's an American thing that's or it's not even just an American thing, but but but that idea of authority as charisma, the preacher or the visionary who has the vision, who has the moment, who has the message for the moment, and an institution, the person is the institution. The institution is almost like uh a shell or an exoskeleton built around this uh like like almost like a almost like a Gundam machine that is built around a single operator who has all the right moves and has all the right message. And so you have a ministry just around um that that just singular force of personality. And I don't think that's the the whole of evangelicalism by a long shot, but it's not not a significant theme. And so it's really hard when your your ministry is built around a guy, a thing, you know, a a particular vibe that uh is associated with him to reproduce that without it being like a succession program of like, oh, here's my son, or here's my here's here's the here's the carbon copy. Uh and oftentimes the carbon copy is not the person for the moment. Like that that guy was the man for the moment in that in that way, in a way that uh an institution, institutions have to be durable across generations, but the problems that hit generations are there's the there's the perennial human problem, obviously, of sin and all that kind of thing and modernity. But it it changed every 20, 30, 40, 50 years, the conditions. And so uh yeah, that that I think outside of the quadrilateral, I think that is a feature that is a significant challenge for long-term institution building. Alistair.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Maybe related to that, many of these institutions have, or many of these figures that you mentioned, have their own vibe. It's almost as if each movement has its particular brand that it's very difficult to maintain when the core figure is removed. To build an institution around something that has really gained its momentum through a central figure who represents a specific vision, a charismatic presence, a sense of a message that really emphasizes certain elements. When you have changing situations, when you have um no longer that central person, it's very difficult to sustain a brand through that. And what we have in most cases is not institutions of long duration, but shorter term brands. I might also add to that that when we reflect upon a lot of these groups, they tend to be fairly siloed. They end up forming their own networks and communities and institutions, but they're very much within a small world and so there will be big fish within these small ponds. But there's the the pipelines that created the leaders of those communities are not present within the communities themselves. And the communities themselves are not producing naturally the sort of people who would be uh able to stand outside of those communities and be able to position themselves with regard to the culture and ways that the founders of those communities were able to. Many of the pipelines are outside. People would go to Europe to study, and then they'd go back to the US. There would be other sorts of networks that they were depending upon. And then when you've got a siloed community formed around such a figure that has a very distinctive brand, it's very difficult to replicate that. And so I think part of the question is what are the pipelines? Have those broken down? Where would we look for the successes? Because the original leaders didn't come from within the communities themselves for the most part. Um, where are the successes going to come from? Where are the pipelines? And have those pipelines broken down, if so, why?

SPEAKER_03 11:31

One of the things Levin talks about is the difference between a mold and a platform. And so institutions functioning well are more like a mold that you fit yourself into. And you sacrifice certain things of your own taste, preference, style, um, because you're trying to build something bigger than yourself. And you're trying to create a form that others can then step into as well, such that it's not purely dependent upon your own sensibility or brand or what have you. I think it was John Shelton likened institutions in some sense. It's almost like one of the rings of power, that it's this kind of like externalization of a person's abilities and talents and resources into something that exists outside of themselves and can be used to accomplish different things. Um and I think there's something to that, but then you want that process of externalization to start to be kind of shaped and limited and formed by other um other considerations beyond your own tastes and desires. Like the thought I actually had, um it's difficult, sadly, to find a lot of good success stories in reformed evangelicalism over the last 15 years on the institutional level in terms of these um the management of an organization's life. But one that I do think is worth thinking about a lot and trying to learn from is Form Theological Seminary, RTS. And like I've asked different profs there about this, and like one of the things that's striking to me is I can ask one prof a question and then ask another prof the same question, and that the answers rhyme. They're not identical, they're still personality, but there's um definitely a lot of overlap in vision. And then the thing one one of the professors told me is he said, we're a seminary that's trying to train reformed ministers, and so we want to be as broad as our confession is, we don't want to be narrower than our confession is, and we also don't want to have lots of kind of idiosyncratic, quixotic projects that one prop is really, really devoted to, and it's his thing, it's his brand. Because that that does distract the seminary and it waters down some of what you can do.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Um This is the superlapsarianism campus, and that is what we do.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

