Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 280 Andrew Root - Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness
In our current moment of cultural fragmentation and existential anxiety, the traditional frameworks of engagement feel increasingly inadequate. Andrew Root's latest work, “Evangelism in an Age of Despair” isn't just a theological treatise, or a how-to evangelism book, but a profound meditation on human connection in an age of profound disconnection. What happens when we shift our understanding of evangelism from a transactional model of belief to a relational practice of genuine with-ness? Andy suggests something more radical than conversion: a form of spiritual presence that honors the complexity of human suffering. We're living through an era where loneliness has become a systemic condition, where happiness is marketed as a consumable product, and where genuine human vulnerability is increasingly rare. Root's approach doesn't offer easy solutions, but instead proposes a more nuanced engagement with our collective pain. This conversation is less about religious doctrine and more about the fundamental human need for meaningful connection - a need that transcends ideological boundaries and touches something more elemental about how we understand ourselves and each other. Join us as we seek the consolation of Christ in the desolation of our lives.
Andrew Root (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Carrie Olson Baalson professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Andrew Root is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, USA. He writes and researches in areas of theology, ministry, culture and younger generations. His most recent books are Churches and the Crisis of Decline (Baker, 2022), The Congregation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2021), The End of Youth Ministry? (Baker, 2020), The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need God (Baker, 2019), Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2017), and Exploding Stars, Dead Dinosaurs, and Zombies: Youth Ministry in the Age of Science (Fortress Press, 2018). Andy has worked in congregations, parachurch ministries, and social service programs. He lives in St. Paul with his wife Kara, two children, Owen and Maisy, and their dog. When not reading, writing, or teaching, Andy spends far too much time watching TV and movies.
Andrew's Book:
Evangelism in an Age of Despair
Andrew's Recommendation:
Severance
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Their very personhood, their very humanity, their very care for the other who is in sorrow, becomes a proclamation of the gospel. It becomes a kind of sacramental moment where we make a claim, where we confess that God moves and act.
Unknown:Oh, hello
Joshua Johnson:and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, in our current moment of cultural fragmentation and existential anxiety, the traditional frameworks of engagement feel increasingly inadequate. Andrew roots, latest work, evangelism in an age of despair, isn't just a theological treatise or a how to evangelism book, but a profound meditation on human connection in an age of profound disconnection. What happens when we shift our understanding of evangelism from a transactional model of belief to a relational practice of genuine withness? Well Andy suggests something more radical than conversion, a form of spiritual presence that honors the complexity of human suffering. We're living through an era where loneliness has become a systemic condition where happiness is marketed as a consumable product and where genuine human vulnerability is increasingly rare. Roots. Approach doesn't offer easy solutions, but instead proposes a more nuanced engagement with our collective pain. This conversation is less about religious doctrine and more about the fundamental human need for meaningful connection, a need that transcends ideological boundaries and touches something more elemental about how we understand ourselves and each other. So join us as we seek the consolation of Christ in the desolation of our lives. Here's my conversation with Andrew root. Well Andy, welcome back to shifting culture. So excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me again. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks. Yeah, it was weird. You know, in 2024 I didn't have you on the podcast, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I looked back, I was like, Andrew root was not on the podcast. Wow.
Andrew Root:Yeah, so was 23 I was on and yeah, you were on twice
Joshua Johnson:in 23 okay, in 2022 so, yeah,
Andrew Root:yeah. So, yeah, I don't know I should get a punch card for this. I guess, yeah,
Joshua Johnson:you need a punch card. You, you have now taken the lead again with the person who's on the most. So that's a few people that caught up at three, and now you're taking the lead. Okay,
Andrew Root:so I'm the norm. McDonald to your Conan O'Brien, that's right, like the reoccurring people, come on. That's right. If you
Joshua Johnson:could tell the moth joke in like eight minutes, I think I was single, too. Yeah,
Unknown:give it a little theological twist. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:that's right, that's good. You have a new book, evangelism in the age of despair, and you wrote right at the beginning is that it's kind of hard, that it's not a model of evangelism for the church that we could take and we could use and we can see some, you know, 10 to 15% growth year over year, and we'll be all set. But it is a book, really about consolation, and meeting people on the consolation. Why then are you writing that an evangelism book about consolation?
