Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep935: Semiotics, Anti-Leadership, and Doing Church from the Table: Dr. Leonard Sweet

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Len is a true Renaissance man. Author of more than seventy books and 1500+ published sermons, Leonard Sweet’s recent publications include groundbreaking textbooks on preaching (Giving Blood), evangelism (Nudge), ecclesiology (So Beautiful) and discipleship (I Am A Follower). The second volume in his Christmas trilogy with Lisa Samson is just out (St.As). Len and co-author Lisa Samson are working on volume four (for Dementia and Alzheimers patients) of their “Songs of Light” series. Len often appears on the “50 Most Influential Christians in America” listings, and in 2010 was selected by the top non-English Christian website as one of the “Top 10 Influential World Christians of 2010”. His “Napkin Scribbles” podcasts can be accessed on leonardsweet.com or Spotify. In this episode, Len unpacks what semiotics is, how we can better read the Bible by paying attention to story and symbolism, why CEO-style church leadership does not resonate with what Jesus said about leadership, and why the table should be the center of our ecclesiological rhythms.  Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you have benefited from Theology in the Raw in any way, there's three ways you can support the show. Number one, you can leave a review down below. Number two, you can share this episode or other episodes like it. And number three, you can support us through patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. All the info is in the show notes. My guest today is the one and only Dr. Leonard Sweet. Dr. Sweet is an American theologian, Semioetician, church historian, pastor, author, currently serves as the E. Stanley Jones Professor Emeritus at Drew Theological School at Drew University. And also he supervises doctoral students at several other institutions. He's the author of over 70 books. It's not a typo or a speako. It is actually

7D70 books, more than. And over, I mean, thousands of articles, he's published sermons. He does a lot. This dude is a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and I'm super excited for you to get to know him. Please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Leonard Sweet. All right, I'm here with Len Sweet, who should need no introduction, but if you need a little blurb on who Len is, you can see the show notes. But Len, why don't I hear from, let's hear from you. Like, talk to us about your journey. I mean, I feel like you've lived like four or five lives already with all the stuff you've done. So I'm sure there'll be a lot of different directions we can go.

But how did you get into ministry and academia, theology? Well, I come out of a pilgrim holiness background. My mother was a preacher. She was ordained in the pilgrim holiness church and then the free Methodist church, both of whom defrocked her for various reasons. And so then at nine years of age, I became a Methodist because they'll take anybody. And so I've been a Methodist ever since. But, yeah, so I'm a PK, but the preacher in my household is my mother. Very strict. I mean, she was brought up by charges for worldliness because she accepted a wedding ring from my free Methodist father, who was a liberal.

So I come out of a very – I wrote a whole book on this called Mother Tongue, what it's like to grow up as a PK with your mother, the preacher, and kind of what it is to grow up in this kind of holiness background. There's Pentecostal holiness. We were holiness, borderline Pentecostal. We were Pentecostal in every way except the tongues thing. So, yeah, camp meeting kid. Do you ever go to camp meetings? I've been to summer camp. Is that the same thing?

Is that? No. I grew up West Coast, non-denominational. So anything with any kind of tradition, I'm familiar. Okay. Yeah. These camp meetings were phenomenal. I was really a form of male evangelism, but that's a whole other story.

phenomenon. It's really a form of male evangelism, but that's a whole other story. In many ways, Promise Keepers was a kind of a postmodern attempt at camp meetings. Oh, okay. Camp meetings, okay. But at any rate, yeah, so I come out, that's my background. Then I had a deconversion at 17. I became a raging atheist. In my early years of college i was in my marxist phase and and studied under some marxist professors and and um just wanted nothing to do with christianity um and that lasted for uh five six years and then then i had a real um it was a it was called liminality by victor turner who talks about sometimes what keeps a river clean and pure is that part of the river goes out and it forms wetlands and

turns into a swamp but when that those wetlands the water from those wetlands of those swamps return to the river because wetlands are really purifiers. They get rid of all the toxins. And that's why wetlands are preserved so much, because that's what keeps the water pure. And so I went into this very swampy period of my life, very, my liminal period, I call it. But when I came back to Christianity, I came back a real convert and real passionate about faith and Jesus. So that's where I've been ever since. How'd you get into theology and wanting to be an academic and a pastor? Did that come shortly after your kind of reconversion?

Well, I've always done three things. I've always had a provost of Colgate, Rochester, Bexhill, Crozer. Crozer was where Martin Luther King Jr. went. So I was actually a provost of his school for a few years. Then at really early 30s, I became president of a seminary. But I always had, I started two church plants. So I've always been committed to the church, So I've always been committed to the church, been committed to academe and scholarship. And then just over and over through the years, everything coalesced around this thing called semiotics. And so if anything, in academic circles, I'm a theosemetician.

I do semiotics of – You got to unpack that because I think about 5% of my audience knows what you just said. Yeah. Well, Jesus had a favorite saying, red sky at morning, sailors take morning. Red sky at night, sailors delight. And then he went on to say, you know how to read the signs of the sky. I want you to know how to read the signs of the times. And the Greek word for sign is the word we get semiotics from. S-A-M-E-I-O-N.

