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A Den of Thieves: Church as a Business Institution with Brandon Lokey
303 Plays1 year ago
The one time in scripture we see Jesus get violently angry, it’s in a church- a church selling goods for profit and treating it like a business. This story is so well known, it got a moment in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. And yet, we still see news story after news story, documentary after documentary, about churches abusing their power and putting profit before people.
In this episode, I’m talking with my dear friend Brandon Lokey who spent decades committed to the Southern Baptist Convention. Together, we have an informative conversation about his experience with church as institution, what brought him to the choice to leave, and how he sees his faith and church now.
Resources
- Read a Book that Impacted Brandon on His Journey: Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
- Read a Book About Women and Church: The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr
- Read a Book About Homosexuality In (or not in) Scripture: God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines
Links
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Now I See' Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
I was lost in utter darkness I was trapped in toxic shame I was bound by my religion Till I chose to break away
00:00:24
Speaker
Now I'm finding my true colors For the first time I feel free Now I'm learning self compassion And as I heal I'm finding peace
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome to Now I See, eye-opening stories from the formerly faithful. I'm your host, Amber White, and here, me and my guests share our experiences in loving and leaving rigid faith systems. Together, we shine a light on the dark corners of these institutions and share the joys of rebuilding life on our own terms. I promise you'll leave inspired, even if you are a little teary-eyed.
00:01:23
Speaker
Hi, and welcome back to Now I See.
Meet Brandon Loki: A Former Southern Baptist
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm your host, Amber White, and in this episode, I am really happy to be introducing you to my friend Brandon Loki. He is a former faithful of the Southern Baptist variety and the husband of one of my previous guests, David Cornett.
00:01:43
Speaker
I met Brandon through David and had the privilege of attending their incredibly beautiful and thoughtful wedding. It was truly a day for our friendship history books. When I first talked to Brandon about the podcast, I had this idea in my head that we might talk about evangelism since it was such a huge part of both of our lives. But when he told me he wanted to talk about church as institution, my ears perked up.
00:02:12
Speaker
The church I grew up in was small and not connected to any governing bodies. So other than us building a million dollar building, we could only half fill and hearing visiting pastor after visiting pastor talk about how the building was a testament to the beauty of God. It's not something I personally experienced.
00:02:31
Speaker
But none of us are really strangers to it these days, are we?
Critique of Church Institutions
00:02:35
Speaker
At some point or another, we've all seen a TV evangelist, megachurch pastor, or social media savvy religious influencer preaching prosperity gospel while asking for money to upgrade their jet so they can spend their travel time, quote, focusing on prayer. Pat Robertson said that.
00:02:55
Speaker
And I hope he is unrestfully, unpeacefully considering the impact of his own greed these days. A few years ago, I remember seeing that Joel Osteen's church closed their doors during a tragic weather event and turned people away rather than housing them. What a great use of tax-exempt status. More recently,
00:03:18
Speaker
I've seen Church's Institute show itself in the fall from grace that Hillsong is experiencing. If you haven't seen that docu-series yet, I highly recommend it. It was shocking to see just how brutal multi-million dollar Church's business could be. And just how much they can cover up.
00:03:41
Speaker
I want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with a church collecting money to comfortably support its missions and the people who are working to make the church happen. There's also nothing wrong with relying on volunteers to help do certain tasks. That's just a great part of being in community.
00:04:00
Speaker
But those things become problems when the leadership is using God to guilt people into donating what little they have so they can buy another luxury vehicle. Or when churches that look like concert venues with ministers in luxury clothing are paying staff members so little they can barely afford to live and telling them that their reward is in heaven. Okay? Why is yours here on earth then?
Experiences in a Southern Baptist Church
00:04:28
Speaker
Brandon experienced church as an institution close up, and I learned so much from a recording session that I didn't know about the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:04:39
Speaker
I hope it will be as enlightening to you as it was to me. Before we get into the episode, just a quick reminder that ratings and reviews help the show so much, and I would greatly appreciate it if you left a positive review on the platform you use. Also, there is a link to the podcast Bookshop.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I have stocked it full with some great books from folks who left their faith, are doing faith differently, or who offer educated criticism and analysis of Christianity as we know it. All right, I'll let Brandon speak now. Let's get into the episode.
00:05:30
Speaker
Hi, Brandon. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with me today. I am really excited to talk with you because you have a really cool story. And the way that I grew up in kind of an independent fundamentalist Baptist church, we didn't experience a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about today. But I think they're really important. And I think they play a huge role in the way that we see Christianity infused into the culture. So I'm really glad that you're here. Thank you for being here.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah.
Understanding Southern Baptist Governance
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah. So I had the pleasure of growing up in a large Southern Baptist church in a relatively small Southern town. So I have a lot of experience with sort of going to a lot of those conferences that we have camps. Like, you know, we had a giant bus with like 50 passenger bus that we would roll into camp and we would be obviously the largest church there.
00:06:18
Speaker
and we used it as sort of like a weird power dynamic. It was odd. Now that I look back at it, but yeah, was part of the convention, like the statewide convention went to state convention frequently, both as an ambassador for youth programs and as like a worker slash volunteer, went to other bits and pieces of that, went to a convention sponsored university. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know that existed. Oh yeah. What? Okay. Yeah. In Tennessee, there's,
00:06:48
Speaker
There used to be three and now there's only two because Belmont officially broke from the Tennessee Baptist Church. There really should be like a reality show about some of this. I mean, it's, but it's bizarre because I can remember when, when that all happened and you know, like.
00:07:04
Speaker
When that all happened in Tennessee Baptist World, there was all these conversations about like, well Belmont's gonna owe Tennessee so much, like the TBC so much money because like the land that it's worth, because it's literally next door to Vanderbilt, downtown Nashville. Like the land that it's worth.
00:07:19
Speaker
massive. And they're like, well, if they want to keep the land, they're gonna have to give the world a lot. They came to a reconciliation situation where they meet you, then it's all good. But yeah, like, because Belmont wanted to be able to appoint their own trustees, because the state convention had veto power for trustees. Wow. For the university. Okay.