Andrew Root:Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a good question. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how you feel, but I find a lot really helpful in evangelism books. I mean, first of all, just evangelism as a concept, feels like it's, it's contested, or, I don't know, like in the world I'm in, you either get people who boldly say, like, the church needs to get back to evangelism. And then the next line is, because there's no people here, or because, you know, some political thing, or some social some social reality, that we need evangelism. Or else, what I find a lot is in kind of more mainline communities, you get people who almost say under their breath whisper to you, you know, maybe we just need to do Evangel like they almost feel ashamed to say that. And so partly it was just trying to think about, what do we actually why would? Why are? Why is there this odd kind of tension where we feel like we weren't we shouldn't be about evangelism anymore, and yet we all want to be about evangelism, like we're of two minds, I think on that. So is partly trying to kind of explore that. But then, you know, back to these evangelism books, like, there's a there's a lot of really good ones, but they tend to come. List different models of things you can do and and I think there's a lot we can learn out of those, but I just didn't feel like maybe I was qualified to do that, or wanted to do that. So really, I'm trying to kind of think as as my whole project really has been about broadly, is kind of thinking of the theology at the cross and trying to think of every kind of practical form ministry through the theology of the cross. So the experiment really is like how to think the theology that cross in evangelism like those seem in some sense, to be kind of water and oil that they don't really mix in some ways. But I'm trying to make a case that they actually can if we if we see them a certain way, I think
Joshua Johnson:if they don't mix, I think we're probably doing it wrong. Yeah, so, I mean, we need to get back to that. So let's zoom out a little bit to to talk a little bit about the state of the world that we're in right now, and why, and what are the some of the predominant evangelistic methods that were that you have seen, that maybe you're not speaking to the world that we're living in.
Andrew Root:Yeah. I mean, I just think that we tend to, when we think of evangelism, we tend to kind of think, oh, some kind of church marketing form in some ways, like, you know, maybe it's to market the church, or it's trying to make a persuasive case for people to believe something. So it becomes kind of propositional. Like, the whole point of evangelism is that you know these five things, and really they're four things, you know, the the four, the four things you need to know the four spiritual laws that we go through those then at the end, you're cool with that, and then you've been evangelized. You know, like, that's one kind of perspective that I think plays in. But I think another one is a kind of sense, like we make a case for why the church or the Christian faith is goods, is a good to your life, and why it adds value, really, and that that should be the way to go. And, you know, then, then we just that confronts in one way or another. It puts a demand on us to really, I mean, evangelism, in kind of a form of math is is pretty interconnected, like you're supposed to count something. Now maybe we don't count how many people came forward at an altar call, though that's been kind of one way people have tended to think of evangelism. But we tend to kind of think this is why, like I said, people say it under their breath, like maybe we need evangelism because they look around and think we need more people in these pews, and maybe that's the way you should do it. But I think what that ultimately gets to is some kind of instrumental kind of view of evangelism. And what I'm trying to get at in this book, I think, is at its core, there's a way to think about evangelism in a more kind of sacramental vein, that it is really an invitation for people to be taken up into the life of Jesus Christ. That doesn't demand a certain form of counting, though it does demand a certain assertion about what it means to encounter this living Jesus Christ and to invite people into that kind of of life. So at that level it is, is evangelism. But I also am trying to kind of pivot us away from thinking that we need to count it becomes a form of marketing, or that it just becomes a kind of practice that has to die inside of pluralistic society, like, if you want to be a truly open person in in you can't really be about evangelism, because then you are making a case that the way people live their lives isn't good enough, or if they grew up in one kind of religious tradition, that's not a value. And I don't know I find that to be not a really helpful way of thinking about it.
Joshua Johnson:So if that's not helpful, can you just define what you think evangelism is? Then what is evangelism? Yeah,
Andrew Root:you know, for me, it is this kind of sacramental reality, in the sense that evangelism is, you know, ultimately goes back to Bonhoeffer, everything for me does, but it is really hearing the call of Jesus Christ, to follow, and to really hear that, call it, and to follow that. And there is a contextual element to that, too. I mean, I mean, I think that's one of the things that keeps people kind of interested in evangelism. Or sometimes people even there's a kind of blurry line between evangelism and mission. You know, they almost seem like you're saying the same thing, that they kind of fit together in a certain way, that that way, and I and so there is a way that it is a call into something. It is a call to follow this living Jesus Christ. But the way I'm trying to think about it, puts discipleship and evangelism really close together, like they are. They are really in some sense, one in the same is, is the evangelistic move is to hear the call and the discipleship is always what it means to continue. You to follow within that, yeah, but there is this contextual element. That's why it's been kind of linked with with mission. And the kind of argument I'm trying to make in the book is that we have, we do have to think contextually, but that thinking contextually shouldn't keep us from really thinking theologically, in the sense of the sacramental, like, how does the divine and the human engage each other here? Because, again, I think we do focus so much on the human agent. Will you believe this? What kind of message will be persuasive? Is it going to be apologetic? Is it emotional? What kind of thing will will convert you? And I do think there's a contextual element here, but I think that contextual element opens up to a reality that it can't be instrumentalized that way.