And then we get semiotics. So it's the ability to read signs. In secular terms, they're sometimes called symbologists. Dan Brown, his whole main character, was a semiotician. Somebody's into reading of signs. But more in the past. I do signs of the past, but I also do signs of the present. So just what is, and the ultimate sign for me is Jesus. So the question is what is Jesus up to in our world?

And then how can we join what he's already doing? So I'm a, that's why I'm a Theo semiotician. I mean, Coca-Cola hires 50, basically, semioticians. They have 50, they call them cultural anthropologists or semioticians, just to braille the culture and figure out what's going on out there in the in the world uh 50 of them so and you can get a phd in semiotics in in europe many of them end up on wall street um but um but i offer three doctoral programs actually in semiotics a thg in semiotics a dmin in semiotics and a doctor of theology and ministry in semiotics, a THD in semiotics, a DMIN in semiotics, and a doctor of theology and ministry in semiotics. So we started here in the US actually offering doctoral programs in semiotics.

Can you get it? I'm sorry. I would love for you to keep unpacking this because, again, it's such an unfamiliar... I think it's more familiar for people than they realize it's the term that might be the roadblock. Can you give us some examples of things you have learned to see and unpack by being a theosemiotician? I'm going to butcher the wording. Just semiotics. Semiotics. Okay.

It's all about semiotics. Yeah. Well, I mean, what you're doing is you're connecting dots, basically. All right. So, for example, Paul and John and others interpret Jesus as the last Adam. There's a language, the second Adam, but it's really the last Adam. He came to do what the first Adam couldn't do. And so to show us how to be fully human, you can't be human without the divine.

So Jesus is divine and human at the same time. But he came to bring us back into that garden relationship that we had been kicked out of. So that we, that once again, can live in that he walks with me, he talks with me relationship with God. Who's the first person that Jesus appears to after his post-resurrection appearance? His first post-resurrection appearance is to Mary. And she doesn't recognize him. She thinks he's what? Gardener. The gardener.

Yeah. Yeah. The world's oldest profession. What did God create Adam to do? Tend and till the garden. That's our prime directive. So it's a semiotic flair, biblically, that Jesus' mission is complete. We are back now in that garden relationship with God.

Yeah. Just one little example. Well, that's similar to – because my PhD is in the New Testament, but it's kind of a hermeneutical PhD. And one big thing we did is try to connect those. It sounds very similar based on the work of Richard Hayes, where you pick up on allusions and echoes and short little snippets in the New Testament. Herbiotics is very focused on the text.

Yes, yes. Semiotics is focused on the story. So it doesn't read the Bible as a text. And it doesn't do that kind of textual criticism and all that kind of higher critical stuff. I mean, it knows how to do it, but it's focused on the story. And treating the Bible, at least my form of semiotics, as one story. From Genesis to the maps, I say, you know, it's one story. And so you treat it, and so you do the semiotics of the story.

So that's the basic difference in hermeneutics. It's a framework for interpreting the text. Semiotics is all about how do you read the story. What about this one? This is one that it is in the text, but it sounds closer, at least in between what you're talking about. It is in the text, but it sounds closer, at least in between what you're talking about. Sorry, I'm battling a cold, so my head's a little cloudy. But the Transfiguration.

Luke's telling of the Transfiguration. And Luke loves, loves, loves, loves to bring Israel's story into what Jesus is doing. And it says he was talking, only Luke has this word, he was talking to Peter about his, and most translations will say his departure, but the word is exodus, exodos or whatever it is. And you have the exodus, as you know, I mean, it comes up throughout the Bible, tapping into the exodus becomes kind of a paradigm of God's, God's redemption. And, um, and from that time on, you know, he's, he has his head, his face resolute to go to Jerusalem. So this Exodus is like pointing to the cross. The cross is like this new Exodus,

the new Moses bringing people out of ultimate slavery and so on and so forth. Um, and it's just one word, but it's Luke. We do know that Luke likes to do that sort of thing. Would that be – that sounds more like he's bringing that whole story into – Yeah, where I would connect it there, that Exodus phrase is Passover. Okay. And the whole – I mean, what do you do at the Passover? You spread blood on doorposts. Well, what is the cross? I mean, you spread blood on doorposts. Well, what is the cross? I mean,

you spread blood on doorposts, and Jesus now is that Paschal Lamb. So that is leading the people towards the Exodus. So yeah, so it's all part of, yeah, but the point is you're interpreting it within the framework of the story. And we've been taught basically not to read the Bible as a story or even to hear it, but to read it as these desiccated, dissected texts and passages and not passages, verses. Yeah. So it's very – I'm a verse to verse as a semiotician. Yeah. So it's very I'm a verse to verse as a semiotician I'm trying to get rid of my own case of Versitis Which is pretty acute Do you think the addition of verses

Changed the way we read the Bible More negatively Oh absolutely Absolutely I'm glad for verses which were done in a medieval period by the way because that's how you find things right don scotus was working on it as were others but but with john calvin published that geneva bible and you have now the the scriptures in the form of chapter and verse. That became our new default setting. And

I mean, I come out of this at five years of age, I was part of Bible Memory Association, BMA, and we had to memorize 12 Bible verses as a week. And we had a hearer, that's what she was called, a hearer that came in on Friday night. And we had to recite those 12 Bible verses, and they were all themed. So one week it was the 12 Bible verses on hope. Another week it was 12 Bible verses on salvation. But we had to recite them perfectly. So I've learned and memorized a lot of Bible verses. But then one day I woke up and realized I've never once memorized an entire Bible story. The Bible wasn't written in verses. We did that. The Bible is written in poems and narratives and, you know, dramas and music and all that stuff.