00:07:36
Speaker
So for a person who's never experienced the Southern Baptist Convention, any sort of convention, tell me and tell our listeners, what is that? What is this body? What are we even really talking about? So the Southern Baptist Convention is essentially a collective of churches and church-like bodies that can then break down into state conventions, that can then break down to regional or county conventions. Okay.
00:08:05
Speaker
And then each kind of convention is a church, or like is a collective of churches. So churches, so the hierarchy would be like churches at the bottom, local churches at the bottom. And then your area or your regional convention, then your state convention, and then the actual Southern Baptist Convention, which is seen as an international body of a cooperation. The idea is that each of the churches have their own governing system, right? The one unifying concept is that they all give to the cooperative program, which is the overall Southern Baptist
00:08:35
Speaker
foundation, if you will, the money. And then they all also align with and have full agreement in the Baptist Faith and the Message. And that's where a lot of churches get... I mean, not in trouble, but that's where they get... Like, that's where people get disassociated, disaffiliated is when somebody breaks the Baptist Faith and the Message. So, like, their churches
00:08:55
Speaker
right now that are bringing in and calling women as pastors and that's like a big no-no or it was way back when but it's becoming less and less of a no-no as it's and you know then there's like literally splitting hairs between if a children's pastor is a woman is that bad? Is that wrong?
00:09:13
Speaker
Women have a special ministry in the home. Like women's ministry is children. So like, is that bad? And so they're starting to split hairs in some of that, but collectively. Some of the matters can mention giant governing body, but not actually governing per se, which is how they get away with like, well, I mean, with this most recent scandal, right? With all of the sexual assault, sexual immorality is what I'm going to use the term of. It's like,
00:09:39
Speaker
The convention can say, well we let each church govern themselves.
00:09:44
Speaker
So the churches are the scapegoat for the convention? The churches are the scapegoat for the convention. It's like the states are the scapegoat for the federal government. Truly. It's super fascinating because, yeah, they're like, no, we let the churches govern themselves. We don't actually have a body of like a hand of control. But I'm like, but the Baptist faith and message. You disaffiliate churches all the time. We break the Baptist faith and message and they're out. But they have a sexual assault lily and assailant on their staff. And
Women's Roles in the Church
00:10:11
Speaker
that's OK. We're allowing that to happen.
00:10:14
Speaker
Sure. But yeah, each so right. And it gets even farther. It's super fascinating. So churches can do their own conferences or conventions, like so like their own little like weekend conferences, like my church had a women's conference that drew like 1500 women to our church for the weekend. I was a volunteer frequently because you know, I knew how to move chairs. I love to make young people move chairs. It's like their favorite thing.
00:10:40
Speaker
And it was service. It was service to the greater good. Yeah, but so that happens. They do other things like again and some conferences have universities. Mine was one. In Texas, the Texas Baptist Convention, they used to have a really big hand in how Baylor was run and governed Baylor giant 15,000 students.
00:11:04
Speaker
a tier one research institution. Wow. Unapologetically. I did not realize there was a connection between those two things. Yeah. Wow. But Baylor has sort of like not distanced itself but a little bit because they wanted to be a tier one research institution. They wanted to be critical thinkers. They wanted to really lean into a Christian intellectual tradition. And it's really difficult to do that when you've got pastors from like BFE Texas that are
00:11:31
Speaker
trying to tell you how to think and how women shouldn't have roles of leadership in any way, shape, form, or fashion. Right. It's fascinating to me that like, this has actually come up a few times in recordings is once a woman is teaching a man over the age of like 13 or 14, it's somehow usurping their authority. And I'm sorry, but the day a 14 year old boy has authority over me is the day that I quit. I just quit like absolutely not. And I just think that's such a fascinating thing.
00:12:00
Speaker
I mean, we're talking right about like, I'm thinking through... I can remember when I was a senior in high school, we had women as Sunday school teachers, but we also had men. Men didn't really do anything. The women were actually the ones who were literally charging us to really think critically about her faith and about like, apologetics and about like, what things actually meant in the Bible.
00:12:24
Speaker
I'm not going to go so far as to leaning into the gray areas, but a little bit of exploring, what does that actually mean? Especially in the new millennia, because I graduated just a few years after Y2K. I can remember all of those fun things. I can remember the scares.
00:12:41
Speaker
But what does it mean now that we are moving forward and looking into a diversifying culture that was actually, you know, that was also after 9-11. So we saw what terrorism looked like on a very personal level. We also saw what radicalization can look like.
00:12:58
Speaker
I mean, we're talking not just radicalization of other people, but radicalization of ourselves, right? Because I can, gosh, I'm trying to think of that church. Do you remember that church from, like, Kansas, Oklahoma, something? They used to picket military funerals? Oh, you're talking the Westboro Baptist Church? That's the one. Thank you. I was like, I can see the shirts. I can see the signs. Because I remember us thinking, like, that was such a huge deal. It was a huge deal.
00:13:26
Speaker
The granddaughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, I don't know if you know, she broke away. Her name is Megan Phelps Roper. She has a book called Unfollow. It's in the Bookshop link for this podcast. It's fantastic. You would love it. It's her intellectualizing.
00:13:43
Speaker
her leaving, but then also telling the journey of like, this is what it was. This is how my questioning started. And then her journey since then, it is beautiful. I recommend it to everyone. They were also unaffiliated from conventions and things like that, which is a big deal, I think, for your more fundamentalist churches as opposed to Southern Baptist churches.
00:14:03
Speaker
Well, I mean, because it's control, right? It's a locus of control. We don't have, like, when, again, when you're talking about the Son of the Baptist Convention, they essentially are self-governing up until the point that they want to make some decisions around the Baptist faith and message and, like, breaking that. I think for a lot of those independent Baptists, it's like, no, we just want our own control. Right. And we're not going to...
00:14:22
Speaker
which comes with its benefits of we're not going to get in trouble if something goes horribly wrong, if we choose to sort of make a decision that leaves us left or right. But also it means that you don't maybe necessarily have the network or the support that the Senate Magic Convention, they've got.
00:14:37
Speaker
Banks on banks on banks. Yeah. I was actually going to ask you, what would be a church? Because I think about the church I grew up in, and us not being tied to a convention meant that we... If something did go wrong, as it did many, many, many times, nobody really was going to know about it unless that person told everybody else in the church, which wasn't going to happen. With the Southern Baptist Convention, it seems like there's more people... There's a hierarchy that people can go to.
