Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

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Brandon Carleton 0:00

We start every service off with what we call a statement of standing. Which I write it in the book, but I won't go into all of it here. But basically we make it very clear from the beginning that everybody's welcome. Especially the people who are going through any type of pain, sorrow, grief, depression, we make space, we listen, we say this out loud, we make space for that, we honor that and we acknowledge the pain in our own lives. May you feel that you belong.

Seth Price 0:32

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I'm Seth. I'm excited that you're here. I think you're gonna like today's conversation quite a bit. Before we get there, though. I'm going to need you to rate and review the show on iTunes. We're so close to 100. Let's just do it. Just somebody click the darn button. I know you want to I see you see you hovering on it, push it.

Anyway. Thank you so much to those of you that support the show on Patreon, you continue to be a blessing, you're making things happen every month there's another uptick another surge there. And so thank you to each and every single one of you and if you're getting anything from the show, consider doing that. It is less expensive than a nasty cup of coffee at like McDonald's. And I mean really, who drinks that stuff? I can't, anyway. So brief announcement so if you follow the show on social media, you'll have seen that there's like a little store and so a little bit behind that mostly I kind of wanted a shirt and maybe a coffee mug for myself. And I figured if I'm going to go to all that trouble of making that work then let's do it the right way.

And so it is there I plan to keep it up there as long as there's interest and so if you want to support the show in a different way head to Can I Say This At Church.com. You'll see a button I think it says store it could say shop I honestly can't remember I'm adding things to that. About every other week until I kind of feel like I got what I want there. But I'm enjoying it. I like wearing it. And to be honest, I wasn't expecting the looks that I would get when I wear it out in public. It's just people looking at this shirt going, What do you mean Can I Say This At Church? And so it is, it is inviting conversations in person. And so I'm enjoying that. So check those out, grab something, I think you'll enjoy it.

Today's conversation is with Brandon Carleton. Brandon has a fantastic story. He has a story that sounds like a lot of people, you know, questioning faith. How do I fit in? I can't make this work, but still deeply and madly in love with Jesus. And so Brandon is doing something differently. He's doing church differently. He is creating communities, blessing and holy and graceful communities with a different intention. And I like it. I love it. He's written a book. We're going to talk about that and so here we go. Roll the tape with Brandon Carleton.

Seth Price

Brandon Carleton, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?

Brandon Carleton 3:24

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

Seth Price 3:26

Yeah, oftentimes people email into the show, but rarely have those people written their own book. And so, I was surprised to see your email and really excited to read your book. I also like that it isn't as long as what I normally read. And so I was able to do it and not just exhaust myself. So that was good. But before we get into that, there has to be a pile of people listening that are unfamiliar with you. So I want to know a bit about you. Kind of your upbringing, you know what makes you, you. Bring us up to speed on all that is Brandon.

Brandon Carleton 4:03

Okay. So I grew up very religious I grew up going to church every single Sunday, definitely every Sunday, but also usually on Wednesday nights and then somewhere else in the week normally going to one of my parents friend's house to go to some sort of small group or Bible study. So that was as far back as I can remember.

I remember my mom telling stories about being on the church softball team diving for ground balls at their base while she was pregnant with me. So that is very much my upbringing. And I bought into that paradigm very much. So when I graduated high school, I decided to become a pastor. That’s how much I bought into it. So I was a pastor in different forms. youth pastor, volunteer pastor, college ministry pastor. I was never a worship pastor, but I was in charge of the worship team as kind of like the administrator for the worship team. Basically any role other than lead pastor I served in from about age 19 on.

And then when I was about 25 my wife and I were working at a church, we had a difficult experience at that church. And we left that church and that propelled us into the season of deconstruction. Which that and a couple other things also forced us into that. And then through that deconstruction I started trying to dream up with a new way to do church. A way that I thought was free of some toxic behavior. And so that's kind of where the book starts more or less is like okay, so the name of the book is Meaningful Again, I decided to try to make church meaningful again, after going through my deconstruction so that's kind of the three minute version of my life story.

