Ep. 189 Michael Jordan - Worship in an Age of Anxiety

Anxiety is rampant. It’s everywhere. Does the way we worship enhance our collective anxiety? In this episode, Michael Jordan and I have a conversation exploring how Christian worship practices can both help and hinder people experiencing anxiety and mental health struggles. Michael discusses the history of evangelical worship traditions and how they have sometimes relied on heightening anxiety to bring people to repentance. However, Jesus modeled a different approach of meeting and accepting people in the midst of their struggles. We talk how liturgy, music, and use of technology in worship can help people relate their inner experiences to God's bigger salvation story. Practical steps like talking to mental health professionals and auditing current practices to be more inclusive of those with anxiety are offered as suggestions. How can churches intentionally support mental health through worship in a way that looks more like Jesus' compassionate example? Join us as we explore the intersection of worship and anxiety. 

Rev. Dr. Michael Jordan (PhD, Drew University) is an ordained Wesleyan pastor with twenty years of ministry experience in From 2002-2009, he was the pastor of Exton Community Baptist Church in Exton, PA, and has also served on the pastoral staff of his current church, Houghton Wesleyan. Over the summer, he is the staff chaplain at Camp-of-the-Woods, a Christian camp in the Adirondack Mountains. 

Mike’s wife Jill is a mathematician who also teaches at Houghton; they live just off campus and together are raising their five children: Grace, Jack, Lucy, Gabriel, and Anne. In his spare time, Mike enjoys singing, crossword puzzles and distance running and is a rabid fan of Philadelphia professional and college sports.

Michael's Book:
Worship in an Age of Anxiety

Michael's Recommendation:
What Are Christians For? by Jake Meader
Women, Work & Calling by Joana Meyer

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Transcript

Michael Jordan: 0:00

Part of what happens here is we like begin to sort of say, that's not just the way people meet Jesus for the first time. That's like what it means all the time, like in our lives, it's like a normal cycle, to be anxious and then to repent to me, you know, and and I want to interrogate that a little bit. I don't know that that's good for us to view as the only way that we kind of grow financially, you know, and, as you know, I mean, I think as we get into this, you know, as evangelicals begin to embrace a different kind of spiritual formation, with the Richard Foster's, Dallas Willard saw that, you know, there's a different kind of approach to virtue formation that comes in that's not nearly build around anxiety in quite the same ways. And I want to ask, how do we how do we merge these two worlds together a little bit?

Joshua Johnson: 0:56

Hello, and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we can make. We longed to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Our show is powered by you the listener, if you want to support the work that we do get early access to episodes, Episode guides, and more, go to patreon.com/shifting culture to become a monthly patron so that we can continue in this important work. And don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each week, and go leave a rating and review. It's easy, it only takes a second and it helps us find new listeners to the show. Just go to the Show page on the app that you're using right now and hit five stars. It really is that easy. Thank you so much. You know what else would help us out? share this podcast with your friends, your family, your network? Tell them how much you enjoy it and let them know that they should be listening as well. If you are new here, welcome. If you want to dig deeper find us on social media at shifting culture podcasts where I post video clips and quotes and interact with all of you. Previous guests on the show have included AJ Swoboda Craig West off and Jesse Roberts. You could go back listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is Michael Jordan, that Reverend Dr. Michael Jordan is an ordained Wesleyan pastor with 20 years of ministry experience. Previously he was the pastor of Exton community Baptist Church in Exton, Pennsylvania, and has also served on the pastoral staff of his current church, Houghton Wesleyan over the summer, he is the staff chaplain at camp of the woods, a Christian camp in the Adirondack Mountains. Anxiety is rampant, it is everywhere, does the way we worship enhance our collective anxiety? Well, in this episode, Michael Jordan and I have a conversation, exploring how Christian worship practices can both help and hinder people experiencing anxiety and mental health struggles. Michael discusses the history of evangelical worship traditions, and how they have sometimes relied on heightening anxiety to bring people to repentance. However, Jesus modeled a different approach of meeting and accepting people in the midst of their struggles. So we talk about how liturgy and music and the use of technology and worship can help people relate their inner experiences to God's bigger salvation story. And we talk about practical steps like talking to mental health professionals and auditing current practices to be more inclusive of those with anxiety. And we offer those as suggestions. So how can churches intentionally support mental health through worship in a way that looks more like Jesus's compassionate example? Join us as we explore the intersection of worship and anxiety. Here is my conversation with Michael Jordan. Michael, welcome to the shifting culture. Thank you for joining me excited to have you on.

Michael Jordan: 3:48

Thanks. It's my great privilege.

Joshua Johnson: 3:50

I'd love to hear some of your story of how you know this work started to coalesce of you. What was your interest in, in worship, anxiety, mental health, and the combination of such?