So letters. So, yeah, I think it is a – that has really, I think, affected negatively the way in which we live our faith. Yeah. Well, it makes the Bible feel like almost like a dictionary. Like there's – you look up the entry, chapter Romans 8, 28, and it feels very flat and mechanical. It doesn't feel like it's an unfolding narrative. And it's without a context. It's contextless. So, I mean, I just do this little exercise.

It's fun to do when I'm speaking. I just sometimes I'll say, how many of you can recite John 3.16? Well, everybody gets confident. You know, they all, you know, John 3.16. You know, so they recite it in unison from the same translation. It's amazing. I don't know how it happens, but I say, okay, that's really good. Now let's do John 3.15. Dead silence.

And I'll go, okay, John 3.17. There'll be maybe about 20% that can do 3.17. I say, okay, what's the story? What's the story that this is in? I said, okay, what's the story? What's the story that this is in? And then maybe one or two will have something to do with Nicodemus. Well, what does it have to do with?

So we are – so this is hard. You build an identity, Preston, on narrative. You don't build an identity. You can't build it on verses. And you can't build it on values. You can't build it on verses you can't build it on values you can't build it on virtues you can't build it on a world view either an identity that's why Christians have

where's their identity? They have no identity because their identity is built on a story and we are not teaching the story we're teaching these little principles or apps or verses or whatever. Well, that's very Jewish, right? I mean, that's why you have the Jewish calendar, remembering the story.

Again, the Passover, the story of the Exodus and various incidences. And that's why there is a million Jews in the whole world. That's it. But you look at the percent of Nobel Prizes, the percent of Pulitzer Prizes, that goes to this statistically insignificant percentage of the world's population. And partly it's the reason that by the age of 12, every Jewish child, now they may be go on to be observant or atheist, it doesn't matter. But what binds together a Jewish child forever is the story. They are bound with that identity of the

story. So their teenage years, they can spend being creative and innovative and going off on all these things. our kids i gotta find myself i gotta i gotta build myself from scratch who am i i don't know who i am where am i and and so we you know we get celebrity culture in here and we get all sorts of things in here and so our kids you know how hard it is to build an identity from scratch every jewish child from the moment they are born they have a place at the table and they have an identity from the story. Exactly. Do you find that that quest for identity today is more chaotic than it has been before?

I mean, with social media and pandemics and everything? Or is it like it's always been that way? No, I think it's... The idea that you build a self from scratch. Yeah. You build an identity for yourself from scratch. Yeah. Is really new. I mean it's really new in history.

Where did that come from? Yeah. Like what – Well, the concept of the individual is relatively i mean it's only what 500 years old 600 years old the concept that i'm in here you're out there and i i can decide who i am and who i want to be and i don't have to live out of a tradition or out of a heritage or live out of a sense of ancestry um yeah yeah i the big issue in my with my new my grandchildren, what do we call you? What what do you want your grandchildren to call you? I go ancestor.

I want to be known as ancestor. I want them to call me ancestor. Oh, we can't do that. I say, well, here's another one. Call me ancient of days. Then have the have a grandchildren call me. I say, well, here's another one. Call me Ancient of Days then. Have the grandchildren call me Ancient of Days. But the sense is you're living out of a tradition, out of a heritage. And you will shape that heritage in yourself and you will take it in new directions. But you aren't born from scratch.

I love in American culture, when you're born, you get a number. It's called a social security number, and that follows you for life, and that defines you. I mean, if there's one thing you don't want to lose, you don't want to lose your social security number. By the way, how in the world, I just got my booster shot, okay? You know that little card? It's this little tiny thing. It's paper. I know.

And I'm going, without that card, though, I can't go anywhere. Can I get a replacement for that card? Yeah. No. Is anybody wondering how many people are going to lose that card? And then they're going to, where do you go live then? I mean, how do you eat? You can't go anywhere now without that proving that you've been vaccinated.

This is crazy. But in Korea, when you're born, you don't get a number. You get added to the family tree. There's a literal family tree. Now, they may have added to it the number by now because everybody's, you know, numbering everything. But up until recently, when you were born, it wasn't you got a number. The historical record, the government record was your name was added to a family tree at a certain branch. In other words, from the very beginning of your life, you were defined in terms of your

relationships. Now we're only defined in terms of our numbers. I'm trying to get back to the relationship, understanding of identity, the relationship to a story. Carl Truman wrote a book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, that traces a lot of this back really a couple hundred years, kind of some key thinkers that were kind of the building blocks for this place where we're at now where we can wake up one day, stare in the mirror and say, who am I? Who do I want to be? We're going to determine our own identity and any kind of authority outside of our individual self that tells us who we are is just profoundly offensive. Whereas throughout history, it's never been that way.

No. Yeah. Yeah, and that's why I – for me, to put it in the narrative context, who is the author of your story? If every one of our lives is a story, then who do you, who's going to author it? And whoever you allow to author it

is your authority. Your author is your authority. So if you're going to say, I'm going to author it just myself, then you are your own authority. I was recently at a baggage claim, and the person next to me could have been pink, Preston. I mean, she had pink hair. She had pink luggage.