I mean, I just wonder like, what are the things like a seminary is a unique it kind of institution, and so the lessons you can learn from it probably have some limits just because it's not going to translate perfectly to a church or a nonprofit or a magazine. But I I've just been struck when I uh I've always been impressed by the conversations I've had with folks from RTS. And it seems like they have a very clear understanding of what they're doing, why they're doing it. And I think it is going to endure past like whenever Dr. Duncan retires, or whenever a president at one of the campuses retires, it seems like there's at least a good chance of a successful handoff, which is better than a lot a lot of us do. So I I've been encouraged by that example, and I've been trying to think through like what can I learn, what can we learn from a place like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Perhaps going back to the comment I made about brands earlier, there is some of the success at least of evangelicalism has been its ability to adapt itself to a very marketized society. It is a market-driven movement in many respects. It can connect with a mass audience along those lines. And also its ability to adapt to new media. And in both of those respects, it's given a fairly shifting protean form. It's adapting itself constantly to these changing uh cultural realities of the marketplace and of new media. And an institution is different from that. An institution uh does not have the same degree of adaptability, it's not always going to become a new thing in each generation. It has to m retain its form over time. And there are particular requirements, for instance, in an institution like a seminary, that it just has to provide a certain sort of education if it's going to produce ministers. There are certain requirements that just make such an institution work. And so it can't adapt itself to the market or to new media to the same degree. That doesn't mean that there won't be degrees to which it will adapt itself for the development of new forms of teaching online, for instance. But in all of those cases, there are institutional ends that will counteract and at least uh they will limit the degree to which the institution is at the whim of market forces and new media possibilities. But yet it seems to me that as a more general movement, evangelicalism does not have that same degree of discipline by institutional factors beyond markets and media. Um and so that's always going to be a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Thinking that through in terms of churches is interesting um in the the longevity of of certain institutions. I I got to I had the privilege of preaching um it's like a men's retreat at a uh church down in in um on the East Coast, and it churches been around for four or two hundred years, which is old for an American church, and they'd had eight pastors in 200 years. Uh, and they've been there and they're still trucking. There's there's babies getting baptized and adults and all that sort of thing. It's a really healthy congregation. But you have this sense of these pastors who last a long time, who probably have to have a sufficient force of personality to have a vision, drive, exercise leadership, um see things through and so on and so forth. And yet, nevertheless, when you step- I imagine when you step into a pulpit that's been there for 160, 200 years before you got there, there that element of platform versus mold um is there. You're you're you're you're walking into something that pre-exists to you, and you have a sense that it's gonna like if you don't mess up, it's gonna be there after you've gone. After you're gone. You're, you're, you're, and you're being entrusted with something. Um I don't know that that has a the kind of similar entrepreneurial mindset that evangelicalism has often th thrived on. I think of like broad-based evangelical like visions of success. It's the guy who drops in, has a powerful preaching ministry, starts a church, blows it up to a couple thousand, whatever it is, and it keeps going. But then from there, does it last 50 years? Does it last 100 years? Does it like the you think about megachurches right now, most megachurches I can think of, they're they're they're the creation of the creation of boomers. There's ones that predate it, but in terms of you've got one generation, maybe half under the belt right now. And they're they're not necessarily yet full-blown, long-term institutions that are being entr have been entrusted over yet. They are still the question is whether they've they've moved beyond the exoskeleton of a single guy phase, uh into something that's just a a long, long-standing like, no, this church is going to be there past a lot of that. And I've seen churches like that, but they oftentimes don't have some of the signature trademark pop evangelical markers beyond, hey, we preach the cross, we we value conversion, those sorts of things that I think are less personality-driven. I don't know. That's where I go when I think about the platform versus mold distinction that that Livin brings up. But to pivot a little bit, that requires a mindset, I think. Well, sometimes I think it requires a form of government and a form of institution around the person. So it's easier when you've got potentially easier when you've got a session of folks who are, you know, extend beyond the single pastor to like, hey, there's six or seven other people who've been running this as well, plus uh a committee, so on and so forth, who can keep the vision uh and hand it off. Um that's one aspect of it, but I do think it has a different mindset of trying to think of like, I'm not just trying to build my platform, I'm trying to keep an institute, I'm trying to build an institution. I'm uh in my mind, my job is well done if I've handed it off to somebody who maybe is going to be better at this than I am. I will be okay. I will I'll be happy if my ministry here is dwarfed by the next person's ministry at this church because the church will be growing, not my name. And that's like I think that's a that's that's a different mindset.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Yeah. I mean, I think part of the issue is that if you are like if you think about a typical brand relationship, um it's a brand and a consumer. So it's a very kind of one sided one person is producing, everyone else is consuming the production and enjoying it, and so it's successful and it carries forward. Until the brand changes or the producer stops producing and then it just collapses because there was nothing else there. Whereas what you need for an institution to be strong and healthy is you actually need a lot of stakeholders that are valuing it together and are involved. And so that requires in a church. You need an engaged laity. In a nonprofit, you need really engaged volunteers. And often in the life of an institution, people will move from from one from one role into another. But yeah, I mean it's it's a dispersal of the activity that allows the thing to happen across a larger group rather than concentrating everything around a small number of or even just a single charismatic talented individuals. I mean, I even thought about like again, not naming names, but one of the pastors in the last several years that has had to leave ministry because of disqualifying sin, when people were investigating what happened, it turned out he wasn't even ordained in the church. I believe he was paid through a nonprofit separate from the church. And so when you start having structures like that, you you really have diminished the church to a kind of performer with an audience rather than being the gathered people of God united in a common life around word and sacrament and Christian discipline. And so it it's a it's just a wildly different thing that if you only show up one Sunday, the difference might not be super apparent, but if you're part of a community for a long time, it becomes more clear, I think.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