Joshua Johnson:It reminds me of when Jesus said, you know, come to me all of you who are weary and heavy laden, because my yoke is easy, easy. My burden is light, right? So it is a everybody is weary, depressed, anxious, they're they're sad. There's something happening in this world where we need an encounter with this living Christ, and then his yoke is easy. This is where yoke to him is we actually then follow him into discipleship. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful picture of what it looks like, what Jesus is inviting people into, and the type of people he's inviting. And I
Andrew Root:mean, the first half of the book tries to really make the argument that we're living in particularly kind of sad times, as you were just kind of referencing there the in one of the reasons we're just so deeply sad is because we're so hell bent, committed to being happy. And here we are in the third decade of the 21st century. And I think it's pretty fair to say these have been really, you know, quite sad times, whether we look at young people and how anxious they are, or how, you know, depression levels are off the charts, or just overall, people just feel fundamentally lonely. And part of that is we, we keep looking to be really happy and the project of just wanting to be happy has kind of failed us. So whatever context we do, I think evangelism in at this time or or even if you know we feel uncomfortable with that word, how we invite people to recognize and follow Jesus Christ, we will be speaking, I think, to a deeply, kind of existentially sad people. I
Joshua Johnson:just interviewed Zach near crebs, who was the pastor gave the sermon at Asbury, Asbury, oh yeah, and just happened. He said the majority of what happened during that time were people actually connecting and getting each other's phone number and being happy to be with one another. It felt like a time where the loneliness of our age was actually being swept away, and we were starting to connect to each other as well, he said, and I think that is what the Spirit is doing on the earth. This is how God is wanting to encounter us, especially because we're lonely. We have a loneliness epidemic. We want to be connected to each other, and so I think you're right. So evangelism, discipleship, are connected so much that evangelism should bring us into a connection with a with a people that is following the way of Jesus. How does the move into from actually meeting people in their sadness and their loneliness and then connecting them into community as a part has been lost in evangelism, yeah, and people in community,
Andrew Root:yeah, in the you know, this is a well, all of my books, in some ways, are weird books, as as You know, Josh, like, I love them there, you know, I try to tell the story of a church that's, you know, inspired from a bunch of different churches I know and pastors I know. But also, this is weaved together as a fictional story, but then I'm also telling you a historical story, and then, you know, try to take you beyond your so this is, this is kind of a French book in some ways, like, you know, like the church is not in France. My gosh, no, it's like a Southern California Church. The kind of protagonists of the big ideas are French. So part of my point is, like the, if you will, the creator of the drive to be happy goes back to this late Renaissance thinker named Michelle de Montaigne, who had this deep sense that what you do is it's to be the way to live is to live a happy life, and that means returning to the chateau, getting away from the court, and just enjoying your life, enjoying writing and reading and petting your cat and gardening. And there's a kind of sense that this is what it means to be to live a good life, is to live a happy life that is this kind of independent, kind of on your own chateau. And what's really fascinating about that is one of the great lovers of Michelle de Montaigne was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was trying his vision of America was a land of. People living on chateaus, living on little farms, living their happy life, you know, just happily on their own. That's why he's always against the kind of Federalists like, you know, we're not going to centralize a government, because then you you lose the freedom to just be happy, you know, to live your kind of happy life. Well, I mean, this is a quite a long story, but I think to get to your point about the community in the 18th century, the great thinker, Blaise Pascal, to be kind of crass, knew that montein was full of crap like this couldn't work. It couldn't work to be happy. And I think we're now seeing in the American project that maybe it never has worked, but that people really feel quite unhappy, and the more unhappy they are, the more they're hell bent that they just want to be happy, like I said. But Pascal's basic point is that he he thought you could know it was impossible. It's an impossible drive to ever be happy. Maybe a couple people can, you know, do it. But he thinks that you you miss something that's fundamental to the human experience. And Pascal believe this because he was a gambler, like before, he had his great conversion experience, which Pascal is one of the great people who was converted, you know, had an evangelistic experience. You know, before that, he was a gambler, and he knew that when you gamble, you're you think to yourself, if I just win this hand, then I'll be happy like, then I'll then, then I can pay the car off, then I content, because this is Montaigne's whole point is that happiness is contentment. It is it kind of this kind of laid back contentment. You just want to be content