Beyond Survival: What Ministry Leaders Need Now with Dr. Rose Madrid Swetman

by on August 14, 2026

As political division, cultural anxiety, and deep polarization continue to reshape the Church, many pastors find themselves carrying impossible expectations. They’re called to shepherd people through fear, conflict, and uncertainty while navigating their own grief, exhaustion, and questions.

Last year, Dr. Rose Madrid Swetman joined Dan and Rachael to explore the growing burdens facing pastors and ministry leaders and why resilient leadership matters now more than ever. In this conversation, she returns to reflect on how those challenges have continued to evolve.

As Executive Director of the Center for Transforming Engagement at The Seattle School, Rose works alongside pastors, ministry leaders, and church organizations every day.

Drawing on both new research and the stories she’s hearing firsthand, she offers an honest look at the challenges leaders are navigating, and what it looks like to remain faithful in this cultural moment.

You’ll hear why resilience is about more than self-care, why finding the right people to support you is more important than ever, and why practices like lament, Sabbath, community, and discernment aren’t luxuries, but are essential rhythms for sustaining hope.

Whether you’re leading a church, serving in ministry, or simply seeking to follow Jesus in a complex and divided world, we hope this conversation offers some comfort and hope as we pursue what it means to embody the way of Jesus in a changing world.

Related Resources:

About Our Guest:

Dr. Rose Madrid Swetman is the Associate Director of the Center for Transforming Engagement at The Seattle School. She brings a lifetime of ministry experience, having co-founded the Practicing Church in Shoreline, WA and served as the Regional Leader of the Northwest Vineyard USA. She also founded Canopy Scholars, a nonprofit that partners with local agencies to provide tutoring and STEM programs to a diverse population of elementary school students. She continues to teach and preach and is passionate about raising women leaders in church ministry.

Rose has a specific passion for resilience work based on her own story of how ministry impacted her health. In her role as Associate Director, she oversees all of the resilience programs.

Rose obtained her Doctorate of Ministry from Bakke Graduate University, focusing on transformational leadership for the global city.

She and her husband Rich have a blended family of 8 children and over 25 grandchildren.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here.

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

Episode Transcript

Dan: One of the sweetest human beings I know on the face of the earth is with us, Rachael. And I would include you in that category by the way.

Rachael: Oh, yes. Thank you. Fine. I receive that.

Dan: But to have your mentor on. It is a delight to have Rose Madrid Swetman on. And Rose has been on before, but she has a new life and a new position. You are the director of the universe. Is that fair to say, Rose?

Rose: The CEO of the universe. Actually, I think that’s Jesus you’re confusing me with right now.

Dan: Oh, I was just hoping that we could put you into the presidency. No. Nonetheless, let’s just say that this new lovely role that we’re going to be talking about, but again, the role is giving you access to the reality of what we want to talk about. And that is what is, in one sense, the burden and the task of anyone who takes a role as, when I say pastor, I don’t mean that just professionally. I mean who takes the role of shepherding other human hearts. Now, whether that’s formal or informal, it’s a crucial category and you are the new Executive Director of the Center for Transforming Engagement. And there are three parts to what we call The Seattle School and The Seattle School proper, the graduate program; the Allender Center, and the Center for Transforming Engagement. And Rose has a doctorate from a lovely university, but more importantly, she is prolific in words and human beings. Isn’t that fair? How many human beings are related to you?

Rose: Oh, related to me by blood?

Dan: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Just like 28.

Rose: Related? Yeah. Yeah. Rich and I have a blended family of eight children, and with those eight children, we have 28 and counting grandchildren.

Dan: Wow. Okay. Name them all right now. No, that’s wrong.

Rose: No, no. I used to have a spreadsheet.

Dan: I couldn’t do my six quickly.

Rose: No, but I used to have a spreadsheet. I mean, honestly, if you gave me a moment here, I could do it. I would just go through each kid and tell you the kids, but we’re not going to do that.

Dan: I just have to be honest. I am so grateful. There are only six. I don’t do their birthdays. Thank God Becky does. But it’s just, again, to say you are prolific is to say that you have brought such good fruit in and through the kingdom of God. And we are so grateful to have you here. So Rachael, given I’m a little irreverent today, I think you better take over.

