Andrew Root | Relevance to Resonance

The Distillery

In this episode, Andrew Root, the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, talks with us about his recent book, The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life, the third in his series of books on ministry in the secular age, in which he engages the work of Charles Taylor and understanding congregations in contemporary life. Andy discusses how to make sense of the cross pressure of time, speed and fatigue as they relate to engaging with “depressed” congregations and argues how the demands necessitated by these changes, and the acceleration of social norm paces, contributes to imposing this despondency.

Andrew Root, PhD (Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is most recently the author of three-volume Ministry in a Secular Age series (The Congregation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, and Faith Formation in a Secular Age), and The End of Youth Ministry. He has also authored Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross (Fortress, 2014) and Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker (Baker, 2014). Root puts together theology and storytelling to explore how ministry leads us into encounter with divine action. His book The Relational Pastor (IVP, 2013), as well as a four-book series with Zondervan, called A Theological Journey Through Youth Ministry (titles include Taking Theology to Youth Ministry, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, Unpacking Scripture in Youth Ministry, and Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry) break new ground in this direction. In 2012 his book The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (with Kenda Creasy Dean, IVP, 2011) was Christianity Today Book of Merit. He has written a number of other books on ministry and theology such as The Children of Divorce: The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being (Baker Academic, 2010), The Promise of Despair (Abingdon, 2010), Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation (IVP, 2007) and Relationships Unfiltered (Zondervan/YS, 2009). Andy has worked in congregations, parachurch ministries, and social service programs. He lives in St. Paul with his wife Kara, two children, Owen and Maisy, and their dog. When not reading, writing, or teaching, Andy spends far too much time watching TV and movies.

Dayle Rounds (00:00):
How can congregations keep pace with the speed of life today? Andy Root is Carrie Olson, Baalson professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a Princeton seminary alum. In this episode, Andy returns to talk with us about his third book in the series engaging the work of Charles Taylor. In the congregation in a secular age, keeping sacred time against the speed of modern life. Andy offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation and contemporary ministry, articulates why congregations feel pressured by rapid changes in modern life, and encourages an approach that calls congregations to re-imagine, what change is, how to live into this future, and to help them move from relevance to resonance.
New Speaker (00:48):
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Dayle Rounds (00:51):
You're listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Dayle Rounds (00:55):
Andy, thank you. It's great to be able to talk to you again about one of your books and particularly this one, which is the third in a series of three, and we've had the opportunity to talk about the first two. This is another one where you engage the work of Charles Taylor, in his, his published work, A Secular Age. Would you give our listeners just a brief sketch of your series and for those who are not familiar with it, the essential claims made by Taylor that are key, for, for the three books. And then particularly for this one that we're talking about today about congregations.
Andy Root (01:31):
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to try to, you know, be in dialogue with this big, this big brick of a book called The Secular Age by Taylor. So it's taken me three books that just kind of, analyze it and be inspired by it and, yeah, then go from there. So yeah, I mean the, the, the series starts with faith formation in a secular age, and I don't know why it starts there to be completely honest. Like it just, it just kinda started there. I'm not a systematic theologian, so I didn't have a grand system in my mind. I think it was more, I don't know, problems kind of facing the church as we, as we thought about decline, as we thought about, how we pass on faith, particularly to younger people, but really across just, the, the church doing its thing.
Andy Root (02:18):
That was in the forefront of my mind and the project it's kind of developed from there. So there's no real, like methodological reason on why faith formation comes first. But I mean, one of the main elements I pick up from Taylor and that is just the way we are so deeply embedded in an age of authenticity. And so what does it mean to kind of pass on faith in a, in an age where in many ways, in some very good ways and some very challenging ways we live in a time where we believe every human being has a right to define for themselves what it means to be human and that - and there's an ethic out of that that says everyone, no one should tell anyone else how they should live their life. Well, that's, there's a lot of good things around where we respect people's experience and things like that.
Andy Root (03:01):
There's also some real challenges on how you take people deeply into a tradition, how you form them in a way to follow someone who isn't them, how, you know, the core of discipleship is actually following someone else and, and giving your life over to Jesus Christ, as opposed to finding the uniqueness within yourself. Those aren't completely mutually exclusive, but they're, it's a, it's a challenge. So we started, I started there in, you know, Taylor, the thing that's so interesting about him. And I think for me, he's, he's impacted the way I, I think, theologically with his larger philosophical system. And I think we'll probably get into that as we talk about book three, but, it's really his description of our moment that is so interesting to me. And, you know, all the way back when Dayle, I first met you when I was, you know, during the last Cicada season, when I was, I was a student at Princeton Seminary, the question that was really always driving me from the moment I stepped on that campus.
Andy Root (03:58):
And even earlier was thinking about how is it that we concretely encounter the living presence of God? And, I wouldn't have had the language then to say that, but how is it that the modern world and particularly late modernity makes that really difficult? And that's really what Taylor is trying to articulate. He's trying to say, yeah, we can talk about secular and we throw it around. And it's confused in, yeah, it's not just that people are less, less religious. That's not really the issue. The issue is that there's an overall kind of movement within our Western societies that makes this a, the sense of transcendence or of a living personal God who speaks to us that becomes harder for people to hold onto. Or even when they do hold onto it, there's, there's currents that kind of, undercut it and can wash that away.
Andy Root (04:46):
And, and they have to deal with kind of doubts or the realization in very pluralistic societies that their neighbor across the streets, you know, never goes to church really has no, religious affiliation at all, but yet feels spiritual. And then when you watch them raise their kids, you think, oh my gosh, they're way better parent than I am. And, yo...