Episode 04 - Jonny Morrison
For Context: Dr. Jonny Morrison
Episode # 04
🎙️ Episode Overview
On this episode, we welcome another program grad in Jonny Morrison. Jonny is a pastor, writer, and church planter based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He’s known for his integration of theology, culture, and everyday life in ways that are thoughtful, creative, and accessible. Whether preaching, writing, or hosting conversations, Jonny is passionate about helping people develop a bigger imagination for God, experience the radical love of Jesus, and learn to recognize and join God’s work in their everyday lives.
This conversation digs deep into the class on leadership from Dr. Alan Roxburgh. From there we discuss atonement theories and contextual theology. Another brilliant guest and discussion. Listen in!
For Context is sponsored by Northern Seminary [http://www.seminary.edu]. To learn more about the Contextual Theology program [https://www.seminary.edu/programs/doctor-of-ministry-in-contextual-theology/] (or any of the number MA, M.Div, and D.Min offerings), visit seminary.edu [http://seminary.edu].
📚 Resources
* Jonny Morrison: Prodigal Gospel [https://jonnymorrison.substack.com/]
* Gino Curcuruto: Following Jesus Into the Ordinary [https://ginocurcuruto.substack.com/]
* Luke Stehr: Faith In Situ [https://faithinsitu.substack.com/]
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Episode Transcript
Gino Curcuruto:
I am Gino Curcuruto
Luke Stehr:
I’m Luke Stehr
Gino Curcuruto:
And you’re listening to For Context,
Luke Stehr:
A podcast about Northern Seminary’s Doctorate of Ministry in Contextual Theology.
Gino Curcuruto:
On this episode of For Context, we have Jonny Morrison. He’s a graduate of the Contextual Theology program. He’s a pastor, a writer, a church planter based in Salt Lake City, Utah. And whether he’s preaching, writing, or hosting conversations, Jonny is passionate about helping people develop a bigger imagination for God, experience the radical love of Jesus, and learn to recognize and join God’s work in their everyday lives. This was a fantastic conversation and I hope that you will listen in and enjoy it yourselves.
Welcome back to For Context. I’m Gino. Luke’s here with me. You want to say hi, Luke? Usually I talk
Luke Stehr:
Hey everyone, all five listeners.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah. Our guest today is Johnny Morrison. Jonny, excited to have you on. Would love for you to just maybe introduce yourself to our listeners and we’ll tell ‘em why we’re having you on later, but I think it’ll become very self-evident as you speak.
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, yeah. It’s so good to be with you both. Excited to be a part of the podcast, as you said. I’m Jonny, I’m in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m a pastor of a church here called Missio Day, written a couple books, Prodigal Gospel and Light Is Air, and I was in the doctor of Ministry contextual theology program, graduated in 2021, so I think I got a walk right after COVID, which I feel very grateful for. So we actually got to walk. We were masked, but we got to walk,
Gino Curcuruto:
But you got to walk
Jonny Morrison:
And none of our classes were disrupted by COVID, so nothing was on Zoom. Everything was in person. I wrote during COVID. I was kind of like the perfect cohort for that moment.
That’s a great window.
Yeah, it was perfect. We went to a Cubs game. This is not what you asked, I’m sorry.
Gino Curcuruto:
No, this is great.
Tell the story.
in Chicago when we were there to graduate and it was the first Cubs game that was open to the community, so the energy was insane. It was the best time to graduate. There was so many people there. Bill Murray comes out and sings “Take Me out to the Ball Game.” It’s like the city opens for a moment and then I get a walk and I was like, this is the best experience
That is the first good story around COVID and education I think I’ve ever heard. So thank you. My heart is warmed.
Luke Stehr:
You just, like, hit that window perfectly.
Jonny Morrison:
I just feel so grateful because then I was with them, I was talking to some friends who did the program almost right afterwards, like Jim Pace and they were on lockdown for so long and they had one of my favorite classes they had to do on Zoom and it sounds like it was one of the worst classes because they had to do it on Zoom with Roxburgh. But I loved that class and I loved being with him. That’s why I was like, that would be brutal.
Gino Curcuruto:
Also, that class, that particular section of that class is kind of legendary in the lore of Northern Seminary. Yes,
Luke Stehr:
That’s probably another podcast.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah, I won’t go into it. Luke, you could ask Jonny a question, change the subject.
Luke Stehr:
Well, while we’re on the subject, what was your favorite class? That’s one of the questions we would’ve asked at one point, so we’ll just get into it now. So why was your time with Alan Roxburgh so formative? What stands out to you about that class?
Jonny Morrison:
I loved my time with Roxburgh. That class I thought was so helpful. Roxburgh was so the way he thought was so helpful to me, he could think so historically, so contextually and he had such a power of narrative, historical narrative to be able to lead us to a moment in time. And I’m in the program at such a fascinating moment. I mean everybody probably says this, but I’m in the program at such a fascinating moment. I start 2017, 2018, so I’m the everybody’s wrestling with how did the Evangelicals vote for Trump? Everybody’s wrestling with what is this doing to our communities? And then we’re about to enter into, well, we’re already entering into Black Lives Matter movements. We’re entering into a reckoning with racial and gender justice in the church and then the pandemic is about to happen. And I felt like Roxburgh, I’d read lots on race, I’d read lots on critical theory. What Roxburgh did though was give me a historical accounting that I felt was so helpful to hold those things together. It was like, I mean to do contextual theology and then to give tools, which is Fitch does this very well too, but to give tools about engaging in the neighborhood really well, and I loved the level of rigor that Roxburgh required. So Roxboro was also my supervisor on my thesis and I loved working with him again, which I was warned against it. People were like, “he’s really intense.” I was just grateful. I was like, He sent my proposal back to me like fourteen times though that’s not even an exaggeration. It just kept coming back again. I felt pretty grateful for.