And I'm sure we can all feel why they chose that word. That's real, you can go look it up. In a world where everything feels like slop and brain rot, now is a perfect time to cultivate a rich intellectual life, to think clearly and carefully about church and culture, theology and technology, family and formation. At Mere Orthodoxy, it's our mission to create thoughtful, engaging content that aims to form Christians in the church to participate in the culture for the common good. Mere Fidelity is one of those media projects. Mere Orthodoxy and Mere Fidelity are reader and listen-supported media projects. Without our generous members, we wouldn't be able to produce essays and podcasts or cultivate the thriving community that exists among Mere Orthodoxy members. Mere Orthodoxy members receive access to our full archive of content, the quarterly print journal with premier essays, an invitation to the Mere Orthodoxy online community, the monthly Mir O Mailbag newsletter from our editor-in-chief, Jake Meeter, and you'll also be supporting a growing media organization that exists to form Christians in the church to participate in the culture for the common good. If you would like to support this mission, you can go to Mereorthodoxy.com slash membership and become a member today. That's Mirorthodoxy.com slash membership to join us and support our mission of renewing minds and restoring hope.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

They were a lot more committed in terms of attendance. Um and there was a recent piece by Ryan Burge that I think was quite shocking, just observing the fact that up to 50% of um many evangelical denominations are boomers or older. Which means that that number is almost all retirement age, 10, 15 years time, many of them will either be dead or be unable to attend due to illness and infirmity. There will be a large group of people who have been key workers for the church, not necessarily pastors, but lay workers, in many cases, the backbone of practical keeping the lights on, who will be depending upon the church to provide for them. And so it won't just be a matter of them leaving um no longer being able to attend. It will be the fact that they need the church to step up for them who are going to fill their shoes. You have younger generations where both men and women have worked full-time jobs in ways that they have not in the past. And so the sort of volunteer work that women used to perform, so much of the church's existence depended upon that. So many other communities within society have depended upon that sort of labor. And when that goes, there is a lot that's going to collapse with it. And so I think it's not just a matter of the um lack of an institutional understanding, there's something also of a generational dynamic here that if you postured yourself relative to the church primarily as a consumer of its resources, even a very enthusiastic one, the sense of deep commitment to an institution and an institution that outlasts and depends upon more than just the personality who's at the front, um, that sort of commitment may be lacking. And as a result, what what is there really in the way of a hand on the other side to reach for the baton that's being passed over?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, that's hard because on the one hand, you know, the boomers have been the foundation of they're they they they are the bulwark of a whole bunch right now in the church financially and certainly um servant-wise, and y you can think of it just a million different committees and subcommittees and just unofficial food trains and all those sorts of things that are just you know basically uh run by them and and and and the church is richer for it. Um weirdly enough, at the same time, they're p the parallel parallel that that's that is Generation Me, such that like the things, the seeds that started in that generation are maybe not maybe not the people who were in the churches during that generation and are currently in the churches right now, it's that it's it's part of that has has run its way through Gen X, run its way through millennials, run its way now down to Gen Z. The the fruits of kind of the ideas that were taught and passed down, the expressive individualism, all those sorts of things, um, are kind of coming to roost or coming to bear in some ways um that hadn't really hit them, hadn't hadn't quite formed them in the ways that they're forming our generations. Uh and it's kind of that's part of the problem with the with the handoff, part of the problem with that impact. Um I do think I do think the willingness to hand things off is an issue is an issue uh in a lot of cases. So for instance, you read about issues of participation within a within a denomination, participation within a local church. If you have somebody who's been sitting on a committee for 20 plus years, 25 plus years, 20 30 plus years, um uh oftentimes you you'd read about boomers who folks who in earlier generations who they were on the committees by 40, right? But now they've been on the same committee for like 25 years. It's just there's no more room for the current 40-year-olds who are showing up to perhaps be drafted or that's not always the case. Sometimes they do want them, sometimes there is the invitation, sometimes, but sometimes the the lack of handoff sometimes there's not a hand reaching out, and sometimes the lack of handing off is part of what provokes the lack of a hand reaching out. Uh so it's a little bit of a chicken or the egg uh situation there where if there are no demands being made, then there is no um, in a sense, impetus to rise to the occasion and respond. Um so uh as well as a sense of stake, uh a stake within the community, a stake uh within the church, a stake within the institution, because there's no uh there's no responsible authority that's been given to them. I can't remember which book I was just reading that was talking about this dynamic. It might have been um might have been part of what's the Christian Smith book, uh, why religions become obsolete? I think he's got a discussion of some of those. I mean, that that book I have my criticisms, but um that book does get to some of a whole bunch of the questions with with the dissolution of commitments to traditional American religion. And I do think that that is one of the elements that we're dealing with here is low stakeholder investment because there's been no invitation into holding a stake.

unknown 31:50

Jake?