00:15:06
Speaker
which could be dangerous for the actual church itself in a lot of ways. So what would be the benefit to the church of being part of this convention as opposed to being independent? I mean, it's the collective body. It's the, I mean, essentially it's resources, right? Okay. So some of it is resources as far as like if your church is struggling,
00:15:25
Speaker
they can petition for funding. So, like, if you are a small country church that maybe hasn't had a new member in, you know, 20, 30 years, that's not somebody that was born into it, you can petition for funding. You can also, I mean, there's a network of ministry there, so there's also just overall, like, they have their own system of
00:15:50
Speaker
It's a couple of different things. They have their own system of publishing, so they get discounted publishing materials. Yeah, they own their own publishing house, fun fact. Interesting. It's the Holman Christian Standard Version of the Bible. That translation, I'm going to use that with air quotes, that translation was created by the Senate Maps Convention so that Lifeway Press could print it and they wouldn't have to pay royalties to Zondervan.
00:16:14
Speaker
is life way press that I know what life is but I did not know that's what that was dirty little sneaks I never would
00:16:26
Speaker
So literally in downtown Nashville, which is where the Southern Baptist Convention used to be headquartered. I don't know if they still are, but it used to be the LifeWay Publishing Building was across the street from the Southern Baptist Convention home headquarters. That makes sense. Interesting. I think it's interesting how many publishing houses are owned by these institutions. You know, Bob Jones has theirs. Pensacola Christian has theirs. And now the Southern Baptist Convention is LifeWay. LifeWay. Interesting.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah. And again, they get all of these things on discount, essentially for themselves. So all of the resources that they would use, ideally, is a discount. Some of it, meh. There's also this real random black market of VBS materials from the previous year that churches buy from other churches. So they're not on the current year cycle. They don't last year cycle because they got their materials for cheaper.
00:17:20
Speaker
discount vacation Bible school. Listen, but you know like again for some of these churches that are like 20 or 30 people that are just trying to do the work, they're doing the work to literally in some ways keeping up with the Joneses that are again because it's the south and the next southern Baptist church is only a mile away. If we're doing that work and we're just trying to keep up, sometimes that's the only way to do it. Yeah, like what else would you do?
00:17:45
Speaker
The Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, is that the name of the body?
Finances of the Southern Baptist Convention
00:17:50
Speaker
It's the Southern Baptist Convention. How do they make money? So that's one of the most fascinating questions, I think, because the way that they make money is, again, through giving the cooperative program. If you were a member church of the Southern Baptist Convention, a certain amount of your tithes. So if you give, so if you make, let's say you make $1,000 a week,
00:18:11
Speaker
in your weekly tithe is supposed to be 10%. That's $100 of that $1,000, right? A portion of that $100 that goes to your church has to go to the cooperative program. And it depends on the size of the church and the financial situation of the church of how much goes to the cooperative program. Interesting. So $100 if you break that into even if it's just 10%.
00:18:32
Speaker
of that $100 or $20. But I think it's closer. Last time I remember checking and this has been, I've been out of that realm since probably around for at least five to 10 years. But it used to be anywhere between like 10 and 30%. So anywhere like right, if you have a thousand members that are each giving $100 a week, that number starts adding up really quickly. That's higher than the 10% tide that they push so hard in Baptist churches. Wow. Right.
00:18:59
Speaker
And that goes to cooperative. Now, mind you, that money is then dispersed into the International Mission Board, which is their thing. Some of that can also go, so some of their cooperative program dollars can go to the state convention. It gets really, really messy really, really quickly, like how it all starts shaking out. But again, it's not always super clear because it doesn't have to be. Well, because you're doing it on faith, right? You're just trying to do what's right by God. Correct. What a racket.
00:19:25
Speaker
I know. And it's one of those things that this is where they've sort of fit into that whole, like, render to Caesar what a Caesar is and what render to God was God. But what I've seen recently with some of my more conservative people is, like, we don't even want to render to Caesar what a Caesar is. Interesting. Yeah, I've been seeing some pushback on, like, giving to, like, even just taxes because taxes are being used for welfare programs. Right. And the church media network anyway. Whole other situation. That's a whole other conversation. That's a whole other episode. Yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
There's famously in the independent circle, I'm not sure if this guy was big in the Southern Baptist world or not, but he's like a very anti-evolution air quotes scientist who would go around to churches and give these revivals around this topic. And he and his wife famously did not pay taxes on their businesses or their mission because those taxes would then be used to publish textbooks that taught kids about evolution. And they went to jail.
00:20:18
Speaker
And that was preferable to paying taxes. Listen, nobody likes paying taxes. I hate paying taxes. I don't want to pay taxes. But we're sitting in a library right now that was free for our use, that's free for the entire community to come and use. There are people downstairs applying for jobs on computers that were supplied by those taxes. And while I don't like everything my tax dollars are used for,
00:20:43
Speaker
military industrial complex. I pay them. And so it's amazing to me to hear of people that are just taking it so far that they'd rather send their wife to jail because he's the leader of his household, right? So he sent his wife to jail for this belief. And they consider that a point of pride. It's fascinating to me. Fascinating. I know we're off topic, but it just drives me crazy every time I think about it and I can't let it go. And one of those people, I'm like, I just can't let that go. I'm sorry.
00:21:13
Speaker
Okay. So, I imagine the convention as a whole other than being involved in the churches to a certain degree, right? They can disfellowship them. Is that what it's referred to as disfellowship? It's sort of like a disassociate situation. It's or like disaffiliation. I don't know that there's a super unified term around it, but it's like, I think it's actually like removed from fellowship or just like, yeah. Okay. We're no longer, my spirit no longer bears witness to that.
00:21:41
Speaker
I love church terminology. Oh gosh. You're going to have to do like a whole like glossary of like the church terms, like the churchy Christian terms. I really should. The Christianese as it were. The Christianese. It really is a language unto itself. It truly is.