Seth Price 6:13

So that's a short elevator pitch of just a few people getting on and off. So, deconstruction is a big buzzword like everybody talks about deconstruction. I'm curious, and I don't know that anybody ever is I know I'm not all the way reconstructed. Although recently I had you know, some brews with my pastor. And he's like you, you sound different, you know, part of you sound. You sound more firm on some things and less yearning, which I hadn't really thought about until I said it and see, I took a swig and thought about it some more. And I think he's right. Do you do you feel like more people are deconstructing now than they ever have been? Or has everyone really just done that in private and not been so public about it? Like, where do you land with that, because from towards the end of the book, I mean, you're still deeply involved in your church. And so you're still having those. I'm having conversations as well, but at a different level. Yeah, at a level more for me, and I'm glad other people listen, but I feel like people are talking to you, you know, as a minister about their issues. And so do you feel like it's more pervasive?

Brandon Carleton 7:21

I think so. I think there's a couple different factors, even if you want to look at it historically, I feel like there has been at least the generation, a couple generations, like my parents age, and maybe so you know, baby boomer generation and the generation before them, I think there was a lot of just assumed lifestyles and there was there was no real. It was, you know, everyone just went to church. That's just what you did. And I've heard a lot of stories from that generation to about how it was very communal. And it was more of like, that's their social circle. And that was where they like, made all their friends. They just went to church out of habit. And it wasn't really theology in general for quote unquote lay people just wasn't really a thing most people were interested in.

And so I think that as time has gone on, I think that's become, you know, obviously with the help of the internet, I think that's become more commonplace for the average church attender to kind of get into apologetics or get into theology. So there's that aspect of it.

And then I also the cynic in me probably would say that there is starting in the 70s in America, there's been a lot of unhealthy behavior in church. And I think that's we're kind of seeing the like, the boiling point of that now, or I think in the last maybe 10 years, really 10-15 years. A lot of that ugliness is starting to show itself. A lot of people who grew up in church are now being able to think for themselves and realize that like, I think I was in a very toxic culture growing up in my church.

So I think there's a lot of different things that play into that. And also, just public discourse in general has changed so much. And the same with mental illness, mental health issues. Same with sexuality, like these things are becoming less taboo, you know, in a public discourse. So I think there's a lot of different factors that make this generation a little bit different. I think all generations definitely have deconstructed, and it was more private. But I do think there's just something about all of those things combined, all those issues coming to a head, that makes this a very unique point in time in history, in my opinion. And yeah, that's one thing that I write about is that, you know, I stepped out kind of in vulnerability and said, “Hey, this is what I'm going through”, and I was kind of nervous to post it publicly on social media or talking about with my friends, but the more I talk about it, the more I find other people who are going through the same thing.

Seth Price 10:06

Definitely. There's definitely a community of people willing to let you do what you need to do and say what you need to say. And I'm finding also willing to not point fingers at me. Like there's a big level of, don't get me wrong, there are other people that wouldn't agree with that. But the communities that I'm finding engaging with me and that I'm able to engage with, like, they're just slower to start calling people “heretic”, or slower to point fingers, or slower to be like, yeah, “Brandon, you just, I mean, you just, you just missed it. Like, I'm so sorry that you're gonna burn. You know, you just you just missing it”. And it's so refreshing because most of the time, that's not the case and you know, the world that we live in, and I know, face to face, you know, at work or at church or Walmart. People don't talk that way. Although I find I'm becoming more emboldened to talk That way if you'd like, what do you do? Well, here's what I get paid to do. But here's what I really like to do. You know, I like to talk about God or whatever. I'm curious, o what was it you know, you're involved in church your whole life, like what was that linchpin? That you know, at nighttime you went to sleep and you woke up the next morning, you're like, I'm sleep a wink, because I'm pretty sure this part of my faith is busted. Like, what was that?

Brandon Carleton 11:22

There are two different things that happen in my life, the last five or six years that really threw my understanding of God into a whirlwind. One was I had a very close friend of mine have an abortion. And that was a very, to see someone so close to me go through that and how difficult it was for her. And to hear, as the third party person, I would observe different people saying things to her, but then I would also, through her, hear what other people have said to her. And knowing who she is and knowing what she's about, and knowing that it was not an easy decision. And knowing that, you know that the amount of hatred that was pointed and directed towards her as she went through that season, that was really disorienting to go through.

And then the second one that sounds a little cliche, but my office is in a co working space and I met a lesbian couple there about four years ago. And they have absolutely revolutionized me and my wife's relationship. Our understanding of what love looks like, our understanding of what God looks like. It's a little unfair to other influences in my life. But I would say that they have been a very, very large influence in my life when it comes to the way that I see God. So Both of those one is a really tragic instance. And the other one is a very positive life giving instance. But both of those events really challenged me to see things differently.

