What do church mission, governance, and high school theater have in common? Brandon and Hannah talk with The Rev’d Molly James, PhD., Interim Executive Officer at The Episcopal Church and Berkeley Divinity at Yale alum (’05), about the ways Church mission and institutional governance weave together to strengthen the work of The Episcopal Church. Listen as Rev’d Molly recounts lessons on leadershipgleaned from her high school stage manager days and reminds us how real transformation only happens when we work together.
59: High School Theater to Church Governance with Molly James
Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black
Guest: Molly James
Production: Goodchild Media
Music: Wayfaring Stranger, Theodicy Jazz Collective
Art: E. Landino
Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast
berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast
You can support our work at https://tinyurl.com/support-transforming-leaders
Brandon: Hey, Hannah.
Hannah: Hey, Brandon. Good to see you. Good to be here.
B: Good to see ya. Another stellar episode of the Leaders Way podcast. We have been firing them off lately.
H: I know. And this, so alumna Molly James comes back. She is the wizard behind the curtain of general convention and a lot of the like inner workings of the Episcopal Church. So we get to kind of see what she’s up to.
B: We do. But I think unlike The Wizard and The Wizard of Oz where the curtain is revealed, you’re like, oh.
H: It’s a disappointment.
B: Yeah.
H: Okay, fair. The metaphor breaks really quickly.
B: This was satisfying. I was in a workshop that Molly must have done at EPN three years ago, and she was just discussing all of the church demographics.
H: Oh, yeah.
B: And the way that she could surf through demographics and this meta level, but then get down in the weeds, and because she’s been a chaplain, because she’s done parish ministry, she just really gets it. So this is like the wizard reveal. You go, oh, thank God. There was an adult in the room.
H: That’s good. That’s who’s at the wheel. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we did a lot of talking about leadership. Shocking. Absolutely shocking. But one of my favorite things is that she brought it back to high school musical theater. And if I’m honest, a lot of my biggest kind of leadership formation moments were also in high school. It was in theater and it was in student government. I want to hear about Godspell. I want to hear about, did you learn leadership lessons when you were in high school theater?
B: Oh my gosh, Godspell. I mean, it certainly changed my life. I don’t know that I would be doing what I’m doing now without Godspell.
H: What? Wait, that’s a crazy statement. Why?
B: A thousand percent true.
H: Why? What?
B: Well, because I had a kind of typical, underwhelming parish experience. It was lovely in its own little way, but there was no music ministry to speak of, there was no youth group to speak of, there was no vibrant preaching to speak of, there was a kind of aging population. And so – and I didn’t go to any kind of faith-based school. However, we did Godspell and…
H: Wait, so it was the religion of Godspell, not just a theater experience?
B: It was both the fellowship that was centered in the gospel.
H: Whoa.
B: Wow. And so I both heard the gospel anew in the music and in… Because Godspell is a whole lot of direct quotation from the Gospel of Matthew, unlike Jesus Christ Superstar, which I also love, but takes a lot of creative liberties. I mean, Godspell is just a whole lot of Jesus from Matthew, right? With amazing Stephen Schwartz music, right? And so I can remember at the end when Jesus died, I was overwhelmed with grief and then overwhelmed with joy at the resurrection moment. So absolutely, right? My whole life.
H: Forget passion plays. It’s all about Godspell.
B: It’s all about Godspell. Indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
H: Oh my gosh.
B: What about you?
H: That’s crazy. Well, I think – so I always think about my biggest leadership lessons as coming from being the head of my high school student government. I mean, even to this day, that’s the most formative leadership experience I’ve had because I really learned how to be a leader who wasn’t about myself, but a leader who was about bringing together disparate voices and finding solutions and envision or realizing what people were envisioning. But really when it came to high school theater, the lesson for me was that I couldn’t do it all because I was performing Fantasmic at Disneyland by night my senior year while I was also doing my high school musical, Anything Goes, which is an insane thing that nobody should have let me do, but yeah, I learned a lesson about my finitude.
B: Aren’t there laws to prevent this sort of thing?
H: I was 18.
B: Child labor laws, oh I see, yeah. Amazing.
H: I know. Wow, so high school theater isn’t for nothing.
B: Oh my gosh, it all happened in the theater, for good and for ill, yeah, yeah. I can remember this one moment where I was on stage as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Yes, it ought to be laughed at.
H: I would love some photo evidence.