00:21:57
Speaker
is a tool that cults use, right? If you take certain language, even if they're common words and give them a specific meaning, it gives you control over this body. It's incredible how normalized as we come with churches. Like you just said that to me and I knew exactly what you meant. But I bet you money if I walked up to that stranger at the desk over there and said, hey, my spirit no longer bears witness. So they're gonna look at me like I'm insane.
00:22:26
Speaker
Okay, so thinking of the convention as a whole, and I've really got to not laugh so loud. Thinking of the convention as a whole, they are technically providing a sort of insurance to these churches that maybe are having financial problems, and we all know insurance is a racket. Oh, they have their own insuring body. Like they own their own insurance company. Of course they do. And they also own their own financial management company. What? Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker
Really? Yes. Is this just for the convention or can other churches be part of this financial management company? I think other churches, like so each church that is part of the convention can be part of the financial management company and especially again at I think either a low to no cost situation, but other churches that are outside of the convention can buy in, but of course their returns, especially if it's investing, their returns are not going to be as good because they're not part of the fellowship. They're not part of the convention.
00:23:21
Speaker
Wow. I know. This is better than reality television. This is incredible. Right. And so when you think about, especially as we look at, again, 2023 United States, we think the church is diminishing in its own influence over culture. That might be accurate, but their culture is still very much their culture. And the things that they have their hands in, publishing, financial management, insurance, are still very, very strong.
00:23:51
Speaker
And also remembering that they have a network of individuals that are literally on, I mean, they would say, on the farthest corners of the earth. Of course, oh my god. Reaching the least and the less of these. They have individuals that are also being supported by the cooperative program, ideally, managing their outposts across the globe. Oh, this is huge.
00:24:15
Speaker
I wonder, I'm sure you don't know off the top of your head. I might put it in the show notes though. I wonder how many members there are in the Southern Baptist Convention. Do you think it's in the millions? Oh, it is easily in the millions. Easily in the millions. That's a lot of influence. I know that for a while they were the largest Protestant body in the globe.
00:24:34
Speaker
Wow. So they have this financial wing. They have insurance. They have all of this. What do you know about their political influence?
Political Influence and History
00:24:43
Speaker
I assume there's some lobbying involved in all of this, an extensive amount of lobbying. Where do you begin? I mean, do you begin with Jerry Falwell and the culture wars? Because that was also the madness. Oh, that's right.
00:24:55
Speaker
Liberty is aggressively Southern Baptist. That's right. And so do you bring it, do you start there or do you start farther back? It's just a question of like, how far and how deep do you want to go? I don't think we have enough time for that. Correct. But I will say, right, like it.
00:25:11
Speaker
in its own way, again, starting... I'm going to start with Jerry Falwell because that's the one that I know well. That's really where a lot of that culture were genuinely started. So a lot of... Some people may know, some people may not. For a while, abortions were seen as like not only permissible but celebrated in the Baptist Church because... I'm shocked. Yeah. Because it was one of those things of not one, they knew that maybe not everybody needed a kid and two, it was seen as healthcare.
00:25:39
Speaker
It was seen as healthcare. But then again, with culture wars, with needing to find their own political power in the 70s and 80s, they started grabbing onto whatever they could. Jerry Falwell built a coalition of big time ministers. And especially once when we start thinking about the advent of televangelism, we start thinking about the advent of preaching to not just your church, but to
00:26:06
Speaker
communities, states, regions, the country, like nationwide pastors essentially. That's where a lot of that political power and that political like embeddedness came from. And it's just until like really recently that you start seeing
00:26:22
Speaker
a bit of a pullback from that because I'm thinking back to, was it 2018? 2016, 2018, someone there, one of their biggest names, Beth Moore, who highly published, highly studied, and she had at least one if not three.
00:26:40
Speaker
Bible studies at any given church on any given day, right? I mean, she was just widely celebrated, especially by women, for being, one, speaking their language, and two, she was accepted by men because she knew how to play the game. It's important. She knew how to play the game. So she was like, all right, this is good. We can do this.
00:26:58
Speaker
But she disaffiliated from the Southern Baptist Convention because of their broad-based support for then candidate Donald Trump. Oh, wow. Because she knew she saw him for what he was. And when she started speaking not in chorus with that, she got pushed back. And so she was like, you know what, I don't need to be here and y'all don't need my publishing dollars. So I am
00:27:23
Speaker
I love that. What a bold move. That's probably hugely public for her, too. Wildly public. Again, maybe not wildly public as far as if you don't know Southern Baptist World, it was maybe just the tiniest byline on CNN. But if you were in Southern Baptist World, that was a huge rift. We're talking millions of people there. Wow. A huge rift and such a large collection of, again, women, women's ministry, women's Bible studies.
00:27:53
Speaker
I mean, how many Bible study leaders had caveats now to Bethmore studies, or are they even engaging in that anymore? I put a link to an article about that in the notes, I think, because that's fascinating. Okay.
00:28:07
Speaker
I mean, because really, you're talking about it is, if you look at it overall, it is sort of a pyramid of like, again, convention, states, regions, churches, right? And churches are then made up of staff and body, essentially.
00:28:24
Speaker
And usually there's an army of volunteers in there somewhere that's actually helping to make sure that things go. Right. Free labor. We love to see it. Most capitalist thing. Moving chairs and tables, playing on stage on Sunday mornings, making sure that your kids have somewhere to go so that you don't have to deal with them in church. And they're not interrupting or like hindering the spirit as the spirit moves in service.
00:28:48
Speaker
I know what that means. I think about all the labor. To some extent, I understand volunteering. I am not against volunteering for an organization or anything that you believe in. If I'm invested and if I'm involved, I don't want to sit still. Right, but I think sometimes I could stretch to the extreme. Absolutely.
00:29:11
Speaker
And I think you might have an interesting story around this. So I'd love to hear about, like, so we've talked about kind of the big overarching, like, what is the Southern Baptist Convention? What is this? What is it like on that lowest tier?