Michael Jordan: 4:03

Sure, yeah, so let's talk about worship first. So I grew up as an American Baptist pastor, or in the American Baptist church. I was ordained as an American Baptist pastor. And part of that process for me was not getting a whole lot of formation and worship when I was in seminary. So I was the kind of guy in seminary who was always like, Oh, I, I want to do a PhD in this and like, every single class, you know, is that kind of person. And eventually, I just kind of settled on the fact that God had also given me some pastoral gifts, not just the kind of academic and I wanted to really get into the church. I wanted to explore pastoral ministry a little bit. So after finishing seminary, I pastored a small church in suburban Philadelphia for a time I was 24 When I started, and it was shocking to me how often I was relying just kind of on my own internal sense of what worked you know, and and eventually, you just get enough impostor syndrome. that you begin to begin to think like what, there's got to be something a little more to this. And so I was drawn to study worship more deeply and basically, long story wanted to do a PhD wanting to do to study worship, I wanted to stay at the church where I was. And so I kind of ran all the schools that would work within 100 mile radius, there was one, it was Drew University in North Jersey, and I did a PhD there in liturgical studies. So that's kind of my background was worship. And that was a wonderful I mean, as as you can imagine, I mean, coming into a program like that, which was kind of like hi, united, Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Lutheran, I felt like I was at Hogwarts, and I was learning all these words that other people didn't know, I was wonderful, wonderful experience, but really good, really good for me. So that's the worship side of things. It's always been a passion of mine. And so mental health. So I've been working at Houghton College, which are holding university now sorry, that's my alma mater, where I graduated in 99. And I started working here as dean at The Chapel in 2013. And have been, even when I first started, I was amazed at the, the, the way students were describing their interior lives, you know, just in a way that was not accessible to me when I was 18, or 19. You know, I had, I had people talking to me about triggers, and people talking to me about medications they were, it was, it was fascinating, it was also a little daunting, right? To kind of jump into that. And that's really only increased in the last, I mean, I'm in my 12th year now. And that's really only increased. So I became really passionate about thinking, you know, I've taught spiritual formation and Houghton, that's an interest of mine. And I just became really struck with the fact that students had like, different ways of talking about what's going on inside of them, right, like, like, they had this idea that God loves me so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross for me. And that's one way of talking about what's going on inside of me. And then there's a whole mental health paradigm. And it felt like the two were not really overlapping, right? They, they knew that they weren't just supposed to pray, anxiety and depression away. But that they also knew, like they didn't, I don't think made a real healthy connection with how those two are supposed to kind of impact each other. So at any rate, I just became really interested in thinking more about that, and talked to the folks at University Press, and was really thankful for the series that they're doing dynamics of Christian worship, which is like that sweet spot for me between academic and pastoral. And this just, it kind of took off from

Joshua Johnson: 7:24

there, our life in our formation, into the image and likeness of Jesus should impact all of our life, our mental health as well. And it shouldn't just be discordance with the our intellectual assent of doctrinal issues, it should actually impact our daily lives and what we're going through. So as you've started to walk through that, how does do those two things intersect?

Michael Jordan: 7:52

Well, number of ways. So as I'm thinking about worship, particularly, I mean, the book is kind of built around this question of, okay, so what does someone learn when they're going for help with anxiety? Right? And even some of the question you just raised about, like, how much of it is learning new ideas, and how much of it is kind of learning simply a different way of kind of adapting to a reality inside them? So I looked at one particular kind of therapy that people go for when they go for help with anxiety called act Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and just sort of tried to look at what people learn when they're when they're going in for that kind of the help. And, generally, right, they're learning, okay, I need to be able to accept the things that I'm feeling. That's not to say that every feeling is good. But it is to say that when we experience an anxious feeling, our first thought can't be how do i eradicate this, but more? What am I going to do with this? Like, how am I going to acknowledge that this is here? And then I often tell students like how am I going to put it in the passenger seat of the car or put it in the trunk rather than let it drive those kinds of things? Which is, which, you know, I think is really healthy advice. Again, I'm not a mental health professional. But the the healthiest kind of way I see students adjusting to that anxiety is when they're not pathologizing, every anxious feeling right there. They're allowing themselves to experience it. And maybe some of those feelings will go away. Maybe they won't, right. But they're, they're learning to accept their feelings. They're learning to kind of to realize that their inner experience is kind of a relative thing, right? That that there may be lots of reasons why they're feeling or thinking what they're feeling, but that thoughts are just thoughts and feelings are just feelings and they don't need to kind of run the show. So for me, then the question like how does a person like that fit or not fit when they go to church? Right? Like when they hear the pastor get up in the pulpit and talk about Be anxious for nothing? Are they going to recognize that message, which is probably been very healing for them in what the pastor saying, or are they going to hear a kind of message that pathologize is that anxious feeling and makes them think oh, the very first thing I have to do here Here is hide the fact that I have experienced that or that I am experiencing that right now. Which is, you know, not, not what we would ask of people who visit our churches generally, right? Like in general, one of the great kind of realizations of the church in the post seeker sensitive years is to realize like when people come to your church, you can't, you can expect that of the you shouldn't expect that people will be these finished products, you need to meet people where they are, and yet, for people with anxiety, that might not be the case. And And so beginning to sort of say, where did that come from? Where's it going? How do we do it in a more healthy way like that? That's kind of what the books built around. As you

Joshua Johnson: 10:35

started to analyze some evangelical worship and worship practices. Sure word. How did evangelical worship practices enhance anxiety in people? Rather than bring that anxiety into a place where Jesus is called Be anxious for nothing? Sure.