Seth Price 13:13

Yeah. So if you're comfortable, or if it's appropriate, I'd like you to break apart that last bit like how did…I do understand how intentionally being in community with those that are different than us helps make us into better humans? If we can break that tribalism and find a different form of a tribe but specifically what changed in your view of how I guess love works with that relationship being so, like what did what was different? Like how did that work?

Brandon Carleton 13:42

Yeah, over the years, there's a man, I could think of dozens of stories where they've impacted me. One is I was at their wedding is actually we're recording this right around St. Patrick's Day, one of my friend's name is Sarah and she is very Irish and they got married on St. Patrick's Day, three years ago. And hearing their vows, where it was some of the most meaningful, powerful, vows I've ever heard. It was very, not very much not traditional Christian vows even though one of them Becky; so Sara and Becky are the couple. Becky is actually a pastor, but their vows are very much not your like typical Christian vows.

They were this very vulnerable, gut wrenching almost, vows that were very moving. I cried basically through the whole entirety of their vows. But also one of the things that started happening when I started deconstructing is that I realized that I had no real inner sense of who I was. For so many years of my life I had listened to the church and listened to my pastors, my leaders Tell me who I was and tell me what the right thing to do is. And I had lost sense of my inner moral compass, I lost sense of who I was. And they have, in their own unique way, and my wife would say the same thing. They have worked-not intentionally, they weren't like we weren't their project or something-but just through being themselves they have given me and my wife, so much insight on who we actually are, who God has made us to be. They've helped us find our voice in lots of different ways. So then that also finding our voice and finding the “so who do you think God is,” you know, asking those kinds of questions. So that's a couple different ways that they've really affected us.

Seth Price 15:49

I asked that question, you know, when you talk about God, like what do you say like when someone asked you who is God on Twitter the other day and some of the responses were great. Like someone else, I guess quoted something from a past episode that I don't remember the guy saying, it doesn't matter. But if you say, you know, tell me who your God is, and I'll tell you a lot about you. Someone else was like, Yeah, I don't know. But let's talk about like, come worship with me. Let's talk about it. But it was always conversational and always intentional and community based.

You talk about and I like it, I actually laughed so the last time I heard the words Christian machine, and this is like, right up front, like, you know, page six or seven, I was talking with Steve Austin and I'd asked him something about you know, how churches can just chew people up and spit people out. And he's like, “Don't even get me started on the Christian machine”. And went off yeah, this beautiful like 10 minute tirade that I was like, you know what, that's it drop a mic drop-drop the mic.

So when you say Christian machine, and that you know, it just you know, you were bought into it, and the Christian machine needed you plugged in to keep it running. There's a lot of people that will hear that and think, okay, Christian machine like of course, like the administration or K-Love or something else, like what do you mean when you say Christian machine? I think you ever say church machine, but I'm gonna say Christian machine.

Brandon Carleton 17:09

Yeah, the Christian machine is the church, I guess is a way to bridge those together. But that idea of the church needs 1: it needs volunteers in order to keep going, in my opinion, or at least the the again, I guess, let's clarify before we start down this topic. I'm talking about most, my experience is very like evangelical, somewhat Pentecostal, Western Christian American church which starts every service with one upbeat song. The pastor comes up and has a word of welcome and then you sing one more upbeat song and then one, slow song. They're all usually probably Chris Tomlin and then you have a 10 minute sermon offering and then have maybe communion and then you have a 30 minute sermon. Which is followed by one last song.

And of course, the last five minutes, the pastor gives the nod to the guy on the piano, he comes out and he plays the soft pad or he plays piano. When I'm when I talked about church as what I'm talking about. Which to be fair, have seen lots of healthy churches that operate that way, just as is often I've seen unhealthy. So in order to keep that specific machine up and running, you need volunteers and you need Well, there's a lot of things you need, we need volunteers, you need butts in the seat, which basically eventually turn into dollars. And then you need like a very, in order to keep that going you need to have a very pristine production. You have to outperform the church down the street. And it becomes a very consumeristic, capitalistic, approach to church, where you actually have a product that's more or less for sale. And what the price of it is is the attendance of somebody And when they're in their tithes, yeah, that's the price that that person is paying. So when I hear machine, the church machine or Christian machine, that's what I picture. I picture this idea of "I need to buy into, I need to show up, I need to believe the right things, and I need to behave the right way. And I need to have the right attendance record.” And then I need to do a lot of those things like I need a volunteer.