00:29:22
Speaker
So I have this weird, this very interesting situation where I was, I am, was, am, are, I don't know. My mom was on staff full-time. She was paid part-time, but she worked full-time. Was that full-time 40 hours? Oh, it was like full-time, like 80 hours. Full-time 80 hours. And she was paid for 20? Maybe. I mean, I think she was able to collect a little bit of overtime here and there, like pay or like whenever they had like,
00:29:51
Speaker
maybe like a holiday bonus or something. I don't know. I mean, and also like she didn't really have to ask for time off either because she had worked so much anyway. But she really took that time because, you know, that was where her heart was. And that's the important, like, I do want to say like that was where her heart was. She genuinely had a heart for the work that she was doing. And she was genuinely invested in the people that she worked with, the students that she worked with. That was where her heart was, which was great.
00:30:17
Speaker
A byproduct of that was that I was always in the building, always in the building. And so even as a kid, when I went to preschool, my mom's work was literally across the street from where the church was at the time. And so I would literally just walk out, walk through the back door of that business, and then just sit down. But when that changed, and my mom started working full time at the church,
00:30:45
Speaker
I just remember literally riding the bus there. That was in elementary school. I would ride the bus home and I was a latchkey kid for a little while. Was that in the 80s? No, that was the 90s. Or like my dad was working second shift and so he would be there to basically let us land and then we would be there for a little while and then mom would come home.
00:31:09
Speaker
We were smart. We were independent. It was fine. It was the 90s. Literally, it was the 90s. That's one of those things that we say, right? And then I can remember when I was in high school, writing a note to my bus driver saying, on Wednesdays, you have to drop me off on the corner. And then I would walk.
00:31:26
Speaker
about half a mile to church because there was no way that my mom was going to have time between all of the things on Wednesday night because Wednesday night church, right? Wednesday night church, yep. There was no way that my mom was going to have time to run and grab me and come bring me back for my meal and for my like whatever else and then for service. That is a lot of commitment.
00:31:47
Speaker
I mean, that was just Wednesdays. Sundays was we get up at six or seven. We're at church by eight. Really, 745 is the ideal because the first service starts at eight. We do all of those things on Sunday. We leave maybe around 12. And then, especially as I like got later in high school, I was headed up to voice lessons, which were 45 minutes drive one way, there for an hour, 45 minutes back.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I got back just in time so I could go to youth ensemble, youth choir, and then Sunday night church. And I mean, and that was just like, that's how that was. And even after I graduated high school, I was there pretty much any time that they needed me on a random weekend while I was in college. I was their summer intern one here. Wow. Because, you know, I was already... Unpaid? I think I got maybe $150 a week. Oh, wow. How generous. Correct.
00:32:41
Speaker
I didn't have to pay for my trips though and that's sort of like that's honestly why I did it was because I was already going to be going with them to camps and conferences and whatever else I might as well just work and let that be my job and I have to pay for it. Literally savings money across the board. Saving me money across the board but also like not making probably what I was worth at all but that's fine. But yeah I was your summer intern for youth ministry for us for that year and did that work.
00:33:06
Speaker
And then, yeah, it was a full-blown commitment. It was literally serving as a volunteer.
00:33:14
Speaker
was a full-blown commitment. I'm even thinking after I'd finished college, I moved back with my parents for a little while because I graduated in 2009 with a degree in music and music business. What do you do with that after the academic collapse of 2008? You go back to church. Nothing. So you go back to your parents also and you try to figure your life out. And yeah, I can remember sitting in
00:33:37
Speaker
Gosh, I remember sitting in the college and career class after finishing college and looking around the room because I think college is where I really started having some of those critical conversations with myself of trying to reconcile what all of this means and thinking, I am not on the same.
00:33:52
Speaker
I can't even have the same conversations with a lot of the people in this room. We're at different places in our life, which sounds awful to say, but that's where it was. Just the reality of the situation. I got to that point. And so I started volunteering. I started volunteering in the nursery because it was something for me to do to be able to skip Sunday school hour. Oh, good for you.
00:34:11
Speaker
I started volunteering because I could skip size school hours. And I just went to service and I went home. And I sang in the choir because why not? Well, you enjoyed it. Yeah. That's fine. With your talents. So your church has 1,500 people approximately. I mean, at its height, yeah. Now, probably not. But at its height, it was between 12 and 15, any given Sunday. So many people. I mean, Easter was like four services because we couldn't fiddle everyone. And Christmas was three or four.
00:34:38
Speaker
That's incredible. So I'm thinking about the logistics of a church that large in a small town.
00:34:46
Speaker
That would require quite a lot of staff, right? You may not know the answer to this, but like how many full-time fully paid and benefited staff members do you think there actually were? That's a hard question. Yeah. Because I mean, right? Like I'm thinking of our senior adult minister who I don't even know that he was ever paid, but he was still considered full-time staff. Okay.
00:35:08
Speaker
but I don't know that he was ever paid. He was a retired businessman from our town. So I don't know that he was ever paid. Interesting. But he was still like considered full-time staff. He still served on like the pastoral care rotation. So like when people needed to go to the hospital and do visits for members in the hospital, like he was part of that rotation. Okay. Let me think. Senior pastor, a pastor of operations, which was, you know, business and finance. Okay. Senior adults.
00:35:35
Speaker
youth, children, minister, family connections, which is sort of like the education pastor.
00:35:41
Speaker
That's seven pastors. Correct. And I think that's all of those. And then you get into the person that runs preschool, because we had a weekday preschool. And so they ran that full time. And then you had the music pastor shared an assistant with the education pastor. So they had one. The senior pastor had their own. The operations pastor had their own.
00:36:06
Speaker
There's that. And then the youth pastor had his own for most of my life. And then they had like at least one or two people that worked at the front desk. Those were definitely part-time, but one or two people that worked on the at the front desk. And I'm trying to think. There was also a Hispanic pastor. They were paid, I'm pretty sure.
00:36:24
Speaker
And then, of course, we had our person that worked in the kitchen for food service for special events and for... Really? Yeah. We had somebody that worked in our kitchen that was special events and was sanitised peppers. That's nice. At least they had a staff member. In the church that I grew up in, it was pretty much just always the women. The men would carry things in and sit them on the table, but otherwise it was just the women. And then the young people would set up the chairs and tables with sometimes the men or the deacons.