Michael Jordan: 10:53

Yeah. So I do a bit in the book kind of historically, first, where I sort of talk about some of the figures that made American evangelicalism what it is, talk about Charles Finney, a little bit, Dwight moody, a little bit, Billy Graham, a little bit. Finn, he was a really fascinating person, I find it more fascinating than most people because my dissertation was on him. So you know, not everybody finds Phineas fascinating as I do, but But you know, he's cast kind of a long shadow for us in the way that we understand preaching. I mean, he was really, he was this kind of revolutionary figure who, I think quite rightly, some, in the liturgical world, understand him as like the product of a burgeoning scientific age in America. And for him, it was very much like, anxiety is really the natural product of what happens when a heart that is rightly disposed toward Jesus, but hasn't yet met him and is bumping up against something in their life that's that sinful, right, that they're going to see that and they're gonna feel anxiety. And so Feeny talks a bit about that in really explicit ways, like in ways that you and I would not look at today in our understanding of mental health and say, that makes sense. Like, he was just like, yeah, anxiety is naturally what happens when that happens. And so because of that, he he really felt like anxiety was something to be pressed. And, and I don't say that to Shane. Like, I think he tends to be a very polarizing figure in the world. I'm from in liturgical studies. So I'm not saying that to kind of pile on because I think he in some ways, I think he needs, he needs a little rehabilitation historically, like he, he really, it's not like he wanted to sort of pile on for piling on sake. Like he didn't want to just make people feel anxious for anxiety sake. But he also literally thought, this is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit's work in someone's life. And so we can't short circuit that when it shows up. And so his approach to preaching right was just highly like, what are we doing when we hide behind a pulpit? And when we I mean, he had, he had such stern words for people in his Presbyterian denomination, who he felt, saw the truth and acted like it was a fiction. And he said, you know, he's like, we have learned too long from those folks. And we need to learn from actors, we need to move out from behind the pulpit, we need to walk around the stage when he has a chance to like design his own space for worship. He's like, got a thrust stage that he's walking out on looking people in the eye with these piercing eyes, because he recognizes that like, heightens the moment. And for him, it's not a matter of piling on. It's just a matter of doing what the spirits told him to do. Moody, I'm a little more skeptical about like, when moody comes along, he sort of sees that and sees how that worked for Finney. And moody really does kind of like embellish and pile on. Right? Like, Moody's got these fantastical stories, which I just find so much fun to read. I don't know if everybody would but like reading old moody sermons, he's got this one sermon where he's talking about, like a little boy who was working, I think for like, he was wearing maybe it was a shoe, a shoe salesman or a cobbler. And he, you know, begs to have Sunday off and can't have Sunday off and the cobbler is really mad at him and really abusive. And he like, tells the story in really gory detail about how awful this boy's situation was. And then he talks about this, like young woman who came in and taught Sunday school and like worked with this boy and brought him to Jesus. And then the story ends with the boy getting his legs run over by a train. And he's like an analyst, you know, the woman was like, you know, holding him with his dying breath, that kind of thing. And, of course, the only purpose to that kind of story is to just heightened heightened the pathos. Right. And so he he piled on in a way that Feeny didn't you know, like, he just sort of saw this works, and he kind of built on that. And that's, you know, I mean, that's also part of who we are, like, as we we sort of recognize this kind of natural movement, right? From an anxious feeling, to repentance, anxiety is sort of what stirs us to make a decision. What makes sense, which is interesting, because on the one hand, we sort of pathologize those anxious feelings and yet on the other, we just kind of tacitly recognized like, people aren't going to make this decision unless they, they feel like they need to for a reason. And one of those reasons is naturally going to be anxiety. Now, when Billy Graham comes along, like at the beginning of Graham's life, he kind of does that to like, you know, during the height, like the the post World War Two, kind of like nuclear fears, right? He does a little bit of that in the early days of his ministry, where he's this, like, the bomb is gonna come, you know, and you are you ready. But what's interesting about Grant, I mean a lot interesting about Grant. But part of what he also does is he like mixes in more like sociological fears, where he's also like, you know, when the bomb comes, in that moment, everyone is gonna see you for who you really are, you know, sort of pile you know, he does that that way. Now, at the same time, I think Graham sort of recognizes as we get into the 50s 60s 70s 80s, that's not going to work with people in the sink like that. That's just not where people are. And so because of that Graham sort of dials everything back, right. And he, he sort of says, There is a joy that comes with knowing Jesus, a joy that speaks into the anxieties that we're all feeling. And so he follows I think, the same kind of scripts as those other guys, but does it in kind of like a different key, almost, if that makes sense. That's mixing metaphors. But but you see what I'm saying? Like it's much more of a kind of softer, modern kind of, but that that idea is the same, right, anxiety is what produces repentance. And I, I want to question that just a little bit like, I don't doubt that that's true sometimes, right. And I think that is the way that a lot of people meet Jesus for the first time. But I do want to say, and I try to build some case for this in the book, right, like, as these revivalists become kind of front and center for what the evangelical world is known for known about, people want to take those revivals home, and kind of rebuilding. So it's like, you know, we start singing, I'd rather have Jesus in our churches, because Billy Graham does it at the Crusades, right like that. And that, you know, people like Billy Billy Sunday and Homer road Heever home people by Homer Road, Hebrew music to bring into their churches, because they want to sort of, to relive that experience. And I think what happens, at least in part, I want to be careful here, I don't think this is the only thing but I think part of what happens here is we like begin to sort of say, that's not just the, the way people meet Jesus for the first time. That's like, what it means all the time, like in our lives, it's like a normal cycle, to be anxious, and then to repent to be you know, and and I want to interrogate that a little bit. I don't know that that's good for us to view as the only way that we kind of grow financially, you know, and, as you know, I mean, I think as we get into this, you know, as evangelicals begin to embrace a different kind of spiritual formation, with Richard Foster's, Dallas, Willard is all that, you know, there's a different kind of approach to virtue formation that comes in that's not nearly built around anxiety in quite the same ways. And I want to ask, how do we how do we merge these two worlds together a little bit? That makes sense? Yeah,

Joshua Johnson: 17:39

that makes sense. And so I mean, there's a couple of things. One, I think that we're still doing that within the culture, that we're playing on fears constantly so that we could get people or manipulate people into doing something, right, because we have anxiety, and so we want to move them somewhere else. And we do that in the culture. So we probably shouldn't be doing that in the church as much. So if you look back on in the life of Jesus, and you saw Jesus enter into spaces where people eventually would, would repent and move towards a different and a different direction, is he playing on people's anxiety to do that? What is he doing to help people realize that repentance is needed, and they need to move a different direction.

