Discovering better ways to read the Bible with Zachary Lambert on Compass: Finding Spirituality in the Everyday.
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In this episode, Zach Lambert and host Ryan Dunn explore how many of us have been handed rigid, harmful ways to interpret the Bible—and how moving toward healthier, life-giving lenses can transform both our understanding of scripture and our spiritual lives. We dig deep into themes such as reading the Bible with curiosity, dismantling literalism, building communities of restoration, and seeking interpretations that bear true "good fruit." Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or just spiritually curious, there’s space here for honest questions and renewed inspiration.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Zachary Lambert (he/him) is the lead pastor and co-founder of Restore Austin, a dynamic, radically inclusive church embracing grace, authenticity, and diversity in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Better Ways to Read the Bible, a guide to transforming scripture from a tool of exclusion into a wellspring of liberation. Zach’s own journey has included being kicked out of several religious institutions, which fuels his passion for building spiritual communities where all are welcome to heal and grow. Restore Austin recently joined the United Methodist Church, signaling a new chapter of compassion and justice-driven ministry in the heart of Austin.
Episode Notes:
Check out what people are saying and pick up a copy of Better Ways to Read the Bible.
Restore Austin has livestreamed worship services each Sunday.
Also, check out Zach's Substack--featuring lots of food for thought and some hot takes.
Related Episodes:
- Fantastical beasts and where to find them (in the Bible)
- Faith, conflict and growth with Rev. David Livingston
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This episode posted on September 17, 2025
Episode Transcript:
Ryan Dunn:
There just might be a healthier way for you to read the Bible. Hey, this is Compass Finding Spirituality in the Everyday. My name is Ryan Dunn and in today's episode I'm having a conversation with Reverend Zachary Lambert, pastor of Restore Austin and author of Better Ways to Read the Bible. Zach notes that there are some incredibly popular, yet horrible harmful lenses through which we often try to read the Bible. So he proposes that there are some alternative lenses through which we may read the Bible that lead us more towards interpretations and ideals of flourishing. We also get into a curiosity driven approach to faith. We get into leading communities of healing and growth and talking about the truth of the Bible. It's a.
Ryan Dunn:
It's a fun talk. If conversations like this are interesting or valuable to you, I'd really appreciate it. If you hit the subscribe button on Spotify, Apple, podcasts, YouTube, whatever platform you might be hearing this broadcast upon, it's always really, really helpful to leave a little review. For example, on Spotify, you hit that little star button and then give us a five star rating or, well, whatever number of stars you think is appropriate. Thank you so much for that. Before we officially enter the conversation, I do want to let you know a little bit more about Zach Lambert. It's funny, because I heard Zach on another podcast and I thought that he would be really interesting to speak with. The next day, I got an email announcing that Zach and the church of Restore Austin were joining my denomination, the United Methodist Church.
Ryan Dunn:
So I took that as a little bit of a nudge to reach out to Zach. Zach is the lead pastor and one of the founders of Restore Austin, which is a church focusing on grace, authenticity, diversity and partnerships. Of course, in Austin, Texas, Zach's own spiritual journey is a colorful one. It involves him getting kicked out of a few different religious institutions. He is the author of Better Ways to Read the Bible, which is all about transforming the Bible from a weapon that condemns, oppresses and excludes into a tool that liberates. And to learn more, you're going to just have to listen to Zach. So let's get into it. Zach Lambert, healthy ways to Read the Bible and more on the Compass podcast.
Ryan Dunn:
Well, Zach, I'm looking forward to talking about the Bible with you, but first questions first. Just how goes it with your soul today?
Zachary Lambert:
Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me on. And thanks for that very pastoral question and Wesleyan question. I love that I'm in a season of a lot of busyness. I think that's true for a lot of us. And I think that I've fallen prey over the years to the glorification of busyness. You know, like we're really only doing great work with God and in the world if we're busy and really actively trying to set aside margin for various things, whether it's family or personal enrichment. My dad also got a really serious cancer diagnosis back in April and probably only has about 8 or 12 months to live.
Zachary Lambert:
And so that's really, I think, also caused me to, I think, see time a little differently, you know, and realize that everything that we do, every second we have is precious, how we choose to spend those matters. And so instead of pursuing busyness for busyness sake, I want to prioritize as much as possible. And I found that that really has been good for my soul. Even when things feel heavy, being able to step into things that really deeply matter has made all the difference.