Rachael: Well, one of the things that’s been true of the Center for Transforming Engagement, and certainly your tenure with the Center for Transforming Engagement is you guys have a great pulse on what’s happening for ministry leaders. And I think even the way you talk about the Center for Transforming Engagement is just acknowledging Christendom and Christianity is in some sort of crisis right now, especially here in the United States. There’s massive cultural fragmentation and isolation. And we’re having to really rethink and reimagine not only what is the role, but how do people thrive and sustain? I mean, I know the statistics on the amount of ministry leaders and pastors leaving roles because it’s become untenable or they don’t have the resources they need, or it just becomes such a burden on their psyche and their personhood and their relationships. And so much of the work of the Center for Transforming Engagement I think is seeking to be a resource for ministry leaders and pastors to move more towards thriving and sustainability and resilience. And so I think your wisdom on both the research you guys have been doing, the offerings you create, but also the conversations you’re in, the on the ground work with people kind of getting a pulse and hearing from people on the ground, what’s at stake? What are they dealing with? What’s at stake? And I think in some ways, what are some of the possible pathways toward healing towards sustainability?

Rose: Well, it’s a lot. First of all, thanks for having me. I really love being with the two of you, and so thanks for having me. I think what I want to start with just a little bit of context for us, because we all know this moment we’re living in, but let’s just talk about a moment of probably the 20th century brought about just so much change in the church in the United States. And I know when I was doing my research from 2006 to 2010 when I was doing my doctoral studies, that was part of my focus and realized, oh, we’re living through a hinge point in history. The world has changed. A new world is trying to be born. And guess what? We’re living through some of the birth pangs of that. And still, social scientists are saying it could take another 50 to 100 years for everything to really… So we’re living in times of great disorientation. And we’ve seen that, especially COVID amped it. And we saw all of the reports during COVID of so many clergy leaving ministry. We were all seeing the burnout, burnout, burnout. Well, one study that’s come out recently, which seems good, you’re going to hear my… I do have some biases here, you guys, and I’ll try to hold them and just for your audience to make their own decisions. But there’s a recent study, five-year study from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research that have done a five-year study on congregational life in America starting in 2020 to see the effects of COVID and five years later. Okay, you can look that up, Hartford Institute for Religious Research. And it kind of seems like good news, but let me just do some caveats with it because pastors are now living and have been in deep contradiction. Ministry leaders, pastors, and Dan, as to your point, even those that now have left traditional ministry and are trying to do other things and build community in new innovative ways are holding deep contradictions. Now, what this study has shown is that megachurches have grown. They’re back and even spiking over pre-COVID numbers. So some rooms are fuller than they have been in years, and yet Christianity itself is less trusted, less central, and more internally divided than ever before in our lifetime. So a pastor can look out on Sunday and see more people and still feel the ground moving underneath them because the gap between what you see in a room and what you sense about the whole, the disorientation that is going on is very great. So I think when we look at this study and see that, I want to just read you a couple numbers. It says, “The emergency is easing. The share of pastors seriously considering leaving dropped from about two and five during the pandemic to 24% by 2025.” That’s progress, but stabilization is not recovery. And that’s the thing that I think we have to hold onto because when we’re listening to pastors on the ground, it doesn’t feel like recovery to them. They’re still carrying accumulated grief, fatigue. And the job description, I don’t… remember during COVID how we talked about the studies that Barna et. al. were doing? All of a sudden the pastor’s job, like you’re a lead pastor, you have 13 different job descriptions, not just preach, teach the normal things that a pastor is supposed to do. Well, since then, it’s even more now because now leaders are expected to hold people together across political differences. They have to produce digital content to stay relevant. They have to respond to public events by Tuesday. They have to embody moral clarity without losing half the room. So it’s even bigger now, the pressures on leaders to know in this shifting ground, this disorientation, this contradiction that seems to be happening where, oh, churches are actually getting back to pre-pandemic numbers. But guess what the study shows you guys? It shows that it’s not new growth, it’s all transfer growth. So mega-churches… churches that are growing are because people are leaving churches in conflict or no longer they agree with the values. So really what’s happening is our purple churches, other than in the megasphere, are disappearing and people are joining around values. So we have red churches and blue churches and very few purple churches left. So that is huge, huge burdens for ministry leaders to be carrying. The old job was to preach, teach, care, administer, and then now all of a sudden they have so many things on their plate. So do you want me to stop there for a minute? Do you guys…

Dan: No, just again, I have several pastors who I relate with on a pretty regular base, and that seems to describe well their experience that it’s not as discouraging, but in some ways it’s more disorienting. And that craziness of ground shifting, but numbers actually increasing, it is so discouraging to hear that it is a divided world between red and blue.