I’m still really proud of my thesis in the end, but that was my favorite class maybe by far.
Luke Stehr:
That’s awesome. So for people who maybe have never thought about contextual theology, have never read anything by Alan Roxburgh, how would you give a Cliff Notes version of his accounting of history that you referenced?
Jonny Morrison:
That’s a good question. So Roxburgh’s work is broad and I think that you could, there’s a lot of things that he’s talking about, but a lot of what he is wrestling with is the leadership structures of churches and maybe you could say the corporatization of local churches and the professionalization of clergy and how did clergy become sort of a management class versus stewards of the spirit. And that’s I think so much of his work if I was to simplify it is about that, like, when did seminary become about training managers and executors versus training midwives and artisans? And one of the languages is detectives of Divinity Roxburgh’s also a real poetic, which I’m such a sucker for. And so that’s so much of his work and I found that that’s ended up being what I wrote on in my own thesis is that was the exact question I was wrestling with in our local context is why did we have the imagination for pastoral leadership that we did and what were the other options available to us?
Gino Curcuruto:
I want to dig,
Question into ask.
Luke Stehr:
That was a beautiful answer to that question.
Gino Curcuruto:
Beautiful. I do want to get into a little bit more about your thesis, but first, if it’s okay, I kind of want to hang out in this Roxburgh space.
Jonny Morrison:
I’m happy, I love it.
Gino Curcuruto:
It it’s, it’s great timing. That was our last seminar and so full disclosure,
Luke Stehr:
We’re working on our papers for him,
Gino Curcuruto:
We’re working on our papers. He also
Luke Stehr:
Subscribes to this, so if you’re listening, Dr. Roxburgh have mercy on us.
Gino Curcuruto:
I found his class very similar. It was fantastic. And his ability to just put any, he was just asking us what’s on your mind? What are you experiencing is what it felt like. Then he would just go back in history and bring us up to the current time, whatever the subject was. The breadth of his knowledge and his ability to put it inside of a narrative like you’ve said was amazing. I’m also thinking that if you’re not thinking as a contextual theologian, you may totally miss the value of what he’s doing as just a guy telling stories.
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah.
Gino Curcuruto:
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Jonny Morrison:
Oh,
Gino Curcuruto:
Totally.
Jonny Morrison:
It’s almost like a history class if you don’t understand contextual theology.
Gino Curcuruto:
And because he’s a more seasoned, experienced theologian and philosopher, it’s just like, here’s the old guy telling us stories from the old days, but that’s not at all what he’s doing and his ability to give us maps for things and be poetic. And so I’m not sitting here just trying to compliment Al Roxburgh, though I will. I was just going to say, I think that the idea of it being contextual theology that he’s inside of what he’s doing, his leadership teaching is really important and I think that some people, I won’t speak for anyone in our class, but I’d wonder if historically through this, if there have been people that have missed that and just thought, “That class was just a bunch of stories. Let’s move on to the next one.”
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that people, when we did the cohort, I remember people wrestling with his reading list. It was, I don’t know if it’s the same list, but you had books like Cosmopolis and you had some other ones that were sort of narrative historical accountings of the philosophical moment that we find ourselves in. And I think people often wrestled with, this is not kind of as you named, it’s not straight theology and it’s not even about our moment. And so then I think people were like, “Well, what does this have to do with now?” But I do feel like Roxburgh was giving us a map of all the wilderness spaces sort of around the moment so that we could kind of find our way and understand how we got to where we are. And again, I found myself so dependent and so thankful for his work and for Cosmopolis is the one that comes to my mind. I referenced it a ton in my thesis to understand how we got to the modern moment and then the bibliography shaped so much of my later research and reading and even the paper that I wrote for that class, which was probably fine, but it had such an impact on my thesis later where I don’t know that many of the other papers I wrote so directly impacted it.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah, that’s good. I think he has updated the list a little bit, but I happen to be familiar with that book from another class that I took and had to read. So that Cosmopolis is great, but I could imagine if that’s the book and you’re doing a history of philosophical thought into modernity that you’re going, “Where’s the theology bro? What are we doing here?”
Jonny Morrison:
What was the other one? I probably have it somewhere. It was something at the eye and it was about the, I remember it was such a large part of it was about the development of grid systems in Europe and roadways. Do you have it?
Gino Curcuruto:
Yes. Seeing Like a State
Luke Stehr:
We we’re talking about Seeing Like a Stat which basically the premise if you don’t want to read this book, which you should, is basically clarity only exists for the people at the top of hierarchies.
Jonny Morrison:
Yes.
Gino Curcuruto:
That’s a great summary.
Jonny Morrison:
That’s a great summary. That’s what I don’t know. I loved it. I loved that class. I think even the reading was like you are wrestling with something. You’re like, I’ve never, my seminary experience maybe didn’t bring me these resources, but they just felt so shaping and helpful and clarifying to, again, leadership structures in the local church. I mean especially in 2017, 2018, what I was witnessing politically around me, it felt like such tools to make sense of the world.