Michael Jordan: 18:25

Curtis Chang does some wonderful work around this, I don't know if that's a familiar name to you or to your listeners, Curtis Chang, has written a book called The anxiety opportunity. There's also kind of a small group course that I've done with a lot of folks at Houghton, that that his whole kind of point, right, is that Jesus meets with people consistently throughout his ministry, who give evidence of experiencing, experiencing anxiety, in the ways that we would define it now, you know, and he sort of Curtis does maybe a little more, like he sort of tries to categorize all the different times when people meet Jesus, and sort of look at the way they talk and attempt to kind of he doesn't diagnose, but he does want to sort of say, like, alright, and what, in what ways can we say these folks are anxious or aren't they, you know, and for him, he wants to say, a lot of the times when, when anxious people approach Jesus, Jesus meets them where they are in the middle of the anxiety. And his whole point is to say Jesus kind of radically accepts them at the level of the of the anxiety that they're experiencing, and lets them lets them know that following Him that that that anxious self will be loved, even as they're trying to grow. I think that's true in a lot of ways. Now, of course, Jesus is certainly not averse to sort of calling out things in people's lives that they they don't think you know, where they don't think they're incorrect about some things. Jesus is not hesitant sir pointed out and to raise the temperature. So I want to be careful of that. But I do. I do think that idea of Jesus is constantly encountering anxious people and not counting the same way that and again, I don't want to say that your listeners are even most Christian fans. There's just one that pounce but, but that idea of like, they're not just moments for Jesus to make a convert or to sort of move people down the road, but kind of moments to see except build connection that naturally leads to people wanting to follow Him and walk

Joshua Johnson: 20:12

with even if you know pastors or or our listeners here are pouncing on people. I don't think it's intentional, right? So we have to figure out how do we intentionally move a different direction? And how do we intentionally do do it in in a way that fosters a place of meeting people where they're at, and then moving them towards relationship with Jesus and towards Jesus in a way that that brings about the type of change that Jesus is asking of all of us to be looking like him? How can we intentionally move towards that? What does it look like? Is it structure? Is it? Or is it just the principles behind the thing are the values? How do we intentionally move that direction? Sure.

Michael Jordan: 20:57

Yeah. So I think it's really crucial, right, that we, we have this culture in our church where we see and acknowledge people with anxiety, and I'll talk about that with some specific practices. But But first before that, where we see and acknowledge people with anxiety, and we sort of demonstrate this, like, sense of, we're not anxious about their anxiety, if that makes sense. I think sometimes in in churches, when we see people who are not quite where we want them to be in some way, they become kind of a problem to solve, rather than a person to sort of see and connect with. And often that means we sort of implicitly even unintentionally, of course, just kind of want to reduce their experience and think, how do we how do we fix it? Right? How do we how do we fix it so we can move on. So that's it's an important thing to keep in mind, we've got to see people where they are, I think the other thing that really helps people with anxiety is when we give them ways to relativize, their inner experience. By that I just mean, and an anxious person is really struggling with this thing that seems real to them. Anxiety is kind of rooted in this the technical term of intolerance of uncertainty, there's so much that's uncertain in the world. And most of us most of the time, navigate that, okay. But for a person who's experiencing anxiety, it's hard to do that. And because of that this internal experience feels so much larger than it is. And I think we all experience that sometimes. Right? It's important to say that even while we're clear that we might not experience a clinical level of anxiety, that that experience of, of sometimes my inner experience seems so real, that it just blocks everything else out. So, you know, I feel that way when I, you know, am criticized in a certain way, you know, to be to be in my role at a college right is to have people above me and below me. And so sometimes if I feel like either one of those groups is not happy with me. And I'm not sure why. Right, that inner sense of like, what's going on, it's just it gets big, right? And part of what's a gift to me in that time, is when someone sort of an offense, my spouse, often it's or people, my friends, people that I love, who can say, Whoa, timeout like, what you're feeling right now isn't? isn't the be all end all of everything, right? So, can we find ways to do that in our worship, where we, where we see people where they are, but we help them to kind of relativize their inner experience. So you know, one of the chapters in the book is about liturgical time. And so it talks about the Christian year, Christian week, Christian day. Again, I don't know all of the background of your listeners, I come from a Baptist tradition growing up, I'm a Wesleyan pastor. Now, most of our churches don't really observe the Christian year very closely. And that's okay. But part of what I really don't like about it is I think sometimes the few that do, sometimes it becomes like a class thing, where it's like, Oh, I know what epiphany means. And so I'm going to, and I know the right colors to have in my church, and it becomes this kind of like, when I was doing a PhD in liturgical studies, I called it like, I don't want this to become like charm school for evangelicals. I don't want it to be like me discovering this kind of fancy new way of doing things. So I almost hesitated to talk about the Christian year, because I didn't want it to be one more chapter that just sort of piled on and said, You should do the Christian year in your church. But But part of what I'm saying is is good about rethinking about our time is it does that thing that I'm saying we need to do it relativize is our inner experience, right? It, it moves us out of our inner experience, every time that we gather and into this bigger story. And it says, Oh, where am I in the story this week, right? And so we as we retell this bigger, bigger story, we learn what it is to inhabit a bigger story than ourselves. And so I talked about the Christian year, some but I was talking about the Christian week. And we, we forget sometimes I think that before we got to a point where we had a church calendar for the year, we certainly had a much more ancient tradition of every Sunday is about resurrection. And I kind of poke around in the book a little bit and I asked congregations to do a dying audit. Like how was def talked about in your congregation? And, and part of that is trying to get people to realize like, I don't know, I think for many of our people, Bull, there's not a functional belief in resurrection. And I'll just say for me like it's hard sometimes, right? Like I'm I'm 46. So you know, I'm kind of midlife place. It as I sort of ponder the thought that my life conservatively speaking could be half over, right? Like if I live to 92. That's awesome, right? So like, as I think about that, it's really hard sometimes even for a guy like me, who has been steeped in this forever, to really believe that death is not just a passage into non being, but it's really going into the presence of God. Why, why is that hard? It's not just a matter of I haven't learned sufficient stuff about the resurrection. But I think it's because we haven't rehearsed it again and again, and again. And so in as much as we can kind of every Sunday call attention to dying and rising. And, and I, you know, I mean, I think about practices like in, in many traditional black churches have many sermons kind of end with pointing to the resurrection. I mean, and I'm not saying all congregations should do that unnecessarily. But but in what ways, if I looked at your church on a given Sunday, are we talking about the miracle of death and resurrection, so that it really can begin to sink into the bones of the people we're talking about? And again, that's the same kind of thing, right? It's relativizing, this inner experience, it's drawing us out of the stories, we're telling ourselves about who I am as a worker, as a husband, as a dad, as a writer, you know, as a dean of the chapel, it's, it's, it's about who I am, as this creature made, dearly loved, redeemed all that. So we tell that story with our time, some. So I can go on with that saying, well,