There's a new person that came to our church a couple weeks ago, and he was telling me about a church that he had just left, where they had what they called “volunteer Sunday”. So the entire service is dedicated to trying to get more volunteers. So they bring up volunteers from the church, throughout the service, and they give their testimony about how much God has impacted their life through their service to the church. And all these people, according to my friend at least, like I know these people very well and they're all exhausted and burnout, however they're being brought in front of the whole Church as the perfect example of what everyone should be like. So that's what I mean by by the Christian machine.

Seth Price 20:06

Yeah. And I think if everyone listening, for the most part, was honest they've all been there. Like, I know it was a few years back. I was I was saying yes to everything, you know, beyond this beyond this beyond this, do worship do this, will you do this? So know how to say no. And my wife was like, you're gonna have to like, you can't like you're working full time. You're doing this podcast thing. The kids have ballet and baseball and basketball and gymnastics; I'm also your wife. Dishes need to be done. Like, you’ve got to say no, and I was really intentional with the church like, except for worship, which I really kind of do for me like that's how I talk to God. I like the sermon. They're fantastic. My pastor does a great job. But the worship is what does it for me. So I would do that in the back of the sanctuary, it doesn't matter. That's just how I get down with God. But everything else was just nope, it's gonna have to be a no like, sorry. I'm done. Don't even ask No, no, just not gonna do it.

But I think those breaks, you know, those Sabbaths to use a nice fancy church word are necessary. You talk about, you know, when you and your wife basically said, you know, I'm gonna unplug from the matrix. I'm disconnected from the machine. I'm done with this. You talked about you wake up on Sunday, you kind of look at each other like, Okay, so what do we what do these three hours like, what do we…I don't know what to do. I don't know how I plug into this world. And you go through a concept that you call “same but different.” I think that's what you call it. Break that out a bit. Because I feel like there's a lot of people that when they leave church, they don't know how to fill that void. Like there's just a hole there. And so they fill it in with sleep, which, sure, I guess that's fine for two weeks. And then after that, what do you do? Do you go to Lowe's, prowl Hardee's with everybody else, like what do you do? So if you (could) rip that apart a bit.

Brandon Carleton 22:00

Yeah, so actually that was the original title. That whole time I was writing that was the working title the book going the Same But Different.

Seth Price 22:13

Going To Hardee’s?

Brandon Carleton 22:15

(Laughter) Yes! Biscuits and gravy, those Hardee biscuit and gravy is good. Yeah, and then I found out that it's already a book written by identical twins. It's the same but different.

Seth Price 22:24

I would have gone with it anyway. Why not?

Brandon Carleton 22:27

So yeah, that idea is actually born from this realization, I have I think a couple paragraphs about this in the book, born from this realization when me and my wife went on this cross country trip. So we’re somewhere in the Midwest, we drove to the Grand Canyon, we went to Yosemite, we went to a bunch of different (places) we went to San Francisco. It was like a two or three week road trip where we camped out and I got back home from that trip, and I drove across the bridge from Illinois into Iowa that I drive across every day. And I had driven across that bridge, without exaggeration, I've driven across that bridge in my life 1000 times. But for some reason I got back from that trip and I drove across that bridge again everything looked completely different. There was something like I was missing out on what was right in front of my nose, right in front of my face. This beauty that we had in our area, but it took leaving and it took seeing different perspectives to come back to the same thing and see it differently. But this idea then, I think also, plays out in our spiritual life.

So I have a friend his name's Aubrey. He hasn't gone to church for a really long time, but he's found community and the stories he tells me from this community, it's a local art scene we have here specifically the local spoken word poetry scene that we have in our area. The life giving stories that he has told me from the encounters that he has had that have blown away…he also was a pastor three or four years ago and he gave it all up. But he's found the same type of community that he had in church, actually, in his opinion, a better type of community, a better connection with God, a better connection with those around him, a better life giving (and) life system really an ecosystem of support. He has found that not at church, he's found that somewhere else. So it's the same thing, but it's different. That's kind of the idea behind that.