Gino Curcuruto:
Guys, this is totally a tangent, but I love that book. Seeing Like a State, it was so helpful. And then I read an essay from Stanley Hauerwas, here we go. It’s not a podcast with me if I haven’t mentioned Hauerwas, and it’s called an essay. He wrote “How Not to be a Political Theologian” and he references one of the author’s other books about being an anarchist as a way of entering into being a Christian political theologian. Anyway, we’re already in the weeds, but I just want to tell you, I would’ve never even known who that was if it wasn’t for Al Roxburgh. So I understood the conversation because without reading, this
Jonny Morrison:
Podcast has just become an Al Roxburgh fan club, which I’m here for
Luke Stehr:
Me too. But as we think we keep talking about contextual theology, I’m aware that someone who just stumbles on this may not have a clear framework for what that is. They may have heard of systematic theology or they may not know that theology and biblical studies are even different disciplines. So for you, Johnny, how do you just when someone’s like, oh, you got a degree in contextual theology, what’s that? What do you say?
Jonny Morrison:
That’s a good question. I’m still working on my elevator answer to that question.
Luke Stehr:
Me too, so I’m trying to steal yours.
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, we’ll do this together. We’ll workshop it together. I like to try to explain it as theology that takes two very serious convictions with it, which is that we stand in line with a tradition and we speak to a place. And so I feel like it’s theology that’s in conversation with two different groups of people. And then we could add so many other dimensions like the living spirit of God, but my community matters to the theological work that I’m doing and the place that we all come from matters to the theological work that I’m doing. And so a good example of this is we’ve done a lot of work in our community around atonement because a lot of our folks come from evangelical-ish environments where penal substitutionary atonement is the only atonement theology. And so what I’m trying to do with them in that moment is actually less about penal substitutionary atonement.
It’s specifically and more about the contextual theology that got us there and why in evangelical churches, that’s the only atonement theology that you’ve ever heard of, even though church history has many options, and these are contextual theologies, like Luther is developing penal substituionary atonement where the reformers are to deal with contextual realities and does that help us engage with our contextual reality? So I feel like I’m using this all the time and it’s like where we came from, where we are having a dialogue between those spaces. I know that’s less complicated than Fitch’s contextual theology graph that I never could understand exactly, but that’s the way I would summarize it.
Gino Curcuruto:
That’s fantastic.
Luke Stehr:
Yeah, it is. Well, I think it’s so helpful too as we think about contextual theology, one of the kind of affirmations of the discipline is that all theology is inherently contextual. And so when I think about it, when I talk to people about it, I talk about the earliest Christological statements that make use of Greco-Roman philosophical terminology to explain Christ. Those are contextual theological choices. They’re using language, cultural images of the time in order to explain the theological concept.,
So all theology is contextual. So how do we make sense of the cultural factors both then and now? I think that’s a really helpful way. So let’s talk atonement, cause you’re in it. You’ve written books on it, you think about it a lot. So as you think about kind of on the ground theologically, how do you do a contextual theology of atonement for now and for the location you find yourself in?
Jonny Morrison:
That’s a great question. That’s a great question. Yeah. I’m sort of obsessed with atonement and I’m getting more obsessed with atonement. And I think it is actually for contextual reasons. I mean there’s the Christian reasons like the saving significance of the cross for my own sake and there’s being a pastor and all that. But I think contextually it’s so important because the cross for my people, and I imagine this is true for so many people who are listening in their churches, is often a symbol of how terrifying God is, not how loving God is.
And so then I feel like that’s what started to make me obsessed with this thing is the very central symbol in work and act of our cross. When I would do contextual work, listening to our people, having those conversations, sitting down with folks who come from a myriad of traditions. I’m in Utah, so we have former LDS people, we have Catholics, we have Evangelicals, Baptist, Presbyterians, Methodism, everybody’s kind of forming here. And I’m hearing that story consistently. So that’s what made me obsessed was the initial contextual work of why does this symbol that John says in 1 John 4 is the revelation of the love of God. Why does it invoke such terror in our community? And so maybe the first part of that is a contextual theological read of our community is that the cross is a kind of a wound point for us.
Then the thing that I did next and I’m doing with our community actively, and I’m writing about this on my substack a lot, shameless plug there is I’m trying to do a historical survey of atonement theology to introduce a bit of epistemic curiosity to our community who have never heard that there is other atonement theologies. I’m not even trying to take shots at PSA in this work. I’ve done that other places. I’m almost trying to level the playing field though and to be like, “do you know that the early church didn’t hold to PSA?” All the writing around the early church is a theory that looks far more like recapitulation theory thanks to St. Irenaeus and it’s narrative and it’s embodied and it’s participatory. And then you get to ransom and Christus Victor models, and again, sin is debt and guilt are way less significant parts of that narrative than they are around bondage, enslavement, forces of evil. And you’re like Joel Green, the theologian, talks about a kaleidoscopic view of atonement. If that’s all I could give you that would be beautiful, cause you’d have a bigger view of atonement, and I think that’s a contextual work. It’s absolutely contextualizing all of it together. So that’s a long answer.
