Episode 12: Transcript

"What can faith look like that is both relevant and progressive?" - with Emily Swan

Magda Pecsenye (00:00:00):

I am very excited about this episode for a number of reasons.

Doug French (00:00:06):

I can tell. Really you should towel off.

Magda (00:00:08):

<Laugh>. One is that I really, really like Emily. I think she's incredibly smart. I think she's done a whole lot of work on herself and on her views about herself and on just knowing herself and who she wants to be in the world. And I think that makes her very easy to be around. And it also makes her very accepting of other people. I think because she's been on this journey of figuring out who she is, she's got a lot of empathy for people who are maybe not there yet. And also a lot of appreciation for people who are also doing work on themselves. The other reason I'm excited about this is that we are talking about religion and about faith. And I don't think a lot of people feel like they're allowed to talk about that. And really, yeah,

Doug (00:00:57):

It seems like that's all I ever hear. I think that what we hear is, “I belong to the right God and you don't, and therefore you're lesser than I.” 

Magda (00:01:08):

All I hear is, “Religion is bad and anybody who participates in religion is stupid or a stooge or ethically bad or–”

Doug (00:01:19):

You should put finger quotes on that <laugh>.

Magda (00:01:22):

Right. Or, “My religion is the only one and anybody who doesn't participate in my religion is a stooge or stupid or morally bad.”

Doug (00:01:32):

Inferior and headed to hell.

Magda (00:01:34):

Right. I don't think we're hearing a lot of stories about people engaging with religion and faith who are not a hundred percent sure of everything that they claim to believe all the time.

Doug (00:01:50):

Well, I gotta say I am very supportive of friends of mine who grew up as Christian. When “Christian” meant Christian and not Christian like it does now. Because it's been hijacked by people who wield it. As you know, I was a big fan of Amandus Derr back in New York 'cause he wrestled with his faith and told me so. And so does she. That's a critical mind at work. That's someone who thinks and doesn't just believe unquestioningly. And there's a lot of that because it's easier.

Magda (00:02:20):

It's not the thing I lead with, but a lot of people do know that I'm a practicing Christian in the mainline Christian, not the Evangelical sense. But I think the reason that I'm 50 years old and have had an evolving relationship with my faith and am actively engaged in participation in a church and other religious organizations and in spiritual life, is because I was raised in a church and a church tradition that was all about that sort of questioning. Like, that is not unusual at all. The conversation we had with Emily is not unusual to me at all. The conversations that I had with other pastors and with everybody in my church, I just do not remember being asked to take seriously the idea that there was only one side of things. Like, sure, there were people I encountered who were dogmatic, but they were sort of protesting too much. Like, the overarching thing was if you have latched onto these specific dogmas or even these specific things that are sort of generally true, it's a form of self-medication. A healthy faith is a faith that has questions. 

Doug (00:03:35):

Unhealthy faith is like, “save me from myself 'cause I'm guilty of things I'm charging other people of doing.”

Magda (00:03:41):

Yeah. And I mean a thing about Christianity when it's practiced well is that it's a relational faith, right? Like there are some systems of belief that you can engage in just by yourself inside yourself. But Christianity is about your relationship with God, your relationship with Jesus, your relationship with the Holy Spirit, and your relationship with other people. So a lot of times people ask me, “You know, there's no meaning in life. Do you think there's a meaning to life?” And my meaning to life as a Christian is that it's my job to be Jesus' hands on earth. To do the things that a manifest God would do for other people, which means it's a relational faith that means you have to constantly be taking into account the other people or beings or I don't know, even animals, right? Like, I mean, cats and dogs and pets and birds and stuff are part of my faith. It's creation and

Doug (00:04:34):

You have to have cats in there. I'm not surprised by this <laugh>.

Magda (00:04:37):

I know.

Doug (00:04:38):

I think you need to have a moment when cats are involved in everything we talk about.

Magda (00:04:42):

<Laugh> Right? This is the “All Cat Podcast.” I know. And I think of course you have to ask questions when it's a relational faith because it's not just you. Emily, I know, feels in many ways the same way that I do. And so I thought this was a really great episode for confirming my own biases.

Doug (00:04:59):

<Laugh>. But that's why you followed her to Blue Ocean, right? Yes, exactly. <Laugh>,

Magda (00:05:03):

No. Yeah. That is why I followed her to Blue Ocean.

Doug (00:05:06):

How far back do you go with her? You were, you knew her at the old place.

Magda (00:05:10):

Yeah. Since 2011.

Doug (00:05:12):

Did you talk to her at all about what it was like to have to leave? There's something just fundamentally terrible about putting your heart and soul in something, ministering to people in every sense of the word, and then being told you're not adequate because of whom you love. And that's,

Magda (00:05:29):

Yeah, exactly.

Doug (00:05:30):

It's just, it appalls me and that's what turns me off so much about religion is how inclusive it's supposed to be and how exclusive it ends up being a lot of the time.

Magda (00:05:38):

Well, I don't engage with <laugh>, the people that are exclusive. Right. Like, I mean, it is true that I am carrying a specific grudge against the specific people that kicked Emily out of the church.

Doug (00:05:52):

I don't even know them. And I do, too. So you have my sympathetic support,

Magda (00:05:56):

But part of that is that I feel like I'm sort of holding onto the grudge so she doesn't have to <laugh>, if that makes sense. <Laugh>.

Doug (00:06:05):

“I don't think she knows that grudge.” There's a name for a podcast <laugh>.

Magda (00:06:09):

I think she's gonna listen to this and be like, “What? This is emotionally unhealthy.” And it probably is emotionally unhealthy, but I mean, I am still somewhere in the bowels of the email list of that old church. And so about every three years they send me an email like, “Hey, you haven't been in whatever.” And every single time I am like, “You kicked Emily Swan out of your church for being gay. Do not ever contact me again. You stupid motherfuckers.” <laugh>. They set some intern or some poorly-paid church secretary or something like that. Like. “hey, go in and find these records of people who used to come who don't come anymore and outreach. It's what God would want you to do.” And it's like, “No, nothing this church is doing is what God would want you to do.”

Doug (00:06:56):

So if you're listening, 22-year-old intern that just started working for Emily, don't do that. 

Opening music crossfades in, plays for twenty seconds, then crossfades out.

Doug:

How big is the church?

Pastor Emily Swan (00:07:21):

You know what? It's really hard to say right now. During Covid we didn't meet every week for about three years. We were meeting mostly online via Zoom and then in different pockets of time, meeting about every other week in person. And so it's really just been since Easter this year that we've been back every single week. And so I think I'm starting to see a little bit more of the patterns of who's around and who isn't. I would say our church attendance on a Sunday morning is somewhere around 120, including kids, with a lot of kids. But the number of people who would say that they're part of our church is probably much larger than that. I think of us as a little bit of a regional church just in the kind of church that we are. There aren't that many of them in the US in general who are theologically progressive, but come from more of a lower church sort of tradition. And so people are coming to us from an hour away, two hours away, which means they don't come every Sunday.