Ryan Dunn:
Yeah. Do you have any advice for managing the tension of realizing that time is finite so we want to make the most of it. Like we want to make our checklist and make sure that we have all the items checked off and yet still being open towards the, I don't know, the movement of refreshment or a sense of the spiritual or contemplation.
Zachary Lambert:
Yeah. You know, not to give the Sunday school answer, but Jesus gives good answer.
Ryan Dunn:
All right, next question.
Ryan Dunn:
Just kidding.
Zachary Lambert:
Jesus, I think, does give us a really great model of, you know, Jesus was what I would call like an essentialist. There's a great book that was written like a decade ago called Essentialism, and it's about kind of how we make these decisions around what we choose to say yes to and no to. I think Jesus was very strict about saying yes to the things that mattered most. Not just so that he could have kind of the checklist and the clear schedule, but also so that he could have margin when he was interrupted by things that ended up really mattering. You know, I think for a lot of us, we're so over scheduled that we get interrupted by things that really matter. We almost don't have time to stop, you know, And I think about how Jesus, whether it was the. The, you know, the bleeding woman or the woman at the well, you know, Jairus's daughter, that needed to be healed. There were all these kinds of things that he was able to stop and redirect for because he had only committed himself to the things that kind of mattered most.
Zachary Lambert:
And then lastly, you know, he was very committed to getting away, having time alone, having time with the Father in prayer, contemplation, meditation, those kinds of things. And so I think he really does give us, it feels trite, but Jesus really does give us a good example, I think, of how we can employ this strategy in our lives.
Ryan Dunn:
All right. And of course we learn about Jesus through the Bible. This is my pro transition here. Zach, back on the topic, I feel.
Ryan Dunn:
Like you've probably had to feel this.
Ryan Dunn:
Question and it is a loaded question. Oftentimes when somebody visits your church and they ask, are you a Bible believing church? How might you address that question within the context of Restore Austin?
Zachary Lambert:
Yes. So I'm a big lead with curiosity guy. And so I would immediately ask more questions, you know, I would ask what that means, what is the Bible to them? What does being, quote unquote, Bible believing mean? Because usually there's something underneath that there's a specific, usually ideology or theology that's been connected to being Bible believing that they now are. That's the real question behind the question, so to speak. Right. So sometimes this is about like women's roles in the church, you know, and so what they've been told is, hey, the Bible clearly states that women cannot be in any kind of leadership role or preaching in the church. And so if you are a Bible believing Christian and you go to a Bible believing church, then they will teach or you will believe that women have to be subservient to men in the church. And so that's actually the question that they're asking.
Zachary Lambert:
You know, so I try to get kind of beneath the surface, but let's assume that I can't. You know, let's assume that I only have one option. I would say, I think kind of tongue in cheek. I would say, well, the Bible doesn't actually like say anything that we are supposed to believe. The biblical authors say a lot of different things that I think we have to wrestle with and choose to interpret and apply to our lives. But I've really tried to. I don't know what the correct word is, but whatever the opposite of anthromorphize is, I don't say that word correctly. Anthropomorphize.
Ryan Dunn:
Anthropomorphize.
Zachary Lambert:
Yes, yes, anthropomorphize. That's the word.
Ryan Dunn:
And I don't know the opposite of it either.
Zachary Lambert:
We try to unanthropomorphize the Bible by saying the Bible is not a person, the Bible doesn't say anything. And I think that is really a core tool of the weaponization of Scripture is to say the Bible says, when the Bible is written by a collection of you know, 40 plus authors across three different continents over a few thousand years. It's got 10 plus genres of literature. And the biblical authors are not always univocal. They don't all say the same things, they're not monolithic, they don't come from the same places, they argue about different things. And so I think, are you a Bible believing church or a Bible believing pastor? Really kind of cheapens I think what the Bible actually is. And so I'd answer it with some form of that probably.
Ryan Dunn:
Okay, well you've noted the Bible is not a person. What would you describe the Bible as being?