She had pink, the word pink over everything. I mean, obviously, she had turned over her life story to pink. I mean, so Pink was her authority. And all of a sudden I realized, no, everybody is turning over their story to somebody. I mean, there's nobody that just says, okay, I'm going to, no, you outsource part of your story to this celebrity or to this. You just, nobody can totally make it up from scratch. You're always, so who do you choose to be your author? And that is your authority.

And that's where I say Jesus is my authority. The author of my story is not Len Sweet. I want the author of my story to be Jesus the Christ. And he and I write chapters together. That's great. You know there's a singer called Pink. I wonder if it was her. There's a singer named Pink.

I thought she was a fan of Pink, but she may have been Pink. I didn't talk to her. Yeah. She could have been. She was short and bubbly and, yeah, maybe. What was your – you did your PhD at University of Rochester in New York. Is that right? And what was your PhD work in?

Yeah. Well, I got my MDiv and PhD at the same time. I enrolled in – I wasn't going to spend seven, eight years getting a master's and a doctorate so I didn't neither school knew what I was doing so it was kind of a um it was a bad thing to do uh so I just confessed my sin there but so for a couple of years I was taking 30 courses a semester I mean it was brutal um but but I got my MDiv and PhD and together in four years. So I went to Colgate, Rochester, Bexley, Alcrozer. Okay. And then, um, at the same time I was getting my PhD in history and especially I got caught up in, this is a place where there was a whole focus on African-American studies and the history of slavery and all that kind of stuff. So

I got caught up in that. So my dissertation was on black images of America. Really? And so I got caught up in that re-looking at the role of the African-American contribution in American history. Can you, yeah, can you tell us a little more about that? What did that look like? What are some key thinkers and contributors? Well, there was Stan Engerman. Actually,

he was a cleometrician that taught there. He and his co-writer got a Pulitzer Prize for their book uh time on the cross was the was the title of it and then um Eugene Genovese wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning book roll Jordan roll he was a professor there and um then uh Herbert Gutman studied it from the the white blue-collar, working-class, enslaved angle. And so I just got caught up in this real vortex of studies of the African-American presence in American history. So it was a fun time. Yeah.

And W.W. Norton published the dissertation. Okay. Yeah. Did you engage with James Cone much, or was he in a different kind of area? Well, I was doing it from a cultural and historical perspective, and Cone, it was more of a theological. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. And so, but you know I read his stuff and partly King graduated from Colgate from Crozer. So there was the King presence as well. So you were living out of that territory. Some of my professors at Colgate Rochester when I was a student there they also taught King. So you got King stories so we were oh my gosh you know we were one of King's professors and this is one his name was

Kenneth Smith we call him Snuffy Smith he was sure that King got his whole ethical system from his classes so his his whole social ethic uh what was King like as a student? Did he stand out? Not that much. He was most noted for his speaking ability. And the ability to kind of integrate, bring together various sources and put them into a spellbinding form. Yeah. People sometimes realize that King, he went on to get a PhD from Boston College in theology, which is

pretty top-notch school. It earned PhD. Just because you have the name doctor doesn't mean you went through the rigor of a PhD program, let alone at a place like Boston College. Early on, he was kind of sucked into the civil rights stuff,

but I mean, he was primarily an egghead, like just an amazing speaker. Obviously, he's always had that, but he was primarily a legit theologian, you know? Yeah. Which comes out in his sermons. Yeah, he only taught one course in his lifetime. And it was a course, 1960, that he taught from his alma mater, Morehouse College.

In fact, Benjamin Mays, the president there, called King and said, I really want exposure to our students. King and said, I really want exposure to our students. I want you to come here and we'll open up the whole student body to you, but I want you to teach a class. King said, I'm too busy. And Morell said, we'll make it as easy for you as we possibly can. So his course on social policy was the title of the course, open to the entire student body you ready and nine students signed up and these nine students are the only people and that's the only course he ever taught this one time and chris king wasn't a common name then it was just you know he was just somebody that

the president of Morehouse wanted to showcase what he thought was going to be a really future star and and so these nine students are the only people in the world that can say we studied with King he was my mentor he professor. Okay. So it's an elite group. And they actually, a couple of them have died in the past couple of years, but they still get together periodically for a reunion, you know, to congratulate each other on the good sense they had not to miss their moment. This is a magic moment, and they seized it, and now they can talk about it. At the same time, though, Preston, they gather together to talk about

how they seized that moment and took courses with King. He required papers, graded them, gave them back. Not one of them saved one of those papers. Oh, no. Not one of them saved the curriculum, the syllabus. Not one of them saved one of those papers. Oh, no. Not one of them saved the curriculum, the syllabus. Not one of them took a picture of them with King. Not one of them has any of the signatures that he could have generated on their papers and on their work or could have given. So even though they seized the moment, they missed the moment because they had the magic of being able to say and didn't appreciate the significance of it while it was happening. And I think that's so much like the Emmaus Road story.

Did not our hearts burn within us when? When you're in the midst of it, you don't realize. Here they were. Jesus was telling his own story real time to them on a walk. And this is his story he's telling. And they missed it. And so I love that. For me, it's a reminder.