Doug (00:08:21):

If we were to talk about that for a second in terms of its rarity or its specificity, how would you describe Blue Ocean's uniqueness? In a sense that it's, you know, so many other maybe like-minded churches are so few and far between. 

Emily (00:08:36):

I mean that's a really big question and I think it speaks to the particular place that we're at in terms of sort of general western church history. Do you mind if I do a little bit more of the big picture?

Doug (00:08:51):

Oh, absolutely. Give us the whole primer <laugh>.

Emily (00:08:54):

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (00:08:56):

“You see Christ was crucified…” 

Emily (00:08:59):

Yeah, <laugh>, let's start there. <Laugh> You know, the church as an institution has undergone a lot of significant shifts. There was an Episcopalian writer and thinker, Phyllis Tickle. She would talk about it in 500-year increments, which you know, is a little bit like more or less, it's not exact <laugh>. With my history background, I don't love saying, you know, “every 500 years” is maybe not quite as accurate. But there is a certain helpfulness I think, to looking at that and saying about every 500 years or so the church has undergone really significant changes, whether it was being co-opted into the Roman Empire, whether it was the Great Schism between East and West, and it was the Reformation. And here we are about 500 years from the Reformation and I think we're undergoing another one of those great big seismic shifts.

Emily (00:09:54):

She used to talk about the church “having a rummage sale every 500 years.” Sort of throwing out the things that haven't been working and re-imagining things that are maybe a little bit more helpful. And I think we're kind of smack dab in the middle of some of this seismic change. It's being driven by all kinds of things. I think we've now seen, to use a churchy phrase, the fruit of having said that the Bible is the authority of the church, which was a big claim of the reformers. And that hasn't been working as well as we thought that it might. 500 years later there's like 30,000 plus Protestant denominations and people starting to say, “oh, well maybe we haven't been thinking about how we ground our faith in a way that's been that helpful.”

Doug (00:10:41):

It's a needle to thread, isn't it, to kind of marry the traditions of religion versus a very progressive time, and where lots of people are really looking to advocate for change and that's kind of why you get a schism and you get break-off sects. And so forth. And how do you, how do you walk that line?

Emily (00:10:59):

Yeah. And then technology has given people access to a lot more information where they can question things and find different approaches. Big shift between modernity and post-modernity. And I dunno, is it post post-modernity at this point? It's hard to know <laugh> and the church is struggling, I think, to sort of keep up with that. And so as part of that, what I would say is I think history will tell whether or not what we're doing is helpful with that. But we have tried to be a little bit nimble in terms of being, trying to be a little bit more culturally relevant, trying to make sure that our liturgy or the things in our service are practical and connect to justice and to different things in the world. And where it's turning out people who are kind and love their neighbors as they love themselves.

Emily (00:11:48):

So I come from, I would say, a “low church” background. So Magda, I know you had more of a “high church” background with coming from the ELCA. Low church just means that it's less formal in terms of, like, dress and the way the liturgy is run. I, you know, I preach in jeans often. And have a more informal music tradition, and so we’re low church married with more progressive theology that you often find in some of the more high church places, at least these days. So yeah, completely affirming, being science friendly, all of these things married with an almost Evangelical sensibility, even though I still don't even like that term, is a fairly rare, I think, combo right now. But growing.

Magda (00:12:34):

I'm gonna backtrack a little bit. Emily Swan that we're talking to today is the pastor of my actual church. So she is my pastor, and Doug and I invited her on today to talk about the question of what's the function of church in modern life for people who are sort of our age in this demographic. Because I personally think that the church, which is in itself a fraught phrase, functions very differently now than it did when I was a little kid. I mean, I think there was sort of this ideal in the United States at least, and probably Canada, that a lot of people went to church. Like, your parents just took you to church and then when you were a teenager you didn't have to go as often and maybe not at all. And then you drifted off and then when you had kids of your own, you wanted to raise them in the church and so you would join a church again and then the whole cycle would continue. And I don't think that's true at all anymore. And I think that a lot of people who were hurt by that because they were hurt by the expectations of the church, the church community, the congregation, the clergy, their parents inside the church, their parents relative to the church in the past, would've felt like they had to replicate that the same way they were replicating all the other things in their lives that were harmful to them.

Emily (00:13:56):

Correct. Yeah.

Magda (00:13:58):

I just think now people can say, no, screw you. Like, I don't have to go to church anymore.” Because I was raised, as Emily said, ELCA, which is a Lutheran form, and it's the Lutherans who have had women pastors for almost 60 years, and tend to be social justice-oriented, and also trying to reconcile some of the really horrible aspects of Lutheranism in general, like the strong antisemitism, stuff like that. I didn't grow up assuming that I was being forced to go to church, so I didn't have any big reckoning moment of, you know, “who am I anyway, do I want to go to church?” It was just sort of like, “oh, well I want to find the people who want to sing on Sunday morning. Okay, I'll show up at church.” Right. You know, I would sort of pick and choose what flavor I wanted. Did I want to sing this certain set of songs? Yeah. Let me find a Catholic church, I can wing my way through. If I want to go to some other church with different kinds of songs. But I'm beginning to realize that that was a completely unusual experience. Like, I've talked about it with my friends who grew up in my same church and we all had that experience, but I think we may be the only six people in the US that had that experience with church in the ‘80s.

Emily (00:15:19):

You grew up in what I would think of as a healthy faith tradition. Right? And so you are what I hope churches like ours are producing, to be people who have a really healthy relationship with church, who don't have a lot of shame associated with their spirituality, who integrate justice, all of those things. I grew up more fundamentalist Evangelical with a good dose of unhealthy Pentecostalism. And I say unhealthy 'cause I think there is a healthy form. I did have that strong youth group and that strong, like who's in and who's out was definitely a part of my upbringing. It created strong bonds. And those feel really good until you suddenly realize that you don't actually fit within sort of the confines of who is considered in. And then, you know, the exile of that is quite painful. So when I came out, I mean, I actually heard from several of my old youth group leaders who were just terrible and I had to cut them off, block them on Facebook who were just, even in my thirties, they’re writing me and telling me that I had to get my act together.

Magda (00:16:27):

I thought you meant that you heard from your old like teenage youth group leaders who said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize you were gay. I should have been nicer to you.”

Emily (00:16:40):

No, no, no.

Doug (00:16:42):

It's so based upon “you must conform.”

Emily (00:16:44):

Yeah, yeah.

Doug (00:16:45):

Given your background, do you think your direction toward lower church, is that a reaction to that, do you think?

