Rich Velodis (4:11)

I don't know, Sky. I mean, my context is, you know, Queens. 50% of Queens is foreign born, heavily large immigrant community where faith is pivotal to the lives of these communities. And so I often wonder to what degree are these studies so oriented around the white experience and white people, as opposed to the vast diversity I have in my church, folks are inherently religious and longing for spiritual resources. Now the way my some might be more caught up in traditionalism or superstition as it relates to faith here, but I think they more gravitate towards language and practices of faith. And so in my context in Queens and you know, New York City, as I whenever I talk to people about New York City because of how vast it is, I mean, if Queens was its own independent city, it would be the fourth largest city in the country. And so after Brooklyn and then Manhattan is probably fifth on the list. And so I think that might be true for Manhattan in terms of that growing kind of awakening to this year. But in Queens, it feels like I'm not sure if it ever left us Here among the nations that are represented in the community that I pass through.

Sky Jutani (5:32)

Okay, well then on that front, I think that's a really good point. This could be kind of an elite, white, Manhattanish kind of phenomenon, but it's affecting the broader culture through media and those platforms. But on the other side of this, what I'm also seeing is people who have a long history within the church, including young adults in my community here in Wheaton, a growing desire to engage these ancient practices. I'll give you one example. Like, I'm talking to tons of people who are all suddenly practicing the Sabbath in a significant way. And I'm like, that's great. I think that's wonderful. And part of it, I believe, is coming out of, for them a religious experience that so emphasized the knowledge. Right. Just memorizing scripture, perhaps, or having your verse at Awana that you get the candy bar for. And I think they've reached the limits of knowledge based formation. And so they're going, well, what am I missing here? They're very attracted to, like, the stuff that John Mark Comer is doing, which I'm in a small group right now that's going through his stuff. And like, it's great. I appreciate it deeply. But all of this, whether you're talking about secular elites in Manhattan or kids who grew up in religious homes and churches kind of gravitating towards this spiritual formation, practices and language. Here's my kind of. And I can't help but being not unalloyed in my enthusiasm, like, this is really good, but here's my concern. They seem to be coming after this stuff for the second order benefits. Like, there's a mountain of research that says, yeah, a more contemplative incorporation of contemplative practices in your life has enormous benefits on all kinds of fronts. But I'm wondering, are people being drawn to this stuff because they're actually seeking a deeper life and communion with God, or are they drawn to this stuff because it's going to help them manage the challenges of life in the 21st century? And both can be true. I don't think it's one or the other, but I'm worried that people are going for the second order benefits rather than the first order benefit?

Rich Velodis (7:42)

Yeah. And you know, Scott, pastorally, I think that's true. First of all, I think, for example, like, when I became a follower of Christ at 19, I was feeling great anxiety, a great sense of hopelessness, and I believed the message that if I trusted in Jesus, that I could experience peace in my Life totally. I didn't really want Jesus per se. I wanted peace in my life. And then upon receiving that peace, I began to understand, oh, let me get to the source of this peace, which is Jesus. And now what does a life look like that's not marked by transactionalism? And so I think, yes, the second order of spiritual benefits, folks are usually gravitating towards that. I think the problem becomes when there is not a formational culture that now points people now to the source, where it now becomes programmatic and now consumeristic. And now the goal is what can I get out of it?

Sky Jutani (8:50)

Right.

Rich Velodis (8:51)

And so I'm fine with people. I preach every Sunday. Some of you are experiencing great anxiety and angst and depression and trust in Jesus. And folks are like, they like the Jesus part, but they really want to just feel better.

Sky Jutani (9:04)

Yeah.

Rich Velodis (9:05)

The question now, pastorally and formationally, is what does it look like now to now root them in something deeper than what they can get out of it.

Sky Jutani (9:14)

Yeah.

Rich Velodis (9:15)

And I think that's the challenge of formation in our culture. It's too often benefits oriented as opposed to presence oriented, relationship oriented, communion oriented. And so I'm not always too negative around the second order of like, you know, the benefits of it. But the larger question is to what degree are we creating a formational culture in which someone is ordering their lives around the presence and teachings of Jesus in community for the sake of the world, which is how I think about spiritual formation.