Joshua Johnson: 26:30

we could dive into time a little bit, because I think, I mean, we're, we're living at the speed of light at the moment and where we are. So everything is so fast and so quick, and that that heightens anxiety in us because everything is so fast. And so as you were looking at the church year, and the church calendar, how does living within seasons and recognizing the seasons over and over again? And what is going on? And what is this bigger story? How does that help, our mind starts to slow down and get into this more peaceful place than this high anxiety, speed of light place that we are living in? Yeah,

Michael Jordan: 27:17

it's about learning to inhabit time, right. And instead of kind of trying to drive it, it's so it's so funny, you know, working with college students site, I'd find myself sort of talking out of both sides of my mouth with them sometimes. Because undoubtedly, part of what I'm trying to do is to help them learn time management, right? Like I'm telling them like, you can't just wait till the last minute to do your paper and hope it turns out good. And well, you you can't just sleep till 11 On this day off for you if you also want to accomplish that. So there's that piece, right, but but I know that if I drive that too much I'm teaching them that you need to be the kind of master of your calendar, you know, take it over run it. And that's not ultimately what we're after either, right? Because I think that sense is is also bankrupt in a way because then time becomes something that we're constantly like, am I wasting it? Am I doing enough with it? I was the kind of kid who cried on the night before his fourth birthday because I pondered like, had I done everything with being three that I could. And so what I don't I don't want to impress that on people and think like that's the you know, soak every moment in right. I think I think right, the the genius of something like the church calendar, which plods along, I mean, certainly during this time of year in Lent, and during ordinary time you think, Wait, isn't there something else to do? Right? And it's just like, Nope, just wait, wait for next Sunday. You know, that mean? That's all you can do be here now be where your feet are, you know, and the calendar teaches us that in some ways now, I do think, right, that the church calendar doesn't dictate, at least for me, it doesn't need to dictate everything about who we are as Christians, I think it's, it's healthy, that it dictates who we are kind of as a worshiping community. But I, you know, I have enough Baptist in me and enough low church in me, it's it's part of our, our job as church leaders to sometimes set that aside and dress address us where we are right now. But in general, I agree. I think I think there's a sense of it makes us stay where we are in and I don't know, waste some time in a holy set, you know, I mean, because who knows what I mean, we might not sit around with those passages very long if the if they weren't there for us to have to do right. So how

Joshua Johnson: 29:27

does musical worship play a part of all of this? Yeah, such a good question.