Rose: Yeah. And it doesn’t seem like we’re coming out of it anytime soon. It doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like the divide keeps growing larger and larger. I think, and we don’t have to get into the advent of Christian Nationalism having such a prominent place now in our churches, but I think it is one of the primary divisive places because A) a lot of people don’t understand theologically what is happening around Christian nationalism. And B) a lot of ministry leaders don’t. A lot of ministry leaders have not had the theological in-depth type of training to go, wait, this is another gospel. This is not the gospel. This good news of Jesus Christ where we care about the poor, the marginalized, the lost the least, and the last is what we used to say. And now all of a sudden that’s been thrown out the window in some ways, in some cases. I think another thing that what we are hearing from pastors on the ground is that pastors have become containers for cultural anxiety. That is a huge piece of what is happening because people aren’t just coming to their ministry leaders, pastors, people that they trust with theological questions, which we just talked about, because their forefront is about fear. It’s about economics. It’s about seeing people, ICE in their neighborhoods and how are we to respond when my neighbors get taken? And so there’s just so much more cultural anxiety. And again, I will go back to pandemic days where we were talking about this very thing. Oh my gosh, there’s so much collective anxiety. And I would say, and I don’t have a lot of research, but I don’t think it takes a research genius to figure out, we never really came out of that anxiety before we were already in another one. I mean, we maybe had a few years of trying to catch our breath between the pandemic and what we’ve got going on now, but it never was really much resolved. And so pastors are required to hold so much, be the container of this collective anxiety that people are feeling. So I think that is another huge reason the work that we do is it’s not even just about the pastor’s resilience, you guys, it’s about organizational health and systems that are created for ministry leaders, pastors to actually be able to be human in a system that allows them to be human and not have to transcend all that’s going on and just care for everyone during this cultural moment. No, we have to design systems where leaders are also part of the care. They cannot be transcending all that’s going on and think that they’re not going to lose their minds and their bodies and their souls during a time like this.

Dan: And again, I concur with all that you just said, but let’s add one more phrase and not lose their jobs.

Rose: Yes.

 

Dan: What feels like the economic power of the divided country is if you differ with certain political orientations or individuals, you have the potential of losing your job. And in that you become then not just the container of others’ fears, but having to contain your own. And when I’m thinking about some of the conversations I’ve had recently, the issue of feeling cowardly, but also knowing how do I keep my job, continue to say important things, but knowing that if I stray into even this category, not even my view on it, but open the door to a category. I’m going to receive countless emails, a campaign where certain very powerful people, and often it doesn’t take more than three or four people to create a maelstrom. And in that context, my child who’s just about to go to college, I’m now in the position of asking, who do I care for most? Do I tell the truth as I see it and feel it? Or do I allow the cultural moment to in one sense obscure what I need to say, but I also need to care for my family? So I’m finding many of my pastoral friends just caught in the question of I can’t afford to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Yet I tell enough truth to know that I am engaging something of the reality of the gospel. It just feels crazy making.

Rose: It is. And this is why I think we have to care. And at the Center, we do a lot around practices for care for clergy leaders, therapists even. How do we pay attention to what’s happening to our nervous systems, to our bodies, to our minds, all of that. Those are all really important. But Dan, to your point, the other thing that I think we have to really begin to focus on is the systemic issues in congregations where a pastor would lose their job if they spoke the truth. Where is their ministry team, their board, whomever? We have to be able to build systems where people can tell the truth. And I don’t even mean in the most bombastic way. Even if it’s just like. I mean, I’ve had pastors tell me, I preach on Matthew 25 and I get emails from people saying you’re being political. Again, people that just preach on different, anything that sounds like a pushback on what is happening in our country. If they’re just literally preaching a sermon, they might’ve preached 25 years ago, the same sermon and got no pushback, but today it’s framed as political. So it is so important that pastors that are not alone in this, that they have boards, ministry leaders, teams where they’re discussing these types of things. They’re prayerfully deciding how much could I say in a sermon without setting the room on fire? They just need more people. Our research has shown people need people, practices and purpose. So the pastor has their purpose. This is their calling, this is their vocation. They might even have really great practices, but who are their people that have their back that will discern with them, pray with them, talk about these things before you just go out in your pulpit or to your small group, wherever, and be able to say things that you’ve already processed with people? Does that make sense?