Don't miss your moment. That's crazy. They still get together. You're in that moment. That's crazy. They still get together. Happy awareness that you're in that moment. Len, you've written more than 70 books and over 1,500 published sermons, other articles, academic, popular, all across the board. Let's just maybe the broader culture? Well, it wasn't the bestseller of all my books, but Soul Tsunami hit kind of a – it was kind of a magic moment.

I just was having fun trying to do some semiotics um but it became um it was published right at 2000 okay and i don't know if it was the turning of the the new millennium or whatever but it became a a big uh a big book. But my unprecedented is I birth orphans. You know, I mean, once a book is published, I'm done with it. In fact, I've got publishers. Zondervan actually got – I had a five-book deal with Zondervan, and they got so mad at me that they said they were going to reconsider whether they were going to do another book deal with me because I would never – what I'm supposed to do – I guess nobody ever told me this, but what I'm supposed to do is you write a book and then you talk about it. Yeah.

But I write a book, and then I talk about what I'm working on now in the next book. So I never talk about the book I've just published. I don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about what I'm working on and what's going to come out next. So I'm a little odd there. One of my oddnesses. Well, you seem to have, obviously, a diverse range of interests, so I would imagine people wired that way. You spend some time in one interest and then you get kind of itchy feet

to go on to something else. I can resonate with that. Well, it's more like, I say I don't write books, I raise racehorses. And I have a stable, and in that stable are various you know i stallions i would hope and i'm i'm feeding them every day i'm grooming them every day some of them grow faster than others sometimes i take them out for a trot to see how they're going to play and see how they can run um but then one of them

and i've got probably like 10 10 horses right now in my stable um the that one of them kicks the door down and says it's ready for me to to race ready for me to run and so i just let it out get it to the starting gate and yeah back to my stable. And I don't even check to see how it's doing. I have no idea how my books have sold, which one has sold the best. I just keep writing and just keep raising resources. How do you determine? Do you go through a process to figure out what you're going to write on next? Is it just whatever is of interest?

Or do you kind of look at the lay of the you know what's been written out there on the topic and see a hole that needs to be filled or yeah and i try to this is where again i i run up against publishers yeah the what people understand is that publishers want you to write on something that's already a bestseller and you just take it and add your little thing to it. And I'm just the opposite. I look out there and say, okay, what is nobody talking about? Um, where is, where is nobody interested? And yet where I think there's a huge need for some, something to be said. And so, um, so I don't do the, you know, whatever everybody's talking about, if they do talk about it, like my, I mean, I've written two anti-leadership books, basically, uh, Summon to

Lead is one. They, they insisted on that title, even though it's an anti-leadership book, but the other was called I Am a Follower, where I critique the whole leadership paradigm. And, um, and I just, um, you know, take on that whole leadership fetish that the church has been in, which is all drawn from basically corporate culture and all that stuff. So I'm kind of looking at what isn't being talked about. Where do I feel? So there's a kind of prophetic edge, if you will. And that's part of semiotics. You're looking at the signs and saying, okay, people are headed in the wrong direction here, and how do we help to correct it and push them and steer them in the right direction? Can you summarize your anti-leadership book?

I think that would do well now because there is such a concern with that form of leadership. But yeah, what does it look like to write an anti-leadership book? Well, I'm usually about 10 to 20 years too early. So this was written about 10 years ago. And yeah, I think maybe I should republish it or something with a different title instead of I am a follower. something with a different title instead of I am a follower. But the leadership is, we've made it the identity itself. And leadership is not an identity, it's a function. And that's the distinction here, is that you exercise a function, and God summons us to the

front of the lines. But a lot of time, Preston, I'm at the back of the lines learning with everybody else. I mean, I'm in the back row at seminars learning like everybody else. I don't see myself as a leader. I'm summoned to the front of the lines, like I'm summoned now to talk to you. But a lot of times I'm listening to podcasts. I'm at the back of the lines. I'm a follower, and I'm just following Jesus where he's leading me, and sometimes he calls me up front. But even then, I'm behind him. So he is the leader, and I am the first follower, if you will, or second follower, whatever. I'm in a line somewhere.

But he is the leader, and the Bible is not – I mean, Jesus didn't see himself as a leader. Are you kidding me? I mean, Jesus didn't see himself as a leader. Are you kidding me? I mean, you know, so, and he calls us to be disciples, not to be leaders. So the leadership is what we got with corporate, our corporate fetish and our corporate literature. And I read corporate literature and I have some of my doctoral students read some of it. But it's there not to define who we are, but to help us exercise a function when Jesus calls us to the front of the lines. What did that book arise from? Was it something you were seeing – so 10 years ago, were you seeing this leadership fetish in the church becoming a big problem? Or was there some kind of cultural circumstance?

I went to a – I spoke at Catalyst a couple of times and I went to Catalyst and – do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the John Maxwell creation that kind of he sold or whatever. that kind of he sold or whatever. I was there, and it was like you had, like Malcolm Gladwell would come out and speak, and everybody would gather around Malcolm Gladwell and worship Malcolm Gladwell, and he'd talk about leadership or whatever. And I'm feeling this real, I'm getting really antsy here. And I'm feeling this real, I'm getting really antsy here.