Sky Jutani (9:48)

Yeah, I concur completely. The metaphor that comes to my mind is marriage. Like, there's again been tons of studies that have shown that marriage generally benefits people. People who are married live longer, they express more happiness, less loneliness, all these kinds of things. But those are all second order benefits of being married. The first order benefit, hopefully is your relationship with your spouse. Yes, that's the first order. And all the other things are side effect benefits that come out of that. And what you're describing in your own story of coming to faith at 19 and having Jesus bring you a peace that you couldn't find any other way, but then seeking the source of that peace. That's the pattern we see throughout the Gospels. Yes. I think virtually everybody who comes to Jesus in the Gospels are coming for some second order benefit. My daughter is dying, I'm a leper, I'm blind, you know, whatever, we don't have enough food, whatever. The issue is even his mother coming, saying, there's not enough wine here at the wedding, Jesus, can you help us out? Those are all second order benefits. And they attract lots of people to Jesus and his movement. But there are moments in his ministry, John 6 may be the most vivid, where he turns to them and says, okay, I'm done with the show. No more miracles. We're done with the exorcisms. And he challenges them with, do you actually want me? Will you eat my flesh and drink my blood? And by the end of the chapter, everyone leaves except for the 12. And Peter says, where will you go? You have the words of life. So that culture of formation, I think is what that's describing is people come for all kinds of reasons, and Jesus never turns people away. He doesn't deny them. I don't think there's a story in the scriptures anywhere of Jesus not healing someone who asks for it. So we all come with these mixed motives of second order desires. But the question is, when are we challenged to that first order piece of it and actually wanting him? And so that is my concern, honestly. It's that lack of formation culture where it is just transactional and the secular world is looking at the church. I mean, even like Christina Emba has been written, she's writing stuff in the Washington Post the last couple years about the sort of emptiness of hookup culture and the desire for a more substantive sexual ethic that the church offers. And so even people on that front are realizing, oh my gosh, there's benefits of the Christian message around sexuality and restraint and self control and all this. And I'm like, yes, this is great. I'm so happy people are discovering this and coming into it. But behind that, are you finding Jesus?

Rich Velodis (12:28)

Right.

Sky Jutani (12:29)

So that's the missing piece for me in some of this.

Rich Velodis (12:32)

Yeah. And part of that is, I mean, where in some respects, I think that one of the big problems with the formation culture, the spiritual formation culture, is it is usually oriented around, yes, practices, yes, programs, but it is done in such isolation, number one, from a larger community that's seeking to pursue Jesus, where it becomes, again, we are now, it's benefit oriented again, as opposed to presence oriented, as opposed to discipleship oriented. It's what can I get out of it? And as a pastor, I mean, pretty early in our formation kind of strategy at New Life in terms of how we're inviting people to follow Jesus. You know, we're offering hope every Sunday. We want people to get relief from the distress that they're experiencing. But pretty early in the process, we're saying, if you're going to be part of this community, you're going to take up your cross. I Tell folks all the time we should have a sign in front of our church that says enter at your own risk, because we are inviting you into a place of deep transformation. And I think here's what I discovered in terms of the young people in our church that are coming. The young people in our church are coming because I think they're being challenged in a way that says we're not just here for some spiritual goodies. We are here to have our lot, to order our lives around Jesus and his teachings and his presence. And I think in a post pandemic world, the level of anxiety that's perpetuating our culture, I think folks are longing to be challenged and invited into deeper waters of commitment and discipleship. And so I think we're actually missing an opportunity when we do not. This is, I think, where the monastic tradition, you know, to be in a monastery, you don't just get into a monastery. There are a number of years before you were accepted into the community. And I think that's where the church at this stage could be really drawing from the monastic communities where to be part of this community, we're saying it's not going to be easy, it's going to cost you something. Not going to cost you something, it's going to cost you everything. And at the other end of it there's, there's life, there's the kind of joy and peace that you're longing for. So I think we're seeing a surge of young people coming to our church because we're actually challenging them not just to have the benefits of faith, but to order their lives around the presence of God.

Sky Jutani (15:18)

So yeah, what you're describing there is unpacking one of the dangers, I think of the spiritual formation movement. When it can, if it's hyper individualized, it just becomes sort of a Christian version of self care rest. But when you make sure it's connected to a broader community to which you are committed, it mitigates against that narcissistic, navel gazing kind of self care spiritual formation.

C (15:46)

How do we.