B: I was rocking out, singing my best 14 year old Edelweiss and my best friend Ryan Murphy, shout out to Ryan Murphy, who’s not a listener I’m quite sure, his stage cue was to bring me the guitar. Because if you’ve ever seen The Sound of Music right, Captain Von Trapp plays the guitar while singing Edelweiss. I did not play guitar in those days. I was actually kind of scared
to actually even pretend to play it. So I start singing, he missed his cue, and I’m belting out Edelweiss, and halfway through the song, he realizes he forgets his cue, and so he brings me the guitar, but I don’t see him because I’m in my moment and he’s handing me the guitar in increasingly bigger gestures. And I am NOT seeing the guitar I don’t even see that he’s there and then he just sort of shrugs his shoulders like “I don’t know … Guess he doesn’t need the guitar for this number” And people are laughing. And I have no idea why they’re laughing.
H: That’s amazing.
B: Yeah.
H: Wow.
B: Bless my homeland forever.
H: I think the funniest character I ever played was Hafa from Fiddler on the Roof. Because there were so many scenes where my sisters were doing important things. And then I was in the background churning butter. But the fun thing about that, and this, I mean, to be fair, is another leadership lesson, is that I formed a community doing that show in a way …
B: Community.
H: I’m not sure I had formed … I had formed tight communities through dance, but doing Fiddler on the Roof in high school, I formed community in a whole new way.
B: The theater community. It’s saved many a soul.
H: Right? Right.
B: Totally.
H: Which brings us back to our theme of relationships and leadership. So maybe without further ado, we should get on with the show.
B: No further.
H: The show must go on.
B: Hi, I’m Brandon Nappi.
H: Hi, I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast.
B: A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology.
H: This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, the Episcopal Seminary at Yale. First, could you introduce yourself to our listeners?
Molly: Sure.
H: And then maybe unpack a little bit of what it is that you do for the Episcopal Church.
M: Sure.
H: You’re like the wizard behind the curtain.
B: Yes, and known to be really smart in Episcopal spaces.
M: Well, most important for this audience perhaps, I am a Berkeley alum of 2005. And I have worked as a hospital chaplain, a parish priest while I was getting my PhD, and then worked on diocesan staff for the Bishop of Connecticut, first in an administrative role and then as a secretary of the diocese, which is like record keeping and serving for the executive council and that kind of thing, or mission council in Connecticut, executive council at the church-wide level.
And then in 2019, I went to work in the general convention office. Prior to that, I had been on two interim bodies, as we called them, the standing commissions and task forces and things that operate between general conventions. First on the standing commission on ministry development, and then on the standing commission on structure, governance, constitution, and canons.
H: The mysterious canons.
M: Yes. And so I actually became the chair of that standing commission in 2018. And so what I like to say is I got to make my church hobby, i.e. church governance, I got to make my church hobby my job. So now I work in the general convention office and from 2019 to last fall I was the deputy executive officer and now I am the interim executive officer. And we do, obviously, the constitution and canons, but we basic–and we plan general convention. And we do all of those groups that meet in between general conventions, task forces, standing commissions, executive council, et cetera. We also collect all the parochial report and diocesan report data. And the other significant piece in our world is the registrar role that belongs to the secretary of general convention. And that’s the person who does all the paperwork for a bishop transition, which sounds kind of basic and mundane, but because it is a bishop consecration, it also involves wax and liturgy, obviously. So it’s the record keeping for the course of the consents and the election and the consents and then at the consecration itself and the morning of the consecration, we make the bishop’s ordination certificate with a wax seal for every bishop who’s present.
H: Yeah, your usual onboarding process does not factor in apostolic succession, so I imagine there’s a lot that comes with that.
M: Yes, yes. Nor how to play with wax. So, yeah, no. I often say to folks, one of the things I absolutely love about my job and the general convention office and working at this churchwide level is no two days are the same. If you don’t like variety, this is not the place to be. But if you love variety, we got plenty of it.
B: Okay. Confession on the Leaders Way podcast. I am a governance convert. But I was someone who once upon a time might have been rolling my eyes at bylaws and structure.
H: What was–what converted you?
B: Well, being an executive director and seeing the need for process. I wonder if you could reflect a little bit for maybe some of those folks who are in the eye rolling phase of their careers? Like, do we really need all of this process? And can’t we get to the real thing? Like, give us your best governance nerd sermon and convert the multitudes, Molly.
H: Convert the multitudes.