Seth Price 24:59

You’ve got a line in here that I underlined twice, apparently, as I'm looking back over it, I'm gonna read it. It says,

I'm confident that if you could have two people left on earth (and) erase their memories of all religion, eventually they would start a religion of their own. That's just how humans are wired.

I mean, I know you wrote that. But I don't know. I read that. And I read it again. I was like, I don't know if I believe that. Like, I'm not certain. I don't know. That seems….I don't know. Why do you think that because I don't know that I would care if that makes sense? If like, it was just me and someone else because that assumes we're even on the same continent. I might not have seen this other person. So why do you think that?

Brandon Carleton 25:42

Yeah, I mean, I think that it may take some years. It takes some generations if those two people can procreate. It takes a while. But I think that historically speaking, from like the very first as far back as we can trace it, people were trying to make sense of the world around them through an understanding of some sort of higher power; whether that's the sun or the moon, the animals around them or, you know, whatever it was they were looking for this thing outside of them. I think that there's this very innate, and I fully respect to their stance, and I think there's even atheists, who would agree that there's something bigger than themselves. They would never call it God. But even if it's a community, or a city, like you know, that they're a part of this thing that's bigger than themselves.

And I think that we're wired that way. I think there's this very innate understanding that I am a small part in this larger thing. Whether or not you want to find meaning in that that's up to you. Even nihilism, I think still says that we're all like kind of meaningless, but we're all in this meaninglessness together somehow at the same time. So I don't know, I think agree with you that if there is only two people and I just have to live out the rest of my life alone with somebody else, yeah, I'm probably not going to really care. What's the point in that situation? But I think that if, you know, a population is starting to grow from there, and like I said, if everybody had their memories wiped to previous religion, I think he would just start from scratch. It might not look exactly the same, but I think people would start looking for answers to try to explain this world around us.

Seth Price 27:32

You're co-pastoring a church now, correct? Is that the right term?

Brandon Carleton 27:35

Well, at the publishing of that book, I was. So Jason was the guy who I talked about a lot in the book, (he’s) a really good friend of mine, we were co-pastoring for three years. And he recently moved to Memphis to be closer to his wife's family. So now I am solo pastoring.

Seth Price 27:57

So tell me a bit about your current church, and there's a method to the madness. I like the part where you break apart, you know, rituals of the church, you know, the way that we do baptism, the way that we do communion. But I don't want to jump the shark there because I think if we don't really paint the frame of how your church is set up, it won't make any sense. So does your church work compared to what you described earlier of, you know, the church machine?

Brandon Carleton 28:24

You mean, from it administrative point of view, or like what a Sunday morning feels like or all the above?

Seth Price 28:31

I mean, really, all of the above, but more like, if you were to say, you know, alright Seth so you're visiting here. Welcome to five minutes away from the next state. Here's what you can expect when you come to church, like, you know, like you're gonna get greeted, there's coffee, there's music, there's a countdown, you know, there's similar to what you talked about. So, how does your church work differently, or I guess intentionally work differently?

Brandon Carleton 28:54

Yeah. So there's a few things probably. The first thing that you would notice say when you walk in it is very much like any other meeting of, you know, a church or any other kind of gathering, like even say an AA meeting. That's one thing we've been using. We've been using that language a lot lately that what we do now is a lot more like an AA meeting than a church service.

But you walk in and you have food and coffee there. And then we start every service off with what we call a statement of standing, which I write it in the book, but I won't go into all of it here. But basically, we make it very clear from the beginning that everybody's welcome. Especially the people who are going through any type of pain, sorrow, grief, depression. We make space, and we say this out loud,

we make space for that, we honor that. And we acknowledge the pain in our own lives. May you feel that you belong.

So that's how we start every service. I think probably one of the biggest differences that most people will notice and this is going to be a killer for you is that we don't sing any songs.

Seth Price 30:00

You are killing me. I’m done!

Brandon Carleton 30:02

(Chuckles)

I totally understand it and actually, not privately, but I understand the value of music and I have been on worship teams my entire life. I'm very much moved by music. And I find something divine about music. But we found, at least with our current group of people that that seemed to be showing up, that singing songs seem to be more divisive than they are unifying. So that's probably one of the biggest changes or biggest differences that you would see is that we don't sing songs. We also do a group meditation usually on a Sunday morning, which that's also probably out of people's comfort zone.