Emily (00:16:51):

No, I mean I grew up low church and so some of that I think is just like, I think culturally a lot of Americans do grow up low church, and so I feel like some of the more high church traditions have some really good theology, but they're not attracting people who come from a low church tradition who are looking for a more progressive theology just because the cultural fit isn't quite right.

Magda (00:17:14):

You have to have privilege to be able to be progressive theologically. Right. 

Emily (00:17:20):

I don’t know. 

Magda (00:17:21):

I think if you have to form a group to survive, you have to come up with some common enemy.

Emily (00:17:28):

You know, we're part of now TFAM, The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, which is a collection largely of progressive Black pastors, who many of them are affirming. Right. And would have some of the most progressive theology in the United States. 

Magda (00:17:45):

Don't you think that's because they could not fit in? Right. Like they recognized that they weren't gonna win if they played the game of “Who's got privilege.” And so their only hope of survival was to step outside of that and say, fuck you to the system.

Emily (00:18:00):

But they don't have privilege and are still progressive. 

Magda (00:18:04):

I've always sort of thought of low church as being almost like a 12 step meeting for a lot of people, that it functions that way. 

Emily (00:18:11):

I don't think of it quite like, I mean you've gotta think about like the liberation theologies in Latin American Catholicism. Right. And that's high church.

Magda (00:18:21):

This is another one of my ideas of, like, we need to find somebody who's in a PhD program who doesn't have a dissertation topic yet and assign them to this.

Emily (00:18:29):

Exactly. To break it down for us <laugh> or something like Philip Jenkins, who's a sociologist of religion, I think he's at Penn, might know something. Like he’d probably have some things to say about that. Yeah. Right.

Doug (00:18:43):

So how does the demographics go within the congregation there? I use, that's the term I use 'cause I grew up Congregationalist, so I was right in the middle. We had a minister, we had a choir, we had robes, we had stained glass windows, but we didn't have thuribles. We didn't have, you know, take the big book and aim it at the ceiling. You know, that really struck me as something new when I attended Lutheran Church with Magda and that's where our boys were baptized.

Emily (00:19:12):

Right. 

Doug (00:19:13):

But talk about the great divide between people who pursue tradition. And you could argue now that given the same reason people are kind of embracing moral right politics is because they want tradition, they want rigidity, they want control certainty.

Doug (00:19:28):

However, you know, elusive and complete nonsense that is in my view, would you say the demographic of your church skews a bit younger?

Emily (00:19:37):

Yes, for sure.

Doug (00:19:39):

So when you have discussions with people our age and they talk about how their experience in the house of worship has evolved, what do those discussions touch on?

Emily (00:19:48):

It's like we've got people coming from different backgrounds and we've got some people who are coming from a more progressive mainline background, like Magda, who are coming from progressive Catholicism. 

Doug (00:20:00):

Is she like one of the geezers at church? Like one of the oldest people who attend?

Emily (00:20:03):

<Laugh> A geezer? No, she's not a geezer. She's not, not yet. But we don't, we don't have that many,

Doug (00:20:08):

I suppose I could say “elder,” but I guess “geezer's” more fun.

Emily (00:20:12):

Yeah. I was reading a stat that in the mainline churches, the Episcopals and Methodists and Presbyterians, their average age in 2018 was 60. And I would say just anecdotally from my mainline pastor friends here in town, who are amazing pastors, by the way, like that's some really gifted, younger, inclusive, progressive pastors. Some of that I think has been the mainlines kind of siloing, like kind of digging into whichever denomination they are. Some of it I think is not adapting, you know, their traditions, the music, all that sort of thing. So a lot of our people are coming from an Evangelical sort of background and the Evangelicals for all the awful that they do, and I don't want anything to do with them, the thing that they have done is adapt at least the facade of their worship services to be a little bit more culturally adept or relevant, if that makes sense.

Doug (00:21:14):

I think it helps also that we have currently in our home state this really progressive government.

Emily (00:21:20):

Absolutely.

Doug (00:21:20):

We just banned conversion therapy, and so I would think that you kind of feel more aligned with the current right now, at least in the mitten. I mean, that's not going on everywhere for sure.

Emily (00:21:31):

Yeah. I mean we even try and put those things in our liturgy. So we light these candles for corporate prayer every week and we were like, oh, one of the candles we should light this week is thankfulness that we have now banned conversion therapy in Michigan. And so trying to actually tie it into,

Doug (00:21:48):

So do you think, I remember when, when I went to church and I felt dragged to church, just full disclosure here. Yeah. It was a burden for me. First thing we did was scan the program to look for the point where it said “Children will be excused to the learning centers.” <Laugh>. And we went to Sunday School. But I do say, looking at the robes and looking at the stained glass, there was a level of “I'm in someplace serious. I'm in someplace important.” Yeah. You know, “the clothes make the person.” When you contrast that with a very low church, which is very loosey goosey by comparison, how do you think that impacts the way in which people take church seriously for lack of, I'm phrasing this very crudely, but the point is

Emily (00:22:33):

Good question.

Doug (00:22:33):

When church is evolving toward a lower format. How does that impact people's idea of how important it is in their lives?

Emily (00:22:44):

That's a good question. I think for me, it's trying to create a space where people feel like they can come as their full selves without having to put on some sort of mask or facade about who they are, or that they have to swallow the whole thing, the whole kit and caboodle.

Doug (00:23:00):

It's a big caboodle.

Emily (00:23:01):

Yeah. Just making space for saying, I actually care a lot less about what you believe. I care a lot more about connection. I care about us having shared stories and rituals that help shape us, help have conversations, help have disagreement. We can still be in community together. So I guess my hope is that if it's more relevant or more practical for people's lives, that they'll be more apt to want it and want it for their kids. And maybe that's just coming up low church. I've just never had much for what we call the “smells and bells” is what we

Doug (00:23:34):

Smells and bells. That's right.

Magda (00:23:36):

I get that. Are you okay telling the story about when you needed the garb for your recent ordination?

Emily (00:23:43):

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Maybe I should <laugh>. So I was recently ordained into The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and you know, many of these pastors are coming from various denominations and they, a lot of them have more ornate robes, at least for ceremonies. Even if they have a lower church setting, they often will have robes that they wear. And so, I just don't, because I preach in very, very casual wear and sometimes in my Birkenstocks, and I didn't want to be the only one without them. So they were like, bring your robes and bring, you know, bring your stole, but you can't do this color, this color, this color. And some of those robes are hundreds of dollars, these ceremonial robes. And I thought this is going to be the only time I ever wear this. So I went on to Amazon and I found an Anglican priest Halloween costume <laugh> that I ordered and, and I think actually works for it. I don't want to be disrespectful to the traditions that use those and value those, but I also felt like it might be more disrespectful if I actually showed up in, you know, what I wear.

Doug (00:24:49):

There's a blog post there called “Damned If You Do” <laugh>

Emily (00:24:52):

<Laugh>. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure somebody who knows a whole lot about clerical garb looked at that and was like, “oh, are you from an Anglican church?” 