Rachael: Yeah, absolutely. But I have warring thoughts going on. I have this very idealistic part of me that lives in reality because I work in an organization and I even feel some of these tensions even in my own work with the Allender Center and The Seattle School and how these realities play out and they’ve kind of permeated everywhere. So I want to just name, there’s this very philosophical ideological part of me that’s like, I think there’s probably more integrity in the American Christian endeavor in what’s happening right now as far as some of the roots and the fruit. If American Christianity co-signed in some ways on enslavement and genocide historically, I know not all parts of it, then in some ways Christian Nationalism is probably a more honest representation of some of that fruit. And so there’s this very idealistic part of me that’s kind of like, yeah, you’re going to have to choose this day who you serve, and it is going to cost everything. And then there’s the very human part of me that’s like, oh no, I need my job. And as much as I say I’m like all those things that Jesus says in the gospels, whoever’s not willing to leave his mother and father. Yeah, I’m the rich young ruler in some ways. Do I really want to live into the kingdom if it means losing a job, losing health insurance? I think I’m just naming, I’m holding my own. Yeah, we’re in an apocalyptic moment and Jesus is like, “Choose this day who you’ll follow.” And we all live in this very real reality where it may not be as black and white as that. There is a lot of middle ground where good work is happening, transformation is happening, and these realities are still in the atmosphere. So one of the things I was thinking about, Rose, is I had the privilege of joining you last summer in a series that you guys were doing. I don’t quite remember exactly, but we talked about lament and I know you had lots of other offerings. And I’m wondering if you could name some of those practices that people might be like, oh, I get to claim that as a practice that will lead towards resilience that might even sometimes feel counterintuitive, but we might have to really lean into and start creating in our context as containers for some of this stuff that not a single person besides Jesus could actually contain or hold.

Rose: Yeah. I mean, we talk about practices. I mean, again, if I’m a ministry leader or a pastor in a congregation that I know is very particular, if I say this, I know the room will be set on fire. I have to be very careful. These things that we’re talking about, this is why I think for a ministry leader, pastor, whomever, having another place where you can do lament, where you can tell the truth, where you have to be. I mean, you guys, in all my years, and probably you guys know this too, when you watch leaders crash and burn, there’s reasons and I mean so many reasons, but one of them I think is they just literally have no safe enough place to tell the truth. And that doesn’t mean it needs to come from your pulpit, but it needs to be somewhere, whether you have a therapist, a spiritual director, or a small group of ministry leaders where you can say what is true, what is happening inside of you, and do the lament, do the repentance, pray. That’s one piece. I think the other things like what we talked about, what are the practices of Sabbath? How are you being able to put in different practices that help you sustain your life through this time? So your entire life cannot be absorbed by what is happening in this cultural moment? I mean, Jesus went away to quiet places and prayed and was alone, silence, solitude, sitting in the loving gaze of God every morning with your coffee in silence. Where are you getting grounded in the goodness of God before you even start your day is so important right now. We can’t just keep rushing to the next thing, the next crisis, the next emergency without having that grounding in God and people that we trust that we’re in community with that we can tell the truth to. I think those are some key places. Sabbath is so important right now, you guys. So important for anyone, I think, in order to take a break from the continual onslaught of negativity and divisive, all the things that we talked about, taking time, whether it’s two hours, 24 hours, however you do it, to just leave it all behind and enjoy the goodness of God’s creation and your life as it is. Where are the good things in your life? And that is another thing. Gratitude I think is a practice right now that grounds us in that goodness of God to be grateful for. I’m grateful I’m sitting here talking to you guys alive. You know what I mean? I can breathe. I can breathe, but just being gratitude for all of the ordinary goodness in our lives. I’m grateful for every one of my kids, even the ones that aren’t talking to me right now. I’m grateful for my kids and my grandkids. I mean, that’s real life though, right? We all have things going on even in our own personal lives that are hard. We’ve got kids, we’ve got marriages in trouble, maybe finances, all the things. So these practices that ground us in a place where we can keep our footing and, I would say for ministry leaders and pastors, that’s so important right now because the ground underneath them is moving back and forth and this way and that. It’s like earthquakes almost every day and people coming at them.