with your life, and you realize it doesn't work, because you gamble out of a certain kind of sense of just trying to enjoy your life. But then you kind of start to think, like, if I win, then I'll be content. And then you do win, and you walk away from the table, and all of a sudden you feel the beckoning to go back and gamble again, like it doesn't fulfill. So his ultimate point is, and it seems like a kind of dire point, but his ultimate point is, you can't be happy, that you really can't be happy. And then this becomes Pascal's Wager, which we usually think of Pascal's Wager as like this, 5050, I know we always like, you know, I remember being in college and people saying this, like Pascal's wager was, either there is a God or there isn't a god. If you bet that there is no God, and you die and you find out there is a God, well, you're screwed. Like, you know, that's awful. But if you bet there is a God, and then you die and find out there isn't a God, well, you haven't lost very much. Well, you only have to be like a 13 year old, you know, middle schooler, to realize that doesn't quite work. Like the Christian life calls you into sacrificing certain things that you would like not to sacrifice and to bend your life in a certain way that that actually no that that is that does cost me something, but that's not what Pascal is actually saying. I think Pascal's wager is something more like, if you will, admit that you cannot make yourself happy, and instead of trying to pave that over with all sorts of gambling, like pursuits of happiness. You know, if you if you will stop and confess your unhappiness and lean into your unhappiness, his wager is that if you will lean in and search the HAP unhappiness, that you will find a great presence there, that you will find a fire that renews and brings life, you will find not the God of a philosophers, but you will find the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that meets you there in ministers to you, but this is where a community comes in. Pascal doesn't go here, but I really deeply believe this is that, particularly to unhappy people, you cannot say, interrogate your unhappiness and see what you find you could fall into, on your own, a kind of demonic darkness that could eat you. But I do think what we'd say in ministry is that come and be part of this community, and as a community, we will hold you as you interrogate your unhappiness, as you look for a great presence in it. And here are stories of how we found a great presence inside of our own experiences of sadness and unbrokenness. And so I think a community is an essential piece that you really can only find this kind of depth of the sacramental finding the infinite God and the finite experience of human suffering. If you have a community that will walk with you that the sadness is too real. It's not just a psychological state. It's a it's a soul sickness. It's an existential reality. And you can't do that by by yourself. You will be eaten alive by the sadness. But a community, in a community that confesses that it is by the Spirit of the Living God, by the spirit of the resurrected Jesus Christ, the Sanctum communio. It can bear this, these experiences of death and sadness, with you, and can encourage you to become a pilgrim into them and see what you find on the path. Because you don't walk the path alone. And I think that becomes the kind of shape of a congregation that's doing. Evangelism that it's saying to its neighbors, let's lean into our sorrow. Let's see what you find there. You're outraged, you're depressed, you're angry. Our wager, our bet, our bet is, if you lean into it, if you look for a great presence there, that you'll that you'll find it, because we've found it.
Joshua Johnson:So why does that give us a deeper sense of joy and even contentment when we're walking through difficulties and sorrows and griefs and sadness with others? Then what happiness was supposed to bring us?
Andrew Root:Well, I really think at the deepest core. The reason it feels, I mean, a deep sense of union, maybe is even a kind of way that mystics have said it like you feel united to something. I mean, I guess this is where what I mean by the sacramental reality is that you that you find the very being of God who takes what is dead and brings life out of it, the very God who, you know, says, Blessed are those who grieve for they'll be comforted. I mean, there's a certain sense, as Jesus says, like that, you that Jesus promises to be present as the minister, as as a ministering God in places of sorrow and brokenness and and, you know, moving in those places. And this is, I guess, what I mean by the sacramental, again, it's like in the utter ordinary and even the very opposite of what should be is where God becomes present. The God of the universe should not be present where lowly human beings are sorrowful and crying out for for companionship. But nevertheless, this is how this God chooses to act that this God chooses to be present, bringing mercy and comfort to the brokenhearted. I mean, this is in Mary's Magnificat is, you know, quite similar those this is, this is what she sees in this incredible moment of the infinite coming into the finite in her womb, where she says, The the high will be taught, will be brought down and lowly will be will be brought up like those who grieve will be comforted and those who know no grief, will have to hear the judgment of God, that they have to see that they cannot save themselves, but that that this God is the one who comes and ministers and wants to be near the brokenhearted, seems
Joshua Johnson:like a very prophetic statement in our country at the moment.
