What Happens When the Congregation Helps Preach?

Every sermon forms a congregation into something, whether the preacher names it or not. At St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, Associate Rector Peter Levenstrong and his colleagues have spent several years experimenting with Living Stories sermons, a collaborative approach to preaching adapted from Godly Play. The preacher reads the gospel while moving simple figures through the story, then asks a series of wondering questions, and the congregation builds the sermon together. Peter, author of Collaborative Sermons, joins Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to describe what that looks like on a Sunday morning and what it has done for people over time.Peter talks about how he mirrors back the best possible interpretation of what each person shares, why he now worries more about what people leave unsaid, and why he compares a lecture sermon to a buffet and a collaborative one to a potluck. For preachers who aren’t ready to try the whole method, he suggests starting with a single wondering question and seeing what happens when you trust the Holy Spirit, scripture, and the people in the room.PopGods: Thinking Theologically About Pop Culture with Tripp Fuller and Andy RootMissio Dei: The Church Sent with Edwin Ortiz-Rivera and Chris SteubingFrom Fixing to Listening: Making the Pivot with Terri Elton

What did Paul think God was doing about what’s wrong with us and the world? For Pauline scholar Michael Gorman, the answer centers on life in Christ. Paul uses the language of being in Christ well over a hundred times, and when he writes “you,” he usually means a whole community. Michael joins Terri Elton and Dwight Zscheile to talk about the Christ hymn in Philippians 2, the cross as both the source and the shape of the Christian life, and justification as God creating a people who practice God’s justice.Michael, who holds the Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University and is the author of Life Transfigured, also talks about why the language of church membership falls short, and about the Friday night Bible study and prayer group he and his wife have hosted in their home for 36 years. For church leaders wondering how disciples are formed today, he points to ongoing community, preaching shaped by scripture, and a deep openness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

When Luther and his colleagues visited rural parishes in Saxony, they were horrified by what they found. One congregation refused to memorize the Lord’s Prayer because it was too long, and nobody knew the Ten Commandments. Luther’s Small Catechism grew out of those visits, written for the home and printed on broadsheets so parents, children, and servants could learn the basics of the faith together. Mark Tranvik, who teaches Reformation history and theology at Luther Seminary and spent ten years as a parish pastor, joins Terri Elton and Dwight Zscheile to talk about what Luther was trying to accomplish and why that gap between calling yourself a Christian and living the faith feels familiar today.Mark reflects on how Luther’s Small Catechism faded from many homes and congregations, and why he believes it can come alive again through worship, prayer, and the sacraments. He also explores Luther’s understanding of vocation, where God works through ordinary callings like parenting, teaching, and picking up the garbage, and shares how he watched the mutual consolation of the saints take place at funeral lunches. It’s a conversation about recovering a 500-year-old gift for discipleship in a changing world.Lutheranism: Bound and FreePositions: Thinking Theologically About PoliticsTheology and Church History FoundationsGordon Jensen, The Call to Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of DiscipleshipMartin Luther, Large Catechism Martin Luther, Small Catechism

What does discipleship look like when the pastor is still growing too? Pastor Edrin Williams leads Sanctuary Covenant Church in North Minneapolis, a congregation that is black-led and black-centered by design and multi-ethnic by conviction. He joins Terri Elton and Alicia Granholm to talk about the Sanctuary Five, the church’s discipleship rhythms of connect, grow, serve, give, and invite, and why he believes formation happens as people share life together more than in any classroom.Edrin also talks about his own formation: the pastor friends he meets with each month, the therapist who helps him stay whole, and the sabbatical he spent with friends who knew him before he was a pastor. Along the way, he reflects on following two well-loved pastors, leading through 2020, forming faith across generations, and why pastors of small and rural churches can trust that their faithful work matters.