Doug (00:25:03):

But I really liked your answer to my question just because I understand it comes from a place very different from where I think many people who go to Blue Ocean are coming from, I mean, many of them maybe including yourself, maybe they gravitate toward you because you have the shared experience of having been run out of someplace else because of who you are, which is tragic and preposterous. And I appreciate that because that's, I think, the central tension to the church's role in a family life. It brings out so much individual choice. And it brings out real passion in terms of how life should be. And so what kind of headwinds in terms of attracting people or discussions that you've had, do you think are at the center of why churches, I mean the latest stat I saw was something like just over half the country decides that it's even remotely religious in a way.

Emily (00:25:56):

Yeah, I think the nuns are up to 30%, but if you look at Gen Z, it's something like 48% of Gen Z say they have no religious affiliation. And you know, I'm sure myriad reasons why, but political association with the far right. People feeling like if they're Christian, they'll be associated with that is a big driving factor. Having had the bad experience that I had that both my wife and I have had to just ask ourselves as adults, like “Why do we? We don't have to do church.” I can do a lot of other things, so why continue to do it? And I think having to ask myself that question, and seeing if this is the value I find in it, maybe other people also find this kind of value in it, has helped shape the kind of church that we started.

Emily (00:26:43):

Because the gift I think of being outed and fired from a denomination for being gay and getting to go and start something fresh was that I kind of got to press a reset button without having to do a big change process or do it within the confines of a denomination that might, you know, have a lot of thoughts about what could change and how it could change and when it could change. And, you know, without the identity issues maybe that come with a longstanding tradition. And so for me that's, it's been like, okay, so what is the value? And I think for me, the value has been community. And we've known for a long time now that the fabric of American society is breaking down. We don't have that many places where people are just coming together and doing community over decades.

Emily (00:27:33):

You know, there's certain clubs or organizations, but the actual fabric of social interactions has been breaking down. And that is important to me, especially as somebody who doesn't live near family. And so we have a lot of people, younger people who are more transient, who do live away from family, who are having to move to different cities in order to find work. So where can you find that kind of community that's healthy and where you don't have to sign something saying, “This is what I believe to be part of this community.” I just don't do any of that. I think a place where we can have these shared stories and rituals to talk about justice and what it means to live together with others in community is important. I guess I'm not ready to cede Christianity or the Christian stories to the interpretation of the far right. And if everybody who's progressive just sort of walks away and says, “I'm just done interpreting,” it basically just leaves these longstanding stories as tools of injustice and oppression. And I'd like to be part of the re-imagining or the keeping of the flame, so to speak, of like, “No, there's actually a much longer tradition of justice in these stories. And the way you're using them is actually harmful and inappropriate. I'm not going to leave those to you.”

Doug (00:29:01):

Is that what kind of reinforces your commitment? It's kind of like, it's the fight in a way. It's kind of bringing Christianity back to what it kind of meant and as opposed to how it's wielded now.

Emily (00:29:12):

Maybe, I don't know if you can fight. More like “I'm an idealist and I know this about myself.” I want to hold onto something that I feel is beautiful and has been meaningful to me and I'm not willing to give up. Am I fighting? Maybe. So one of my things that I've been hoping to see more of in the US is we've seen a lot of deconstruction, right? People walking away rejecting a tradition that's been harmful. And in a lot of ways, I say push off an abusive system, right? I get in trouble sometimes with fellow pastors 'cause there's some people I say, yeah, you should walk away. Like maybe that's the first step in getting it away from an abusive system. Right? And there's a lot of deconstruction that goes on. There are a lot of tools for deconstructing faith. There's a lot of criticism, plenty of podcasts, plenty of books. But there's not a whole lot that's sort of re-imagining what can faith look like that's relevant and progressive and isn't just about sort of fighting or self-defining against something. And so that's the part that I've been most interested in.

Magda (00:30:11):

When you started saying years ago that this was the “next reformation,” this was The New Reformation or whatever, that really struck me a lot. And I feel like I've been observing a lot of the old ways, leftover from the last reformation, that are just gone now, have died out. I mean, a year or two ago, Doug's and my older son said to me, “Mom, why are so many girls so into astrology?” And I immediately answered him, without really thinking about it, “Because modern religions don't have anything for them and have failed them. So they're returning to old forms of faith.” Yeah. And I see Gen X and Millennials principally asking for something. They're looking for something. And when they're expressing what they're looking for, I'm like, “Well, okay. That, to me, is God. That's my relationship with God.”

Magda (00:31:12):

And that's the relationship with God that is being nurtured inside the church that you're the pastor of. So I feel like this is, I want to say “the next thing” but that sounds too capitalistic, right? But it is an answer to what human beings are looking for. And yeah, what I was always taught about church was not that it was a place that you had to report into, that you had to sign into, but that you weren't obligated to church in any way. It was that Jesus said, “gather together to support each other.” Church was like a gift of a group of people that would support you in your faith. We did get gold stars for attendance in Sunday school, but my mom hated that. I mean, we were there every week. No fail, right? But my mom hated those gold stars. She hated the attendance thing. She hated that we got rewarded for memorizing Bible verses. She could not stand certain songs that they made us sing. Like she finally had it out with the lady who played piano for Sunday school and was like, “You cannot make these children sing Onward Christian Soldiers. That is not okay.”

Emily (00:32:27):

Oh my gosh, Magda, I've got this experience. We actually had some congregants early on. They were a little bit older. He passed away and he had been an Episcopalian a lot of his life and he loved “Onward Christian Soldiers” and his Episcopalian pastor before, he would never let him sing it. So he put it in his, like, he wanted that at his funeral. And so it was me and Ken and another Episcopalian pastor friend who's progressive, and we were all just sitting there like, “well, he got his way at his funeral.” <Laugh>. 

Magda (00:32:58):

Well, I mean, the song itself, the music itself, is great. It just sounds like some sort of military march or even like a drinking song, right? So if you could turn the lyrics into like a drinking song or

Emily (00:33:11):

I mean, we could do it, right?

Magda (00:33:12):

“Drop it low, put on your sequins,” something like that. Like an ode to drag queens. Just change the words to Onward Christian Soldiers because it's musically a good song. 

Emily (00:33:23):

Yeah. But post-colonially, you're just like, wow, <laugh>. Exactly.

Magda (00:33:26):

Exactly. I can't stand any of the military imagery. Like when people call themselves “prayer warriors,” I'm just like, oh, no, no, no!

Emily (00:33:34):

I think I get so exasperated when I think about Christians who read the text and come away with the New Testament as being like pro-militancy or pro-empire. I was just saying, the majority of the New Testament is so anti-Roman Empire and

Doug (00:33:50):

The bridge of your nose gets a big workout. I get it. Yeah.