And the whole one that, this one I attended, I have most vivid memories of, I did not hear Jesus mentioned at all. Wow. So you had a whole, the major Christian convention drawing, quote, we used to call them churchmen. You know, churchmanship. Now it's leadership, but drawing these people who are supposed to be all about the church, um, uh, and serving the church. Um, I I'm not hearing Jesus. And so I just got really convicted and just got this book out really quick called I'm a follower. Um, and, um, and just kind of, um, called the church to what its true mission is. Be thou, always vision language, you know, be thou my vision, oh Lord of my life. We got enough vision,

we can handle it. Jesus is our vision. You know, well, I got it. You got, what's your vision, sweet? You got to come up with your own vision. No, I got all the vision I can handle. Jesus is my vision. I'm just following him. That's why I do. I read where he is, what's he vision, sweet? You've got to come up with your own vision. No, I've got all the vision I can handle. Jesus is my vision. I'm just following him. That's what I do. I read where he is, what's he up to, and I'm trying to find ways to join him in what he's already doing. How do you get around?

I mean, in our culture, well, not just our culture. I think of most cultures like when you have a bunch of people show up on a Sunday morning and you have one person on a stage speaking to, I mean, literally down to, not, you know, it's just he's up on the stage and he's the authoritative voice or she's the authoritative. Isn't that system itself going to perpetuate that leadership fetish? Like, do you think there's something intrinsically problematic with the system of that that is going to perpetuate that leadership fetish? Do you think there's something intrinsically problematic

with the system of that that is going to keep this problem in place? Yes, I do. I think one of the worst moments that the church made was in the fourth century. We had to decide. We were all meeting at homes around tables. Everything is at homes around tables. This is the Jewish model.

And Christians continued this Jewish model. And that's where we worship, at homes around tables. Everything is at homes around tables. This is the Jewish model. And Christians continued this Jewish model. And that's where we worship, at homes around tables. And there came a time when the tables kept getting bigger, the homes kept getting bigger, because, so where do we go? And so we adopted the Basilica model, which is the legal model, which is the court model, if you will. So you have rows of people and then you have an upfront. And so when the table became a decoration, not a definition of who you are, I think that was one of the worst mistakes we made. So I'm all about bringing back the table in as many ways as you possibly can. And it's all about the table and what happens around the table. And Jesus, that's where he taught.

He didn't speak up front. He taught around tables. He taught most of his teachings was with meals. Jesus is a foodie. He's eating constantly. You have Jesus around, you better have some food. Revelation 3.20, I stand at the door and knock, and if you will open it, I'll enter. But you better have some food for me. I'll enter and eat with you. You don't know the name Chris Venon, do you? He's a South African church planter in the U.S.

He's not well-known. He's kind of a behind the scenes kind of person, but he's been in the States for, I want to say, 20 plus years, 30 plus years. And his whole ecclesiology begins with the table. Everything flows from the table. You begin with the table. Everything is an outgrowth of that. I mean, it sounds almost identical to what you're saying. And he's raising up a lot of church planters with that kind of mindset. I think you guys would get along well, I think. Yeah.

I wrote a whole book on this where I say, it's called From Tablet to Table, but to look at the Bible as a table itself on which we feast. But the real table, which is increasingly missing in our homes, people aren't eating together around tables, but to look at the table as in some ways the tree of life. And you have the language of the table, you add leaves, you have the stem of the table,

the roots. But that table is where discipleship needs to take form, Preston. Even if worship goes someplace else, and that's, I mean, the synagogue wasn't where the most sacred rituals were performed in Judaism after the destruction of the temple in 70. It's the home around the table. That's where the most sacred rituals are, and so the ritual of table time and table talk, the Protestant Reformation was formed around a table. The Tishraden, Luther's table, which they desecrated, by the way, if you've gone to Wittenberg, they just cut it in half so you could walk through the room. And I was

so devastated when I saw that. So you've got this little stumpy short table. The real table was a Reformation table that was forged. The Reformation was built around that table. But, yeah, to see the table as the primary symbol of where we encounter Christ is, yeah. Well, you have that semiotic symbol all throughout Scripture. One of the most interesting ones to me is, I think it's Exodus 24, where, oh, now I'm blanking on who's there.

Is it Moses? Maybe, was Aaron there? I don't know. It says they're like in the presence of God, and they sat and ate and drank or something like that. Like they have a meal, which symbolizes this kind of like fellowship with God in his presence. But you see that throughout Scripture. Meals are very theological, aren't they, in Scripture? Absolutely, yeah. And the whole role of food, the symbology of food.

I mean, we've totally missed that. I mean, what was the golden, what was the rod of Aaron? We talk about Aaron's rod. Well, no, it wasn't a rod. It turned into an almond branch. You know, what was the golden lampstand? No, it wasn't a lampstand. It was an almond tree. I mean, let's get it right. So the whole, I mean, that's why I'm convinced the tree of life was an almond tree. I think the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a fig tree. But I think the tree of life was an almond tree. And the symbology of the almond and what the almond and the mandorla in Italian and Latin, I mean,

and the whole, what was Mount Sinai? It was the mountain of almonds. I mean, it was, so the food imagery, one of the biggest things in the Adventist circles are food studies. We need a food studies of the scriptures where people can take seriously. Pomegranates, what was the significance of pomegranates? Why does every priest have pomegranates? The high priest had them on the fringes. So the role, the symbology of food itself.