M: So we need all those rules and governance and structure in order for the institution to do its transformative work in the world. So there’s really no bifurcation between mission and governance. You can’t do the mission if we don’t have the governance. And especially for us as the Episcopal Church, we punch above our societal weight because of our history and because of a variety of things, partially how many founding fathers were Episcopalian, how many presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress over the course of history, the effort at trying to become the sort of national church in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The National Cathedral is ours. So we have a level of societal influence because of having been sort of embedded in the institutions of society.
So they’ve gotten us a lot of value. Also, we wouldn’t have gotten women’s ordination, the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks … That doesn’t just happen all by itself at the local level. It does happen at the local level. And in order for it to be across the church, you had to do it at the church-wide level. You had to do it, you know, if it hadn’t happened through general convention, there are places in the church where it would have been a very long time before that was a reality. And so we have to think about that piece. And then the other good piece to remember is that if you don’t like institutions, then perhaps you’d like to give your pension back.
B: Yeah, right.
M: So, you know, we also personally benefit, and so much of … the other piece that’s part of the reason why actually I’m really excited about what the Episcopal Church can do in this particular moment, not just because of all the tremendous people we have and the leadership we have and the gifts and all the things. We also have an incredible amount of literal resources, real estate and financial resources. And we have those resources because of the generosity that has gone before us and because how well the institution has curated and maintained and across the board, both at the parish level, at the diocesan level, at the church-wide level. So we actually are in this really remarkable spot to be able to be about tremendous change because we have such financial resources at our collective disposal, which we wouldn’t have without the institutions. So…
H: Can you talk a little bit more about what goes on at General Convention? I have some students who I think feel like general convention is “the man”, and it has nothing to do with them, and who knows what happens there, who knows who goes there. That’s not really the church. The church is just the individual local parish, and that’s what’s doing all the good work of serving the needy and spreading the gospel, what’s… Talk to me. Talk to me.
M: Yes. Yes. Well, yes, that is a true parish. But if you… You know, it’s a multi-level piece, right? So, we are, you know, a collective representative government. That parish elects delegates to its diocesan convention. That diocesan convention elects deputies to general convention. Of course, it’s worth noting the difference between a delegate and a deputy. Delegates are elected to represent the parish, whereas a deputy is elected to vote their mind and conscience. They’re not bound to the beliefs at their diocesan level, they’re elected for who they are and what they believe in, to act their conscience at general convention.
So general convention is the whole church in representative government. Eight deputies per, up to eight deputies for diocese, four clergy, four lay, so everybody has a say. I think that’s one of the pieces that I always think is important, especially if you’re familiar with either more congregational traditions where it’s very local governance or say the Roman tradition where there’s not really representative government.
H: It’s top down, yeah.
M: We are a wonderful combination of those two. Yes, there is stuff that can be decided at the local level. And all of the decisions, General Convention is the highest authority under God in the Episcopal Church. So all of the decisions that happen in this church have input from the bottom up. So it’s not like, oh, there’s this black box where stuff happens and it just comes out at us. No, like people from all across the church. And that’s, I mean, I think that’s one of the fun parts about general convention is just to see the whole church gathered, to see representatives from absolutely everywhere across the church, you know, in multiple languages; we worship together. Yes, we do a lot of governance together.
I also want to say, well, if you like the prayer book, you like how we pray, well, that’s a product of general convention. If you like all our alternative liturgies that have come in the last few years, that’s a product of general convention. If you value the way the church operates, the way we are at a local level. Well, that’s a product of General Convention. That’s how we got here. We, you know, basically the church as we know it was created by General Convention. So it’s kind of central to who we are and our identity as much as, you know, our common prayer is.
H: Yeah, I went for the first time this last, was it last summer only?
M: Mm-hmmm.
H: In Louisville. The year has been chunky and tense.
M: Yeah.
H: But it really struck me how democratic it was. It struck me how much these are regular, lay and ordained Episcopalians making the decisions together. It looks a lot like American government for a lot of historical reasons. And as you were talking about different people from different places coming together, I don’tvknow if you’re aware of the each sort of diocese will have these big signs and then they’ll decorate their signs. So like the Diocese of Olympia has a big orca stuffy on their sign and you know, I donated a Berkeley baseball cap to go on the Diocese of Connecticut one. Even though we’re not, you know, part of the diocese, I felt like we needed some representation. Traditionally there’s been a Yale Bulldog and a Yukon Husky.
H: Oh, well, there you go. See, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. It’s so fun.
B: Well, maybe Lucas needs some representation in the future. Have you been tracking the arrival of Lucas?