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Yeah, I mean that's something I I've seen mentioned, and I just confirmed the dates as you were talking. So it's interesting if you think about three of the biggest um figures in Boomer, especially like broadly reformed evangelicalism, it's Carson, Piper, and Keller, who started TG together. And I just checked the dates. And Piper and Carson were both in their mid-30s when they got their job that kind of was their gig for the rest of their career. Um, Carson at Ted's, Piper at Bethlehem, and then Tim was almost 40 when he started Redeemer. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of guys right now. Um, I'm 38. There are a lot of guys in the reformed world who are five to ten years older than me that's feel I think feel frustrated because they still haven't had that opportunity. And yet the the flip side of that is I look at those three cases, for example, and like TED's was not like it was a different time at TED's in the 70s versus the the 90s. And it was still a relatively younger institution, I believe, in the 70s. The 70s, yes. Yeah. And so Carson got there when it was still kind of a startup-y thing, I think, in many ways, or certainly closer to that than being being what it was by like the 90s or the early 2000s. Um, and when like Piper came to Bethlehem, my understanding is it was kind of a dying downtown Baptist church that was really struggling, and they brought him in. And even with Tim, like he had been deeply involved in a lot of PCA things for a long time at Westminster on the diaconal stuff that he did. Um so yeah, I'm I I think uh part of what I wonder about is like what are the right expectations that the like next generation should have in taking things on? Because it's not as if any of those guys were handed this kind of pristine thing that the previous generation had built and just gave it to them. Like all three of them were builders, even as they were coming into those roles younger than a lot of people do now. And so I I guess part of what I I wonder about is there's always a kind of golden age problem that can quick crop up in these conversations where we we long for some kind of scenario or moment that never actually existed. And because we misrepresent the past, we we take the wrong expectations into the future. I I don't know. I'm kind of rantling.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

In in in in some ways, yes. In some ways, I do think that they I think I think that the shape of American religion over the last 30 to 40 years is in 50, 60 years is different. So just earlier this year, I revisited Eugene Peterson's memoir, The The Pastor. And it was, you know, it's elegant writing, all that's it was a lot of it's beautiful. And but the the the chapter on his church plant was the funniest thing in the world to me because they drafted some guy, you know, fresh with like half a PhD in hand. Uh I think he he he I can't remember, he stopped, he stopped when he was basically ABD. The Presbyterian church at the time just like had apparently gobs of cash lying around. So they send him to this, so they send him to this uh neighborhood in Maryland and both outside of Baltimore, and they're like, hey, why don't you start a church here? Here's three worth here's three three years worth of like housing and and and and fun and funding, whatever, no fundraising involved, and just walk around and introduce yourself. And by the end of the year, he's got like a hundred people in his basement. And then within two years, two to three years, they've built a church and which they already paid for. They had a building. They had a building. That's something that they built a building. And so that that that is just a kind of institutional world that and and an expectation at the time of religion playing a normative role. If we're talking about evangelicalism, we don't live in that world.

unknown 35:53

Right?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

We don't have to go full negative world there or whatever. But the institutions, the money, the the cultural pressures that create headwinds, that create pressure for people to show up at your locale. If you can offer a better product, everybody's supposed to buy the product. And if you're offering a better one, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

Like if I'm not falling asleep in the thing, it's also kind of the story of Willow Creek's ascent in the 70s was capitalizing on a lot of people who were willing to attend church, but were kind of flaky, didn't go all the time. And they figured out what was keeping them away and blew up.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