Emily (00:33:52):

Yeah. The earlier Christians were pacifists and tended to opt out of military service. And so to have adapted this sort of very militant, expansive language is, yeah, it's a little baffling.

Doug (00:34:09):

I was hoping to back up a bit and talk about how Blue Ocean came to be.

Magda (00:34:14):

Yeah. Because when we first moved to Ann Arbor Doug and I were already divorced. We moved to Ann Arbor separately, but six blocks away from each other so I could go to business school. And we got here in the summer of 2011. And I remember at the time I had come from NYC, I had been going to Lutheran church my whole life and then had switched to a church in the Vineyard denomination that I didn't really know a whole lot about except that I saw their ads on the subway and they were really thought-provoking. And I got to the church in New York and they were just asking fantastic questions. And so that was where I was. And then when I moved to Ann Arbor, I told my pastor in New York and he said, “Oh, my best friend Ken is the pastor of the Vineyard church in Ann Arbor. You should go there.” And so, yeah, I started going to that church and really liked Ken and really liked you. And I remember the first time, it was maybe the second or third week that I came and you were preaching and I was like, “Oh, they have a lesbian pastor. Okay, this is cool.”

Emily (00:35:19):

Yeah.

Magda (00:35:20):

And now I'm like, “Oh, she wasn't out at all!” <Laugh>

Emily (00:35:24):

No, wasn't at the time.

Magda (00:35:26):

It wasn’t, was not a question for me at all. I just saw you and was like, “I'm gonna get some good stuff from her.”

Emily (00:35:32):

It's so funny. My wife said the first time she saw me walking, I kinda ran up onto a stage. She's like, “I was like, ‘Ooh, she's lesbian. Does she know this?’” <Laugh> <laugh>? So apparently, apparently your gaydar is good.

Magda (00:35:48):

Well, I went to a women's college, so I guess, yeah, my gaydar is probably good.

Emily (00:35:52):

I mean I, I was out, you know, to Ken, I knew I was gay and had said that before I was on staff. But the denomination I was part of didn't have any national policies at that time. We were in a change process. We had actually talked about a three-year change process of becoming an affirming congregation. And I was helping with that. I met my wife in the middle of that, and suddenly the denomination had policies. Ken had written his book, A Letter to My Congregation. So he had written a book that had really ruffled the denomination’s feathers because he was on the national board at the time. And then I was on staff. And so, you know, it was just, it was a container that could not hold us. I was fired when I came out. Ken was fired for not firing me. And good riddance.

Doug (00:36:41):

Is this the church that was in the roller rink?

Emily (00:36:44):

Yes,

Magda (00:36:44):

The roller rink church. In hindsight, like, I've joked around that when I walked in and they had not kept the wooden floor of the roller rink, they had carpeted over it and put in permanent bleachers, I should have known. Because if you were the lucky church to get a fully-formed roller rink, why would you not have roller disco Friday worship where you, like everybody came in and like you had the lights and the roller skates and playing like all those eighties Christian bands, right? Like yeah. Some Amy Grant, some Stryper,

Emily (00:37:18):

All that kind of stuff.

Doug (00:37:21):

If we just had some interfaith roller derby.

Emily (00:37:23):

Oh, now that could be really fun. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (00:37:27):

And the winner is the predominant religion of the country.

Emily (00:37:31):

<Laugh>.

Doug (00:37:31):

What is it like to start a new church? Were you put in place to lead this new church? When it broke off,

Emily (00:37:38):

I was, it was essentially a church split. I would say about a third of that congregation came with us. And at the time, Ken, who had been my boss, he and I decided to co-lead just to make it absolutely clear that women could pastor at the top.

Doug (00:37:56):

Will there be a shuttle bus from the church to Winona for the wedding <laugh>.

Emily (00:38:02):

That could be fun.

Magda (00:38:04):

That would be a long, long shuttle bus. 11 hours. Yeah. I mean Mike and I were talking to our officiant, but we were joking around last night, because in college, Jonathan got kicked out of the Christian group for not being Christian enough,

Doug (00:38:20):

I'm sorry I invoked the name in vain. But I'm just so tired of these organizations that purport, to include and to nurture, who cast out the other, and that's a tradition that's millennia old. How do you keep your enthusiasm for such a system? Right? 

Emily (00:38:37):

I know. There's no humility, there's just absolutely no humility of like, “oh, we could be wrong.” Yeah. Right. 

Doug (00:38:43):

It's just, it seems so oppressive. I just, I've never understood. I love the idea of community. Yeah. And one of the great things about being a part, a peripheral part of, of ELCA in New York was the community. Like, we met our kids' first babysitters through them. Yeah. I thought the people were wonderful. I thought our pastor, I love the parallels between him and you because he would admit straight up, he wrestles with his faith, he wrestles with his purpose. Yep. And those are the people that attract my attention because they're at least critical thinkers and not just automatons who it's “faith or die.” So you were a history major, which I think dovetails well with your experience and where you are now. Yeah. Because there's so much history as part of the church. But when you first ventured into full-time theology, how many years ago was that?

Emily (00:39:32):

Late 2007. 

Doug (00:39:34):

Okay, so 16 years.

Emily (00:39:35):

16 years ago. Yeah.

Doug (00:39:38):

And a lot of this podcast is about taking stock of our path and what we thought was ahead for us at this age and how little resemblance it bears. So what we thought it would be. So if you were to look at your 16 years in the clergy, would you have even anticipated the kind of life you have now? And if not, what do you think the biggest difference is?

Emily (00:39:58):

I wanted to be a history professor and honestly, I'd audited a couple of history grad courses at U of M and then I had a professor meet with me and he was like, “I'm just gonna be really honest with you. If you're not American history, your chances of getting hired are going to be pretty slim. And even at that, it's going to be, you know, you'll have to be sort of willing to go anywhere.” And that was sort of a wake up call to me. And then I feel like I just sort of, the rhythm of my life has always been ordered by, like, I go to church on Sunday and I enjoy meditation and prayer and I like thinking about theology and I've always enjoyed wrestling with the different parts of scripture and trying to see like, how is it useful? How does this provide wisdom? Does this give me a framework for thinking about justice and for thinking about power? And I like community building. And so I just kind of stuck with it. Did I imagine it? Not at all.

Doug (00:40:49):

I asked you that because I admire someone who has every reason not to do what they're doing and is still doing it.

Emily (00:40:56):

Yeah. I was working in business, I was good at it. I didn't, I didn't love it, but I still am pretty good at business. I've had times of thinking about like, well if I, if I didn't do this, what would I do? And I have pretty specific ideas about what that would be. I don't know, I just feel like a little bit more freedom. Like, oh yeah, I'm choosing to do this so that even when there's times when it is difficult because sometimes you're helping people, you're pastoring people through some like really, really difficult times in life where it's like, “no, I'm doing this and this is why I'm doing it and this is why it's important to me and why it lines up with my values.” I have a weird set of skills if I said, like I'm a jack of all trades and a master of nothing, and it's kind of this weird cobbled together.