Zachary Lambert:
The Bible really is, I think, a collection of writings where humans are doing their best to describe who God is and who we are and how God is at work in the world, in and through us and nature and all the rest of the. Now I actually am very much believe that the Spirit of God has been and continues to be involved with the writing of scripture and the interpretation of scripture. I believe in what would be classically called the inspiration of Scripture by God through the power of the Holy Spirit. But I don't think that takes away or negates the humanness of the text either. There's a great book called the Word of a Humble God by Karen Keane, who's a scholar and a, a Bible teacher. And she describes inspiration in a way that basically is that God in God's humility, meets us and met the biblical authors exactly where they were in all their humanness and all their understanding, and called them forward to be in partnership with God as they described what was happening in the world around them and their encounters with God and all of that. And so that's, I think, what the Bible is, so to speak, very like from a statistical perspective, I guess the Bible is the Protestant Bible at least is 66 books, as I said, written by a bunch of different authors about a bunch of different subjects in different genres. So the Bible is not a book per se.
Zachary Lambert:
It really is more of a library, I think is the healthiest way to think about it.
Ryan Dunn:
A lot of my work is centered in social media, especially representing the denomination in the United Methodist Church. Most vocal critics of the stuff that we post on those accounts are not people from outside the church. I mean this in terms of the church universal. They're not non believers or atheists or whatever the most vocal critics are. Those who are, are professing to be within the church. And oftentimes it comes around to biblical interpretation and that what we espouse the Bible might say is not in agreement with what they think the Bible might say. And oftentimes they're saying, well, you know, I take the Bible literally. Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.
Ryan Dunn:
Do you believe that there is such.
Ryan Dunn:
A thing as a true biblical literalist? Like, can we just take the Bible and be like, yep, there it is, that's what it says. It's so simple. Let's do it.
Zachary Lambert:
It's funny, that's such a great question. I don't think there are actual Bible literalists, Biblical literalists. And I think that, and this is really where I try to build bridges with people who maybe come from more literalistic traditions is to say, oh, they're absolutely literal things in the Bible, right? I'm not anti literal. Like when Jesus said, the most important thing is to love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself, he meant that literally. That was very literal, you know. But what I would say is, hey, even you, a self proclaimed biblical literalist, do not take the Bible, every word of it literally. Let's just start in Proverbs, you know, where it says things like, the lazy man gets eaten by the lion. You have realized that's not a statement of literal fact.
Zachary Lambert:
That is a, you know, colloquial wisdom statement to say, don't be lazy, right? And they'll say, well, proverbs, you know, that's different. And I'll say, well, it is different, but there are a lot of, you know, their wisdom genre literature all over scripture, not just in proverbs. And I'll say, well, let's get a New Testament example. You know, we have a text like, I do not allow a woman to teach, you know, from Paul or whoever wrote Timothy. And it's right next to a command. And so they would say, I take that literally. We do not allow women to teach in our church. But it's right next to a command that says men everywhere should lift up their hands when they sing praise and we should all greet each other with a holy kiss.
Zachary Lambert:
And I would say, you don't do those things. You know what I mean? Like, you don't, you don't require every man in your church to raise their hands when they sing that. You don't, I know that. And you don't greet everyone in church with a holy kiss. We have said those things must be cultural or contextual. They must be descriptive of something not prescriptive for all time. But we've taken this other part of it and said, well, no, that is both descriptive of a time and prescriptive for all time. And I'm not even arguing that you're wrong.
Zachary Lambert:
I think I would argue that you are wrong. But in this moment right now, all I'm saying is we're all doing this. None of us are taking all of it literally. We're all kind of trying to do the best we can to understand it in context.
Ryan Dunn:
Zach, your book is Better Ways to Read the Bible. And in there you suggest that a pursuit of literalism can actually be harmful. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by that?
Zachary Lambert:
Absolutely. I think a woodenly literalistic understanding of every part of Scripture ends up becoming problematic very quickly, especially when we transform scripture into. Try to make it into some kind of like a science textbook or a historical textbook or something like that. The example I go really deep into in the book is from Genesis 1 through 3, the creation of the world. There have long been debates about evolution, creationism, and is. Are Genesis 1 and 2 a literal, scientific recounting of the creation of the world by God? Are the days literal days? How old is the earth? I mean, you know, entire institutions have been built to answer these questions or to defend certain points of view related to those questions. And again, I'm not actually. I don't actually care a ton about debating the age of the earth.