Michael Jordan: 29:32

I have so many thoughts about music and part of that is because again, working with a lot of evangelical young people music is is such is so much the place where they meet God or where they feel like they do and I I am careful about that language because I know that it's not just that they feel like it although sometimes like there's lines that are blurred there. It's it's sometimes objective, sometimes subjective, but it's so it's such it's so much of outsized importance to them. I wonder why sometimes I think It's part of it is because it's it's so much easier to master than not to become a masterful musician necessarily, but it's easier for a 17 or 18 year old to lead worship than it is for them to preach a sermon. And so I think they, they also sort of gravitated towards it with that, again, thinking about that idea of relativizing our Inter inner experience, right? To what degree does music do? That is an important question to interrogate? Please, I hope that none of your listeners and nobody who reads my book takes away the idea that music doesn't have anything to do with our inner experience. It certainly does. But that question of like, what's the role that our inner experience plays? When we're singing is really important. And there's, there's kind of a tension that works through all of these worship practices, I think, a tension between what some scholars talk about the kind of the, the dichotomy of ritual insincerity, right, like this idea of like, to what degree do we sing these songs because they're our songs. And to what degree do we sing songs, because it's, it's my song, it's it feel, it's what I need to express to God right now. We live in a pretty sincere culture right now, as most white evangelicals live in a pretty sincere culture where what we value in music is, is a kind of intense feeling toward God, we have to realize that that's jarring for people who can't access that feeling all the time, right? Like, if part of what you are told, for your own mental health and for your own kind of well adjusted life is your feelings are just feelings, and they're not running the show, then what do you do when you go into a worship service, and those feelings really are running the show, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way. But what you know, like that idea of like the worship leader, as, as they look around the room, or as they plan, or as they, you know, rely on the work of the Holy Spirit in that moment, are primarily rewarded for intuiting the internal experiences of people in the room, and choosing songs that amplify those kinds of feelings. And so we just, we need to think about that a little bit. There's kind of a script almost that we use. In some churches, it's it's spelled out like in the vineyard church, they talk about moving from kind of like an A moment of kind of an introduction to worship to a moment of like, engagement, where, like, there's some intro songs, and then there's like engagement where we lock in, and then there's exultation where we're like, focused upward and praising God. And then there's like adoration which is more intimate. And then that that builds to like, what they call intimacy or quiet time with God, which is very, again, heartfelt, very sincere. And what's really interesting to me, and I track this a little bit in the book, and Lester Ruth and limps, weihong Write about it in some of their writing, too. They talk about how there is this form of worship, which has kind of theological grounding in certain Pentecostal traditions, has made it way, its way over to other churches that don't have that theological grounding. Just feels kind of like common sense, right? So it's like, we start music, we start worship with like something fast, and then we move to something slow. And we get, like that kind of thing that tells us that it's working. It's really fascinating that even in churches that don't think there's like theological merit to it, just kind of like, that's what makes sense. Now, and so I do want to call us out of that a little bit. I want us to think about, okay, what what? Well, first of all, I want us to think about that feeling of deep resonance. Like, let's, let's interrogate that a little more. And this is where I hope that worship leadership continues to develop as a discipline, so that they can because I'm not a worship leader, not a I'm not a music worship leader. So I know that there are some things that those folks need to think about on their own without, without, because I don't know exactly what it's like, right. But I want I want better answers to those questions like, well, how is this feeling? Like the feeling that you get when you're at a secular concert, which doesn't have anything to do with God? Like, how are those two things relate? Or how is it related to the feeling I feel towards my wife or my kids or, or my home or the the school? I work for? My friends? You know, I want to ask those questions a little bit. And I don't, I don't think we've developed far enough along that too. I think we need to keep keep digging into those questions more. So that we don't quite exalt internal experience in quite the same way. Sometimes people think just because like a liturgical studies background or whatever, that, that I'm a hardcore traditionalist. And it's not, it's not that I do want us to think about the role that songs have in a person's life. And then what happens when we take that song and do something to it or dispose of it pretty quickly? Right? And I talked some in the book, there's some really good research out recently about kind of the lifecycle of contemporary songs and how it's different, how it's changed. we cycle through songs much more quickly than we used to. So that, you know, when I went to college, in 1995, we were singing shine Jesus Shipe. That song was eight or not eight or nine years old, in 1995. But we still felt like it was our music, but today, songs that are eight or nine years old, do not feel like ours. Aren't the our music anymore? Does that make sense? My, my students would view that as like oldies day if we threw that back. And so like, what's that? Like? What does it mean to create new music and dispose of it that quickly? When people build emotional attachment to it, like, let's, let's be careful. Let's be careful with that. And let's also be careful, too. I, you know, just as we touch individual songs, I think a little bit about how we sometimes even you know, this is very common evangelical thing to do and has been for hundreds of years, when we take like one hymn and then we slap a chorus on it. That's like a different thing. That's not a new thing. But we think about like Chris Tomlin doing it with amazing grace. And we think, Oh, he made that up. But no, like, that's, that's been going on for a long, long time. But it also has its its drawbacks, right. Like when I think about when we sing that version of Amazing Grace, I often think like, the song existed for a long time, and kind of, on that ritual sincerity, that dichotomy between ritual and sincerity. It's a ritual thing. And it's almost like Tom looked at it and said, you know, what the song needs is a little sincerity and kind of put it on at the end. And so it's like, Wait, like, let's think about what we're doing a little more than that jars, people's experiences, with the songs because those experiences are pretty precious. And we have to be, we have to be careful with them. Just knowing again, that people are coming in, in all different kinds of fragile, fragile state, sometimes not just people things IoT, all of us, you know, I think make those make those connections. So, you

Joshua Johnson: 36:18

know, a lot of people when they think worship, they just think music. Sure. So tell us, then, what is worship? If it's not just music? What is worship? And how can we enter into something? Maybe that's different than musical worship at the beginning of services?