Emily (00:41:37):

Like, I've got some business skills, I've got some people skills, I've got some history and theology skills that I think kind of fit this weird moment that we're in where we're meeting the sort of “adapt and be nimble” and cobble together “what could church look like in a way that's actually helpful and gives a framework.” And so can I keep some of what was really meaningful and helpful? And that I think could actually help give kids a sense of like, here's a framework for doing justice work. We always say “empathy, inclusion and wonder” are what we hope our kids are taking away from it. Like if they come to church, I want them to feel loved. I want them to know that there's a place they can be fully them. I want them to know that there are people who are cheering for them to thrive in all of <laugh>, all of whatever it is that they love and are, you know, made to be however they are.

Doug (00:42:28):

Yeah, I want to make a joke about, you know, dogma and creative thinking and how never the twain shall meet, but I'll

Emily (00:42:35):

Well, I'm not big dogma person. 

Doug (00:42:37):

No, you're not. But I'm saying many people are. Yeah. And many people gravitate to dogma because the alternative options are stressful. I don't want to pile on religion, but I feel as though I am. But I love the fact that talking to you about it, you can take it, you know, <laugh>, it's like it's, you must confront this a lot.

Emily (00:42:54):

Religion, unhealthy religion should be critiqued and cast off. Right? I mean that we can see the fruit of what it's doing in our country. It's actually destroying our democracy. Bolstering white supremacy and homophobia, all these things. But I also think the seeds of combating that can be found within the tradition that's flaming it. And so you have to have people articulating that. So there's an alternative when people are like, “I don't know if this is working for me. What else could it mean?”

Magda (00:43:21):

You know, I watched that whole Shiny Happy People thing and I've been sort of encountering Evangelicals along the way and you know, I mean I've asked you Emily, like half a dozen times, why would somebody join a church and go to a church that made them feel bad about themselves all the time, or at least every week. If there's someplace where I can tell I don't belong, where they're not being nice to me, yeah, I will just walk out. And I know that's because of my early church experience. So it's just baffling to me. Like I just can't imagine taking your kids someplace every week that didn't think your kids were good enough the way they were. Enough. I think it's just a fundamental difference of how you approach life that some people have been sort of set up to go into these high-demand religions by not being told to trust themselves or use the scientific method or observe or anything like that.

Emily (00:44:19):

Well, yeah. I mean especially if you grew up female

Magda (00:44:23):

Yeah.

Emily (00:44:24):

Or Black or brown, you're taught to not trust your body. Right. And I think that's been some of the reclaiming that's been going on just in our larger culture of like listening to your body. And going through trauma. I think that there's a real attraction to certainty if your life has been chaotic in any way. I once had a friend who I haven't talked to in many years, 'cause she would not be kind to me as a gay person, but when I was younger and we were still talking, she was just embracing the patriarchy and she's just like, she's had seven kids and she's gonna have “as many as God will bless her with” and that's fine, that's her choice. But she's like, you know, I just, I want my husband to make all of these decisions for the family. And I was like, but why, why would you seek that to somebody else? Like, I would just never <laugh>. Right. You know, do that. And she's like, “Well, for me it's just a relief. I don't have to think about the big things.” And I was like, oh, oh my gosh. Because an appeal to some people, it's just, I think there's an appeal that's just like, I don't, it's not to me

Magda (00:45:26):

In the Barbie movie, which I know you've seen three times. I've seen twice. Right. 

Doug (00:45:30):

Hey, no spoilers. No spoilers.

Magda (00:45:32):

Well there's one line.

Emily (00:45:33):

Oh Doug, you've gotta see it <laugh>.

Magda (00:45:35):

By the time this comes out, it will have been three weeks. So it's allowed to have spoilers. 

Doug (00:45:40):

Alright, I'm gonna go hide under the desk while you talk to her about it. I'll be back shortly. Okay. 

Magda (00:45:42):

There's that line when the, whoever it is who's the doctor or the physicist or something says like, “Oh, it's like a spa day for my brain. I don't have to make any decisions.”

Emily (00:45:54):

I noticed that too. Yeah. And I was like, “I've actually heard someone say that.” Yeah. There's definitely a theological undertones. Greta Gerwig, you know, the writer and director grew up Unitarian. Right. Rachel and I just watched an older film of hers where her character goes to this Unitarian church and I was like, I bet that was her church growing up. And it totally was <laugh>. It was really cute. <Laugh>,

Doug (00:46:16):

We were talking about your skillset. I really, you know, your varied skillset that you bring to this current, I don’t know if you refer to it as an apotheosis of all the paths you've trod. Let's not forget the skill of public speaking.

Emily (00:46:29):

Yeah.

Doug (00:46:30):

So do you prepare a sermon every week?

Emily (00:46:32):

I do. Pretty much. 

Doug (00:46:34):

Because I've always been fascinated by what it's like to prepare that, to prepare a sermon every week, to inspire people, educate people, be current, be traditional, be all things to all people. Much as Barbie had to be.

Emily (00:46:48):

<Laugh>. Yeah.

Doug (00:46:48):

And not repeat yourself. What is that process like when you sit down to write something? How are you inspired and how do you edit and what's that like? 

Emily (00:46:57):

That's a really good question, because there is a lot of creativity to it. I can understand why my mainline pastor friends use, many of them use the lectionary. So it's sort of a set, it gives you, this is what you preach on this week, this is what you preach on the next week.

Doug (00:47:11):

Can you imagine if there was like a PreachGPT, we'd all be just <laugh>.

Emily (00:47:15):

I want to come back to the “how I create,” but I will tell you that of course I tried AI. I was like, I just want to see what it would do. Yeah. If I type in “progressive Christian sermon on Psalm whatever.” I just wanted to know. And then I tried “progressive Jewish sermon” because the Christian one got a little bit weird. <laugh>. They were all like so formulaic and generic and it was a lot of just repeating progressive like buzzwords over and over and over where I was like, it's just not even usable. It might be usable if you're not a very good preacher and just want something generic to say. I thought, well maybe it'll be helpful for resources. So I was like, “Could you give me quotes from Womanist (Black woman) scholars or theologians about Palm Sunday?”

Emily (00:47:57):

I think I was trying, I was like, let's just see if it'll help me with my Palm Sunday service. And it completely made up something. It was like <laugh>. It was like Kelly Brown Douglas–who's a real person, who's a real scholar–”The Reverend Doctor Kelly Brown Douglas wrote this in Stand Your Ground,” which is a real book. And it gave me this big long quote that was kind of great. It was this really subversive, amazing Jesus revolutionary kind of quote. But I was like, I have that book. So I got it out and I was like, that is not in there <laugh>. And then I actually bought the Kindle version so I could search it to make sure. And I was like, it just totally made up a whole quote. And then I put in myself, I was like, “Can you quote Emily Swan from Solus Jesus.” And it made up something that I never said. So that was a little scary because if people use that and put that in blogs, it might start learning that and thinking those are real quotes. That's completely like a whole different topic. Right.