Zachary Lambert:
What I care much more about is that a lot of people who would say, who would apply wooden literalism to Genesis 1 and 2 have said, this is what you believe. If you're a Christian. You know, you believe in Jesus and you believe in faith in God, but also you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, that God created it in six literal days, that Adam and Eve are the literal parents of all human beings. And if you don't, then that is not a Christian belief anymore because a Christian believes that. And I will tell you, I know so many people, including a lot of people in our church, who self selected out of Christianity because they were told a Christian has to believe in this understanding of science or the creation of the world. And then they take a freshman biology course in college and they become convinced of evolution and adaptation and an old earth and carbon dating and all these things. And they think, well, I've been told my whole life a Christian believes the earth is 6,000 years old. I don't believe that anymore, so I must not be a Christian anymore.
Zachary Lambert:
And they leave the faith. And I think those consequences are incredibly damaging.
Ryan Dunn:
Yeah, all right, I can see that. There's a lot of thinking, though, that says if. If one part of the Bible is not true. How can you trust any of it? Have you heard qu questions around that? Do you have some response to it?
Zachary Lambert:
For sure? I think my response to it is to say I'm actually not saying that Genesis 1 and 2 is not true. And I think that is an important distinction. I would say that storytelling is not an inferior way of communicating truth. Let's go back to the lazy man gets eaten by the lion again, right? That statement is not literal, but in some ways it's true. Right. If you practice habitual laziness, then you will have destruction in your life. You know, that's, that's part of what we see borne out in our society. Right.
Zachary Lambert:
And so there is truth in that statement, even if it's not literally prescriptive. And so we have to ask like what is the author trying to do and what is God trying to do through the text in this specific thing? So back to Genesis 1 and 2. The whole purpose of the creation narrative was to say that, that, that Yahweh our God or the, the Jewish God at the time was the kind of like preeminent God among all the other gods of the time and all the other religions of the time. They had their own creation stories. I talk about them in the book. They had a lot of similar through lines to Genesis 1 and 2, but they were really different. And Genesis 1 and 2 was written later than all of them. It was written in response to them.
Zachary Lambert:
But there were some really important distinctions. So like the main one is that Yahweh created humans as co laborers alongside God and in God's image and in God's likeness, this very beautifully elevated space. Whereas basically every other God in religion at the time created humans to do their work because they were tired of doing all the work like the harvest or whatever else. Right. And so humans are really created by those gods to be slaves. Well, what the writers of Genesis 1 and 2 were saying was like, no, no, no, we're not just like God's random slaves put here to assume the drudgery of the gods. We've actually been created to co labor alongside God to be co creators. And that's because we are made in God's image and likeness.
Zachary Lambert:
In fact, we bear the divine imprint wherever we go. And that was a radical shift. And so I would say that is absolutely true. And Genesis 1 and 2 communicates that truth so beautifully. And so I think it's every bit as true. And I mean, I guess I would argue kind of tongue in cheek. I think it's More true than, like, a biblical literalist trying to tell the age of the earth, because that's not what Genesis 1 and 2 is trying to do. And the last point I'll make on that is, if you don't believe me when I say stories are not an inferior way of communicating truth, then you're going to have a lot of trouble with Jesus's teaching style, because Jesus taught almost exclusively in parables that were not, quote, unquote, literally true, but were absolutely true, teaching us about who God is and who we are and how we can interact.
Ryan Dunn:
Okay, well, you've noted that literalism is maybe one of the. One of four lenses that we traditionally kind of look through the Bible which are harmful. And then you propose, well, why don't you try these four lenses instead? Can you talk to us about a couple of the healthier lenses through which we might begin to read the Bible?
Zachary Lambert:
Absolutely. And so, yeah, the. The first half of the book is really set up to try to help us identify and discard these harmful lenses. And I talk a lot about all four of them, give some biblical examples, but I really didn't want to leave it there, Ryan. You know, I didn't want to just say, here's all the. Here's all the terrible ways. The whole point is really to help us find these better ways to read the Bible. And that's like to give myself away here.