Sky Jutani (15:49)

How do we mitigate against the danger of, in the community space of it? There are some people who've gotten into faith communities really committed to their faith community and then that community goes toxic. Right. And in a weird way, I think the deconstruction movement in some ways is what happens when the second order benefits of Christianity actually become second order. Not benefits, but depravities or brokenness. Like they, the things they thought they were going to get from a Christian community. Love and care. And mutual support and, you know, being on mission together, whatever those things are, like, it all goes sideways because you have a toxic. And people are deconstructing sometimes leaving the church or leaving the faith altogether because those second order things didn't go well. And yet the people I've talked to, like we've done this series on our show, why I'm Still a Christian, talk to all kinds of amazing people. And when you pose that question to them and they've all experienced like real horrible situations in the Christian subculture or within the church. And when you ask them, why are you still a Christian, they almost all give the same answer. Because I'm committed to Jesus. Like, their first order commitment isn't affected by the lack of second order benefits. So when you emphasize that commitment to the community, yeah, there's a lot of benefit there. Again, but what's the. How do you mitigate against the danger that. Or if our community kind of goes sideways, how do, how do we make sure that people don't throw out the baby Jesus with the bathwater?

Rich Velodis (17:22)

Yeah, well, I think part of it is when we talk about community life, that New Life Fellowship in Queens. A big part of my job is anticipating all of the ways where feelings of letdown, feelings of disappointment are just going to surface. And so it's my task on a regular basis to normalize the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs of just community life. I mean, there's even in our newcomer lunches that we have, it's a way of saying, to be part of this community means a few things. You're going to have at least three stages of going to our community life. Number one, there's going to be the idealism phase. There's the realism phase, and then there's kind of like the holding the tensions phase. The idealism phase is, wow. I can tell always who are the new people in our church? They love our church. They can't find anything wrong with our church. I could tell. You've been here for two months. There's never been a church like this before. It's idealism. It's like you falling in love. You don't see the faults of the person you fall in love with.

Sky Jutani (18:27)

It's infatuation.

Rich Velodis (18:28)

Realism comes in.

Sky Jutani (18:29)

Yeah.

Rich Velodis (18:29)

And you're disappointed. Someone says something from the stage you didn't like. Someone's in your small group. They're not as hospitable as you thought they were going to be. You heard that they're voting for someone else or whatever it might be. The Realism sets in. And is there usually where people leave. This is here when people quit jobs, dump boyfriends and girlfriends, leave churches. It's that realism phase. And it's almost as if the level of. They were not prepared for the level of just reality and the whole. For me, at that stage, pastorally, my goal is to set a culture where we're not talking about abuse, we're not talking about the worst of just community life, manipulation, narcissism. We're talking about the. The normal conflicts that emerge within the life of a community, the differences we have. And it is my task and our pastor's task to say what. What would it look like to go to. To hold on to stage three, which is we're holding the tensions where someone is not all this. This is not an angelic community, but it's not a demonic community. We are trying to hold together the mixture. I think that's a big part of just why people stick around. In addition to. Yes, it's about Jesus. Our. Our lives. We are part of the body of Christ because we're part of a community, but because we're living in obedience to Jesus, that to follow Jesus is not to follow him in isolation from others, but in a community with others. And so I'm sticking around in obedience to Jesus, knowing that I was designed to follow him within a community. Which, by the way, sky is one of my other critiques about generally the spiritual formation movement, where it just becomes very to your point. You're just isolationist, individualistic, and, you know, we were made for community. Which, you know, Brother Lawrence, for me, is I had the discovery around community and formation with Brother Lawrence. As I read Practicing the Presence of God, I just found it so inspiring and then very depressing because I could not find the kind of spirituality he had about washing the dishes and sweeping the floor and praying and thinking about God. And then maybe three years after reading it, I discovered. I don't know why I didn't discover it in the first reading that he's a Carmelite monk who is in a community of people that have a particular order, a particular rule. And so his personal spiritual formation is bolstered. It's only created because of the community he belongs to. And I think that often goes missing within at least popular interpretations or applications of what has been presented in the spiritual formation movement.

Sky Jutani (21:26)

Okay. Oh, my gosh, there's too many directions. I want to go in with you right now. And the Brother Lawrence brings up one of them. We'll come back to that. Let's Stay on the community thing for a second, though. I remember, gosh, 20 years ago maybe, I went to a spiritual formation conference, big conference, thousands of people, and the content was fantastic and there were wonderful presenters and it was sort of different than the rock concert kind of ministry conference stuff that is often presented. So I benefited greatly from it. But I do recall being in this giant ballroom at this very large hotel in Los Angeles and looking around the room and realizing it's all white people.