Gino Curcuruto:
No, that’s good. I want to keep going, but I want to just interject some of my own story in this and have you kind of riff on this. So I didn’t grow up in the church right before I turned 30, I became a follower of Jesus, spent eight years in a church that was very much like Reform Baptist kind of thing. And so I say all that to narrate this moment. It was the moment when I realized that the church did not begin 500 years ago and what that meant for my atonement theory, I was simultaneously, and maybe this is something that is very prevalent in your context, it is in mine as well. I was simultaneously really pissed off and more excited about Jesus than I’d ever been ever. But I didn’t have a map of where to go. And then I was trying to as a wasn’t a theologian at the time, I was working as a chiropractor and I’m a dad. I’m like, what do I study? What do I do? And so I know you’ve probably wrestled through this. I’m not asking you to tell me what’s the best resources, but if I’m the person in your congregation, if I represent anything like that, and you’re developing these contextual theology around atonement of atonement theories, I understand what you just said is really helpful to that. But maybe dig in a little bit deeper with someone with that kind of story if you could.
Jonny Morrison:
So something I have found really effective because been doing so our community is so similar, Gino, to what you just said, we can get to this later, but Missio Dei, the Church that I pastor is a church plant of a church called Imago Dei in Portland, Oregon. Imago Dei is the very first Acts 29 church plant. So we are Driscoll’s great grandchildren in a sick twisted universe. And so that is our story. So let’s just talk about contextual work. And we were always different because Imago leaves A29 before it kind of becomes a really big movement around the issues of women in ministry. It wants to ordain women in ministry, not as elders, but as pastors, and they leave over a very specific woman, my co-pastor. It’s not like an abstract conversation, it’s about does Heather Thomas get ordained and now she’s my co-lead pastor. So again, we’re deep in the world of contextual, but it means that so many people from that community come with that neo reformed atonement. Almost like in my thesis, I describe it as an evangelical emerging and neo reformed perspective because a kind of deconstruction that’s happening, there’s an aesthetic of questioning and then a really reformed foundation that you’ll run into eventually. So all that to say that’s exactly what they come with.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah.
Jonny Morrison:
So one of the things that we have found really helpful in that is to try and get to the root of what atonement is and see it as a banquet table with many dishes on it. And we have been fed basically only one dish for many years. For 500 years we’ve all been kind of really honing in on roast chicken and that’s PSA and is it good? Totally. It’s fine. We could prepare it a little differently, absolutely. But there’s actually lots of other dishes on the table and atonement is the full table. The phrase atonement is an invention of a word by William Tyndale when he is translating his English Bible to make sense of this complicated Hebraic and New Testament context, boom, contextual theology. And he invents a word to try to translate that to his context by taking the phrases at one and mint and putting it together to express what the cross does.
And we found this really effective in our community to be like at the very foundation, the table that is laid is a story about how the cross makes us one with God and one another. And this is actually what we all agree on Greek Orthodox Catholics, protestants of almost every stripe. That’s actually the thing that we sort of agree on. Now we get real fighty as soon as we come out of that and that’s fine, but can we get back to that foundation? And I found that with our folks who come out of that reforms perspective, that’s almost like a bit of a safety raft, which is like, okay,
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah
Jonny Morrison:
This is what scripture says the cross does, and that gives me enough room to start to look at the rest of the dishes that are on the banquet and see how they’re a part of that at-one-ment story.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah, yeah, that’s so helpful because to me that sounds like something that’s true all the way through and opens up space to leading to some unwinding as Fitch might say, of some of the things. Because I would say that when you eat that particular roast chicken all the time, it has particular effects on your emotional health and physical health in certain ways. Don’t want to stretch out the metaphor so it becomes unusable. We don’t have to go there, but I just say that it’s really interesting when you’re not saying no to that, but you’re saying yes, and which is what I find that as I’m interviewing people and talking to people, that’s what contextual theologians seem to say more than any other Christians that I know is like, yes. And have you heard the other person’s story? Have you heard this story? Let’s take that all into account.
Jonny Morrison:
Well, I think we go back to that definition of contextual theology, which is you do theology in a place and that isn’t abstract. These are your people. And I dunno, you can condescend them all you want to in your head, but that doesn’t help you do anything with them. It doesn’t help you do life with them. And people with deeply held PSA convictions and other really reformed or Southern Baptist convictions are in your church or I dunno, if you’re doing church in a Jesus centered way, they should be. And if they’re not, you actually have some other contextual questions to ask yourself. And I think I found it didn’t help my own heart to see them contemptuously. And so at some point I had to take responsibility as maybe this is another Roxburgh term, is it an artisan of a new humanity? I didn’t take that responsibility serious and be like, if I can dream something, I have to include them in the dream and I don’t get to reject them. I’m responsible for them also, not in a paternalistic way, but just like, this is my home, this is my people,
Luke Stehr:
Yeah. There’s a commitment there and I think that’s the stability that Roxburgh would write about. And so many others have written about stability in those cases too. And I don’t know if you’ve read his latest book, I think it was certainly a kind of cornerstone of our conversations in January when we had him. But yeah, it is that stability piece of like this is the people and this is who you have to work with. So
Jonny Morrison:
Whether we like it or not,
Luke Stehr:
Unless you’re my church members, in which case I love you every day.
Jonny Morrison:
That’s right.
Luke Stehr:
But yeah, and I think that’s just an amazing way to frame it. I think for everyone that atonement is this table and there’s so many dishes on it. Are there, I think there obviously the different atonement theories come out of different cultural moments. Do you feel that there is maybe one or two atonement stories? I think that’s how James William McClendon frames them. He calls them atonement stories, not theories. Are there one or two atonement stories that fit our cultural moment better or in a really hyper-local sense? Your context in Salt Lake City better?