M: I have not been tracking the arrival of Lucas.
B: The new Berkeley mascot, who’s really the old, in a sense, Berkeley mascot.
H: Oh, indeed. Yes, St. Luke’s Chapel sort of has a representative around the world of the winged ox who is now descended in the form of stuffy, temporary tattoo, sticker.
M: Yes, I think on the table at EPN. I did see one of those stuffies. Okay. See him out there.
B: And I think there were some conversations about graduating students actually getting Lucas tattooed on their body. I don’t know that that’s happened.
H: Somebody. Somebody has been…
M: Oh my. Okay.
B: But yeah, so there’s lots of enthusiasm. So I’m appreciating the pneumatology, the theology of the Holy Spirit that you’ve just described, the Holy Spirit moving at every level and every corner of the church and having a voice through people. As you, in your kind of eagle-eye perspective, a really unique perspective on the church, how else would you name the unique brilliance? You know, every denomination kind of has its own unique DNA, its own contribution in the body of Christ.
H: Charisms to be very Episcopalian about it.
B: Carisms, right? So governance, obviously one. What are some of the other gifts that the Episcopal church about it. So governance obviously one. What are some of the other gifts that the Episcopal Church brings to the body of Christ?
M: I think it is our shared prayer and our shared way of doing liturgy that while … I travel around the church a lot and there’s great diversity in the church and great diversity in liturgies, and yet the bones of it are still the same, and the beliefs behind it are the same, and the understanding of God and Jesus and our theology, our understanding of the Holy Spirit, the belief that the Holy Spirit can act at all levels. All the way from participating in how, working in how a parish might call their priest, all the way up to how the presiding bishop is elected, elected by the House of Bishops, the General Convention, confirmed by the House of Deputies, like every… All the way through, bishops are elected. That’s different than most of the rest of the Anglican Communion. And so the sense of unity that I think that comes from that of, we’re all in this together, and we actually get to be a participant with the Holy Spirit in the say of, sort of the direction of how we go as a church, and not just at the local level, not just at the diocesan level, but at the whole church-wide level as well.
And so I think that both the combination of the rich diversity that’s true across the church in terms of language, culture, all kinds of factors is really important. And there’s so much that we share. And I think that’s often, I think, can be a surprise for folks. Because if you’re really grounded in your local and you haven’t yet experienced sort of bigger church at another level, you’re like, oh, wait. I recognize this. Like, over there, there’s another one like me. And that we have that such … so much that we share and that brings us together with our diversity, not – our diversity doesn’t have to be a stumbling block, and in fact, it can be something that unites us.
B: Have you had any experiences lately that have just stuck in your mind, experiences of a vibrant community, ones that you really, that you hold on to? I think all of us in our professional lives have those moments that get us through the hard ones.
M: Yes.
B: Can you give us one of your recent ones?
M: So one of the pieces of my job is bishop consecrations, and I love those for the diversity. It is absolutely the same liturgy every time, right?
Straight out of the prayer book. Like, we have one liturgy for how you consecrate a bishop. And so … there’s that. And yet, in each context, the music changes, depending on the feast day, or the bishop-elect chooses the readings, and there’s a different preacher. So there’s all these elements that bring it different. But the joy that’s present and the hope that’s present in a diocese as they are embarking on this transition and this new possibility and this new hope. And so I love being a part of those. I love just helping that process. I love to help in that process.
I actually think playing with the wax and doing all the paperwork is really fun. And to be gathered in a liturgy that’s usually hundreds of people, sometimes over a thousand people, depends on the diocese and the location, who are just excited for the future. That is so life-giving to be in communities of people who see the possibility and aren’t just focusing on all the challenges. The challenges are great, we have many of them. And yet, to be in the places where people are focused on the hope and the possibility of the future and what we can do together, because that… Liturgy brings the diocese together in a way that we don’t do very often.
B: Yeah, thank you.
H: I wonder in your transition from being a church governance nerd to being a church governance professional nerd …
M: –Oh, I’m still a church governance nerd.
H: … Professional nerd.
B: That’s a terminal condition.
H: Have you learned things about leadership that you didn’t anticipate, or have you changed as a leader?
M: On one hand, I still draw on older things from my past about leadership and examples of really good leadership. I was in a-
H: I’d also be curious to just hear about those.
M: –I was in a situation where we were supposed to talk about like sort of someone who’d been a good example of a leader, leadership, or some of the things you learned about leadership. And I realized actually how much I rely on two lessons from high school about leadership. One was I spent a lot of high school stage managing.