Michael Jordan: 36:36

Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think worship broadly, we can identify as this formative practice where we come into the presence of God to praise Him. And in so doing, we discover who he is and who we are. I mean, there's lots of ways to talk about worship. So but that's, I think, a broader way, a broader way to think about it. You know, by and large, I don't feel like I need to unseat music as a formative kind of thing. Like, I don't feel like we have to, we have to do that. I think it's good for us to realize that in many evangelical places, musical worship really has taken the place of what used to be more the province of a sacramental thing, right? Like the sacraments used to carry a little bit of that water in worship for us in terms of like, encounter with the living God. That's not in the headspace of preaching, but a heart space. And I would really encourage us to, to recapture some of that part of the reason that I left being a Baptist and join the Wesleyan Church is that we have sacramental language. Now, de facto, if you were to go to most Wesleyan churches, it doesn't feel like it like that makes sense. You wouldn't walk in and have a high church kind of experience. But that's not because the the the language is in there, right. John Wesley himself is an Anglican and so he's got a real high sacramentality. And, and that begins to locate the heart encounter in a different place. And so I would encourage your listeners who are part of traditions with sacramental language, even if they're, you know, Martin Marty, who's a church historian from the 80s. He has this this. He's kind of the godfather of church historians of the last half of the 20th century. But he has this this word he uses for the he calls it the Baptist, deification of America. And he just means like, all American Christians are basically Baptists, like all of them have this real democratic flair, all of them have this real individualistic and, and even volunteer, Ristic bent. And so because of that, that's really impacted the way that a lot of churches even that say their sacramental approach the sacraments, most most evangelical churches, even if they call it a sacrament, think of it in terms of kind of an object lesson, most of the time. And so for us to really begin, I think those of us are in those traditions to begin to do that work a little bit and sort of say, what does it mean to be sacramental now, and to take a little bit of that, it helps us to offload some of that stuff from music on to something different. I think it also goes though, for Baptists and for others who who don't use the word sacrament, I think a little church history can help help that as well. I mean, if you dig around in Baptist history, some of the ways that they used to talk about communion, they were always very clear. It's an ordinance, not a sacrament. Right. But and by that they just meant like we do this primarily because Jesus told us to he ordained it. It's an ordinance so much like you might have an ordinance that prohibits chickens in the yard in your town. You know, this is an ordinance. It's something we have to do primarily because Jesus told us to do it. But what's important to realize is that for early Baptists, right, highlighting the fact that we do it because Jesus said to did not exclude the idea that that was a place that you could also meet Jesus. As Baptist history develop, what happened more and more was that people tended to identify our approach to ordinate sacraments over against Catholics. So anything that seemed to Catholic we kept out but in the early days, I mean, it's remarkable some of the language about some of the language about communion and early Baptist have a the second one confession here I wrote a quote down just on this from 1689. The outward elements in this ordinance are sometimes called truly, though figuratively, by the names of the things they represent, that is the body and blood of Christ. Like we call this the body and blood of Christ, because it is truly, but figuratively. And most Baptists would not go to the mat for that today, does that make sense? Most of them would say, it's not really the body, it's not really the blood, it's just something, you know, it's like, no, this is part of your history. And it's good. Again, if you want to, if you want to be able to spread, not just music, but to get, you know, the idea that the table is something that God sets for us to meet with him, is a really, really crucial idea. And I think, digging into the history a little bit can help with that. I'll also say just one more thing on that piece too. So much I think of the healthy redevelopment of communion in some churches, has been a recognition that communion has Thanksgiving as a really important element of it. And so really taking communion as a place to again relativize, that inner experience by by praying a prayer that draws us into God's salvation history. So we have a daily communion service here at Houghton that I started when I when I came on, part of that every day, is praying, a prayer of thanksgiving, where we just rehearse the salvation narrative, we talk about God, creating us with dignity and purpose, us falling away, God calling forth of people to be himself in the fullness of time from that people calling forth Jesus, Jesus breathed on us the Holy Spirit, that Holy Spirit is here in this room now. Right. And what that's intended to do, again, is that whole piece of relativizing internal experience and saying like, Yeah, this is the part of the story. This is the story that I'm blessed to be a part of. And we're rehearsing that every time we gather together. And, you know, sometimes that's lost on students, because you can imagine most 18 to 22 year olds are not, who are coming in from evangelical churches are not like, yeah, I want to do daily communion. But for those that do, I think that sense of like, coming to the table again, and again, reminds us who we are, and, and so I think sacraments can really help take a little bit of music, such a gift, but I think sometimes because we're expecting it to do so much. It's sometimes suffocates under the weight of its own seriousness. And I think that's totally true, the way it's developing, frankly, I mean, as I watch contemporary music developing over the last 30 years, it's remarkable to think about how joyous and happy it used to be, you know, like that the primary concern of my parents generation was that we would be around the chapel just kind of like dancing and you know, that it was going to get kind of get out of hand, because people were going to be too happy clappy, but that used to be the way we talked about it. And now that's just not the concern that I have. You know, it's it's at its worst, really moody, right? Painfully introspective against centering that internal life, and just sort of saying, God, I'm feeling this so much right now. And in a way that's, that's not always healthy for us. And again, I don't I'm certainly not the kind of dean of the chapel who says we're not going to do that on my watch. But I but I do want students I do try to draw boundaries around it right and say, there are other ways to do this, too. So in Sacramento part of that,

Joshua Johnson: 43:03

what gets us into this, this place of moving from introspection, and just looking at ourselves and wallowing in our own self pity, worship, toward looking up gazing at Jesus seeing one another, we do have a new commands that we need to love one another that there are, I don't know, 61 and other commands, the New Testament. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah. So how do we move from that individual listing, self MIDI introspection towards seeing others? Great

Michael Jordan: 43:36

question, I think some of it is actually physically seeing others. So like, I spent a lot of you know, technology is often something that people kind of, certainly in the liturgical studies world, I realized that, as I am part of the Wesleyan Church, that ship has certainly sailed in my own denomination like it tends to be very embracing of new technologies and worship, the liturgical studies world that I inhabit, you know, there tend to be skeptical of screens, skeptical of stages, that kind of thing and worship. But part of what I tried to say in the book actually about that is to think about how often technology that we use in worship, what is it that we sort of our amplifying, either with the volume or the things that we can see most clearly? And so for example, to your question of like, how do we begin to get a different vision for what it looks like to follow Jesus? Right? Part of that is to think, Okay, what do I see on the screen? In my worship service, and particularly, what is made larger than life? Does that make sense? Like, what is it when I you know, because often in churches, you know, the size of the screen will dwarf the actual person. So what is it that we're trying to sort of highlight and say, this is paradigmatic for following Jesus? And so, spent a lot of time in the church working or a lot of time in the book working with an old dissertation that kind of works through it's not super old, but a few years old, that kind of works with this church, talking about its lighting ministry, its tech ministry that kind of thing and talking about how, for example, one thing the church aim to do was to sort of, you know, focus on the vocalist, and then focus on the guitarist, just as they seem to have this kind of like, moment of pious connection with Jesus. Well, putting that on screen at like four times life size, is a really powerful message for people about what it means to be a Christian. Like, this is what a Christian looks like. And so for me the question like, I'm happy to embrace technology and say, okay, that ship has sailed, I'm not worried so much about, you know, getting rid of screens and worship all that, but, but what's on the screen, right, and there are ways to use those screens, to sort of draw us closer into the ministry of the whole church or to amplify and show us people that we might not always see. So, you know, a screen like that can be a great way to like, get an up close look at someone who's being baptized, that we might not get to see, that's an amazing use of that kind of screen. At my church, there's always a great deal of anxiety, not real anxiety. But you know what I mean, about children's sermons. Like, when there's a children's sermon going on, it can be super awkward, like who's really being talked to here. But that's something that made the transition to video with COVID. And it's stuck as a video thing in our church, it's the only time in my church where someone appears larger than life on a screen is when it's our children's director talking to the children in our church. And I love that because it's highlighting and saying this is part of the church's ministry. And, and the reason we're putting it up here so that everyone can see and join in, in a way that's much actually less anxiety inducing than when she was sitting up in the front of the church, and everyone was up there fidgeting and all that, you know, it seems to be a really good. So think about who is it that we actually physically see, that can go a long way to shaping our our expectations and understanding about what it means to follow Jesus. So