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah. Oh, what a great question. That’s so fun. I am becoming a bit obsessed with recapitulation theory, which is one of the earliest known church theories. We associate moth with St. Irenaeus who is a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. So there’s good reason to value this theory way back. It goes way back and it may represent something that looks like what the early church was articulating to one another. One. I just find it beautiful because it’s an atonement theology that incorporates incarnation to ascension and Pentecost and second coming for sure. But we’re just like, we got to frame it somewhere because the whole thing is about incorporation into the story of Jesus or into the life of Jesus. Irenaeus doesn’t use story language, but I think contextualizing it to our modern world story is maybe the most helpful way to think about it. But it is this notion that Christ is the new Adam who there’s a substitutionary component there, a solidarity component there who lives the story humanity was always meant to so that humanity can then re-participate and that story is recapitulated in Christ. So then there’s this heavy participatory element to that atonement theory, which I find in our context, and I would imagine true in many other people’s context is so empowering because one, the cross has been often framed in western spaces as a one time event. But Irenaeus is saying that the life of Christ is an ongoing invitation for all of us to participate in something, to pick up our cross, to join the new humanity, to live a renewed story. It’s like Christ is Aragorn where humanity had been Isildur and in the Aragorn rejection of the power of the ring on the cross also, we get to be participants in new Gondor. We get to live a new kingdom. And I find that so compelling. Irenaeus also talks a lot about healing and healing of wounds,
Which he’s way before a trauma-informed atonement theology, but that is what he’s speaking about is that the fall, he calls it the old wound, which I just think is so beautiful in that humanity is arrested in their development. He’s so sophisticated for a dude who’s writing in the second and third century and that in the story of Christ we get to a development is freed so that we can be mature and whole and flourishing. And I know again, contextually I think that has so much power to people who want so much more I think in life than what is offered to them.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah, yeah. They see, I’m sorry Luke, do you want to go?
Luke Stehr:
Go for it man.
Gino Curcuruto:
I was thinking about the opportunities that I have to spend time. I teach inside a prison theology and Bible inside a prison, and then just friends that I have that are in recovery after addiction and maybe aren’t familiar with the term recapitulation, but are absolutely pursuing a new story. And the connecting point that is so valuable is saying like, Hey, the people of God, the people that are created are always walking in a story that has a starting point before them and many of us don’t do it well, but what would it look like to actually consent to someone else incorporating you into a better story in some way or living it out or So even that healing idea of atonement that there is a true and greater atom who did it in a way without flaw and then gives you a blood transfusion in a sense to heal not only your infection of sin, but also to give you renewed life in a new way. I love that. Also, the last thing is I never hear a church named Recapitulation Church. We got Redeemer, Renewal, all of these churches, but there’s an R word that the church has not really latched onto, so maybe your work will do it.
Jonny Morrison:
Maybe our people are already confused enough about our church’s name being Missio Dei. I don’t know that we need to add another level of complexity and theological nuance to our church naming.
Luke Stehr:
Valid. Oh man. Some of the things I think about as you’re preaching, as you’re teaching, as you’re helping people understand the ins and outs of recapitulation theory, like you’re talking to a person in your church who’s like, “how do I talk about this with my friends who don’t know Jesus?” Or you’re in Salt Lake City, so it’s safe to assume your people are bumping into a lot of Mormons. How do you teach people to talk about recapitulation theory and just a natural not Irenaeus kind of way?
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, I’ve, other than when doing a historical survey of atonement theories, I dunno that I’ve ever used the word recapitulation on stage. So that’s maybe the first
Luke Stehr:
That’s probably wise.
Jonny Morrison:
And we do a lot of preaching training in our community and have invested in this a lot. And so high value for me is to strip our language of religious veneer, jargon or Christianese, and this is true, I think everybody should do this, but Utah is a fascinating context in that. So we’re in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake is, I think
It is quite a progressive city. People often think about it as maybe like Utah itself, but it’s better thought of as Austin in Texas. It’s a city in rebellion to the conservatism of the state around it. And so we were the 12th city to legalize gay marriage back in 2008, and then our governor vetoed it at the time. So then our state was, it only became legal when it became federal. So that’s our state’s tension all the time. And I think we were one of the first cities in the United States have a queer mayor. So there’s this real progressivism in the city that’s always budding against conservatism, but it’s a progressivism, all that to say that is shaped by a post-Mormon religious context, not a post-evangelical or post-Catholic or post-mainline. And that already sets us up into a fascinating dynamic. And then the city is populated by so many transplants.
Like many cities, young people want to live there, they want to be there. There’s a college, a big college, and then we’re an outdoor state. And so many young people move to Utah, take their first major job or second major career job because they want to ski and they want to hike and they want fish and whatever. So I say all of that to say that Missio is a community that is shaped by that religious heritage, like post Mormons who have deconstructed Mormonism evangelicals who have deconstructed evangelicalism, folks who moved here and couldn’t find a Catholic church, and we were the most liturgical thing around. So they started coming to us. That’s the strange dynamic of the community. And even my staff is a really good example of this. I grew up Pentecostal, found anabaptism in college. I’m like a Pentecostal Anabaptist. And then solid, my co-pastor Heather grew up in a tiny Anglican church in England and then helped plant an emerging neo reform church. And then it’s here today, our third pastor is a 62-year-old retired Presbyterian USA pastor, and then my staff is Foursquare folks. They’re all over the place like megachurch folks who, so I say all that to say is a long answer to say that I really want us to use language that cuts through tradition because you cannot assume that people in the room understand the word the same way you do.