Rachael: Well, a Sabbath is such a right sizing also of the powerlessness we feel. The bind of a leadership role is you are tasked with some power and authority to steward. And the things we’re up against, no one person, it is a all hands on deck, but ultimately the God of the universe. We bear responsibility and we are called to join in co-creating. And there are some things. It’s kind of like, yeah, I have to actually entrust this to you and remember that all I can do is bring what I’m bringing. And to take a day off, it actually pushes against that sense of powerlessness or I should be doing more. I can’t take a break. And I think we have a lot to learn from more marginalized communities that have been in long labor towards justice and liberation, finding ways to dance and to delight and to feast and to be together. And those things that remind us what it is we’re trying to reclaim or build together. And so I absolutely. But I think Sabbath can feel so counterintuitive when we’re in crisis and when there’s fires that need to be put out. I think so many leaders especially can feel like if I take a day off, the whole thing’s going to crumble. And so I know that could be like, Dan and I talked about this a lot when we did the Sabbath work, and that was in a more different time I think. And that was still hard for people. Just the normal rhythms of labor that you’re holding and you feel responsible for and you’re tending to.

Dan: Such truth. The other day I asked Becky, “What books do you want to read together for August?” And she said, “There’s a book on Sabbath that I would like us to read.” And I said, “Great. Did that come out recently?” She said, “No, it’s a book some time ago.” And I’m like, it’s a reality that we need to be able, whether we wrote or not, to, in one sense, come back to what feels essentially absurd in the midst of a flagration of fire burning around us to sit, to reflect and to allow delight to actually fuel our capacity to return to the battle. So part of my question for you, Rose, is as you’re working with leaders in the Center, what are you saying to those who are part of the blue? And what are you saying to those who are part of the red churches? Again, just that polemicized and polarized divide. Not that I do it well, but my hope has been that this podcast would offend everyone. I’m not sure we’ve done that well, but how do those in red churches offend and yet keep their job? How do those in blue churches offend but keep their jobs?

Rose: Well, as we are talking about this, our work, one of the things that we do with leaders is one of the practices we help facilitate is how do we hold difference in this cultural moment theologically, politically, and culturally, all the different ways that we are so divided right now. So part of our work with them is I don’t know that people are doing it well, which is why we’re just fighting all the… There’s just so much fighting. So being able to help people realize that there is a way in which we can learn to hold difference. Now that doesn’t mean I hold difference at the extent of somebody’s going to harm me or thinks that I don’t have the right to exist. I’m not talking about that far end of things. I mean in our red, in our blue, everyday people lives. I mean, and I would say even with people that have super different ideas than I do about where the country’s going and all that, the ability to be able to be in a conversation and to. And I think this takes work, you guys, which is another thing we do is try to train people how to respond versus react. Reacting, as you all know, is like I’m in a conversation, somebody says something that triggers me and I’m like, “Rah,” rather than trying to Learn the practices of how do I go, “Oh, I feel this in my body. What do I need to do right now? Maybe I need to get up and walk out and take a few breaths and come back to…” How do I learn to stay at the table with people that have difference is really important right now.

Dan: How’s it going?

Rose: It’s hard. It’s really, really hard work is what I will say. I will say in the cohorts that I’ve done in the last year with mostly pastors. Let me give you one picture of a cohort that I was in last year. I had three… I don’t get vetted who ends up in a cohort, by the way. When we do a Resilience Circle, people just apply and they put them in Circles. I had a Circle last year that ended up having three white male pastors probably in about their 50s, three young women, one Asian American. Anyway, the makeup of that group, and I had one minister from Canada who was a gay woman married to a partner, and she’s a minister in Canada. This group could not have been more different. And when we first did introductions and I heard where they were all coming from when we had our first break, I literally went and got coffee and thought, there’s no way this group can stay together. This is not going to work. You guys, it was so beautiful because by the end of that Circle, as I was listening to each of them, why they were there and all the things, I always ask, “Give me one word or phrase that you’re leaving with today.” Both of those men said, “I was looking for a place where I could be with people radically different from me because I know I have to learn from people that are different from me in order to do my ministry well right now.” They were so courageous. You guys. And I was a little bit worried about how they might trigger some of the young women in the group. One young woman was in the group deconstructing her evangelical world and church trauma. And I just thought how will. It was the most beautiful Circle. By the end, when we did month eight and said our goodbyes, I could not have been… I was crying because these folks showed up. Now that isn’t the story everywhere, but that is the hope that if people can hear, there is a way in which we could sit together and just listen. We don’t have to agree, we don’t have to condone, but listen to… As you two know, you are the brilliance in story work. Behind everybody’s “aah” that they’re pushing at you is a story. And if we could just slow down to understand where that push is coming from for a while to hear one another, that just changes everything, doesn’t it? I mean, for most people, it really does if people would have the time to do that.