How does discipleship take root when a church walks through crisis together? In Pivot’s first bilingual episode, Dwight Zscheile is joined by Pastor Henry Burbano, executive pastor of Juntos Ministries at Emmanuel Covenant Church in Shoreview, Minnesota, and Anna Schaberg, one of the core leaders of the ministry. Henry speaks in Spanish and Anna interprets as they describe a community where people from about twelve countries share meals, meet in homes, and worship in two languages, with new Christians learning to follow Jesus alongside people who have walked with him their whole lives.Last winter, during the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, nine members of the Juntos community were detained on their way to work, and three were deported. Henry and Anna tell how the church drove people to their jobs, went with families to immigration appointments, and sent a team to visit those who had been sent back, and how that season deepened faith across the whole congregation. They also talk about why helpers burn out, the wave of baptisms that followed, and what it takes for a church to begin a bilingual ministry.

What is discipleship? Everyone is a disciple of something, and whatever we follow shapes what we believe about ourselves, other people, and the meaning of life. In the Season 8 opener, Dwight Zscheile, Alicia Granholm, and Terri Elton begin a season-long conversation on discipleship, convinced that the primary challenge facing the church in North America is a crisis of discipleship.They reflect on their own formation, draw on Lesslie Newbigin's observation that every culture is religious, even when it presents itself as secular, and discuss why so many churches invest their energy in being church and lose sight of what it means to follow Jesus. They also discuss why discipleship can't be a one-size-fits-all program and preview a season that will explore discipleship through history, hardship, preaching, tradition, and even AI.

Season 7 of Pivot has come to a close, and in this finale, hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm look back over eleven weeks of conversations about spiritual practices, church tradition, and what it means to make old forms of faith legible again for people living in a very different world than the one those forms were built for. They talk through difficult moments in church history, questions of leadership and listening, and why exhaustion might be one of the truest words for how people are experiencing church and culture right now.Dwight and Alicia talk through concrete ideas for helping leadership teams encounter unfamiliar traditions, and challenge leaders to root themselves more deeply in their own church's history rather than chasing the next quick fix. Season 8 begins October 8, turning to discipleship.

Warren Smith, professor of historical theology at Duke Divinity School, joins Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton to talk about his new book, Early Christian Theology: A History, and what the first several centuries of Christian thought have to say to church leaders navigating a very different, but strangely familiar, moment. Warren walks through Justin Martyr's arguments to a suspicious Roman government, Augustine's account of pride and the desire for dominion, Irenaeus's vision of a unified gospel, and Gregory of Nyssa's reflections on the endless discovery of God.The conversation turns practical near the end, as Warren offers church leaders a word of encouragement: the church's survival has never rested on our shoulders, and the best thing a pastor or teacher can offer their people is genuine delight in scripture. That kind of enthusiasm, he says, tends to spread.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Q3gtQcwV86MEarly Christian Theology: A History, Warren’s new book.

Rachael Wooldridge is Associate Vicar at St Paul's Church Hammersmith, a Church of England parish in London dating back to 1631, where hundreds of young adults with no prior church background have come to faith in recent years. In this conversation with host Dwight Zscheile, Rachael describes the discipleship program her church built to disciple them well: a nine-month commitment involving daily prayer and scripture, mentoring, small groups, and a fifty-day fasting program called Awaken 50, built in part on the Catholic program Exodus 90. Rather than lowering expectations to make faith more accessible to newcomers, Rachael and her team raised them, and found people hungry to meet the challenge.Rachael also reflects on the leadership shift that made this discipleship program possible: learning to lead through discernment rather than strategic planning, watching for where God seemed to already be at work, and building worship and pastoral care around what they found instead of a five-year vision statement. She shares stories of physical healing during worship, a former drug dealer now preaching in the prison where he served time, and what it's meant for her personally to loosen her grip on control as a leader.Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB)Awaken 50

This week's episode breaks from the usual format. Pivot producer Joey Goodall steps in for a solo reflection on what prayer practices are actually for, and what happens when we lose sight of that. He starts in an unexpected place: a line from the 1994 Australian film Muriel's Wedding, where a character compares her life to the biggest hit by the Swedish pop group she'd once used as an escape.From there, Joey turns to prayer, scripture reading, and the practices Christians return to again and again, naming two temptations that work against their purpose: holding a practice so tightly to its exact words and structure that we forget what it's for, or adapting it so loosely that it no longer reshapes us. He closes with a version of the Examen, a nearly 500-year-old prayer practice from Ignatius of Loyola, as one way to stay open to a God who is always more than our practices.