I mean, who's the one that killed the first animal? God. To provide skin for Adam and Eve. I mean, so the eating now, eating of animals and how we survived before, we didn't have to worry about that because we were, you know, food was just enjoyment and we were made to be, to live forever. But when we eat of that tree, we die. And so God sets the first table, if you will. Yeah, so it's just huge. We've kind of lost that a bit in our church ecclesiological rhythms, really, the significance of the table.

It's hard in a big setting, right? How would you – if you had a pastor of a church of a thousand said, hey, I love what you're saying, what do I do? What would you tell him, him or her? Well, you replace your pews with tables, first of all. To replace your water, your ushers with waiters. I mean, there's all sorts of, yeah. And I'm much more participatory in my preaching. So I'm out there in the middle working, interacting with the crowd. It's not the sage on the stage it's so much as it is i am it's much more um you know here's the mic it's karaoke time it's it's time when i'm gonna what do you think about this and here john you know you you tell us what you think and mary tells me so you're

more of an orchestral conductor uh of the people's uh worship than you are I'm the big boss with the hot sauce. So you walk around and talk to people. Does that freak people out? It can. I just gave the list of that. But here's what people... This is the... Why do you go to why do kids go to a concert today Preston they do not go to sit there and listen to a performance

the high and the quote performer becomes the mic stand for the people and they are singing that song and in many ways then it just reverse roles the performers there to listen to the people and produce their singing and their song. And that's the new role of the preacher is to move from this to this. Do you have weird moments when you ask somebody what they think and they come up with some bizarre thing? It's like, oh, my gosh, I got to just let this go. Or, you know, I have to. And some people really want to take the mic and make a statement sometimes.

I know that person, yeah. Yeah, but some people will come up with the weirdest things, you know. I mean, I actually had one person who, in the midst of that, just said, I gave the mic to them, want to say something and they said you're the devil okay so when you hit when you how do you handle something like that and my usual way of handling it is we'll say more okay so that's one of my one of my key phrases. Either you may be right is one or say more. And this person goes, well, as I was here, as I was driving here today to come and hear you. And by the way, you know, when I drive, I never have to stop for a stoplight because I just point at it and it turns. So I never have to stop for a stoplight. at it and it turned so i never have to stop for a stoplight but as i was driving you know but as soon as this person announced that they never had to stop for a stoplight just had to point their finger and it would change um you know she had said everything that she needed to say you know and she people hang themselves you know but most of the of the time, it's the energy.

The energy of the air. I call it baking a souffle, you know, because all that air, that conversation creates an experience, a collective experience that is really rare and rich. And that's what can happen around the table, too. In Spanish cultures, it's called sobra mesa. Sobra mesa. And it means over the table. And you would dishonor any host in any kind of Mediterranean culture. If when you got done eating, you got up from the table. The table had two parts. One was eating eating the food but you can't talk when you're eating food you're enjoying the food you're talking about how good the food is you're discussing the food but then there's the conversation after the sobra mesa the after the table conversation and that's uh that's where the real that can take place for hours.

When I first heard that word and the meaning, I went and tried to get the URL for it, SobraMesa.com. It had already been gotten by a cigar company. They make cigars, Sobra Mesas they're called, just for conversation around the table after the meal. So you might appreciate this. My wife and I, we've always kind of had a hard time with traditional church small groups. I don't know why. It just oftentimes feels forced. I feel like maybe we've just been put in groups

that just doesn't work right. I don't know why. But after a while, we're kind of like, I just can't tolerate another small group. So we just started throwing parties. So right now, almost every week, a week, a couple couple weeks we'll just throw a lot of it and a party with no agenda no anything it's like we we always try to serve like high quality like appetizers like kind of finger foods and high quality drinks so like good wine um good whiskey um good beer

whatever non-alcoholic drinks as well and stuff. But it's like – and there's no agenda. Like there's no like, all right, after we talk for 46 minutes, we're going to stop and go around and get our prayer. There's nothing. It's just come however long you want, leave whenever you want, whatever. And it's amazing how many rich conversations. It might be 20, 30 people. And people kind of tail off and you'll see like pockets of people

having conversations and stuff. We've got a big world map on the wall. So some of our friends are missionaries. And we'll go to the map and talk about the work they're doing and stuff. And when there's no pre-programmed agenda, it's amazing how deep the conversations go. We feel so filled at the end of that. Yeah. I love that. i love that i love

that the only the only thing is you gotta uh if people said the same people keep coming back to the parties we have different people like kind of a yeah we'll just throw out a random invite to a bunch of people and okay yeah but there can be if it becomes too ingrown and it's like for a for a new person it's like walking into a room with everybody making out. You don't know where you fit in. You don't know where. Everybody's so friendly to one another. So there has to be an ethic of hospitality to the stranger.

And the stranger becomes the most important person. But I love that. I love that. That's Jesus. I. But I love that. I love that. That's Jesus. I mean, I love that party team. Exactly. Well, I think we have, I'm thinking of them right now, several, two or three people that are very outgoing.

And if anybody comes in the door that they don't know, they will, hey, what's your name? I don't know you. Then, hey, do you know people here? They almost serve as that kind of just natural funnel. If there is an introvert, because we have had some people over that don't know anybody except us. And that can be kind of, especially if you're kind of introverted and you see a bunch of people.