Doug (00:48:54):

Well let's talk about your real ones. Yeah. So how do you put together

Emily (00:48:57):

I tend to like to look out about a year and I really try and hit different themes, but I'm just thinking about spiritual development, justice development. So like, am I doing something on connection to God, some sort of contemplative or mystical sort of work? Like during the Trump years I was doing a lot of anti-empire. I just try and find things that have some resonance, like what's actually going on in our communities. And then I'm kind of flexible in that. So if something happens, like when the Black Lives Matter protests, you know, move everything aside and say okay, we're going to talk about scapegoating and the experience of racism and white supremacy and how, you know, Christianity's contributed to that. In other words, I try and be responsive to what's coming up. I preach shorter than I used to, which is helpful. I think Covid helped us push that down a little bit, realizing that people's brains were not processing as much information as we were probably putting out. I haven't written my sermon for a week from Sunday, but I've been thinking about it for months. Does that make sense? So I'm constantly reading, constantly thinking about, and

Doug (00:50:06):

You're a writer. Writer comes with torment.

Emily (00:50:08):

Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>. And you're right. There is something, it's not like being like a professor or something where you could maybe repeat like you've got a class and you've kind of set your curriculum and you can do it every year. There is this sort of ongoing creativity. It's part of what I like about the job because it keeps me challenged.

Doug (00:50:23):

So do you brainstorm at all? I mean, is it one of those things where you think about, you know, no judgment, just get a bunch of ideas on the paper and seeing how I can merge them in, you know, in a particular flow or, and then head toward a conclusion that'll leave them, you know, rolling in the aisles with ecstasy?

Magda (00:50:41):

That’s not your goal.

Emily (00:50:41):

That's not what I come away. No, no. That's not my goal. My goal is if they feel like they've learned something or have gotten some tool, that's helpful. But usually if you come away with one thing that's kind of practical or helpful or a tool like a food for thought, that's more my goal.

Magda (00:50:58):

I feel like the sermons of yours that I feel like have really hit what I assume is your goal are the ones that have revealed something to me. Something that I had thought about previously and hadn't figured out yet. Or something that I hadn't thought about before. And you brought up and you explained it and I was like, oh, I can completely get that. You've attacked some stories in the Gospels that have been problematic and pulled them apart. I've been like “Oh, okay. Once again, context matters.” I kind of think if anybody could summarize your entire body of work, it would be “Context matters.” There was one you did a couple weeks ago explaining the case for reparations, taking into account the idea that people who would be listening to your sermon would be generally in favor of reparations, but have concerns about the logistics. But then you made it spiritual and I really appreciated that. I thought that that like, if there was a way to put that in the canon of literature about reparations, it should go in that because it was just so good at explaining, and I think that's it. You're good at explaining things

Emily (00:52:21):

Right. And I think of myself as part of like the keeper or the helping give shape or interpretation to stories that maybe we've heard it interpreted one way and that's maybe a less helpful interpretation. I try and not just have it be me, but also listening to my fellow pastor friends who I talked to. Like what are you seeing in your congregations? What's been helpful framework for people. I also see the church as a place where we can do just like community education, right. So Juneteenth is still a relatively new national holiday. A lot of Black people have celebrated Juneteenth for a lot longer, but a lot of white people don't really know what it is. So I was like, let's just do a history of Juneteenth. And some of that's just education, you know?

Doug (00:53:04):

That's preposterous. Yeah. I was a history major in college and I didn't know about Juneteenth or the Tulsa massacre like three years ago. It's appalling.

Emily (00:53:13):

It's appalling.

Doug (00:53:15):

But you know, we all know who writes the history, don't we?

Emily (00:53:18):

We do.

Doug (00:53:19):

Well, I really appreciate Magda that you came in and talked about your perception of her sermons as someone who receives them. I think that's, yeah, and that's the kind of feedback, right, Emily? I don't know how often, how often you get the chance for someone to come up to you and say, “Hey, what you told me this week really resonated. And I feel incrementally more intelligent. It's nice about my place in the world.” That's a nice, that's a nice feeling, you know, to get that kind of feedback and inspire you to, you know, trudge through another rough draft.

Emily (00:53:46):

Yeah. I mean, something I did a few years ago was I wrote down all of the things that I felt like were part of healthy religion, that I wanted to be part of this sort of re-imagining, like, what would just a healthy, practical community look like? What would I want to do? And I go back to that over and over and I really try and work those themes into the sermons. And so some of that is, you know, like in Western thinking, we tend to think very linearly and don't necessarily see things in relation to other things. And I think maybe having just lived and studied in China and learned a bit of Chinese and Tibetan, like learning that, oh, people think in different ways. Like how can we train our brains to see things more relationally? How can we be less anthropocentric? In other words, how do we take the human out of the center of <laugh> the world and creation, you know, where we're just part of nature.

Emily (00:54:41):

How do we talk about how we're inherently good? I don't think Augustine is right with his original sin. I don't think Augustine gets mystery and paradox.

Magda:

I don't think Augustine's right about most things. 

Emily:

I don't think so either. How do we talk about reducing shame and slowing down? How can we talk about power dynamics? How do we talk about the oppression of late stage capitalism and its, you know, completely unregulated nature. I'm not completely anti-capitalist, but I am anti completely unregulated capitalism. How do we talk about Christian nationalism? How do we talk about scapegoating and justice? How do we talk about comfort with suffering and death, which our culture's so bad at? There's been people who are writing, you know, about Degrowth, and Magda, in your sphere, you might be familiar with some of that. Where it's like, I think some of that work is really interesting. I'm actually kinda gearing up to talk about financial justice probably in the winter. A big one using, I think the story of Job, no, not Job, Jonah which is fairly anti-empire, right? And so that's the kind of thing because I mean, young people are coming into lifelong debt. If we're not taking sort of this burden of debt seriously on the young, the church will be completely irrelevant.

Doug (00:56:00):

Well, it sounds like you see this church and your place in it. It's more along the lines of there's social change here that needs to happen. Yeah. And it can be based, the traditions that you've read and read about aren't necessarily removed from the change that needs to happen because social change has been an aspect of our lives since organized religion became a thing.

Emily (00:56:25):

Yeah. And the Bible's Jewish, right? Yeah. And Jesus was a Jew. And the entire written <laugh> scripture comes to us from the point of view of the oppressed, oppressed by the Egyptian empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Roman Empire. And so it's all coming from this particular perspective that I think can be helpful for people. And that's why I think it's relevant.