So I do think it's partially it's partially, hey, you still have to build it. You know, he showed up, there wasn't anybody there. You did have to you did have to walk around the neighborhood, you did have to write sermons, you did have to do all those sorts of things. And at the same time, the time was also different. Um and so I do think people are still building things, planting churches, having them blow up and and in in good ways. Um and and there there's still things that are happening. So I don't want to I I'm not I'm not I'm not a I'm not a pessimist about the future of religion in America. Nevertheless, I do think that that was a weird golden bubble that if we do, if we do look back and there is there is an idealization that can happen. And then there's also a fact that of like, hey, you we're we're we're we're now. We're in 2026, uh, that was 1975 or 1980. Things have happened, right? And so the expectations around what successful institution building uh will involve, and you know, even foundational institution building will involve, it just has to be calibrated differently.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Yeah, no, I mean, so we have a piece on the website called The Institutional Roots of America's Political Crisis. This is kind of the same world you're talking about, Eric. So John Shelton is the author, and he was talking about the role that the Christian century, kind of the mainline Christianity today, played in Niebuber's career. And he had this piece or this data point at the end-of-one graph. By the end of his career, Nieber could draw the modern-day equivalent of $25,000 or more for a single article. And so, like, there's an amount of money stuff in the post-war mainline that is just unimaginable to us today.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Um that that's a real that's a real difference in terms of just keeping the machinery of an institution involved. But I do think that that's there. But in terms of the structures of personal development, personal relationship, and and honestly the the the incentive to to hand things off, um that that does take a different that does take a mindset uh of thinking about ministry success in some ways or institutional success of like your job is to part of your job is to fade out in good way in a good way and hand off not fade out, but yeah, fade out, hand off and ensure healthy succession past your past your career moment. Right? You actually have to have a much larger horizon and timeline involved than your uh most active years. You have to have a mindset of of I I might actually pull back even during some of the years of my strength in order to use some of my strength to strengthen and make sure that the handoff is is is um is well done. Uh and I I you know I've never been there, I've never done that, I've I've never had to. So I'm speaking perhaps out of turn there, but I have seen some places attempt it and do it well, and there it has its roots in probably how you've been conducting your ministry for the first for the 15 to 20 years before that. Right? You don't make a you don't make a sudden shift to from building a platform to suddenly thinking about things in terms of a mold and handing off an institution, that sort of thing. You had to you kind of had to have had an institutional mindset from the beginning to some degree, or or or or significantly shifted halfway through when you're moving out of building your personal fiefdom to no, actually uh it's not about my fiefdom at all. I don't I shouldn't have one. It it really is an element of of what how can I expand this part of the kingdom and and pray to God that it it it it it the post can be held after I'm gone. Like how can I strengthen the post, as it were, uh for the NESCA to occupy it?

