It's our 200th episode! Thank you for joining us as the Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, Dr. Ashley Boggan and Rev. Matt Rawle take a look at the profound change The United Methodist Church has experienced during the past four years and share honest reflections on what these shifts mean for how United Methodists live into transformation with love, joy and courage.
Guests: Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, Dr. Ashley Boggan, Rev. Matt Rawle
- Listen to our 100th episode featuring a conversation with (Ret.) Bishop Minerva Carcano and Joe Iovino, the podcast's first host and current producer.
- Rev. Dr. Ron Bell is senior pastor at Asbury UMC in Washington, D.C.
- Dr. Ashley Boggan is general secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History.
- Rev. Matt Rawle serves Carrollton UMC in New Orleans and St. Matthew’s UMC in Metairie, Louisiana.
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This episode posted on Nov. 21, 2025.
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Transcript
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Prologue
It's our 200th episode! Thank you for joining us as the Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, Dr. Ashley Boggan and Rev. Matt Rawle take a look at the profound change The United Methodist Church has experienced during the past four years and share honest reflections on what these shifts mean for how United Methodists live into transformation with love, joy and courage.
Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, my name's Crystal Caviness. I'm your host on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” Welcome to our 200th episode. Wow! This is just unbelievable. And I'm also so excited for today's special milestone event. I've invited three guests who are no strangers to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” They people who've shared their stories and their wisdom with our audience across the years, and I'm just really honored that you've joined us today. I welcome the Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, Dr. Ashley Boggan, and Rev. Matt Rawle. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Ashley Boggan, guest: Thank you, Crystal
Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, guest: Oh, it's an honor. And congratulations.
Ashley: 200!. Woo!
Crystal: Thank you. So Ron and Matt have actually changed locations since you were on last. So I'm going to ask you to update our audience on what you're doing these days. And Ashley, I'd love for you to also tell our audience about what you're doing and don't forget to talk about your two new books. So we'll do this alphabetically and start with you, Ron.
Ron: Yes. So since the last time we were on together, I am now the senior pastor at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown D.C., the oldest Black church in D.C. on its original property. And so it's been an incredible experience and journey and a lot of stuff going on, so it's been fun.
Crystal: That's awesome. That's great. Ashley, how about you?
Ashley: I'm still in New Jersey, which is great, but I have had a busy year, year and a half. I don't remember the last one I was on, but I have had two books come out. First was “Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity.” It came out in April and then the second came out, I believe August. And it's “Calling on Fire: Reclaiming the Method of Methodism.” And that was written with another guest of Get Your Spirit in Shape, Reverend Dr. Chris Heckert.
Crystal: Yes. And Ashley is the General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History. So thank you.
Rev. Matt Rawle, guest: Yeah. So I am newly appointed to St. Matthews United Methodist Church in Metarie and also Carrollton United Methodist Church in the Garden District of New Orleans. It's not a two point charge, it's a dual appointment. So it is two separate systems, two finance teams, two governance boards. So it's been interesting to navigate all of that. And we got the call the Thursday after Mother's Day, which is exceedingly late in our appointment system. So it's been a whirlwind, man. It's been great. So I'm coming back home. So I'm from New Orleans originally, so I am coming back home, which is wonderful and lovely. And I hate to say goodbye to, I was serving Asbury up in Bossier City, Louisiana, but being back home is a real gift. And being from New Orleans, there's no place like it. Either you get it or you don't. I get to see the streetcar pass my office window every day, and I just don't need much more than that. It is just a beautiful setting and it's a city that loves being alive. It is just a really, people let the good times roll and it's very much, very much my speed. So we are back loud and proud in New Orleans and we're thankful.
Crystal: I am the second host for “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” My predecessor who created the podcast, Joe Iovino, was the host for 100 episodes. And that episode, which aired September 30th, 2021, featured a conversation with the now retired Bishop Minerva Carcano. So it was a really special 100th episode. But today I'd like for us to talk about how The United Methodist Church has changed in the time span of the past 100 episodes since I first started hosting. So since the fall of 2021, The United Methodist Church has experienced the pandemic, disaffiliation, General Conference, historic votes at General Conference. And possibly by the time this episode airs on November 21st, we will have the results of the vote on worldwide regionalization. That's a lot of really big experiences over the past four years. So I want to start, just kind of go back and let's start four years ago to remind everyone. We're talking about the fall of 2021. We were in our second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost everybody had learned to use Zoom or Facebook Live by that time for meetings and their church services. And we were starting to venture out more as people wore masks and vaccinations were available and we were really starting to live into a pandemic world. It's kind of what that looked like. So as a church, who were we then? Who was The United Methodist Church in the fall of 2021?