H: Oh, man. I mean, that’s essentially what you’re still doing.
M: Theatre. Yes. And I started as a freshman. And so then I am a freshman stage managing seniors. And I’m thinking, how do you do this? And so I sort of started off a little strong and stern and like, I’m gonna tell them what to do. That was mildly successful. What I discovered was, if I just built relationship with them, they saw I respected their art, their talent, the actor’s talent, what they could do things. And I showed them I was competent at my role and we just had mutual respect the whole thing got a whole lot easier and we did so well. The other one is the head of my …
B: Yes …I have a future question. Future Brandon has a question.
M: And then the head of my upper school was this wonderful man. He was probably 6’5”. So, you know, he was an imposing presence wherever he was. But he had the gentlest spirit and was so kind and deeply respected us as students and always, you know, I mean, never raised his voice, never–just respected us as students. Spring of my senior year, there was a rumor floating around that we were gonna have a senior skip day. He stood up in front of our class meeting at his full height. He would stand behind with his hand behind his back and sort of rock on his feet and looked around the room. And he said, “If you all take a senior skip day, I’ll take it personally. That was the end of that. There would none of us would have dreamed of insulting him. None of us. Because he had spent years earning all of our respects and listening and caring about us as students and helping us and all those things. So for me, that value of building relationship in leadership is so, so important. And so I’ve definitely hung on to that piece.
I think the piece that’s personally … I’ve sort of really had to learn and, you know, this is why we have, you know, therapists and executive coaches and all that stuff, is, when you get to a certain level of leadership, it’s not possible to please everyone anymore.
H: Oh, gosh.
M: And I mean, that’s true at lots of levels, right? I mean, no parish priest ever pleases everybody in the congregation. So it’s … but that in sort of like, right, the number of people you have authority over, there’s no, you you know, or are working with. Yeah.
H: And many are, all of them, leaders themselves.
M: Right. I mean, I’m really a part of a big team of leaders now Yeah. You know, under the presiding bishop and the president of the house of deputies. And so … So, you know, and I’m a–I’m a people pleaser by nature. Yeah. Me too. So this is hard. Yeah. It’s really hard to realize that and I’m a I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist. And so, one, I’m gonna make mistakes because that’s inevitable. Right? We’re human and you just can’t get stuff done at any level of leadership and not make mistakes. And there are gonna be people who are not gonna like the decisions I make.
B: So I was in a high school, production of Godspell, as long as we’re talking about high school theater careers. And I think the way I thought about this was that the good people will like me when I’m a leader. The bad people won’t like me. And the task is, is to be comfortable with the bad people not liking me. Right? And the challenge, of course, that I discovered is that indiscriminately people might be upset with my decisions. But it’s … it especially hurts when the people that you love, respect, cherish, don’t agree with decisions you’ve made. And how do you stand in that moment? And I wonder, in your own experience, what have you drawn upon as supports? You mentioned therapy, spiritual direction, and coaches. Those things have been helpful. Can you maybe walk us through the lever? It takes a village …
M: It takes a village to raise children and be a leader, be a human,
H: Sustain oneself.
M: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think absolutely all of those pieces. I mean, that you and colleagues and friends and, you know, and I also, you know, I have maintained, a colleague group from when I was in leadership of the Young Clergy Women Project. Now it’s known as Young Clergywomen International, which was started at the Divinity School. Susan Olsen started it years ago.
B: Oh, Susan. Yeah. Yeah.
M: So which is a– it’s an ecumenical organization for women clergy 40. I’m I’m I’ve graduated. But so, and those … the women who I’m in that group with aren’t Episcopalians. They’re other denominations. So I also think it’s really important for us to keep a wider perspective. Yeah. And especially if you’re, in leadership, whether, like, if you’re on a diocese in staff or you’re working at the church toilet, like, you need colleagues who are outside so that you can have an outside perspective. And also because you can’t have like, when I was on diocesan staff, I can’t have the same collegial relationship with clergy in Connecticut. And even now, I can’t have the same kind of clergy collegial relation I have. It … there’s a collegial relation, but I can’t be, I’m not an equal among them. And so, so having that, those resources and that also just the wisdom of people who are outside your own system, is so helpful.