Doug (00:56:52):

And I think a lot of people are unaware of that relevance. I think that's a real calling in terms of bridging that gap and saying we're all hearing about what people would do in the name of Jesus

Emily (00:57:04):

Uhhuh <affirmative>,

Doug (00:57:05):

Even though we're kinda losing track of the kind of person Jesus was and how he would've reacted to hanging out with the broken and the botched. I love the fact that this is a big job, a fledgling church, and you've become the face of it and the heart of it. So when you see yourself carrying this church forward, what do you see as your biggest priority in terms of how to grow the community, how to propagate your messaging and to help people recognize that as people lose track of their faith maybe, or lose track of their, of their role of religion in their lives. That it actually can be more relevant than they might think.

Emily (00:57:46):

Yeah. It's funny. I think I have a little bit of an allergy to that big, like, growing thing because of what I come from. I come from a more Evangelical tradition where it was all like expansiveness that I see as pretty tied into sort of a colonial mindset. Growing isn't my, has never been like my big priority. I just want people to find us for whom we would be helpful. Or I just want to be able to kind of grow enough that like the church remains healthy and that we're all able to continue doing what we do together. I just want to be a really good local church. And when I say local, I want to also include that there are a lot of people who join us on Zoom. Magda will probably be one of those for a little while while you're in Boston. Sort of local. I just want to be a good healthy church community and show that that can be done. I don't have like a ton of aspirations beyond that. And I sometimes see it as like, I think that there's a lot of Western Christianity that is on the diminuendo, <laugh> <laugh>, if you know a musical term. I had a music minor that is I think is

Doug (00:58:49):

Oh, you buried the lede. Really, we're about to wrap up and you tell us you have musical training ,too.

Emily (00:58:54):

I do, yeah. I was one class away from a double major at Butler. So, and I do think that there's quite a bit of Western Christianity that's going to continue to diminish and I think that that'll be good. And I think that whatever kind of starts to spring up from that will be hopefully healthier. And I'm like, I just want to kind of survive and, and be this place that can kind of pass down this tradition and say, look, it's not just all this other destructive stuff. There's something else that's still here that future generations can tend, and it hasn't been neglected.

Doug (00:59:29):

No, I appreciate that. I think there are two very different groups in the world. There are those who want to do something good and the audience will come. Yeah. And there are those who just want to do something. So then do all the engineering to make sure the audience knows about it, regardless of how good it is, and I'm standing firm in the first camp and it sounds like you are too. And I, I just think that's the way to go.

Emily (00:59:50):

Oh man. I mean watching, I watched a lot of the second camp and I just don't have a whole lot for it. <Laugh>, <laugh>. It seems there's plenty of that in my profession. We'll just say that.

Doug (01:00:01):

Yeah. Using PreachGPT.

Emily (01:00:04):

Yeah, exactly. <Laugh> <laugh>. I know a lot of people don't love like Myers-Briggs stuff, but I'm just like, I feel like I'm just like this little INFP, like both my wife and I are INFP. We're both just little idealists who just want to do good in the world. 

Doug (01:00:18):

Well, you're both INFPs. How does that work to be the same type? Aren't you both

Emily (01:00:24):

It's mostly good. We get each other somehow. I think we get each other on a lot of levels. We probably don't get details tended to in some ways. 

Doug (01:00:34):

Well, I've seen your wife is also a bit taller than you, so you really don't share much wardrobe. 

Emily (01:00:38):

We absolutely do not, but you know what, we have the same size feet, so we have shared some shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of nice. Right?

Doug (01:00:45):

Same like me and my son. I get it.

Emily (01:00:47):

Yeah. Nice.

Doug (01:00:48):

Which means he helps himself to my shoes and leaves them everywhere and he also doesn't care if anything matches.

Emily (01:00:54):

Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (01:00:55):

He'll grab one shoe and another shoe and just wear 'em out of the house and then leave them somewhere. And I'm left trying to match up my shoes.

Emily (01:01:01):

Nice. <Laugh>. I just, I've gotten a kick outta Robert, too, and hearing about all of his travels and adventures.

Doug (01:01:11):

Yeah. His slow metamorphosis into Jack Kerouac.

Emily (01:01:15):

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>.

Magda (01:01:19):

Okay. So Emily, if people wanted to read your book or listen to your sermons, can they do that? Tell people how to find your works?

Emily (01:01:30):

Yes, you can. You can find the church at a2blue.org, the letter A, the number 2, the color blue, dot org. And you can listen to my sermons from there. Those are available in podcast form. Book can be found anywhere you can order books.

Magda (01:01:50):

And what's it called?

Emily (01:01:52):

It's called Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance.

Magda (01:01:55):

Go to a2blue.org. They can find your sermons, they can find your blogs, they can find some of the stuff Ken wrote. They can find the link to the book there, too.

Doug (01:02:03):

Get this 22-year-old to post the transcripts on Medium.

Emily (01:02:06):

Yeah. Can do that. <Laugh>

Doug (01:02:10):

More than ever now I would love to come in and meet you in person and hear more about what Magda's been talking about for years when she does come to town. And thank you so much. I could talk about theology and religion and spirituality for a very long time and I appreciate all the time you've given us. So thank you very much.

Emily (01:02:24):

Thank you. It was good talking with you. It was really good to meet you, too, because I've heard about you some, Doug, because Magda and I have been in a book group together, and it'd be really fun to even just get a beer at the Corner Brewery or something and talk theology and <laugh>. 

Doug (01:02:37):

Oh, done deal. We'll close the place.

Emily (01:02:39):

<Laugh>

Doug (01:02:42):

Offer accepted. What time, what do I wear?

Emily (01:02:45):

Yes, <laugh> Jeans,

Doug (01:02:47):

Jeans is okay. Right? I don't need to go and buy a robe on Amazon? Those are callbacks, everybody.

Emily (01:02:55):

Yeah.

Doug (01:02:56):

Yeah. Anyway thank you very much for listening to Episode 12 of the When the Flames Go Up Podcast with Magda Pecsenye for now, and Doug French. Our guest has been Emily Swan, who is the lead pastor at the Blue Ocean Church here in Ann Arbor. And we'll be back next week with other discussions about spirituality and how your heart needs to shine through whatever they force you to wear over it.

Magda (01:03:19):

<Laugh>, That was horrible.

Doug (01:03:23):

<Laugh>.

Emily (01:03:24):

I thought it was great.

Doug (01:03:26):

It's become the vanguard now. I have to come up with something completely terrible to sign off. So I guess if that becomes our new tradition, I'm all for it.

Emily (01:03:34):

You need to do different song lyrics since you know.

Doug (01:03:38):

Yeah. And until next time, “Backward Christian Soldiers!” <laugh>.

Emily (01:03:42):

There we go. There we go. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug (01:03:46):

Thanks everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye-Bye.

<music>

Emily (01:04:21):

Well, that was fun.