Dan: Well, everything else is to some degree a form of dehumanization. And the moment we bring a category that brings the finality of judgment, it leaves us in this terrible bind. Terrible bind. So we’re actually inviting people ultimately to the story of death, resurrection, and ascension, even when we’re differing with someone and the particularity of how they are living that out. So again, it’s so compelling, and I want to come back to that question of how do you in the midst of this, moments like that I know fuel something of the freedom to say, “I can do this again.” But there are many discouraging moments. And I think for many in the context of their ecclesial world, they’re either becoming a bit indifferent, if not outright, or just like, “Oh, I’ve got other things I can do on a Sunday morning,” rather than to enter a world where there’s just heartache and frustration. So how are you. And I’ll say to the two of you, because you are in some ways, the fruit of each other’s lives as a ministry. I mentioned that Rose, you were the mentor to my dear friend Rachael. And Rachael, you were mentored by this good woman. So how are the two of you remaining in the kind of discouragement? And I’m also curious how, as you reflect back, Rachael, on your time with Rose and Rose, your time with Rachael, how did you all get to where you are?

Rachael: I mean, I’m not going to lie. I think I have a lot of moments. Well, I have been in a season as far as my imagination of where the world is moving and progress as our movement, that with time, the gospel just becomes more real. I think so much of that really came from a very privileged place of being in my body and being raised in some of the contexts I’ve been raised in. So I’m in a lot more lament these days. The beatitudes to me have become something that feels like they are for me in a new kind of way of what does it mean to move closer to the heart of God, to actually be in some ways a child of the kingdom of God has actually felt like an invitation to be closer to, I won’t say despair. Sometimes it does feel like despair, but true lament. And if I can let my heart stay tender, even though that feels excruciating at times, I have more imagination. I will be honest, I do not have imagination right now that the ship itself is going to turn towards goodness. I am becoming okay with being a part of a Christianity that is actually not the seat of power. I’m grieving the loss of that and I’m also leaning into that. But I think it for me, and I learned this from Rose as a pastor and a minister, it has become increasingly important for me to be around unapologetic Jesus people who are okay staying in the messy middle. They’re okay with mystery, but they know they are loved by God and that we are responsible. We’re not just waiting for the end. We’re participants in co-creating the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven. So I’m a part of a really small community right now. I think there’s like 30 people that are a part of our community. And I think that’s one of the things I loved about being in community with Rose. And it’s important to be with people of character who can hold complexity and tension and who have… I mean, when I met Rose, her and Rich, it was a purple church because the two head pastors were purple together in their marriage. So I did learn a lot about what does it mean to be in community and friendship and love, doing life together with people who do come from different perspectives. But we have this thing, this person, Jesus, who is calling us forward together. And so I think in some very as simple as that might sound, it has felt really important to be on the ground with actual people trying to live out what does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to offer mutual care? What does it mean to do life together in some ways in the midst of our differences that is humanizing and not dehumanizing? And I will also say I have had to take a break from social media for a season to get the polarized noise and the algorithms that were deeply shaping my brain and body. I’m still tuned in, in different ways. I’m still reading and in thought conversation with people that it feels important to. Paying attention to what’s happening in our world. I’m not checked out. I’m not living in some alternate universe. But I also did have to take a break from the constant barrage of only the bad stuff. I’m tuning into what’s happening, but I’m also trying to pay attention to where there’s also goodness unfolding. So those are some of the things that I think have helped me stay the course. And I have been increasing my practices of leaning into my belovedness with God, that that’s my grounding. And also right-sizing, I think, my power, if that makes sense. I’ve really struggled with the efficacy of my voice with the people I love the most in this world. There’s nothing I could say or do right now that’s like, this is a Holy Spirit change. I can just keep being faithful. I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but –

Rose: It does. It really does. I think that’s good, Rachael, because I feel that way too. I mean, I believe we’re living in a crisis that can’t be solved right now. I do. And I don’t mean that in a despairing way. I think it’s the truth and the reality of our time. And I think a new world is being birthed and it’s one that we have to inhabit. And so what does that mean? My hope doesn’t come in an optimistic way like what you said, Rachael. I don’t think anything’s going to get straightened out quickly. But my hope is in the confidence that God remains active even as all the institutions fall. 