I also, I also think I mean, back to the piece of, you know, building relationship in the to the … when it’s, you know, when it’s Facebook posts about who don’t like a decision, okay, there’s not really possibility for dialogue there. It’s not really a good medium for dialogue. But if they’re people you know in real life, or they’re people in your office, or they’re people colleagues of people, then conversation. And, yeah, we’re probably gonna come at the end of that time, we’re gonna come … We may still hold the same disagreement, but something feels different if you feel heard.
H: Yeah.
M: I think for on, you know, for both sides, that if you feel like, oh, okay, then maybe, hopefully, we get to a place of, like, you know, better understanding. And maybe I’ve learned some they would better understand why I made a decision I did, and I’ve probably learned something that will help me decide differently next time. Even if I wouldn’t change the decision I made, I might change my process going forward, or maybe I would change the decision, you know, going forward from what I learned. So I think that willingness to stay in relationship, to talk across difference, to be engaged is just really important.
B: Yeah. That’s really hard. And it seems to me another gift of the Episcopal church is that the purple reality is real.
M: Very.
B: Right? And we need spaces where we can come together, stand shoulder to shoulder, and orient ourselves to something bigger than political difference. Right? We orient ourselves Absolutely. To God, to the gospel. Right. And increasingly, churches are lining up in in political fashion. So I think it’s a beautiful opportunity the Episcopal Church has to be in purple spaces together. And I wonder if you have the, the opportunity to be in those spaces very often yourself. Obviously, you kinda have a higher perspective on things.
M: Yeah. I’d say I mean, some of my colleagues have more of that. I mean, that’s, you know, very much the work of the office of government relations and our office in DC, and they do lots of great work around civil discourse and helping people to have those conversations across difference and to, you know, go to the hill and advocate for the things that general convention and the executive council have said, “these are … this is what we believe, this is what matters to us.” And that and that’s a that’s about the principle, that’s about the gospel, that’s about what we believe. It’s not a … it’s not a partisan effort. It it’s going and saying, this is what matters to us as Episcopalians. And lots of those are things that, blessedly, can be, hopefully, you know, unifying on the Hill, although I don’t know there’s a lot of unifying on the Hill these days. But they you know, those can be places where people from, you know, multiple backgrounds come together. And I think it is really important to honor the political diversity of, you know, the Episcopal church and that we, you know, we are … we are purple in that. And, while we may have blue congregations or red, more mostly red congregations, lots of our congregations are, you know, are purple. And I think some of them, you know, sort of cancel each other out on election day because they’re really, you know, divided. And yet, if that sense of community at the local level is strong, then that’s okay. And you can, like, come through that and work through that and be in relationship with each other and learn from each other and unify around the shared issues. And, you know, I mean, I think, you know, seems to be the theme for the day. You know, keep coming back to, like, stay in relationship with each other about those thesis. Right? You know, I was a psych major. And remember we just talked about, you know, how do you sort of undo stereotypes? Well, you build relationship with the people who you were holding to this narrow … and you realize that, oh, well, stereotypes can be accurate, they’re just incomplete. And so you have to get the whole picture, and the only way to get the whole picture is to actually engage. And I think that that’s so, you know, so important. And I think we have a really wonderful opportunity, but also obligation in this current political time to be that voice in the public sphere to say, you know, oh, you know, there’s a via media. There’s an Anglican way about this. There’s a middle way and to say that, you know, the gospel isn’t partisan. It’s very political, but it’s not partisan. And let us unite around the principles that we share. And those are many. We spend so much time talking about what divides us. It’s like we forget about the things that we share.
H: Could you name some of that for people who might be listening more on the outskirts and it’s not immediately … I think the the divisive stuff is so central to our minds. What does unite us?
M: I mean, I think, you know, the the oft quoted piece of our baptismal covenant that says to respect the dignity of every human being. And I do think that that it that is at the heart of, certainly at the heart of our faith. Actually, you know, I think that’s also at the heart of, you know, sort of the American political experiment is a value of the individual. Now how that’s expressed and, you know, what does that look like? And, you know, one side would say, well, no, no. The fundamental thing about that is the freedom to choose, you know, my own way and sort of almost to a, like, a libertarian side of things. Right? Others would say, no, no. You have to have all this government structure in order to ensure that the, you know, dignity of our human being is respected. And, you know, a lot of times but okay. Yes. Okay. We’re talking about different ways to get, but the fundamental Yeah. Belief is the same, that we care about the individual person. And that does actually … so can we can we start can we get to that can we remember that piece? I mean, I think that piece is fundamental. It’s fascinating to me over the years, the coalitions that have been built around climate change stuff and environmental stewardship across some pretty interesting denominational lines that we wouldn’t there wouldn’t be a lot of things that we agree about. Necess–you know, in sort of, you know, we might not agree on, you know, the our soteriology. We might not agree on women’s ordination. We might not agree on, you know, various, you know, things. We all agree that the Earth is God’s creation and deserves to be cared for, and we should not really, you know, just mess it up. There’s some pretty fundamental pieces there that we really do agree on. And, if we could start there … Yeah. I’d think that it would be different. And I think, you know, fundamentally, at the base of it, you know, right, everybody wants, you know, a reasonable shot at success and happiness in life. They want that for their children, and they want … they would like, you know, to leave the world a little better than they found it.