Zachary Lambert:
That's because I love the Bible and I love the church, and I am so grateful for my faith in Jesus and my faith community here in Austin and being a part of greater faith movements like the United Methodist Church and others. And so I believe in this stuff. And so my hope is to help people who are still looking to engage with this, but just need to do it in healthier ways, find a way to do that. And so the whole second half of the book are these healthier lenses. And I'll just kind of pick out what is my favorite one. It's like children, though. I don't think you're supposed to say that you have a favorite one.
Ryan Dunn:
Oh, the other three are throwing up their hands.
Zachary Lambert:
Yeah, exactly. They're mad. They're mad about it. So the one that I want to talk about today is fruitfulness. And fruitfulness is really prioritizing interpretations that lead to what Jesus calls good fruit. Jesus has this famous line where he says, you will know my followers by the fruit that they produce. And, you know, some trees bear bad fruit, some trees bear good fruit. We know if a tree is good or bad by the Fruit it produces.
Zachary Lambert:
Same with my followers. And so. And then, you know, Paul kind of expounds on that in Galatians and says the fruit of Jesus's spirit that he was talking about are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And so we should be assessing our Bible interpretations through the lens of the fruit that it's producing. So is this particular interpretation leading to more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, in me and in the world? And if not, then I would say the spirit of God is not in that interpretation. And so we at least need to revisit it. We need to re. Engage it.
Zachary Lambert:
We need to find ways to read the Bible that lead to healthier fruit. Because the truth is, Ryan, like a lot of our Bible interpretations, especially through the weaponization of Scripture, it doesn't lead to love, it leads to hate. It hasn't led to joy, it's led to sorrow. Right. It hasn't led to peace. It's led to violence, it hasn't led to kindness, it's led to. To cruelty. And that, at the very least, like I said, should make us kind of open our eyes and say, something's not right here.
Zachary Lambert:
Because Jesus said we should be known by good fruit. And this is not producing good fruit. And this really is a pastoral thing, too. I mean, it transcends Bible interpretation. We talk all the time at Restore about how it shouldn't just be our Bible interpretation, it should be our. All of our beliefs and behaviors should be yielding more of this good fruit. And if it's not, then there's a problem.
Ryan Dunn:
Well, you brought up Restore Austin, your church. The narrative around Christianity, at least in our American culture, is that it's shrinking. Right. And so that the fruit is not, in essence, producing numbers. And yet I get the impression that, well, Restore Austin is a church start. I feel like it's a church that is growing, so to speak. Maybe not numbers wise, but in. In depth.
Ryan Dunn:
Maybe this is a chance for you to brag on the church a little, like, what are some of the fruits that you're seeing around Restore Austin?
Zachary Lambert:
Gosh. Yeah, I really appreciate that question, and it's one of my favorite things to brag on our community, because the truth is, yeah, we are seeing declines in overall church attendance all across the United States. We've had a pretty mass excess over the last 25 years and especially over the last 10. But that's not true everywhere. Right. And I would just say, without making any kind of value judgments, I'll just talk about Restore specifically We have seen, you know, tremendous growth, not just in numbers, but also in depth and in fruit produced and all of that kind of stuff. We launched 10 years ago in February. So February of 26, we'll turn 10 years old and started with five of us in a living room.
Zachary Lambert:
And today, you know, a typical Sunday is like 400 people or so. And I would say that those people, 90% of them, have some difficult church background. They've got some baggage. They've left church at one time or another for one reason or another. And I think what we've said from the very beginning is we're kind of, we're going to be unapologetically for those people with the goal of helping restore faith in Jesus and the church through some of these practices that we've been talking about. So I would say that even though millions of people have left the church in the last decade or so, significant percentage of those millions, if people are open to going somewhere else, if there is value alignment, if there is stuff for their family and their kids and all of those kinds of things, like they, they will come back. Not all of them, but a lot of them will come back if they've got something that is Jesus centered and justice focused and radically inclusive. That is what we're seeing.
Zachary Lambert:
And I think that my hope is, my hope is that this will provide Restore, really can provide almost a counterweight to not just people leaving the church, but what a lot of the American church has become, especially kind of more fundamentalist versions of it as we see really horrific things being done in the name of Jesus by churches and politicians and some of the most powerful people in our country are, are doing these terrible things and then slapping a Bible verse on them or slapping religious language on it as justification. And we should absolutely be critiquing those things. But I think we also have to be demonstrating something better. And that's my hope for Restore and even for this book, is that it would be something to say not just that stuff is bad, but like there is something else that's good and better.