And then we don't have a traditional sermon. So we have a five to seven minute presentation of an idea. That is, sometimes me or I'd say 80% time it's me 20% of the time it’s a couple of other people that are part of our community that are thinking about things, different ways to see God. And then we have a group discussion around that. So, I'll present a topic, sometimes it's not even five minutes. Last Sunday, it was like 30 seconds maybe, where I presented a question. So what do you guys think about this? And then we had a group discussion. And that group discussion started out (in the beginning) being like we were pulling teeth. And now it's to the point where it goes on for an hour, and I have to shut it down because we’re like, you know, it's getting late.

Seth Price 31:37

What are some of those questions? Like, what would be an example of a question like that?

Brandon Carleton 31:41

Yeah, so last Sunday, it was, what are the pros and cons of defining your faith or talking about God in negative terms? So there's a lot of people that, a lot of traditional people, when they hear about deconstruction, they say, “Don't tell me what you're against, tell me what you're for”. Which is a great idea. And I tend to agree with it most of the time, however, you know, and this is what most of our conversations are about-getting to the nuance of a discussion and trying to like, you know, pull the thread at that nuance. And so it's like, okay, well, yeah, so I try to stay pretty apolitical but this is kind of like all lives matter versus Black Lives Matter. If you say, “I think we should love all people”, that tells me something about you. But if you say, “I think we need to do a better job of loving our Muslim brothers and sisters”, that says something completely different. Or, you know, so if you get more specific you get if you say, “I don't think God is like ‘this’”, that tells me more oftentimes, there's more information there. There's more being communicated when you say don't, and again, I see both sides of it.

So that was the discussion was, “okay, what are the pros and cons using negative terms or should we always use positive terms when we talk about God?” So that's just one example.

Seth Price 33:08

What's been the hardest question that someone other than you has come up with? That someone is like, “here's something I'm dealing with Brandon; I want to know about or what y'all think about this”? What's been like the one that “Oh, man we're going to have to table this one for six months from now, because I need to do some reading”.

Brandon Carleton 33:25

I think that there really hasn't been one at all. That's a disappointing answer. But we do very little apologetics on Sunday mornings. So it's not like okay, was the resurrection literal or what about end times, or what about this verse? There's very little of that type of discussion that needs research like that. And what we are gathering is based around our Christian roots, so we still do communion. We do a very open table style communion, but at the same time we have two of our most like loyal attenders are atheists; there’s definitely a couple agnostics that come, I think there's one person that might identify as a Buddhist.

So we don't shy away from talking about Jesus or the Bible. But because there's such a unique group of people there, we really to keep an equal footing, we can't necessarily do a deep dive or like an exegesis on Nehemiah or something like that. Like that's just not…(because) half of the room’s just going to check out if we get into that conversation.

Seth Price 34:38

That's the part that I check in too. My pastor sometimes will say something and I'm like, no one in this crowd understands that he's talking about Eastern Orthodox theology right now in a Baptist Church, and everybody is really liking it. But none of you have any idea that what he's talking about, would have like gotten ran out 20 years ago. Just love it like we did. Um, we did like a prayer labyrinth like a 10 minute prayer at the end of the sermon on Sunday and like everyone. And I know he had talked about he's like, I didn't know that was gonna come off like one of those all or nothing kind of things, like let's do yes. And everyone that I talked to has been like…that was transformative work. Can we do that again? Can I listen to that again? Is it on the website? I need that again.

Which blows me away? I'm like, see? See, there's so much more out there if you get out of it. And you alluded to it earlier, if you just get out of that small little “this is how we do church”. Yeah. I'm curious. So you had said, you know, tell me what you're for and not what you're against. So what are some portions of your theology that can never be the same again? Like you used to believe this and now you're like, yeah, there's no way I could ever believe that again, that are non negotiable for you?

Brandon Carleton 35:53

I want to preface this by saying two things. One, I'm not a theologian. I would never claim to be. And two I have and was raised in circles where the main goal was apologetics. One of my former churches that I was at the senior pastor now actually does a national apologetics ministry. He's not even a pastor anymore. That's like what he does. So if you're listening to this, and I say something and you're thinking, “Oh, he just doesn't know about XY and Z”. Yeah, there's a chance I don't know about it. But there's also probably a good chance that I have heard the arguments.