We try to get age diversity. So if it's an older person and they see a bunch of younger people or whatever, they could be like, oh, what is this? But we do have a few key people. Again, we didn't plan it this way. It's just they just naturally like it. That's great. Yeah, it's really cool.

That's so cool. Yeah. There is a book called The Art of Gathering. I'd really encourage you to read that. It's called The Art of Gathering. Oh, that's cool. Who's it by? Just trust me.

Okay. Trust me. Pratha, I forget, but The Art of Gathering. The Art of Gathering. Okay, cool. We'll check it out. Hey, we only have a few more minutes, but we got to talk about your recent project, The Songs of Light.

We talked a little bit offline about this, and I was just kind of mesmerized a little bit. This is such an awesome idea. Can you tell us what this uh it's a series right i mean i think you're on your second or third volume right now um can you tell us about what songs light is no right we're doing the fourth oh four okay yeah the fourth yeah yeah but well what it came as a result of um my i lost my wife a couple of years ago to cancer. And so we had hospice in here. And I realized there was no resource that I knew of where I could just sit down with her and read some meditations together.

And so I'm on a big oral kick. Faith comes by hearing. So the Bible was meant to be read out loud. You don't do silent reading. You don't have any evidence of silent reading of Scripture until the fourth century. So the Scriptures are meant to be spoken. And the vibrations that occur from the speaking of those words i think have power uh elon musk the three things of the future frequency vibration energy all of which are

encompassed in speaking so um i mean nicholas tesla said that i'm sorry not elon musk that was I was Tesla. But the – so I realized I wanted – we need a resource for somebody to sit down next to somebody in hospice care and just to read some meditation, some memories, some encouragements, to bless over them with words of comfort and cheer. And so these are meant to be read out loud by a caregiver to a person at end of life. And there's 33 of them. So it's a smaller book because you can put it at an end table or a bedside. You can almost put it in your pocket. But there's 33, and they're designed to be as much of a blessing to the person doing the reading because they're the ones who are the caregiver primarily as the one who's receiving it. And so we have the first one is for end-of-life hospice.

The other is for a critical condition. The second volume could go either way. The third one is for people who are dealing with suicidal thoughts and are having issues related to taking their own life. And then the fourth one that we just finished is one on memory disorder. So this is all based on hymns so basically we have 33 hymns

because hymns bring people out music brings people out uh and reconnects them to reality the last thing that does and so there are these meditations on on 33 um most familiar maybe some of the most familiar hymns and most loved hymns that people in this state of memory decline and disorder can latch on to. Now we're going to do the next one on Vine 5 on mental illness for people who are struggling with those kinds of issues. The suicidal one was a very specific one, but with other kinds of paranoia and schizophrenia. And so it's going to keep going down the line. Wow, that's amazing. And how have the first, I guess, three been received?

Do you get people that have been using these books? Yeah, well, it's so recent we haven't had. But we just had, just this week, our first order for 200 came in from uh a chaplaincy organization the the head of the organization read it and said uh i got to give these to my people so the next meeting there's guys there's 200 at the meeting so he just bought 200 and said i'm going to give this free to everybody and so i'm hoping that it, that I really feel a special anointing on this series, Preston. I think there's a real need for it.

And, and the key is that it was, they're designed and written to be read out loud. It's spoken out loud. So it's not something you read with your eyes. You hear it with your ears. And that's a whole different kind of writing for me. Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm hoping that people enjoy it. You have to pay attention to phonetics and other things, right? I mean, because when you're writing, you think about like, yeah, audible resonance or how things sound against each other, different words and stuff. Yeah, the first – actually there actually is a back story here the first volume um because i tell preachers when you write your sermons you write them for your ear okay so i thought i had done that and i'm working with somebody else too and i thought we had both done that um so it was published and so my first volume came in you know you get the first ones and so um I um started reading it out loud for the first time

and I immediately stopped the presses and I said I called it I had to resound them literally resound them because I had not done good enough I had not done far enough I really needed to redo it so that it was meant for the ear so that so ever bought it I redid that whole first volume it's a whole new volume so if you got some people actually ordered it quickly. And I just say if you've got that first volume before I resounded it, it's a collector's item because there are only just a couple published because I stopped it. Wow, that's crazy. Well, Len, I've taken you up to an hour here.

So, man, we can keep going. There's a lot more to talk about. But thanks so much for giving an hour of your day to Theology in Iran. It's been fun, Preston. Thank you. Yeah. Really appreciate all your work and your voice and love this anti-leadership stuff. I'm going to be thinking about that for a while, and I'm sure my audience will, too.

So people can find you at lettersuite.com. Is that where you want to point people to? And I'm looking at your website now. It looks like you have. That'd be good. Is that where you want to point people to? I'm looking at your website now. It looks like you have.

Yeah, that'd be good. Or I do a YouTube channel where I do semiotics of the lectionary every week. Okay. So I have about 30 minutes every week where I just say the semiotics of these passages could be this, and you could use this, and this you might want to think about this. Okay. I do the semiotics of a passage. I've had 90.

I think there's almost a hundred there now. So a hundred weeks of semiotics of, of the lectionary passages. They just type in your name to YouTube. It'll take you to your channel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sounds good.

All right. Thanks. I appreciate you. All right. President. Great being with you. Blessings on you and your family. Thank you.