Ashley: Gosh, I'm trying to back to, what was I doing that fall? I actually think I had been general secretary for about 10 months. I started January of 2021, and for those first 10 months, there was no travel required, which I think about today. I travel probably 65% of the time for work. And I remember the first meeting where we actually tried to gather in person, I believe it was a GCFA meeting in Nashville, and it ended up being canceled because half the people got COVID on the plane and tested positive as we landed. And so it was one of those, and I feel like that summarizes that fall because there was a lot of attempts to try to get back to some sense of reality, and yet we were still in the pandemic very much. And so trying to come together, figuring out how to do that safely, figuring out how to talk to people face to face again, was also an adjustment.
Crystal: Yeah. And did you have a full collection of masks by that time? I had Sunday masks. I had grocery store masks. I started to have holiday themed masks. I mean, we were definitely living into it.
Ashley: And there were totally the folks who would coordinate their mask to their outfit. And I was definitely not one of those. I was usually the person who having two small kids, I usually ended up with one of their masks in my pocket, and so it would barely cover my mask because it's a child mask. And you were like, so you're trying to balance the whole, I'm wearing one, but it's probably doing nothing. Yeah,
Ron: I was one of those ones who matched the mask with the bow tie of the tie. Yes, yes.
Ashley: Amazing. I love that.
Ron: I was thinking about this, the fall of 2021, I was still pastoring, Camphor United Methodist Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. So Derek Chauvin had just been convicted, I want to say it was that April. So we were dealing with the cleanup of the emotional cleanup of all of that from George Floyd to the city, to the police, to the, and so there was this real tidal wave of soberness, of grief, of where do we go from now, vicarious trauma was being spoken of a lot. I was in a lot of conversations with different churches and leadership around how do you deal with vicarious trauma? How do you deal with fatigue with people trying to figure out how to fight and where to go? And so 21, at least where I was at, there was a lot of that tension around who are we and how do we reconcile for these emotions and feelings and what do we do with them? And look at what's happening to our church. Our church is crumbling, our church is uncertain of what it is, and we're in masks. So there was a lot of that happening all at once in 21. Yeah, yeah.
Crystal: Thank you, Ron, for reminding us too of what was happening in the United States, just the trauma that was happening around George Floyd's murder and the subsequent, the trial and the convictions and all of that. And that also impacted what was going on in our churches because there was a renewal of a focus on the racial injustice. And I know there were a lot of book studies happening, and so thank you for reminding us that that was part of this timeline as well. Matt, what do you recall as who we were as a church in the fall of 2021?
Matt: Ain't nobody happy. Nobody is happy with masks, no masks. It was this constant push and pull because there were some folks who thought we should all be masked up. There are some folks who thought wearing masks was somehow cowardice and no one was happy. And not only that, but right around that time, my church council, reading the tea leaves, because on the general and jurisdictional team for Louisiana, our church council was preparing ourselves to not have a vote for disaffiliation. So we were preparing ourselves to say, how do we say this? We're going to be United Methodist regardless of how the Discipline changes in the future. We were United Methodist and we're going to remain United Methodist. So I was dealing with that first kind of wave of folks who didn't feel that God was calling them to remain in the United Methodist Church. And right around that time I was thinking about, there seemed to have been three distinct marathons that we were running in COVID.
That first marathon was a traumatic innovation trauma in the sense of we didn't know what was happening, how this was spreading. We were wiping down groceries. Is it okay to shake hands? We just didn't know. But at the same time, the church was kind of thrust into an innovative space. What does it mean to be incarnation when no one is with each other? For the first time, the ascension was true. Jesus had gone to sit at the right hand of the Father and he is not here. And we're trying to figure out how to be the body of Christ really, I think for the first time in my generation, for sure. So traumatic innovation, but then that gave way to existential exhaustion. Like doing the regular things like math homework for my kids was five times as hard as it needed to be your hybrid.
And no one really knew how to do that. Well. I say no, and that's a generalization, but sometimes lessons were in person, sometimes they weren't. And it was just really, really hard. But also at the same time, people were asking big questions, do I want to stay in the same relationship? Do I want to stay in the same job, the same church? And I think, I don't think disaffiliation was immune to that. I think that was a big part of how all of that came to be as we were all collectively culturally turning a page, so to speak during that time. But then that gave way to I think, which was the most troubling marathon. And I call it nostalgic scarcity. We didn't have the same people, we didn't have the same resources, but yet everyone, there was a temptation there. Get back to what it felt like it was in 2019.
I heard constantly, pastor, when are we going to get back to fill in the blank? When are we going to get back to the ice cream social? When are we going to get back to having hymn singing out loud? When are we going to get back to? And there was this constant push to recapture and not having the hard conversations of COVID killed a lot of things. And there's some things that are not coming back. And what does that mean? We need to talk about for now, investments and forever investments moving forward. So those three marathons were kind of happening all at the same time, which is why I thank God for clergy. I mean, that's why I think a lot of folks said peace out. I'm being called away from this out of sheer exhaustion in a lot of ways. So
Ron: Yeah, I just want to add, Matt has re-triggered some trauma for me.