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Aaron Ross Powell One thing I wonder there is the degree to which evangelicals have felt betrayed by institutions in the past, as institutions have I mean the fundamentalist modernist controversy and the the loss of mainline institutions is part of the evangelical founding narrative. Um and for many I think there's that sense of deep anxiety of institutions shifting away from their evangelical roots, and as a result, I think there is this deep nervousness about handing over the reins to untested persons. And there is not a long history of stable evangelical institutions passing on reins generation after generation. There is a lot also of evangelical institutions that have arisen and gained power almost working within and against institutional forces. And so to shift from that sort of operation to start to think institutionally and weight those institutional forces, the very ones that you've maybe been pushing against, as they've been delivery systems for liberalism, that takes a big shift. And I think for many people, the question is should I fund this institution if I cannot be absolutely certain that the person, the people who are holding the reins are not going to betray me, as they have betrayed evangelicalism in the past. And there's also this twitchiness that I think uh makes people over-vigilant in these sorts of situations. There is an appropriate vigilance, but many people, anything that sounds out of the uh out of the ordinary, it can be a a cause for um extreme anxiety. And so there's a hyper-conservatism when it comes to taking that next step of passing on the reins.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

This is one of the things that we haven't talked about yet, but has to be part of the conversation, is that so if you stipulate that healthy institutions have broadly dispersed agency and like work they're doing within the community, um, you're stipulating that you actually need to have a high number of well-formed individuals capable of that kind of stewardship for it to function the way it needs to. And in our current kind of technological moment, a lot of the formation that people undergo is coming via their phone, via really unhealthy information flows. And it begets that kind of high anxiety, highly reactive, low trust sensibility, which then makes it really, really hard to coexist in healthy ways in an institution. And it incentivizes you toward the brand and consumer framework because it's safer and you can walk away from a brand very easily. Brand doesn't ask much of you. I also have wondered, does it cause us to devalue the institutions we already have such that we just kind of slide people into those roles without necessarily thinking about it very much or determining if they're qualified? And then when there's a test and that individual who probably shouldn't have been in the job in the first place fails, everyone looks around and says, well, see, the institution failed. It's like, well, yes, it did, but it was kind of set up to fail by the circumstances that existed around it. And I think the the tech moment we're in exacerbates all of this in massive ways.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Aaron Ross Powell And that does, and this is a this is an old theme, but I think it it also it more than other times magnifies the character character competence, um, external, internal uh problem of you you can find somebody, you can find somebody to slot them in who has external talents, has who has the the charisma, the um the the the kinds of qualities that capture market share well, and has and somebody has been trained in the virtues of generating attention and market share and and that's that kind of thinking online but perhaps has lacked the requisite formation internally, uh moral the moral shaping of a community, the moral shaping of of the will and all those sorts of things. That's it again, yeah. Big talent, bring them in, get butts in the seat, get views on the page, get whatever, and oh they've they crashed out, okay, time to find the next, you know, Disney star, uh pastor, whoever it is, um, and and and and and and ride that wave again. Uh and I do think that that's that is that is another tendency that is is real.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