And so that’s why we’ve done so much work around atonement in part is like what do we mean when we use the word atonement? What are we saying when we talk about the cross? What do we believe the cross is accomplishing? And at its most basic, at its most foundational, and one of the things that we talk about a lot, this is where I’ll close, is that so John talks about this is in the letter from John 4, 1 John 4, he talks about how this is how we know what love is that God sent his son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. And then he goes on to say, God is love. So this is the primary way that we would talk about atonement is that the way in which scripture describes to us atonement is that it is the great reveal of God’s love. It’s not the only reveal, but it is the perfect snapshot of God’s love for us. And so then everything else we understand has to have that Jesusy other oriented sacrificial love on it. What the scripture says is the primary reveal. And for us that’s so important because Mormons have a very unique understanding of who Jesus is. But evangelicals, Baptist Presbyterians, we all bring that, and so it’s like what holds us, and it’s like the cross reveals that God is like Jesus, and that’s going to be our big atonement crux. So there’s lots of other things I can say there, but I just feel like I talked to you for 30 minutes.
Gino Curcuruto:
No, that was great. You really had me at just the idea of staying away from certain language so that you could communicate well, and I was just thinking about how much of our work is translation in so many ways and just listening to how you are thoughtfully going about doing that was just a real encouragement to me. So I was just listening. You could go longer as far as I’m concerned. That was really helpful.
Oh, thank you.
Luke Stehr:
I’d be okay with that.
Jonny Morrison:
It’s interesting. I’d be interested to hear you guys’ thoughts on this. Translation is also an interesting work because doing contextual theology with people who are religious, there’s a kind of way in which they want certain religious words used also. And so one of the things I’ve had to learn in this work is that the pushback is sometimes that we don’t use the religious word enough, and so then because they don’t hear the symbol that represents a whole world of meaning behind it, all that front stage backstage stuff, you guys did that with Roxburgh, they don’t hear the front stage performance that indicates all that. Then they’re like, oh, you’re not actually talking about sin. That’s the big one. If I talk about wounding and trauma and systemic injustice or racism, but I never used the word sin, then they’re like, oh, you didn’t talk about sin at all. These all good stuff, but where’s sin and where’s the cross. And you’re like, yeah. You’re like, oh no.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yes, I can relate to that particularly around that word sin of, but also maybe this is another episode, but even my own personal Anabaptist non-violence kind of convictions that I’ve had multiple conversations with people that visit on a Sunday and they’re like, I love this church, but I’m really uncomfortable with the non-violence. I’m trying to understand what that means. You want me to be more violent? You are not a violent anyway. Let’s just stick to the sin one maybe. Yes. That’s a’s something about it makes me question whether people are listening for the symbolic gestures to what they already believe or are listening to the thought. What I hope is a thoughtful presentation on how we’re bringing joining with the spirit together and using language. So it’s not that Johnny and I are pro sin and we’re just going to keep it under wraps by not using the word, we’re just trying to use language that moves away from individual guilt as the only imagination for what sin might be. Is that a fair assessment?
Luke Stehr:
Yeah, I think that sounds fair. And as I’m listening, as I’m thinking, I think people are looking for these theological signifying words. I think in the American development of Protestantism, once you start moving past Appalachia and into the frontier, I mean churches were not elaborate spaces. They were pretty simple structures. And there’s almost a virtue once you get past the east coast of a simplicity and architecture in particularly Protestant life. And so in the absence, if you’re a Roman Catholic, you’re going to walk into a Catholic church or an Anglican church even, or an Episcopal church and you’re going to walk in, you’re going to see stained glass, you’re going to see a baptistry font as you come in. Maybe there’s going to be a certain layout out to the architecture that’s actually going to let you know that you’ve entered a certain kind of theological space where your theological expectations will be met. And this is, I think, true across Catholicism. For one of the classes we took with Mulder, I went to a Vietnamese Catholic church in town, and even at this super Vietnamese Catholic church, I walk in, it looks very Vietnamese, but I know that I’m in a Catholic church. Well, Protestants don’t have that kind of defining visible architecture. So I think in the absence of that, particularly in our emphasis on the spoken word as the main component of worship, we rely on those signifying words to let us know that we’ve,
Gino Curcuruto:
But we just lost your Mic, but I was going to say that as Luke’s saying that he’s going to come right back on here. There. Yeah, there you are. I’m sorry, Luke. I was just going to say that I think that’s really important because what I should have said also is that it’s not wrong for people to want to have those signifiers because of what it means for them, right? Contextually is I need to know that I’m safe here. And most of us, we don’t have those other symbolic gestures other than our words, especially in Protestant spaces, and most of us, including myself, are too impatient to have the time to hear each other out, for lack of a better term.
Jonny Morrison:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I would be interested, Luke, to tap in on what you just named and hear what you guys think about this. So I want to present a theory, like a contextual theological theory to you about the future of the church and have you dialogue with me about it. So I think that what you just named is so true about spaces feeling like churches, and I think that will become more important to a de-churched people, not less, and I think that the missional, I love the missional movement, but its emphasis on home spaces misses this pretty large that my Gen Z friends who come to church are very nervous to just show up at a home. They actually really want a religious space as the first place to welcome into and to clearly see it as a religious space, and so for Missio, but they want to do, okay, maybe one more point add this.