Andrew Root:Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I do. I think the outrage is so intense because we're all ultimately really sad and anxious, one of the responses to being sad is to be really angry. I think it's a legitimate human response, is that when you feel really sad and anxious, because you're really sad, you you're filled with outrage. And now we, we have this thing called the internet that just becomes an outrage producing machine, and in social media that I think you know now, we look at all these people who are threatening our happiness because they just posted some statement we find ignorant, and then what we find we what we end up creating, is a society where we get the exact opposite of what we need as human beings, which is people to console us and be with us and and bear our burdens with us as we're called into bearing other people's burdens. So
Joshua Johnson:you do mention a little bit in your book about people. A lot of young people have left evangelical Protestant churches. They're deconstructing their faith, but they're really just trying to find other types of the same thing, but in a different style. Maybe they're leaning differently politically, or they're actually crying out for the marginalized or something. How does this help a disaffected group of people who are deconstructing and are leaving something because of they're sad, they're lonely, and they see that what has been happening has perpetrated more sadness and loneliness for marginalized people. What do we say to them? How does this help? Yeah,
Andrew Root:I mean, I think one of the big dangers in in that that that hasn't helped us, and just it just feeds the the outrage is to say there's a certain kind of for lack of a better term, like a cottage industry of affirmation for turning from your past and being like those people suck. And now I see things this way, and it really, in some sense, becomes a move from one ideology to another ideology. And so a big question for us is like, how do we break the ideological hold that just moves us from one pole to the other pole? And I do think that there's something, and this is what I mean by the theology of the cross and Luther theology of the cross, that kind of breaks that ideological perspective that that this is not in this is why, I think, why the evangelism in this cadence is so important, because it is really not about an idea or a proposition. It's about a deep form of encounter. So the question becomes like, how do you encounter? Living God. And I think one of the traps of people become disaffiliated and left, maybe for really good reasons, is that they end up just riding the wave of the cultural moment, and they essentially just look for a different kind of religious firm, if you will, or kind of different form of spirituality, or something that that they can use in a way to, well, make them happy again. And when that doesn't fulfill, then they either become incredibly agile people who just just jump from one wave to the next wave, but that becomes quite exhausting, as you just have to do that, or you get washed out in the white water, and you end up spitting out water, and you feel more alone than you did before, you know. So there's a certain sense that they feel maybe, as they've disaffiliated, that they it became clear to them, if they did not, if they not, did not conform or commit to some certain ideological perspective, they would be ostracized. But then the great temptation is, you just go to another group that just has a very different ideological perspective, but you need to conform and perform that ideology, or you get you get pushed out again, as opposed to what it means to actually find a community of people who will walk with you in the midst of your deepest sorrow, you know, like even in the midst of your moments of doubt and and loss, and I guess, at the end of the day. And what I try to do with even the story in the book is try to say the core human experiences that really frame our lives tend not to be around our assimilation to big ideas. Anyhow, they tend to be around these events of things that happen to us, like a father dying, or a miscarriage, or just fear that your wife may not recover from the sadness she has over a miscarriage like these become, or a diagnosis of of cancer like these become the very moments that really shape our lives more than even like, Do you believe these four things or something, and how the church or how those who confess Jesus Christ show up in those moments is in what they testify to and witness to in those moments, how they care and enter into A spirit of the pastoral or the ministerial becomes incredibly powerful and and not in any instrumental way, like if we care for people who have who are diagnosed with cancer, then they'll come to our church. No, some of them, they're, they're going to die. But what does it mean to help people die in the very presence of God? What does it help people to grieve what will be lost in the midst of that, you know, to me, that's really the depth of the incarnational impulse within Christianity. Is that it says these core human experiences of getting sick, of having to say goodbye, you know, like, and this is why I use this, this French mystic name Jean Garcin, or, if you're my joke is, if you're from Wisconsin, Gene Gerson is that's because I'm from Minnesota. So I always like to throw a jab, throw a little shade on Wisconsin. But where his basic point is that you that what it means to live the Christian life is, is the invitation to pilgrimage. And so that's really what I think we're inviting people to an evangelism is to walk the Pilgrims path. But to walk the Pilgrims path, he says, You have to say a Diem, and he means that as a kind of idiomatic phrase. It was, well, he means it as to God. It's it literally means like to God. And so that makes complete sense. If you're a pilgrim, you have to walk to God. You're not just you're not just on a marathon walk. You're walking towards something. And even today, if you, you know, if you walk st Cuthberts way, or you walk the Camino, or something, you're walking to God, you're walking towards something. But he says, what's really interesting in France at this time, to say I Diem was also the idiom for goodbye. So like, the end of this podcast, we would say to each other, I Diem, you know, to God, goodbye. And I think those are really interesting to put together. Is that to walk the Pilgrims path, you also have to be saying goodbye. You know, you have these great sorrows that you have to say goodbye to those you love, to dreams you've had. And it is giving those to God that we find ourselves taken up and changed and transformed, and find ourselves ultimately in Christ, and we can call that. We're evangelized, you know, but we're not evangelized through some great leap or find ourselves evangelized through some deep surrender, which is actually what Kierkegaard means by his leap of faith is it's very much like Pascal, which it's this kind of letting go and dropping into your sadness and seeing what meets you there, and people is the very crucified Christ will meet us there, taking what's dead in us and bringing life out of it,