Joshua Johnson: 46:47

if you're thinking about your readers that would read your book worship in an age of anxiety, what is your hope that they would get from your book? Yeah,

Michael Jordan: 46:58

I just find such joy in asking these questions. And I don't mean like in an academic way, like, it's not, it's not like I just don't want to sit with the questions. I just, there's such life giving stuff when you begin to sort of realize the agency that we have as church leaders to help shape how people encounter Jesus. And I think for most of the people who will read this book, who are not mental health professionals, or don't work closely with people with anxiety, I think it's looming in the background for most of them. You know, I cite this one study in there that talks about how in 2021 high school students 42% of high school students said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the last year 57% of female high school students, it's an astounding number. And I think most of us recognize that's coming. It feels like a freight train. And I don't know what to do about it. And I'm hoping this just like open some conversations, I'm not trying to be terribly prescriptive in the book. But I, but I want people to realize like, oh, the things we're doing can help. But only if we're willing to ask, like, how does this jive with what people are learning about themselves? And incidentally, that's not to exalt what astute people are learning in therapy as the only truth. But it is to say, like, if this is a generally helpful thing, like in what ways? Are we undoing this for people, you know, when we start to ask those kinds of things, can we really help people get healthy answers? So that's what I'm hoping people will get about. I think for most people, it will be like a conversation starter, rather than a conversation Ender about these things. So

Joshua Johnson: 48:33

as we enter into it, have a conversation starter. If we do want to start to be intentional to think about these things, and how our worship engages with with mental health and anxiety, loneliness, depression, and all these things. What would you say to people and churches that are just getting started with this? What are their first or two steps that they could take?

Michael Jordan: 48:58

Yeah, I think a great thing would be to talk with mental health professionals, either in your congregation or community, part of what I'm honestly fearful about in this book. Like, I realized that the first part of the book where I talk about acceptance, commitment, therapy, that itself is a process that's always changing and growing, right? And so, you know, for that to become a real live conversation with between actual people, and some of which might be a little different from my book. Like, as they talk to mental health professionals, they might say, Oh, well, this is what I'm doing. I think to get that question out there that way, is pretty important first, and then I think the question of, let me do kind of an audit of what we're doing now and try to think through it from the perspective of a person with anxiety and if you know people in your church with anxiety, you might just bring them into that process. If they're open about what they're, you know, I mean, some some people don't want to be drawn into those conversations in that way. But some, some do, particularly those whose level of anxiety is not debilitating, but begin to ask them like How does this feel? What what goes through your mind when we do this? What goes through your heart? And when When do you leave your feeling in empowered and ready to face the week? When do you leave? You're feeling dispirited, and like you're not really part of us. I think those are the questions that we need to get out there. And then hopefully, again, some some of the ideas in the book will will connect with people. And they'll say, oh, yeah, when we're thinking about music, we ought to think about like, are we? Are we talking about feelings and ways like everybody is having them here? And who might not be you know, so I think, but once you have had that kind of personal connection established, then I think this book can be helpful that way.

Joshua Johnson: 50:27

Michael, I have a couple quick questions. The end. What, if you go back to your 21 year old self? What advice would you give?

Michael Jordan: 50:36

Oh, man, you know, working at a college, I always am in touch with my 21 year old self. Right. Great question. I mean, I think there's so much in growing up Evangelical, that worries about being in trouble all the time. And I think I spent a lot of time worrying about being in trouble, particularly with people my parents age when I was having them as seminary professors and working in churches with them. And to realize that there's something that I can contribute as a 21 year old that's different than I will now as a 46 year old. It's no no better or no worse, it's just to say that I had something different to offer the church at that stage. And I wish I hadn't been so apologetic about offering it, even while recognizing its limitations. So yeah, that's one that's but as a great question, you

Joshua Johnson: 51:20

got anything that you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend. I'm

Michael Jordan: 51:25

reading a bunch so we have a program at Houghton called Immanuel scholars, which is it's basically a kind of a year of spiritual formation oriented toward vocation and so we try to read books with them every year that are just kind of interesting book Christian or reading Christians or reading enjoy Jake meters book, what are Christians for just kind of a Political Theology of what Christians are supposed to be? I love it when people call together theory, you know, traditionally, stereotypically progressives and traditionalists and sort of say, Look, they're kind of on the same team in ways that surprise you. So I love Jake meters book that way because he gets Gresham makan and Willie james Jennings on the same team arguing which is a wonderful thing, like we just think of them as oppositional and they're not. So they're great. Enjoying some new books about calling women working, calling, enjoying, as we try to think more about calling the students. So those are a couple anyway, that I'm enjoying right now.

Joshua Johnson: 52:16

Yeah. Good. Well, Michael, this is a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it. If people want to go out and get your book and connect with you. Where can they connect with you? Where can they get your book? Not

Michael Jordan: 52:29

terribly active on social media, very glad for Facebook, folks. So if you want to find me there, but that's old, and but I have asked my college students, what social media do I need to get? And their answer is have not been there. They've not been unanimous enough yet for me to take the leap into another form. So yeah, not terribly social media activities. You can find me on Facebook, and we can chat there or find me at the hotel's website. Always glad to talk there. Love, love that too. So perfect.

Joshua Johnson: 52:57

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I love going deep into into worship, and how do we structure some of our our services and our worships as we gather as a community of believers so that we can manage some of our anxiety and bring that to Jesus himself. So looking at those types of things that in music and in liturgy and in really, what do we actually focus on and what do we promote while the services are going on? I was great conversation is good conversation starter for people. So thank you for this conversation. Really enjoyed it.

Michael Jordan: 53:35

Yeah, my great privilege. Thanks for having me on.

Joshua Johnson: 53:37

Yeah.