So they want to do it in a way that is maybe stripped of some of its baggage. So this is the trick. I think that has to be the line that has to be walked. So Missy, our church, our space has a very specific design to it that is meant to do some of the things that you just named Luke. So our room has a really long communion table down the middle of it that’s always there. We do communion every single week, and that is the center of our space. Then we do have a stage, the play, kind of like the orientation of word, and then on its left side is a baptismal font that’s always there. It on its right side is a prayer station which forms across, so there’s a cruciform nature to the space. The chairs are oriented, so they’re kind of angled towards one another, which is again, so that there’s a participatory element, and then the design of the stage is very simple, but it’s all this geometric shaped hardwood because we are in a warehouse, but we’re in a warehouse in which the presence of God is.
And so we have the sense that God redeems spaces, but makes them fully what they’re supposed to be, not less than they were supposed to be. Then there’s the lobby, and then the lobby faces a big prayer chapel, which has big glass windows, that same geometric shaping, and then a view of the window that we exist for, or a window that shows the city that we exist for the city. We built the building, you had a view of the capitol, and then immediately afterwards a parking garage went up. So now we have a view of a parking garage and apartment buildings. So all to say something about that, that’s our space. And thankfully more apartments have gone up in front of the parking garage. It was, we built the space and it was finished in 2015 for a full year, had this beautiful view of the capitol and it was like, ah, so cool. We’re praying for the city. And then end of 2015, the parking garage starts going up and we’re like, no, it’s just big concrete six story edifice or whatever. But all that to say, so we’ve alluded to your point, we have tried as a contextual experiment to be very deliberate about the design of our space. Our services are actually quite liturgical while being, we would say our tradition is Anabaptist, charismatic liturgical, those three streams sort of shape the feel and texture of our church. And so I’d be interested, yeah, this is like here’s our experiment, and I’m putting on the table in front of you is our contextual theological church planting pastoring experiment that we’re trying to do. I think it’s the future of the church. That’s my premise.
Luke Stehr:
Yeah, no, I think you’re right on the money. I think the first thing that came to mind is the success of Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man just had this huge cultural moment, and it’s such an overtly religious film, but it’s Rian Johnson is not religious. He grew up religious, he grew up Christian, but he’s not anymore, but just makes this profoundly religious film. And so I think people actually want to feel that. I think there’s a Canadian author, and I can’t remember the name, but I think it’s like Wisdom from Babylon or Wisdom from Exile, something like that. But one of the things he talks about and argues for is that as we move into these increasingly post-Christian environments, which are only going to increase, even hearing heard Ed Stetzer speak two weeks ago, but even he was very explicitly clear revival is not happening, which so to hear Stetzer say that the decline is only going to continue people, but in that kind of cultural environment, people actually want to know what the feeling is.
I live in a context where Islam is growing pretty quickly, so I think I’m in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in my city alone. We’re the third largest city in the metro. There are five mosques and the first Spanish language mosque opened in Fort Worth, and so Islam is growing, but you know that you’ve gone to a mosque. There’s no doubt about the space that you’ve entered into what’s happening there. I think people actually desire some sort of tactility to a space. I think in a time when people actually don’t know the narrative of scripture, don’t know the theological language, the words as signifiers of tribe or identity don’t mean anything, and you could argue that we’re moving into a post-literate society or whatever, but there’s a reason people started using stained glass and used statues and used art in religious spaces, and it’s because it communicated it was the signifier of the kind of space you had come into.
And so I think that’s only going to become more essential. I think routine practices of communion, regardless of your tradition. I’m at a Baptist church when I came, we were doing quarterly. I made a push. We moved to monthly, and I feel really good about that. I’d love to do it more because it’s the most concrete and tangible expression of what happens in atonement that you can do week over week. And so even if you’re preaching some bonkers passage out of Haggai, you’re still going to do communion and you’re still going to convey what happens in a really tangible way that makes sense narratively, but maybe in a way that’s not necessarily aimed at a literate sense of meaning.
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, I think that’s so true. No, no, I think that’s so true. Our liturgy, and this is so shaped by Fitch, this is, I think doing work in his class really helped me shape our, we were always a bit more liturgical, but I really started to hone it more and more. And so
All of it’s written in-house unless we, sometimes we’ll pull prayers from the book of prayer from scripture specifically, but it’s all contextualized for our people in our community. I think what Luke you just named is we’re trying to narrate the story of scripture and invite people to participate in the good news embodied, and that all has to happen contextually. So you’re called to worship, then there is music, then there’s moments that are for the community. Then we do multiple collective prayers in the service, and then the table comes after the sermon. It’s like the chief responsiveness, the prayer station is open. Then there’s doxology and a benediction always. And so the goal being that there’s a movement to the service you’re invited in to know and experience the goodness of Jesus. You’re centered on the table where you belong to one another and to Christ, and then you are sent back into the city, the people of church.
And I think about Fitch’s three spaces being like, you have to have the second two spaces. And I think the missional church where I was so shaped by theologically, we emphasize those two so well, and then kind of forgot the value of the closed circle to use fitch’s language or that first space and the learning in experimentation. And I think with younger communities, you still value religious spaces. It’s like, oh, the social architecture of the church all has to be operating pretty healthy and you can’t overemphasize the Sunday, but you also can’t deemphasize it because of the formational power that I think it has still in our communities.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah, there’s definitely been, I’m familiar with those same missional movements if we use quotes around them that you are was formed in that myself as once to quote
Luke Stehr:
Roxburgh from when he taught us the missional church is dead.