Joshua Johnson:talking about. Madness and desolation, these difficult things. It doesn't sound fun, but there is something, when you talk about the living God will meet you there, that the community will walk with you in the midst of it, that that is actually good news. That's what it is. It's good news. I want to know how people as they've been trained, or thought about evangelism as propositional truth tied to an ideology. How do we shift our thinking in our minds, like practically, what does it look like to sit with somebody and meet them, you know, where they're at, and not try to get them to an ideology? Yeah,
Andrew Root:and this is what I mean, whether I've succeeded at this or not in this book, or any book, I just, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's because I have an aversion, both towards, like ministry books that tell you how to do it, because I always find those just too flat, or really, like deep academic books. So you're like, have this these are great ideas, but have these people ever met anyone or had to preach a sermon or anything like I'm trying to somehow thread that needle, so I feel like I have to the reader. I have to show you it, more than tell you it, you know. So that's why this narrative is here. That's why this kind of story is it is at play. But what I try to show in that story, and what this then looks like, really practically, is where I really tell the story, mainly through lay people that are, you know, not the, not the paid pastor who's leading the church, but through, through lay people. And it really, it starts with, it does start with a pastor, through his own experience, who helps his lay people have a kind of watch word that says, we follow Jesus in sorrow. That's what we do. What it means to be a Christian is you follow Jesus into sorrow, because Jesus is found in sorrow. And then all these experiences happen. You know, like this woman who runs HR has to fire somebody, and the her her job performance is going down because she's lost her father, and it's in the wellness profession. And she realizes the wellness profession and the wellness culture will help you hack everything to find your happiness. The one thing will not do with you is help you bear grief. It's not built for that. And so there's a sense of her seeing that this is a person who is beckoning for me to be with them and care for them. I don't think, I don't think we can really faithfully evangelize people. We surely can't if we're scared of the word. So we should not be scared of the word, but at the second level, we shouldn't be thinking, well, how can we send people in our church out as minions to evangelize. I mean it usually what we mean is like, how can we, I don't know, like, what's a, what's a sci fi example here, like we vampires that, you know, like, make more vampires, or walking dead zombies that make more walking dead zombies. Now I'm really loading the analogy here in the metaphor, but I don't think we should think of it that way. I think we should really try to help people in our communities be sensitive to where Jesus Christ moves and acts, and where Jesus Christ moves and acts. I'm trying to make a case here is in places of sorrow, and so where the Christian is called is to care for the person who's in sorrow. And they're very personhood, their very humanity, their very care for the other who is in sorrow becomes a proclamation of the gospel. It becomes a kind of sacramental moment where we make a claim, where we confess that God moves and acts. So I think really quite practically, it's about helping people be sensitive and open to where there are the great goodbyes in there that the person who lives next door or the person at work. And so in some sense, this is where I'm, you know, I really think discipleship and evangelism are really close together. The objective is to keep discipling your people, giving them a vision of how God acts and moves, giving them a watch word to hold to, and then, as they embrace people in their lives, and these events of call them deeper in the act of evangelism happens, happens that way. So I think it really is very practical, and yet it can't be formulaic in any way you know, and
Joshua Johnson:your previous books, and what you've done, you're calling people to wait, to wait on this God who's going to act, to remember his faithfulness. And that's really difficult in this modern age where time has sped up so fast that that's why, you know we're online and we're all outraged, because we think that everything is so immediate, and if we don't get to it right now, it's gonna go away, how do we move that to the side and actually sit with grief? I think that's probably why Americans are really bad at grief and lament. They're horrible at it. So how. Do we do that? How do we make time? Or just we have time? How do we sit with it? I
Andrew Root:think there's two things at play. One is exactly what you're saying, that we're that we fear, we fear two things. We fear that to sit with it, it will last forever. And so it's like, okay, I'm willing to grieve. But, I mean, it's a little bit like, I don't know if I felt this way during the pandemic, but you'd have people say it, like, just tell me when it's over. If you could just give me a date, even if it was, like, two years from now, but you're just like, july 11, it's over, then I'm cool, or whatever. It's the kind of unknownness of it that drove, I think all of us a bit crazy, but grief is that way too. Like, there's no you have to grieve for 1010 hours, and then you're fine. Or you have to grieve for 10 days, or you have to grieve for 10 months. You don't know, you know, like, you just have to, you just have to live in it. It's different for everyone's experience. And we don't like that like we would like to just optimize, tell me how to deal with it. So that's one reality, but the other reality of it is is, I do think we we believe at a deep existential level that grief or sadness will destroy us, and we believe that, because we do believe that the highest end of the human life is to be happy. And I don't know I'd like I've as a parent, I feel this way, like when my kids are unhappy. I feel frustrated with them. Like, it's like, get over this. Like, I this is incredibly inconvenient for me. Could you just kind of get over this? But there is a kind of sense that I also want them over because I'm I'm afraid they'll never come back from this. Like, what if they're sad for ever? And we, we then there. We therefore think there's no value in it. Like, there's absolutely, when you're driven just to be happy, there's no value really, in sadness. And yet, any artist would tell you, or anyone who works that are kind