Ryan Dunn:
It's natural that RESTORE has kind of become this community of people who may have been disenfranchised from, from the church for a while. Because it sounds like that's some of your story, Zach.
Zachary Lambert:
Absolutely.
Ryan Dunn:
You lead off early part of the book and noting that you were kicked out of youth group and have since had some other church related separations, whether from institutions or from relationships. What has kept you coming back to the church when it's been oftentimes a Place of disassociation or harm or pushback.
Zachary Lambert:
Yeah, thanks for that question. I would say two things. The first one is that I am incredibly compelled by the person and work and teachings of Jesus. And that's true in a spiritual sense. Like, I've had spiritual encounters with God through the power of the Holy Spirit that I'll never forget, you know, that were so real and tangible. And even when I'm experiencing doubts or questions, I can go back to those, you know, things and I can remember. But also, as I'm trying to be someone who is a, you know, a husband and a parent and a pastor and just a person in the world, I think the model of Jesus, not just as, you know, kind of fully God, but also as fully human, really gives us the way that we're supposed to be human. And so whether that's raising my boys or trying to just be a good citizen, I think that Jesus gives us the model for that and that there's incredible, you know, to bring it full circle fruit that comes from following Jesus in kind of all these different areas of life.
Zachary Lambert:
So that's the first half. The second half, though, has been, I think, Jesus's presence made manifest through people. I think that's why we're called the hands and feet of Jesus as the church. And that's what I've experienced in our community. I'm not just one of the pastors. I am a member of the community who doesn't just give, but also receives and is incredibly blessed by the ability to receive from our amazing folks. And they keep me going when I don't feel I can. I can keep going.
Zachary Lambert:
Rachel Held Evans has this amazing quote in her final book that was published after her death called Wholehearted Faith. And she talks about how when she's surrounded by this community of faith, that she's reminded that even when she doesn't believe, that there are people who can believe for her, you know, and then when there are other people who are struggling to believe, she can believe for them. Right. I can hope for you when you're running low on hope. You know, you can hope for me when I'm running low. And that, I think, is the power of healthy community. And I've experienced it tremendously at Restore, and it's kept me going.
Ryan Dunn:
Well, I appreciate the suggestion that you made along the way through the book about the ways in which we might engage in reading the Bible. So I. I grew up in that culture where it was very prescriptive in saying that, well, this is what a good Christian looks like, first of all, you wake up at 5am and you have no less than 30 minutes of quiet time. And, you know, quiet time was supposed to be that time for biblical reflection. You give some freedom to move away from that for those of us that do not savor the thought of waking up at 5 in the morning. So how do you suggest to the, the people who you work with at Restore Austin that they engage in reading the Bible or engage in some spiritual reflection?
Zachary Lambert:
Yeah, I think that we have a tremendous amount of tools to help us do this. And I hope that better ways to read the Bible, the book that I wrote, is, is just, you know, another kind of tool in the tool belt for that. But there are devotionals, there are, you know, church Bible studies. There's all kinds of ways, I think, to engage with scripture in healthy ways. But I'm actually going to say something that maybe feels a little weird for a pastor to say, but this is what we practice at Restore, and that is that I'll tell people, like, if. If reading the Bible right now for you is, is so triggering and re traumatizing that like you're having panic attacks when you open it up. I think God's okay with you taking a break, you know, from like trying to have the quiet time every day, you know, from trying to just like white knuckle your way through this. Because I think that all of what we would call spiritual disciplines, you know, prayer and Bible reading and community and meditation, all these kinds of things, are gifts from God for us to better connect with God and with ourselves and with our community.
Zachary Lambert:
But if, because we've been through a tremendous amount of trauma or something like that, we actually can't practice those things without experiencing tremendous pain, then I think that, like, if God really wants us to flourish and use those tools to help us connect with him, but they're having the opposite effect. I think it's okay to take a break, to reassess, to maybe go through pursuing some counseling, some therapy, therapeutic interventions, things like that, so that we can experience healing, to be able to get to a place where we can re engage those spiritual practices in a much healthier way.