00:36:48
Speaker
Oh, and how can I forget are also like our custodial staff. Oh, yeah. They were they were full time because it was a big building. Yeah. And it was always in use. This is incredible. And we had, I think, three custodians. Wow. Like three people that were just facility operations, making sure that lights were on, that sometimes they did tables, but a lot of times it was volunteers. A lot of times they were the ones that were making sure that
00:37:17
Speaker
the sidewalks were cleaned and salted if it ever got cold, all of those fun things. And then we had from there literally an army of volunteers, people that worked in the nursery that were not full-time or anything, but they were working
00:37:33
Speaker
usually two days a week. We had people that worked in our youth ministry to do all of their, like to do some of the bigger things like, you know, Oh, the sound guy. How could I forget the sound guy? The guy that runs the sound board. Was he paid? He was paid. Um, I think they called him like the media director. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes it was a guy. And usually that was some weird, like catch all of running AV running.
00:37:58
Speaker
Marketing as well running like it was like this weird combo of it was the catch-all of like all the things that We need attention to but like we don't know how to do ourselves, you know Yes, I know I can see that person in my head That's really that's a lot more staff than I thought but also you would still have to have that army of volunteers to function correct That's interesting
00:38:22
Speaker
What are some of the specific things that you were questioning or that really helped you kind of develop this idea that like, hey, maybe I don't want to be part of this anymore? I think that's such an interesting question because I think when I started, actually, no, I can give you a really specific example.
Personal Break from the Church
00:38:38
Speaker
So when I was in undergrad, I used to do a lot of like, we called them GoTrips, but I used to do a lot of like trips across overseas to do mission work.
00:38:48
Speaker
And a lot of it was valid. A lot of it was real. A lot of it was valuable. And I think for a while, I was like, man, I could really do this for good. And so I started doing some applications into the International Mission Board for their two-year stints. They call them journeymen or journeywomen.
00:39:06
Speaker
How fancy. But yeah, they call them turning men. And it is a huge financial commitment for the Southern Baptist Convention. But they really focus on new college graduates to do these two-year stints, which if you're listening closely at home and you know enough about churches and stuff, two-year stint, what else does that sound like? Oh.
00:39:29
Speaker
It's also interesting to me that that's the timing of it because that is where I think most churches start losing people. So if they can kind of reel them in and keep them through that period where they might leave, that's fascinating to me.
00:39:43
Speaker
But yeah, I started applying to be a journeyman and in that process, disclose some things because at that point I had been questioning things around sexuality, things around like identity. And when I was brutally honest about like, yeah, I have been to counseling and that counseling was for sexual orientation because it was one of those things that I was like, I probably should address this because I'm not right. And so I need to have some conversations with a counselor to like help me sort this all out. And when I disclosed that, they dropped my journeyman application.
00:40:14
Speaker
And that's I think what really kicked me out of like, it's not like I'm broken. I love God very much. I love God so much that I'm willing to give two years of my life away to do the work. In my formative career building years after college. It's that apparently I'm not seeing this good enough. And that's I think where I started breaking with, that was the big break of just like the system is broken.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, no shit. After all the hours that you and your family put into building up this institution that I'm sure made quite a bit of money for the Southern Baptist Convention. I just... Yeah. And it's not necessarily trauma per se. That sounds a little like dramatic. Trauma sounds dramatic, but it is like this, you start when something doesn't
00:41:09
Speaker
meet your expectations when something all of a sudden becomes the thing that you have given your world to support to build to create and that you've seen your family give their world to build and create and then you're not getting the return or you're not getting or like you're basically like shut out of it. Yeah. It becomes it you just start questioning like what have I done with my life up to this point. That's hard to reckon with.
00:41:38
Speaker
And so I think that's where a big part of my reconciliation journey came from. And there were other little things here and there like, you know, there was a catastrophic weather event at my undergrad institution where like we were essentially leveled by a tornado and there was a lot of like, it was actually genuinely miraculous. No one died, but we were hit by an F4 tornado and 80% of our buildings had to be demolished. Wow. Yeah.
00:42:06
Speaker
No one died. Literally miraculous. But that sort of started this conversation. That contributed somewhat to the conversation of reconciling goodness, mercy, grace, providence even. But yeah, I think that that's where some of that started. And then, like I said, I went back to my parents. And I was there for a couple of years, or for four or five years.
00:42:33
Speaker
Sort of wandering into the wilderness of life and then went on to start my master's work and learned a lot about student development theory because, you know, that's super important. Learned that it makes sense that a lot of students, especially that were raised in the church, especially if they go to a Christian college, start having some of those conversations because they've never been faced with critical situations. They've never been faced with the gray areas. A lot of churches are preaching to the black and the white.
00:43:03
Speaker
and are leaning into the gray areas of life. And so in college, when you start having to navigate that either in a class or on your own, we start actually having to deal with morals and ethics and how what is moral in one way is not necessarily moral in another way, what is ethical in one situation may not necessarily be ethical in another situation. When you start leaning into some of those gray areas,
00:43:25
Speaker
a lot of development happens. Like genuinely there are textbooks of the actual like where your brain is structured and how those four years that happen between like 18 and 21, 22, 17, 18, 21, 22, these four years are so radically developmental for your brain and your brain's structure that it's fascinating. Of course, like I get it. I get why students come out of college and they're like, wait,
00:43:53
Speaker
It's because they weren't really prepared to go to college. They weren't really prepared. Like spiritually, they were not prepared to go to look into, to lean into some of those gray areas. Yeah. Oh, it was shocking to me. Right. Going from being homeschooling, going to Bible college, then going to college. Right. Oh my God. It was eye opening.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's one of those things, to me, it's that, again, like that sort of that process. And again, it's sort of like right on time. Now that I see it from, you know, the other side, I'm like, oh yeah, that development was right on time. But then when I got into my master's program, started learning a lot about that. I read this book by Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, when I already felt like I didn't have a home in my church already.
Seeking New Spiritual Paths
00:44:31
Speaker
And I was finally able to like leave, not just my home, but like my home state. Like I went somewhere where I knew no one.
00:44:38
Speaker
and that was super freeing. Good for you. And that is where I like I read this that book and it helped me reconcile. Yes, I do still want to be involved in the church, but the church that I've been involved in for so long is not that place. To say that, yeah.
00:44:54
Speaker
Good for you. So, where are you now with all of that? Yeah, yeah. So, I know that I used to spend a lot of energy on following both my church and like my church at home and also, you know, Tennessee Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Convention, I used to spend a lot of energy following.