of our artistic cadence would tell you there's incredible value and sadness. You know, like some of the most beautiful pieces of art make us sad, but they make us feel something. They make us feel alive, you know, so it, it is. I think that's part of the issue is that we just don't trust that there's actually there's, there's not any presence in the sadness, that it is just the very opposite of happiness, and all we want to be is happy, because that's what it means to live well and in what that ultimately does. I mean, I'm not a hater of happiness. I like happiness as much as the next person. But if all you live for is happiness, then all you do is live on the surface. And artists and philosophers have known a long time that if you're willing to interrogate sadness. I mean, if you do it, if you do it alone, you can become a bummer. You know, like you can, you know, just look at French existentialists, you know, like you can become a real bummer, but also someone who hasn't been willing to lean into their sadness is also very much a surface person. And what I'm trying to get at in this book is that inside the Christian tradition there's a deep, there's a deep, deep vein here that says that, yeah, well, that that that God becomes present comforting. Those who so are are sorrowful. So Blessed are those who grieve. Blessed are those who are sad,
Joshua Johnson:for their eyes will be open to see the presence of the living God who cares for the brokenhearted. We get to follow them, this man of sorrows. Yeah, that's who we get to follow. How do we do this in what does it look like in either like our wider community? I'm thinking about our nation. I'm thinking about America. I'm thinking about the pursuit of happiness. This is all we've been doing, is pursuing happiness. It is an act of protest to slow down as a community and feel sadness and grief and sorrow and say, We're gonna walk with you through this thing. What does it look like to do it as a as a whole, and not just individually?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I mean, it is, it is a question like, I think we're at a peculiar place right now, because, you know, like, even what we were just talking about, and I do, and I would want to say, this is the the main thing that I'm emphasizing is these events, these realities, like, people may be really upset about what's happening in the country from whatever kind of side they're on, but you can't stop the fact that someone in your communities can be diagnosed with cancer, and all of a sudden that's going to be the issue, issue at hand, at least for them, or what they're going to need is someone to walk with them in the midst of this. But at another level, I mean, we are looking at a moment of great transition here, you know, like and this takes us a little outside the book, but in some ways. Not because, you know, like one of the things I try to argue in this book is that when you even look at some of these articulations of in the 1990s that the 1990s are really positive and that this all falls apart for us. But one of the reasons the 1990s were so positive, and I, you know, look at the philosopher Charles Taylor, as well as the philosopher Stephen toolman. Have these really positive kind of genealogies, like the 90s are going to be finally living into some of the ideals that came out of the 60s, or kind of get get individualism under control in some way or something, and that those don't come to fruition, the last three decades of the 21st century become quite sad ones. But one of the reasons they're so positive is because it feels like, Well, I mean, just really concretely the Berlin Wall stone, and, you know, the Cold War is over, and it looks like maybe economic growth may be kind of returning, globally in a certain way. And I think what we're seeing right now is that, again, this is beyond the book, but we are really seeing the ending of the 20th century completely, like, you know, like even the way America is responding to Europe, like, it's, it's the kind of logics of the 20th century are really over. And I think at a certain level, we we, I'll just speak for myself, like, grieve some of that, like grieve some of the way the world was that it feels like it will not be able to be put back together. And therefore, we are on a precipice of great change coming, like we are the kind of larger order of the country, as well as the order of the of the globe, in many ways, is, is in the midst of a great kind of transition, like at that level we are kind of 100 years ago, 150 or like, you know, like end of the 19th century, you know, just before and then after world war one kind of reshaping the way the world works And the way even people interact with each other. And I feel, you know, we feel a lot of great anxiety around that. So there is a kind of question of discerning the difference between anxiety and sadness, you know, and too much anxiety can make you quite sad, but they're not always the same thing. And so I think in the midst practically, of anxiety, we part of our pastoral leadership is to remind people that anxiety isn't is a good response to things being in flux. It's not a bad feeling, and to remind them that God is is in control of this. And that does not mean that it could not become bleak or difficult, or economies couldn't crumble, or, you know, all sorts of things one couldn't even imagine could could happen in the way our our lives are ordered, and we should, but that there is a greater hope that we have, and then to To avoid the temptation of that anxiety about what will order the world to take us away from the concreteness of the ones who suffer in our midst. And I think that is a real I mean, particularly thinking the main line that's one of the big issues is that everyone is fighting for some ideological perspective and fear that they almost miss, at a kind of global level, at a larger macro level, that they miss the person in their community. I mean, the 85 year old person their community is utterly alone and has stopped coming to church because they hurt their they slipped on the ice and broke their hip, and now are literally deteriorating and dying, and had been part of this church for 45 5060, years, and now are being forgotten while we're all anxious about what the next executive order is going to be. And again, that's not to minimize that stuff, but it is to say there's a deep temptation that we forget the concrete people before us, and it's not even people in our community, but the person across the street who is, who's, you know, a lonely and not part of our church, but is having to say a great goodbye to something, some something or someone, and not being with them. So I think try to help our communities parse out the difference between being anxious and not minimizing that anxiety, but also what it means to be in moments of loss and sorrow. And sometimes those are the same thing, and sometimes those are different.