Rachael: That’s right.

Rose: God is still remaining active. God is still God. And so I think it’s a different way of being in the kingdom. First, let me just say, I love the church. I really do. I’ve been in church since I was four years old in different ways. And I’ve been broken by the church many times from being a little girl in my 20s and then again when I was pastoring. And I still love the church. And so I think communities can become signs of God’s kingdom in the midst of decline as to what your soul, Rachael. I mean, I go to a church that if everybody showed up, it would be 40 to 50 people. But man, that church is so active in its neighborhood. I mean, there is so many things going on that are good, fruitful things because people are being faithful even in the smallest of ways. And I just think that that’s going to be more and more how things shake out. One resource I want to do, I’m reading this book and it’s really rocking me and I’m loving it. It’s called Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling by Alan Roxburgh and Roy Searle. And honestly, I think they’ve got a finger on a pulse that’s going on. And do you guys remember way back in the day, Brian McLaren wrote an article in the 2000s, Dorothy on Leadership. And Rachael, I think I did that when I was teaching leadership. I would always give that article out to my MDiv students because he was already seeing the future where the pastor as CEO who has to be the visionary, charismatic, strategic expert has all the answers. Moving to Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, you become a companion, a listener, you’re on the path with everybody. You’re a discerner, you’re a cultivator, you’re still learning. And that’s what these guys are literally saying in this book as well. We have got to allow pastors, ministry leaders, people doing this work to let go of the old ways of leading for the old world and inhabit this new world that is being birthed. And as we’re inhabiting it, there is hope. God is with us. God is leading us through this time, through this wilderness, through whatever you want to call the metaphor of this time. And that is the hope we hold onto. God isn’t gone. God is leading us and faithful people go into times of discernment and prayer and the word about what does it mean to be faithful in this time? That is the biggest question I spend with pastors. Dan, to your point, how being a pastor discern, yes, there’s the money issue. My kids are in college. So what is the Lord inviting you to? That’s the question. Discernment. And God might be saying something very different to Pastor Susie than he’s saying to Pastor Willie. You know what I mean? This is a time for discernment and to answer the call that God might be inviting you to. And it might be very different than what he’s inviting me to.

Rachael: And I just want, before you speak, Dan, I want to add something because Rose, you have been a tremendous mentor in shaping how I imagine the role of a pastor and getting to watch you and do ministry with you. Dan, you co-created with others an MDiv program that I think also had an imagination for the future of how pastors needed to become more human and understand their story and have more capacity to do exactly what you’re saying, Rose, is some ways really is like the true function of a shepherd. If we can go back to some of these places of what it means to be a good priest and a good prophet and a good leader. And so it just feels very important to name publicly and to you, Dan, that the MDiv program I was so fortunate to be a part of, has deeply saved my life a thousand times over. So thank you for knowing and creating for pastors and ministry leaders access to a deeper work of building character that could root into the belovedness of God and sustain some of these storms that maybe you couldn’t have fully imagined, but knew would come and are just a part of doing life and being human and working with other humans.

Dan: Well, I think the one summary for me, and I hadn’t had this thought, but it’s a pretty simple thought. And that is you need to be around people who really love Jesus. And that deep conviction that Jesus is my life and there are a lot of other things in my life, but he is the center of who I am and what I want to be, even if I am very far from being all that that means. On the other hand, I can’t be with people who can’t hold some degree of mystery and complexity that there aren’t a lot of answers. But it’s somewhat, not contradictory, but unusual to find people of a conviction who also hold complexity, who actually have a center while simultaneously knowing that the edges are frayed. And to say of the two of you, so grateful that you are friends. And that at least as we talk about this current polemical age, you two love Jesus and you bear a complexity and call me into more complexity than I desire. So I thank you both.

Rachael: Feeling is mutual.

Rose: Yes. Thank you. Yes. I just want to say one thing too, Rachel, as to your point, even though the MDiv degree is gone, the Seattle School still, I think, does such a good job with ministry folk training because of the intersection of theology and psychology. I just want to say that. Thanks for having me today.

Rachael Oh, so good to be with you.