00:45:15
Speaker
and sort of like being outside of it and like looking at it and being critical of it, not because I didn't like it, but because I loved it and because I wanted it to be better and I wanted it to grow and to learn.
00:45:27
Speaker
And then again, especially with mom, my mom was basically pushed into retirement and that's what finally broke me. And I was like, you know what? I don't have the energy. I don't have the time. I don't have the interest. I'm done. Like after this long, after, I mean, 25, 30 years of her giving hours, days, weeks, months, years of her life. Most of your childhood? Correct. I was just like, you know what? I'm out. I'm out. You don't need me. I'm out.
00:45:55
Speaker
And so thinking about it that way, I have landed in some area of I do love God. God's people I have an issue with, but I do love God. And finding the right fit for where I belong as far as being a part of the body, as it were.
00:46:15
Speaker
And, you know, I've landed pretty well either somewhere, you know, going back and forth between the Anglican tradition, which is very high church, and it's comfortable because you're never surprised. And in Anglican church, you know exactly what you're getting on Sunday. As long as you go to the motions, like you're good to go. And if you're liturgical, that's a great place for you.
00:46:36
Speaker
Methodist Church, you know, it's currently going through its split from the conservative to the not so conservative or the conservative and the modern, if you will. I mean, I'm going to go that way because you've got some people that are like trying to still say that gay people don't exist or that women shouldn't be in ministry or
00:46:54
Speaker
Unreal. What? What world do you live in? Because it ain't this one. And I mean, you and I talked about this. Homosexuals were never meant to be in the Bible to begin with, but that's a whole other story. Again, that's a whole other podcast. It is a whole other podcast. And I definitely want to have episodes about that. And there's a documentary about it coming out soon. But that was never supposed to be there.
00:47:13
Speaker
And so, again, Anglican Methodist, again, modern Methodist, and fun fact, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Have you heard of them? No. So, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is
00:47:28
Speaker
basically an offshoot of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was basically the people that have been disaffiliated because they wanted to be open and perming. They wanted women in ministry. They wanted that, but they still wanted the structure. They still wanted the fellowship with other churches.
00:47:49
Speaker
So, CBF churches are usually very, very progressive. They allow women to preach on Sundays. They allow women in, yeah, like full-blown ministry. Like a senior pastor of a cooperative Baptist church will be, can, usually is a woman. Wow. I know. So, yeah, it's, that is sort of like, I'm somewhere in that area of, I know God, I love God. I value Him. I know that I am valued. I know who I am. I know what I'm about. And I know I'm not.
00:48:16
Speaker
going to be burning in hell for the rest of my life. And I still want some of that fellowship because when you grow up in it, you understand that that's so much of a part of your community. And that also frames so much of your worldview and having fellowship with people that share a similar worldview, especially if it's a worldview that you are super closely aligned with of like, I don't think gay people are going to hell just because they're gay. I don't think that
00:48:42
Speaker
Like, I acknowledge that trans people exist. I acknowledge that women have a place in the church and ministry. I acknowledge that that can be great. I can acknowledge that... That is great, yeah. I acknowledge that, like, there are so many women in the Bible that were incredible women, and somehow the Southern Baptist Convention has gotten to the point of, like, they can be in ministry, but, like, should they? I'm like, no. Gideon didn't go into battle until he went with Deborah.
00:49:10
Speaker
Listen, you have to conveniently forget certain things, OK, Brandon? Get it together. Y'all love to, like, they love to reference the Old Testament, but it's like when you start talking about some of the gray areas or some of the messiness of the Old Testament, like David knitting his soul to Jonathan, like, that's fine. That gets awkward really quickly. It's so interesting. Friendship. The cherry picking is fascinating to me. I don't know a lot about Southern Baptist doctrine compared to independent, fundamentalist Baptist doctrine.
00:49:35
Speaker
We were very much literalist, right? The Bible is the literal, inerrant, infallible word of God. And that's fascinating to me because they love to say things like, well, these people over here are cherry picking scripture to do whatever they want. And then it's like, okay, well, can you please explain this rape to me? Nope. We're not going to do that. God's ways are higher than our ways. Lean on your own understanding. I just, that just doesn't fly with me.
00:50:04
Speaker
So a lot of it is like, it is very black and white. It is very clear cut. It is, there's good, there's not good. I'm not gonna use the term evil because I think that that's abused a lot in the church. Like there's good and there's not good, right? And it is very much like the Bible is inerrant. It is worth study, but it like, let's not get too deep. And that's especially true now. That's true now than it was before, in my opinion. Like,
00:50:28
Speaker
Because I can remember, so when I was growing up, when I was in high school, my best friend's mom literally created a version of Bible drill that was basically like Bible bowl, where we learned how to read Greek, we learned how to study Greek, we learned how to break things down.
00:50:46
Speaker
and we learned how to go beyond just the service level reading to look into context. This woman literally taught me how to study the Bible in a way that no one else had, and it was three years of super intensive material. We focused on 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, which, fun fact, pastoral epistles talks to you about what it means for women to be in the church, what it means to be a deacon, what it means to be a pastor. If you've ever read them, it looks very clear-cut, but she's like, it's more than that.
00:51:13
Speaker
Two of the women that Paul were most, like two of the people that Paul were most like ministered to, like Paul was most ministered by were women.
00:51:23
Speaker
Paul was ministered to by women. He was raised in ministry by two women. Fascinating, isn't it? I know. And again, in the context, Paul is saying, essentially, not that women aren't valuable, not that women don't have a place in the church, but in the culture, a lot of women were also the women that were
00:51:45
Speaker
priestesses to other things, not to God himself, or God themself, not trying to gender the divine. I think that's one of the worst things we've ever done, is to gender the divine.
00:51:55
Speaker
That's one of those things. Again, this could be a whole other thing, but if we talk about how, like, talking about literalism, if we talk about how Jesus took on all of the pains and all of the feelings and all the emotions of the world while he was on the cross, then that means that Jesus experienced pregnancy pain. Right. Jesus experienced period pain. Right. Jesus experienced all of the things that a woman would also experience. Right.