Joshua Johnson:It seems like if we all were able to care for those in our midst that were in pain and struggling and sorrowful, that would make a huge difference than just because we we would be human again. It feels like, if we're we're focused on the on the macro constantly. It feels like we're just trying to make sure that this machine is going to do what I want the machine to do. But we, we need to, like, figure out, what does it look like to be human? Yeah, in this day and age, absolutely. What do you think like, if you would say to somebody like, these are the things that it means to be human. What does it mean to be human as opposed machine? Yeah, and
Andrew Root:I think one of the things that it ultimately means to be human is to be the kind of creature who needs others. And I do think we live in a kind of moment where we think we don't really need them, you know, we've take that kind of Satra view that other people are hell, you know. And particularly other people with other ideologies are are hell. But to be human is to, well, it's two things, I think it is to be the kind of creature who needs others, and you're the kind of creature who needs others, because to be human is to have to say goodbye. You have to say goodbye. You have to say goodbye to your health. You have to say goodbye to your kids being, you know, 11 and 12, and now they're 13 and 14. You have to say goodbye to your kids as they go off and launch their lives. You have to say goodbye to parents who are passing away. You have to say goodbye to a spouse who's who is suffering from dementia like you have to there the human life is saying goodbye all the time. And that opens up this deep question of, can you do that by yourself? No, can you do that just in a a community that you're only in that community because you correlate to its ideologies? No, you need others. And can you do that without some kind of divine referent that can give order to this and gives practices? I don't think so. You know, like, I think a pushback to that could be like, well, the only reason I have a god is because you can't cope with your existential fallibility. But at another level, again, there's nothing more beautiful than these moments of having to say goodbye. This is why most pastors say they feel the most alive doing funerals because they are on. They're at this place where they get to speak into deep sorrow and hold people and without minimizing that sorrow also speak of deep forms of hope and possibility that doesn't come around the sorrow isn't a detour around it. It goes straight through it, which is why, again, most pastors I talk to will say they feel the most alive or like their vocation is the most significant when they're doing a funeral, because they're helping group of people, they're helping a community say goodbye, and they are reminding them that that saying goodbye is a Diem. It is to God, and it is God's business to be part of that. And I just think that's how we be human, that we say goodbye and we recognize that God has something to do with that saying goodbye.
Joshua Johnson:That's beautiful. Andy, if you have a hope for this book and for the people who read evangelism and the age of despair, what? What's your hope?
Andrew Root:Yeah, my hope is a complete cultural, you know, as a complete contradiction everything I said, I hope it's an Amazon bestseller and that I that I have a private jet after this. No, my real hope is that it, well, I guess my hope is that it, that it can help form communities that look a little bit like the story I told in it, which I think they're out there, but I do, you know, like again, which is kind of, well, it's the world I live in, but the church that I present is not a church that anyone would look at and be like, Oh my gosh, this is the most important church in Southern California. Let's you know, they wouldn't say in their town, let alone, you know, the region or the state or something, it is just a small group of people who are plotting along and doing their best to respond to where Jesus is calling them. And that's the great hope. Is that if we can care for one another, that that caring for one another isn't just a benign, nice thing to do, it is it's sacramental. The finite and the infinite partake in this common but profound act of bearing each other's burdens.
Joshua Johnson:Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend
Andrew Root:we're struggling actually right now, because we're in the middle of severance, and so we're, we're just anticip, we're anticipating. So I, you know this is, this is just throwing shade on my my wife car. But I was like, Hey, we gotta wait. I just want to store these, these episodes up. And then she's like, No, we so we re watched the first season, and then we started, and then we just were hammering them, you know, like every night, two episodes, and then all of a sudden, the dreaded, you know, like when it's gonna queue up the next episode, it gives you a different show. And, you know, you're caught up. And now you have to wait till Thursday night or Friday, or whatever that it drops. So, yeah, we're in the middle of that. So. Yeah, that's, I would definitely recommend that. And it's making problems for us as we wait, because every other show we watch just feels, as the kids would say, totally mid like it just doesn't it's just not doing it. So yeah, I would definitely, definitely recommend that. Great.
Joshua Johnson:Well, I love severance. I asked go check that out. And just, yeah, you could go down the rabbit hole with severance, and you could just go through different different theories for a long time. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Well, well done. Show. Really impressive, really amazing. How can people go out get to evangelism in the age of despair? Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to get the book. And where else would you like to point people to? Yeah, I think
Andrew Root:I would just, yeah, wherever you feel comfortable getting it. I think you'll be able to find it there and go there if you know, if you look for convenience, obviously, it's on Amazon. If you can support your local book store do that it should be there, or, yeah, independent one online would be, would be great. So that's, that's great. And, yeah, I mean, if people want to find me that there's, I have a website that chooses andrew.org and you can, you can find me there.
Joshua Johnson:Andy, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for going deep into our sorrows and our sadness and our pain, but knowing that there is a living God that could actually meet us and encounter us in that and that we could walk with community, that evangelism, discipleship can be paired together, and we could continue to go on the pilgrimage to God in our life. And so it was beautiful. I love our conversation. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Unknown:Those are a pleasure. You.