Most people, that’s really there. Now, how you get there, we can all just, you know, we can have a lot of different ideas about how we might get there and how we might do that and what does, you know, a successful look life look like. And I think it … you realize, you know, that there’s so many shared values at the … at the root of it, but we just we say we spend too much time talking disagreeing about the ways we might get there. We forget to focus on actually, you know, what we share.
B: Well, and, of course, the shadow side of social media is we’re being sorted into silos, right, into these little echo chambers. And it’s hard to get to know someone who might share a different perspective if we’re not in the same space. I think of that funny line from from Brene Brown who says when she said, I wanna go to church on Sunday and sing hymns with someone that I wanna punch in the face the rest of the week. I mean, it’s hyperbole. Right? But, like, more and more, we’re literally not in the same spaces with people with whom we disagree. And whether it be in church or at the Rotary or volunteering right at a local soup kitchen, wherever. I mean, we have to find ways to be together rather than this kind of self-sorting that’s happening, and has been happening over the last generation.
M: Absolutely. And I think in the course of COVID, you know, lots and lots of churches that didn’t have online worship in any form or hybrid worship or any of those things, you know, all of a sudden, you know, loads of churches took a technological leap forward really fast because they had to. You know, there’s good value in that. There, you know, I don’t have the exact numbers yet because we just closed the 2024 parochial report. But I know we did, you know, sort of measure the online participation, and it’s pretty significant. Like, hundreds of thousands of people on a Sunday morning across the Episcopal Church are worshiping online. Are worshiping online, are connecting in some way online. And, you know, I mean, many of them may have another church, you know, that they go to, and they just tune in because, you know, connection, a family, you know, it’s a great way to go back to a church you can’t attend in person anymore because you moved away years ago. All those kinds of reasons for folks who are shut-ins, you know, who can’t make the physical journey to church. Lots of good pieces there. And, right, there’s no substitute for in-person. And those interactions, and I think … so, you know, I think we have to figure out how to hold well the both/and of that because having that online resource is a is a real gift and it’s connect meaning that people are connected to churches in ways, you know, that they couldn’t be if they had to be there in person. So that’s important. And we do really need that incarnational experience of worship together. You know, we all know it doesn’t sound the same to sing those hymns with someone on Zoom. It just you know, it doesn’t work.
H: In fact, it’s a little bit of a nightmare.
M: Right. And so that experience of being there, and … so how do we ensuring, you know, that we’re, you know, having both of that? And I think that’s, you know, that’s a challenge for education. Right? I mean, you know, and a challenge for, you know, social life. You know, I have an 11-year old and a 14-year old. Like, how do you manage the in-person and the online communications of … for the, you know, interchange? How do we do that for ourselves as adults? Right? How are we maintaining in-person friendships? And, you know, while we might feel connected to lots of people because we have lots of friends on social media, there’s just no substitute for that in-person experience. And so how do we help each other maintain that?
B: I mean, I hope for you, given the kind of responsibility that you have, that you sleep very well. Well, when you don’t, what are the sorts of things that you worry about that you can share with thousands of your new friends?
M: I worry that we won’t be able to do it. I think we are at such a beautiful opportunity as a church, and I mean that from the seminary to the … and to the parish level, all the way up to the to the church-wide level. The… all across the church, we’re at a real opportunity for transformation. We are at an opportunity where our particular voice of the middle way and, our, you know, faithfulness to the gospel and our fundamental belief in the respecting of every human being is very needed in the public square right now. And so we have an opportunity not just to sort of be louder in the public square. We also have an opportunity to transform our own communities in a way and to, you know, engage more deeply at the local level. You know, certainly, one of Bishop Sean’s priorities is to help the resources be shared more fully across diocese and local congregations and also to seek out those things at the local level that are going really well and how do we scale them up and share them across the church. And so, I think there’s just such an amazing opportunity here.