Rich Velodis (22:11)

Oh, yeah.

Sky Jutani (22:11)

Like it was a lot of evangelical and some mainline churches represented and almost entirely white, suburban. It struck me, and other people have written about this, that the spiritual formation movement runs the risk of being a movement of white, affluent American Christianity.

Rich Velodis (22:33)

Yeah.

Sky Jutani (22:34)

Now you're in Queens. You already talked about the enormous diversity of your church and the background of your people. Do you see that? And what's your response to that in your community? As somebody who is bringing these formative ideas and practices to a very different kind of diverse congregation, I'll just say this.

Rich Velodis (22:54)

I think I have in recent years appreciated how difficult it is to copy and paste the general environment in which the spiritual formation movement was birthed in and birthed out of into my context in Queens. For example, let's talk about Sabbath. For example, I've talked about Sabbath. I've been practicing Sabbath for the last 17 years. And Sabbath keeping has been one of the greatest gifts to my life and to our family's life. And what I've discovered maybe in the last five years is I had this realization that numbers of congregants were coming up to me saying, I would love to keep Sabbath, but I have two jobs. I would love to keep Sabbath, but socioeconomic, I'm really on the low end of that there. And so I don't have the luxury of a 24 hour period without have to's or shoulds, which over time is to result in deep rest and renewal. I don't have the luxury of that. Which made me think, oh, if, if, if we're going to have people practice Sabbath in Queens for a number of people, not for everyone, for a number of people, it's going to take a new kind of like Sabbath economics around community life. What does it look like for us to help others rest? What does it look like for us to create the conditions, whether through our generosity, our community life, to create spaces where people can receive the gift of rest? You're not going to hear that in general spiritual formation environments because it assumes that you have a 24 hour period to just do whatever you Want.

Sky Jutani (24:46)

Yeah. It seems the only barrier to practicing these things is your own will.

Rich Velodis (24:51)

That's exactly right. So the way I've explained it is we all have this interior pharaoh that says, if you stop working, you're going to die. What I have forgotten is that there's lots of folks who live with the kind of an exterior pharaoh and, you know, powers and principalities that have. So whether it be marginal, they're marginalized. They're on the margins of society economically. They don't just have, like, this interior pharaoh that's keeping them from taking a break. There are just powers and challenges and realities external to themselves. And that's what I discovered in Queens. Like, oh, yes. If I. I have been, I think, sadly and unwittingly heaping on shame on people. Like, if you can't rest, there's a problem with you. And folks are like, I long to rest. I just literally can't do it because of the city we live in, the income I have, the job, the multiple jobs I need to make it in the city. And so I've discovered that a copy and paste from one context to another, which just reminds me, sky, like much of the spiritual formation movement is outside of the city, and it's outside of, I think, socioeconomically diverse contexts. Which is the weakness, I think, of the spiritual formation movement. It's a movement for monasteries and mountains that's in the backdrop there, not skyscrapers and taxi cabs and all the rest there. But, yes, it's something I'm continually reassessing here in my queen's context.

Sky Jutani (26:42)

So beyond the socioeconomic assumptions of the spiritual formation movement, what about the cultural and ethnic assumptions? I know there's plenty of people, as I mentioned earlier, raised in the church, particularly in the white evangelical subculture, who somehow find themselves drawn into these conversations about spiritual formation. John Mark Comer, as I mentioned, is kind of like a gateway for a lot of people. Or John Ortberg. For me, it was Dallas Willard and Eugene Peterson. But there are other people coming out of the black church or the Latino church or a more charismatic background or, you know, the Asian church, Korean American church, whatever. These different traditions that aren't just white evangelicalism.

Rich Velodis (27:24)

Yes.

Sky Jutani (27:25)

And some people have this posture of, well, they need to be introduced to spiritual formation because without it, they have got some deficiency in their faith or Christianity. Again, you're at a church with 75 countries represented.

Rich Velodis (27:40)

Yes.

Sky Jutani (27:40)

So you're advocating for some of this stuff, but you're doing it with people that are coming from particular backgrounds and traditions. How is that different for you then?

Rich Velodis (27:49)

Well, you know, again, I think the I mean, my critique of the spiritual formation movement emerges as someone who's in within it, so someone who appreciates it. And at the same time, I'm naming the gaps here. I think the spiritual formation movement has.

C (28:09)

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