And I don't know, if we want to, I'm happy to to geek out and get into some of the finer points. But I think the biggest thing would probably be (that) I'm on the fence on literal heaven and literal hell, but if there is a literal hell, I don't picture a God who sends a large percentage of the people who have lived on earth to hell. That's one of the big ones for me. Definitely a lot of the things around behavior modification. So the shame culture around sex, premarital sex, but in particular, I think also the LGBT community, some of those a little bit.

Also, obviously, I brought it up earlier abortion like so some of those quote unquote I think there literally our “pet sins” and I've heard lots of people who can't be on a worship team because they were sleeping with their girlfriend and they weren't married. These are adults. They're 40 years old, they are just not married, but the worship pastor would confide in me about his porn addiction, but he was allowed to lead worship every Sunday! So like things like those ”pet sins” that are just like, way too much emphasis on them.

I think in general that word sin we don't really even use it that much. Not to say that I don't believe in sin or a concept there of behavior that isn't beneficial to you. I think one that's really iffy, which Be literal resurrection. I don't know what I believe about it at all. So I don't really have a problem believing that it's literal. I'm okay with that. But at the same time if someone told me, they don't believe in a literal resurrection, I'm not going to be appalled by that. I'm not gonna like say “okay you're not a Christian then!” Which I know that one is a really touchy one for a lot of people. But um, yeah, that's some of the some of the things

Seth Price 38:27

Yeah, I hear a lot of my my answers similar to yours. Not all of them. I'm pretty good with a literal resurrection. But I'm also I feel like I'm good with it because I'm literally talking about a God of that is so big beyond my comprehension that why not? Like, why not? Here we go. It makes as much sense as the concept of God does to begin with, so why not?

Brandon Carleton 38:54

I agree.

Seth Price 38:56

We were talking in our Sunday school class at church other day. They're doing a study on hell. And someone looks at me and she's like, I know you want to say something. I was like, I can't I'm just in a different spot than y'all. Like, I don't want to tell you that that concept you're talking about, a Satan, is made up by Dante. And hell's almost always a metaphor. Like literally every time it's in the Bible, it's a metaphor or a geographical reference point. Like, you know, go up to the Hardee's get a biscuit and then take a left. Like, it's not that I can't, but I'm not willing to argue with people about it; iit's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Brandon Carleton 39:33

No, no, yeah, that's a lot of the reason why we don't talk about that stuff a lot on Sundays is because I don't see it necessarily as a great use of time. I write about in the book, but I think those are really, were shortcutting or are undercutting, those topics, those stories. I remember someone was telling me once about the story of Jesus walking on water, and how it usually gets watered down, watered down is maybe the wrong word, but the conversation stops at Whoa, what an amazing miracle! Jesus could walk on water. And it's this proof of divinity. And it's his proof that he, you know, could perform miracles.

But there's so much imagery there. And there's so many great questions that you could ask around that that are completely devoid of whether or not he's divine. Those types of topics I write about in the book about resurrection, literal resurrection. that argument to me is now boring. I've heard and I've read a dozen books on arguing both sides, and I've had hundreds of hours of conversations with people about it. But the question instead of where do you see death and new life in your life right now, that question to me is really interesting. And I think atheists and agnostics and Buddhists can find a lot of meaning in that question and that can create real Good group dialog where we can all learn from each other when we ask questions like that.

Seth Price 41:04

Yeah, I agree. The question that I most often get that I refuse to answer are my view on the end times. And I try to tell people like, I don't want to be flippant, like, I just don't care. Like I just, it doesn't matter. Does it matter on me loving my neighbor? Does it mean how I treat people? It doesn't change that? Okay, then why are we talking about like, I'm investing all this time, and all this money, but I'm still ignoring the people in my community that actually need to be loved. So I want to end with this. So you’re lead pastoring a church now for lack of a better metaphor, or word, or verb (so) where do you see yourself being, you know, a decade from now?

Brandon Carleton 41:46

That's a great question, a question that we are as a group actually actively working on answering-we're doing some strategic planning. And our core group is trying to figure out where we want to go and then next couple years. A lot of what we're talking about right now, is we're referencing what we're doing as a community resource. So, this kind of ties back into the machine question, so it's good way to come full circle. The machine is dependent on people showing up. If no one's there at all, if no one's attending and no one's volunteering it all collapses. And I think that is why we're not why we're seeing the church in America decline is because it's not a sustainable model in 2019.