And because we have a tremendous legacy, literally, financial legacy that has been given to us from generations past and, you know, recent positive economic circumstances, that we really could make a huge difference to care. We have to do it together, though. We can’t … it can’t be a little bit here and a little bit over there. The only way to make the kind of impact I think that is really needed is we have to do it all together. And that’s hard and complicated. And so, you know, I worry that the things that divide us and the challenges and the roadblocks and all that would sort of just get to be too much, and we wouldn’t be able to do it, which would grieve me greatly because I think there’s just such hope and possibility right now.
H: Well, would you be willing to play a game we like to call Holy Cow inspired by our patron saint Luke, the winged ox, to prove to our listeners that you are fully human just like us.
B: So we have five questions that I’m gonna ask, which will astonish listeners, and they’ll each say, “Holy cow”. I’m gonna add an extra sixth this week.
H: Oh, okay.
B: Based on your vast …
H: Special special.
B: … Stage management experience. So we’ll make that the grand finale. Okay. Your favorite go-to snack?
M: Bread and cheese.
B: Carb.
M: Yeah. Carbs.
B: Carb loading. Random job from a former chapter of your life.
M: Actually, I would say random job from current chapter of my life. My family runs a blueberry farm in Maine …
H: Field trip!
M: … and we have a blueberry festival weekend, which is funny because my maiden name is Field, and the blueberry farm is called Fields Fields.
H: Great, writing it down.
M: First weekend in August, there’s a festival, and we have … open the farm, and we have all kinds of visitors and vendors and things like that. And my daughter and I sell the merchandise …
B: Oh, my gosh.
M: … Of, like, tea and t-shirts and honey and all the things that my sister-in-law and brother work on. So it’s, like, one weekend a year, I do a completely different job for three days.
H: That’s incredible.
B: One of the rules in my house is there must always be frozen blueberries available. And as often as we can, we get them from the local farm. I’m thrilled. I wanna … I wanna make a trip.
M: Great.
B: Strangest thing in your refrigerator?
M: Well, actually, there are a lot of capers in my refrigerator because my children both love capers on their bagels with smoked salmon.
H: Wow.
B: Bad habit that you’d be willing to share?
M: A bad habit, and this is, you know, part of the gift of having an executive coach so they get to work on it, is I move too quickly.
B: Smallest hill you’ll die on.
M: Quantity of chips in a chocolate chip cookie.
B: That they should be packed.
M: No.
B: Should it … should be rather sparse.
M: They should be sparse so that there’s plenty of cookie between the chunks. And preferably, you should sprinkle some salt on them when they come out of the oven.
B: And the bonus Holy Cow question. Again .. .your favorite stage manager snafu from high school.
M: So my high school theater was a … built between, connecting two buildings. So the front of the … where you, the audience came in was through the Arts Building, and then you could go off the back of the stage into the elementary school. So I went to a preschool through twelfth grade school. Off in the wings, you know, we’re on our headsets and, somebody goes, there’s guys with tanks in the hallway. And I’m going, oh, what? Well, it turned out the fire alarm had gone off in the elementary school. And so the fire department came. So, you know, they’re there with all their gear and other things. And fortunately, because they’re connected, but they’re not, it’s not all the same system, unfortunately, the alarm didn’t go off in the theater, but, you know, we’re having to deal … we’re like in the middle of a show and we’re having to deal with the fact that they’re like, the fire department is all in the back hallway, you know. And we know this because we use, you know, parts of that …
H: Everybody’s running around.
M: … To wait for space off stage and dressing rooms and all that kind of stuff because it’s all off the back of the stage.
H: Wow. That that feels like it could very easily be a metaphor for something having to do with church governance.
B: Holy cow.
H: Holy cow. Well, we didn’t ask you ahead of time, but do you have a favorite prayer or a collect or a blessing, or could you simply pray over our listeners?
M: I would be glad to do that. The Lord be with you.
H and B:And also with you.
M: Let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you for the gift of this day. It’s a beautiful sunny day in New Haven. We thank you for the gift of hybrid technology, as it were, and that we are here in person and yet able to connect with so many people across our beloved church.
Bless each of us here and bless each of the listeners that in this day, wherever they are, wherever they find themselves, in whatever they’re doing, they may feel your presence more nearly. All this we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
B: Amen.
H: Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast.
B: And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you’d like this episode, please share it with a friend.
H: Until next time.
B: Peace be with you.