One thing I I've been struck by over the last few years is just seeing the horrific caliber of people within the key institutions. So evangelicals tend to think in their circles about the conversation that we're having here. But when you think about the main line and the quality of the candidates administer, when you think about the academic institutions and the quality of students within them, you realize there is a a catastrophe that's unfolding at the moment. There are not, I mean, it's not as if you have what you had in the past, very smart liberals. Um, liberals who rejected the gospel but really knew their they knew their languages, they knew the disciplines really they could engage in conversation at the highest level, and evangelicals were clearly outclassed. That's not what you see in many institutions now. What you see is just this utter dearth of talent. And the liberals that are there, they are far more radical in some of the forms of the apostasy that they can represent, but they're not even impressive anymore. And so I wonder this seems to be a more general problem that's being experienced in very different ways in highly institutionalized context and then in de-institutionalized context.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Yeah. I just gotta I'm sorry, I was just amazed at the it's the essence of Alistair. I'm not even impressed by the bat I'm not even impressed by the heresy anymore. It's just the talent, the talent level the talent level on the apostasy is shameful. You need to up the game. Um, but I I do think I do think there there are as as as degrees are being handed out, there there's a devaluation of the levels of scholarship, all sorts of things that are happening across the board. But you know, I don't know that that's the main I I don't know that that's the main problem right now. It's a contributing factor here. But I I do I wonder more about the moral formation. I wonder more about the motive the motives we have uh to engage in the hard work of institution building. I I think that the the distortion factor around those things is a huge driver. We haven't, you know, and I we've talked about some of the economics of it, we've talked about some of the some of the media environment stuff of it, but um all of those things play into the distortion field of the motivations that we ha we all have as individuals in any field that we're entering into. Kind of the performing self of the late modern expressive individualist world. I'm trying to remember what's his name. Andrew Root, I think he's got uh he's got that series on uh the church in a in a secular age, or it's it's all post-taylor stuff. But I mean, the one the one of those that I did read, part of it is just is just that that element of the performative self who um you're you're always in every role you're occupying, having to constantly achieve a l-a sense of transcendence through the accomplishment of of various measures of of and markers of success that within a late modern frame looks like certain kinds of career moves and certain kinds of numbers and certain kinds of online metrics and certain kinds of of status and competition and recognition games that really severely distort your ability to commit to a long-term institution where you start to think about the long-term players. Uh you read about in biographies and history of there there were huge behind-the-scenes players in American politics or in the church who little recognition or didn't want to be in the limelight weren't main upfront players, but you know, reshaped history. Um and the motives to be that kind of operator are are not there. And maybe that's a good thing in terms of you don't want uh too many, too many, too many, you know, smoky backfilled rooms, but within the church. But um that kind of mindset of like I I can use the ball down. I I did I did have I had a student the other day, I just student a few months ago who's like, hey man, you'd just come back from like a men's retreat thing from a loc from one of our churches, one of the local churches, dude, what is it with Presbyterians and cigars? I was like, I don't know, just accept it, just accept it. Um But that kind of I that kind of mindset is is not what's incentivized. Um Right.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