Ryan Dunn:
And I'm just curious more about Restore Austin. I mean, I love sharing these stories of the ways that the church kind of upsets the narrative that's going on. And so I would love to learn.
Ryan Dunn:
A little bit about, like, what's the.
Ryan Dunn:
Future vision of Restore Church in Austin? Like, what's something that your community is dreaming about doing?
Zachary Lambert:
Absolutely. We're right in the middle of a really exciting season right now. So we're 10 years old, as I said. Um, and about a year ago, we started a pretty kind of direct conversation with the United Methodist Church about what it would look like to join up. And we'd been non denominational for most of our existence. We were part of a denomination that we were kicked out of really early on because we practice full inclusion of LGBTQ folks. And so after being kicked out, we've been non denominational for a while. And so that conversation went really well and has led to just over the last couple of months, us stepping into, you know, full connection with the United Methodist Church.
Zachary Lambert:
And actually we are going through the process of merging with 151 year old Methodist congregation here in Austin, who has a facility. We are portable. We meet in a middle school, they have a facility. And so we are in the process of merging together and then also raising some money to do some repairs and renovation on that facility to make sure it's safe and effective for all of our kind of merged congregation for both traditional and modern worship, expressions for kids, ministry for the preschool that's there, all those kinds of things. And so that's really the season that we're going to probably be in for the next year or so is doing some fundraising, doing some vision casting and doing some repairs and renovation, and ultimately, hopefully probably next summer, moving in and starting kind of the second stretch of our ministry with putting some roots down in a city that we love so much and hoping and praying and moving toward it being a place that's used 24, seven for compassion and justice work and not just something we do on Sundays.
Ryan Dunn:
When you're talking about compassion and justice work within the church, what does that look like in your congregation?
Zachary Lambert:
We do it almost exclusively through partnerships with nonprofit organizations. We do some internal ministries, I guess, so to speak, but almost everything is done through. Okay. We want to, you know, and be supportive of our unhoused neighbors. We could start an unhoused ministry, but we don't know what we're doing. We're probably going to cause more harm than good. And there are incredible organizations, faith based or not, that are doing that work in our city. And so what would it look like to mobilize money and volunteers to them every single month? So that's what we do.
Zachary Lambert:
We mobilize money and volunteers to about 11 different nonprofits across our city all, all year long. And we have an entire group that is, I think there's like 150 people who are a part of it who every month we put out. Here's the partner we're serving with. Here are the slots that we have and they get filled up really quickly and we go do a service project. And we do that at least once a month. And so that's a lot of what we try to do. And so the hope with the facility would actually be able. The hope would be that we could help house even some of those nonprofits, help house some of those justice things.
Zachary Lambert:
Because right now we're in the middle, middle school for six hours a week. You know, we don't really have the opportunity to do things outside of that.
Ryan Dunn:
Well, Zach, you've done your writing project, Better Ways to Read the Bible. But I know that you're, you're written, you're working the written word. It keeps going on. Where's a good place for people to kind of latch onto what you're doing?
Zachary Lambert:
Absolutely. I do a lot of long form writing on Substack. I'm Zach W. Lambert. Zach W. Lambert everywhere on all the socials. So you can find me on there. You can find me on Substack.
Zachary Lambert:
And then the book is. Yeah. Available anywhere books are sold. And I truly hope that it's helpful on your journey if you're going to pick one up.
Ryan Dunn:
Fantastic. Zach, thanks so much for joining us. Cool.
Ryan Dunn:
That's it for today's episode of Compass Finding Spirituality in the Everyday. A huge thank you again to Reverend Zach Lambert for sharing insights, stories and wisdom with us. If you want to dig deeper into any of the topics that we've discussed, be sure, sure to check out our website, umc.org compass there you'll find detailed episode notes plus a full library of past episodes to keep you inspired. We're grateful here on Compass for the team at United Methodist Communications. They of course, make this podcast possible. And of course, if you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe to Compass on your favorite podcast platform. Your ratings and reviews help help others discover the stories of hope and inspiration that we love to share on this podcast. Thanks for journeying with us today.
Ryan Dunn:
We'll see you next time. In the meantime, peace.