So instead, we're trying to frame what we're doing in our own minds to help with our own success criteria and understanding. I guess it's almost a survival method to you know, if we have a small crowd. But we're trying to frame things as as being a community resource. So we have this resource and it's there for people if they need it. Just the way that a soup kitchen is just the way that an AA meeting is, a homeless shelter. It's there if people needed.

And when people fall on “hard times”, when people get kicked out of their church for asking questions about end times or literal hell, when people you know, have a bad experience, they have a place they can turn. And really if people aren't coming that regularly, I think it's actually a good sign just like if a homeless shelter is empty. That's why we're happy if that's the case, because we're kind of seeing ourselves as a recovery group of sorts. And I feel like if I do my job, well, we won't have the same people there for 10 years. People will come for a time of healing. They will either go to a different church or they will just stop going to church altogether, which is maybe controversial for me to say, but we were talking about the beginning about finding community In other places. But, I see what we do now as offering people a time to come and be healed. And to be free to ask questions and to deconstruct and not be judged. And then when they're healed, they can go somewhere else, or they can stay, I guess if they want. We had that. That's kind of where we're going in the future.

Seth Price 44:21

I like that. I've talked with so many pastors and often and the question I always ask them is, why does someone need to be like a 50 year member here? And a lot of them you know, when the microphones off, will it just admit like, I need you to still kind of be needy of the portion of God that I can relate to you? Because I have bills and, you know, mouths to feed and I'd like to go on vacation. So the product becomes the message as opposed to the purpose becoming, you know, redemption and Shalom and community and love.

Brandon Carleton 45:00

Yes.

Seth Price 45:02

But it's a razor's edge like it's a razor's edge. I really appreciate that answer like that's a hard answer for that to be the answer. Like that's a hard answer.

Brandon Carleton 45:11

It's a completely different financial model. It's a completely different, which means it's completely different model when it comes to how many employees you have, when it comes to the building that you're in, or you're renting. Yeah, it's a completely different model. I think it's a more sustainable model. And we actually have now transferred from being a religious nonprofit to just a regular nonprofit so we can get grants. We do a lot of community work. And, and I know when I was in my previous churches, I would look at other churches like ours and say, Oh, they're just a community center”.

And if I hear that now, I kind of wear that with kind of like a badge of honor. It's like yeah, we are community center (and) we are a great community center. We are doing the things that I think Jesus would do. We're standing up for the oppressed by giving a voice to the voiceless. We're healing people who have been hurt. I think we're doing the work of Jesus, in my opinion. So we are just a community center and I love that that's what we are.

Seth Price 46:18

Brandon, where do people grab a copy of your book? (And) did you draw these cartoons?

Brandon Carleton 46:23

I did. Yes.

Seth Price 46:24

So there's definitely some art in here. I like it. And then so where would you direct people to getting engaged with that or to maybe get involved or support communities? Like where would you direct people?

Brandon Carleton 46:40

Yeah, so I've tried to make it as easy as possible. So the name of my book is Meaningful Again, so you can go to meaningfulagain.com, (currently broken link) and you can click a link there. It's just gonna take you to Amazon. So you can if you prefer, you can just search Meaningful Again by Brandon Carleton on Amazon. I just added a page to our website, which is connectionqc.org. And it's a series of six videos that explain what we do and why we do it and how we're different.

So if you are a church leader maybe who's trying to find a different way, you could easily sit down and watch those are all about three minutes long. Otherwise, you can reach out to me on social media. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram. My Twitter is at @bctheheretic, and my Instagram is @BrandonCarletonCC, and there's actually been a few people that have reached out to me and said, “hey, my pastor asked me to start this side thing at my church. That sounds like your thing. Can you kind of walk me through what you did”? So I'm definitely open. If you have any questions, reach out to me and contact me however, you can find me.

Seth Price 47:51

Fantastic. Well, thanks again, Brandon, for coming on. I've enjoyed the chat.

Brandon Carleton 47:54

Yeah. Likewise, thank you so much for having me.

Seth Price 48:21

The music today is from artist Solveig Leithaug. You can find her music listed in the show notes and the Spotify playlist for the show. Really love her stuff, really a different type of flavor. And it's an honor to have it on the show. So check her out you’re really gonna enjoy it.