So I think one of the things that again goes back to the brand angle, it goes back to the tech angle and the performing self-angle is that nobody imagines themselves as like the engaged lay person who helps out in the nursery and brings a meal to the family that just had a baby. Like everybody wants to be person on the stage. And I mean, the irony is that I think even a lot of there I shouldn't say a lot, there are pastors I can observe just on their social media behavior, where it feels like even being a pastor is kind of boring to them. And they would much rather be a kind of talking head commenting on politics and culture than preaching the words. With their own podcasts and stuff, yeah. Right, right. And so I think there's I think there's a because of how we take in information, because of how we interact with technology and how that's informed our relationships to our neighbors, when we think about being involved in something, I think it's really hard for us to get outside of the producer-consumer frame. And as long as you can't get out of the producer-consumer frame, you're not going to get healthy communities, you're not going to get healthy leadership, you're not going to get good transitions in leadership because nobody's thinking in those terms or being formed in the ways they need to be to make those things possible.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

One thing here, I think, is just the relation of this with the birth rate crisis. There is a more general crisis in a society that cannot produce a next generation. And part of that is an existential shift from the idea of ourselves as bearers of a legacy, passing on a tradition, thinking about ourselves in terms of our absence. There's a going to be a time when we are not. What are we going to leave behind? And the sense that we are part of this larger project than us than ourselves, that we're responsible for passing on a baton. The idea of passing on a baton, it's not just continuing your empire, it's the sense that you are part of a larger race. There are people who have given you something, entrusted you with a church, entrusted you with a particular message, and you in turn have to leave that to someone else, and you have to leave it in a way that is enriched by having passed through your hands. And that whole way of just thinking about ourselves, I think, has largely gone as we've had smaller families, we've moved around a lot more, we've had all these unsettling factors that the larger things than ourselves that we used to be invested in, that used to give us a sense of just succession as part of what the self is, um, stable marriages that persevered over a whole lifetime, all these sorts of things, as those go, people just do not think about succession until the last moment. And at that point, it's okay, I'm about to lose my energies, I'm nearing death. What now? Um, and at that point you're thinking about it. But it should be just a central factor in how you think about yourself as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

Yeah, it's not like the Green Lantern core where you know at the very last minute you die, the ring five flies off and finds somebody else. It's a little bit more. It's a little bit more like having a Padawan as a Jedi. I'm sorry, just doing this for Alistair's benefit. Guys, this is how you reach the kids. I'm just kidding. Um but uh but to be honest, that that element of discipleship, long-I mean, long-term discipleship, long-term um training of of you know Paul, having Timothy follow him around, working with him in ministry, uh, Mark and Barnabas, and and that sort of idea of part of what I have done for the church, part of what I have done for the kingdom of God is equipped people to equip the kingdom of God when I am dead and no longer a part of of the ministry. Um, you know, it's parenting, it's it's fatherhood, it's motherhood, it's it's you know, one of your from you know, think about having children at a certain age or a younger age, or whatever it's like from the time that you have a child onward, one of your main goals is to make sure that this little this human is ready for the day you die, is ready for the day you're no longer here, and that they are equipped to face life without you. That is building the institution of the family. And that is, I think, part of the mindset of the of the church. Um, just to repeat Alistair in a different in a different voice. Um, it's it's baton. It's baton, not baton. Come on. Um with that in mind, I I think we could keep going here for several more hours, minutes, years, who knows? But for today, I think we have to land the plane and just say, Jake, thanks for uh joining us for another kind of exploratory episode of Mere Fidelity. I don't know that we've landed the plane, but I do think uh I I was I was encouraged and I was challenged to think a little bit more deeply about what does it mean to approach uh work within the church and beyond it with that more of an institutional long-term mindset. So thanks, Jake, for joining us. Um and if you have listened thus far, uh thanks for listening. Thanks for dialing in. And and if you want to keep this institution going, I'll say uh head over to iTunes or Spotify, rate and review it, uh go become a uh a member of Patreon or uh however we're doing things now, Mirror Orthodoxy, become a mirror o member, keep that institution going um for for good for good work within the church. Uh but until until next time, uh this has been Mere Fidelity.