00:52:17
Speaker
And you're telling me that he was fully God and fully man, man within like capital M and like an XY chromosome. Like really? Is that where we're going? Yeah. But he, we also, we also like try to wrap our heads around the fact that like he experienced all of the pain in all of the world. He experienced the pain of a woman who's lost their child.
00:52:40
Speaker
not trying to gender the divine. And it doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't make sense to you. But yeah, like the Bible is the inerrant word of God. And it's like, and yet the Southern Methodist Convention literally decided to do their own translation. That way they wouldn't have to give
00:52:56
Speaker
If it was in Iran, it's in Iran. Why do we need our own translation? Well, because Zondervan, we don't want to pay royalties to Zondervan. Oh, so it's capitalism. Correct. So money talks. Genuinely. Every time. Every time. Every time. It's unbelievable to me. All right. Brandon, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I feel like I've just went to a seminar and learned so many things I've never heard of.
00:53:20
Speaker
I really appreciate you sharing that knowledge and for doing that work and for like holding on to that understanding and doing your own work around it. This is really powerful and educational. At the end of every single podcast episode, I asked my guests two questions. So the first one is, what do you see clearly now that you didn't see before when you were really enveloped in it?
Mission Trips: Effectiveness and Motives
00:53:45
Speaker
One of the things I see really clearly now is
00:53:50
Speaker
it's essentially a version of tourism that we call short-term missions. And it's essentially a version of like, it's, and it finds its roots and like white saviorism, it finds its roots and like, and I'm not saying that you cannot have a life altering experience on some of the strips. I'm not saying that you cannot do help on some of the strips, but I also know that in some ways it's essentially glorified tourism and it also
00:54:15
Speaker
Is a certain form of like emotional manipulation for the people that are participating in going on these trips of like, this is why it's important for you to tide. This is why it's important for you to be committed. This is why it's important for you to do the work. It all comes back to that system. It all comes back to the system of like, yeah, like it all comes back to the system of like,
00:54:33
Speaker
This is why all of your like all of your commitments and all of your ties and all of your whatever is important because we're doing this work. We're helping the hungry and housing. We're helping individuals that are food insecure, that are housing insecure, that are resource insecure. We're helping them not just in our nation, not just in our region, but across the globe. It is a form of manipulation for their own members, but it's also seen as being quote unquote helpful. Like a week is not going to fix.
00:55:04
Speaker
housing insecure person. No. A week of effort is not like one meal is not going to fix a food insecure person. Right. It's not super helpful to prayer walk around communities of desperate need. What's helpful is to actually start saying we need to change the policies around how this is created. Right. We need to change the systems that have sustained that have created and sustained this. Right.
00:55:27
Speaker
Amen. I don't know how these episodes come out on this Sunday because I swear I get taken to church every single episode. I love it. Okay. And so the last question that I have is, what is or have been either your greatest moment or some of your greatest moments of joy in your kind of deconstruction and reconstruction process?
00:55:50
Speaker
I don't actually use the term deconstruction. I don't know why. That's fine. I don't love it. And I think it's because it's become so like, one, I think it's become like very widely used around people that are just like, they just have pushback on the church. And also I think the church is trying to weaponize it against people that are trying to do the work. I've sort of latched onto this concept of reconciliation.
00:56:09
Speaker
Like I am trying to reconcile my experiences. I'm trying to reconcile my faith. I'm trying to reconcile that whole part of my life into the rest of my life. I'm trying to bring that compartment back in and reconcile it and just part of like who I am. And I think some of the moments of greatest joy was realizing that maybe just maybe not all of who I am is Southern Baptist one. I don't need. And for that matter, that church, that fellowship,
00:56:39
Speaker
body can be found outside of that space, one. And I think, two, that it is more than just yes and no. It is more than black and white. It is that this grayscale spectrum can be really beautiful. I mean, that includes people that are gender diverse, that are sexually orientation diverse. It includes people that are neurodivergent. It includes some of those things that
00:57:08
Speaker
And it also includes like a certain level of like unlearning trauma, right? Oh, you have diabetes. What did your parents do? Like what sins did your parents commit? It's unlearning some of those things that like sometimes it's just life and sometimes life just sucks. And yeah, it can be part of God's plan, but that doesn't mean we have to enjoy it always. As we like to wandered around in the desert for 40 years,
00:57:36
Speaker
I always thought it was funny that that was preached just like, and they were complaining like, no shit. I would complain after one day, three hours and I'm out. Correct. I'm like, again, we can, again, part of that gray area, we can lean into the fact that sometimes we don't have to love God's plan. The story of Job, like we don't have to love it. We can find contentment in it. We can, we can reconcile it into our own experience and say, okay, like I get where this is coming from. We don't always have to love it.
00:58:06
Speaker
Hell, we don't even have a place to like it. We can say, this sucks. I mean, you know that Jesus somewhere in the garden was saying, this sucks. He was weeping in the garden. This sucks. This sucks. I don't like this plan. I don't like this. I don't love this journey for me. I don't love this journey for me. This is not the vision I got for myself. This is not what I thought I manifested. I do not love this journey for myself. Thank you.
00:58:32
Speaker
Oh, that's great. I also, just coming back to that, I also think you see somebody who's born with a condition, a severe allergy, diabetes, whatever it may be. We have options as people. We can either make that harder for them by blaming and shaming, asking what their parents did to make them have this terrible, terrible thing happen to them, or we can be like, shit, that sucks.
00:59:00
Speaker
Is there any way I can support you in that? I don't understand why we so regularly choose the former. And I just love to hear you talk about reconciling and trying to incorporate these ideas of human nature with your love for God that turns into a love for people and understanding and making space. Thank you for sharing that. That's really beautiful. And thanks for being here. Of course. Happy to be here.
00:59:37
Speaker
Thank you for tuning into this episode and being on this journey with me. You can find resources and links in the show notes. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe, rate, and review, and follow along on social media to help us grow.
00:59:52
Speaker
Now I see is independently funded by me if you'd like to help support the show You can donate directly or purchase a merch item on the website music for this episode was made by Alana Sabatini a former faithful and talented musician and finally this podcast is made possible by the incredible team at softer sounds a Feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives providing technical skill with tender support