Gino Curcuruto:
Yeah. Did he say that?
Luke Stehr:
He did.
Gino Curcuruto:
He’s working on what is mission post missional movement, I think was what he said he was working on now, interesting. But the idea of almost, I hate to use the idea of a pendulum swing, but my experience was many people were just moving outwards so much as a rejection of what they were experiencing in those Sunday settings as being highly just attractional light, not really significant in many ways. And they were just saying, actually, we can just be with our neighbors. And embodied presence has value, which the church had been saying since the beginning. It’s just not our American west churches. And so now there are some that are just moving so inward that they might also now be saying, come and see our experience of the liturgy. I’m not making this claim about you. We’re highly liturgical with our Sunday gathering too. And so by you naming the three circles, I feel like that’s the healthy thing a church exists in multiple spaces because a church is made up of people that do more than just hang with their neighbors or invite their neighbors to a Sunday worship. So I think that’s really helpful. But what I was also keying in on the two of you’s conversation, just so I can reflect, was that the importance of having something beyond what is spoken to signify
What this space is, who these people are, what they represent, and I think there is a hunger for that more than I’ve seen in my own lifetime.
Jonny Morrison:
Yeah, I think in some ways it’s about reclaiming the purpose of those spaces, having all three, this is again, so thankful for Fitch for this work. It’s like you have the full embodied social architecture of the church knowing that one space alone is not enough, and then you reclaim the purpose. Evangelicals made the purpose of the Sunday entertainment. I know that’s not what they would say, but that’s what they did.
And if the purpose of the Sunday is, this would be my pitch, it’s about imaginative formation really shaped by Brueggeman in that and by other political theologians. If that’s the goal, then the Sunday needs word. I think we have to be good proclaimers of the gospel. You actually need to hear the good news to help us story it, to renar it. But it also has to be embodied, and it has to be, I think there has to be an imaginative music component, a practiced component, a participatory component, and that all then, I mean this is all Fitch. It all then frames when we leave and we enter into the second space to have a place to practice it. But it’s all the same things. The metaphor we use here a lot at Missio to help people understand this is that Sundays are sort of like physical therapy.
I’m your physical therapist or the other pastors or your trained physical therapist, and we’re going to walk through all the practices of the Christian life in a highly curated fashion. We’re going to gather the table, we’re going to practice confession. I’m going to proclaim the gospel. But if that’s the only thing that this ever does for you, it’s just not enough for wholeness, for healing to get back on the mountain and ski again or to run your marathon again, you have to then go to the second space, which is the gym with your homies, and you have to start doing table there again, all this all fits. So grateful for him in this. And then even that space isn’t for itself. That space exists for everyday life. You go to physical therapy, you go to the gym. This says Utah, so that you can ski again, right? You tore your ACL, let’s get you hall and back on the mountain so that you can ski again, so you can climb again. So you can go to work and live the gospel so you can be in your neighborhood embodied presence. But I do think you actually need those first two spaces to get you to that third one at least to get you there as strong as possible. I guess I’m continue using the metaphor.
Gino Curcuruto:
That’s great.
Luke Stehr:
Okay. Well, last question. What are you reading right now?
Jonny Morrison:
Great question. So as we talked about earlier, I’ve been so in the world of Atonement, and I have a podcast called Prodigal Pastor, and I’ve been interviewing people about atonement. So I’m reading Michael Gorman’s book right now, the Death of the Messiah, the Birth of the New Covenant, which is his, he’s offering kind of his own model of atonement, which is really fascinating. That one’s very fascinating too, because most of the book is actually about practicing atonement, and so it’s like reclaiming baptism and all these kind of old practices that sometimes in Western atonement models they don’t have a place for, but his is like, well, they’re essential, right? You die with Christ, you rise with him. What does this mean? So that’s been really, really good. I’ve been reading that. And then I’ve also been on a weird fantasy kick, so I’m reading a book right now. This feels like a different take between, it’s called Between Two Fires, and it’s like a Catholic, medieval novel that takes place in real Europe, like an actual place during the plague. And then it’s kind of like, it’s all framed by deep religious superstition around the moment. What kind of fear would’ve emerged during the plague and how that would’ve shaped your view of God and one another. But then it’s a story, it’s a fantasy novel, and I have been absolutely delighting in it, so
Gino Curcuruto:
That’s awesome. That is. Wow. Oh, Johnny, this has been so good. This has been Rich. Enjoyed this conversation and know that we could probably continue, but you I’m sure have other things that you need to do today,
Luke Stehr:
No one needs a two hour podcast.
Jonny Morrison:
That’s fair.
Gino Curcuruto:
But thank you so much for coming on with us and sharing some wisdom. It’s been really, really good.
Jonny Morrison:
Oh my gosh, you guys have been so fun. To be here and to talk to people in the program, that’s always a gift I miss. Maybe that most of all is being able to hang out with the cohort and chat through theology and we’re reading, and thanks for doing this, and huge shout out to everybody who’s been involved in the program. I feel so grateful that it exists. I think our church sort of exists because of it, so I’m really indebted to Fitch and all the professors and grateful you guys are here telling the story.
Luke Stehr:
Yeah. Well, thanks for being here.
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