Matt: You're welcome.
Ron: As I think about, so I’m here having to be a parent and a pastor watching my children rehearse for choir on Zoom was just, that's a pain you can’t get rid of.
Matt: There's some things the Lord did not ordained. Yes, he did not ordain that at home
Ron: Boundary. I did not ordain that.
Crystal: Well, I was just going to say, Ron, I was going to say the same thing, Matt, I'm kind of tired now we need to go after thinking about, but we made it through that. But what was also happening really simultaneously was that The United Methodist Church was living into what was known as paragraph 2553, and that gave congregations an opportunity. If they had conflict over issues related to human sexuality, they could leave with their property. And I'm simplifying it tremendously, but that was what gave way to this. At the end of it, by the time it ended in December, the end of December of 2023, about a quarter of congregations had chosen to leave The United Methodist Church. So again, we're in a very unknown space. What do y'all remember about that time? And it's going to be more trauma. I'm sorry.
Ashley: I always think it's so fascinating. This is going to be a future Methodist history trivia question. So if you are a fan of Methodist history trivia, here's your answer. That is probably the only paragraph that's been passed by a General Conference that will never appear in a book of discipline. So thinking about and how consequential the passing of that paragraph was for The United Methodist Church for individual and local congregations who used it for various ends and means and purposes. It is just fascinating. And from this Wesleyan historian perspective, creating that temporary loophole around the trust clause is just talk about personal trauma that is breaking some really sacred forms of connectional that Wesley sought to implement in the Methodist Episcopal Church way back in the 18 hundreds or 17 hundreds.
Matt: For me it was…So a story and then scripture. Locally in Louisiana, there was a church just up the road from us that disaffiliated and the week after they disaffiliated, they called my church because they were taking a mission trip, but they didn't have enough vehicles. So they called us and wanting to use our vehicle for their mission trip. I was pretty clear, it's like you just voted to say you didn't need the connection. My guy, look, I looked up our insurance. We can only loan our vehicle to United Methodist congregations. I'm so sorry, which is a lie and I'll answer to Jesus for that. But it was innocent as doves, but as wise as a servant, no during that time in terms of disaffiliation, because a lot of things that were not true were being shared. And just a real quick rule, if you have to spin your point, then it's not the gospel.
If you have to spin it, then it's not the gospel. So I'm reminded of the story of the healing of the Gerasene, this beautiful healing of Jesus bringing restoration to a man and telling him to go home because that is where his ministry is. But consequentially, all of the legion that was in the man was sent into the pigs and the pigs jumped off a cliff. So all the swine herder said, wait a damn minute. You just ruined all of our capital. We just lost all of our money. And sometimes there are people who would rather keep their property than seek healing of the human soul. So there's the paragraph, it's for all the pig herders. I'm just reading the Bible.
Ron: By 23, I was doing a lot of work with annual conferences, a lot of annual conferences, and I felt like a divorce attorney because every annual conference there were a bunch of folk who were threatening to leave, wanting to leave other folk who wanted them to stay, didn't want to stay. And so there was this constant back and forth of how do we communicate in the midst of fracturing? And that's the work I was really doing. How do we help communicate well in the midst of the fracture? It hasn't fully formed yet. There's this thing about grief where there's this pre grief that sometimes we get when we know something or someone's going to die. And so we start the process even though the person, our thing hasn't died yet, we're already in the grieving process. And so I was seeing a lot of that in 23, just trying to figure out how we get to the other side of this, but even while it's crumbling or fracturing in front of us, how are we using language? How are we sustaining ourselves? How are we finding identity? And so that's what that season was like. Yeah,
Ashley: I'm pretty sure it was in the fall 2021 when we were still pretty sure we were going to have a General Conference in 2022 was still, we were pretty sure we were going to have it in some way shape or form.
Ron: In Minneapolis. In Minneapolis.
Ashley: And so there's talk about your pre grief. I feel like before any season of General Conference, there's some pre grief or pre traumatic stress of preparing for just the thing that is General Conference and doing it knowing that this is the first time we're all coming together, that we are in this season of this affiliation that we don't know who all's going to be there. All of that too just added to the general church level of anxiety. It seems really long ago and yet like yesterday, I don't know how to reconcile that.
Crystal: Yeah, that it's true. It does seem like such a long time ago, but yet I do feel like we still live in the ripples of some of that trauma and grief. And so I don't want to fast forward as too much. However, we still have some time to some events to go because we are now looking, we're finally know. In fact, if you were at General Conference or you purchased the t-shirt that the General Commission on Archives and History produced, it was like General Conference and it had all the marked out 2020, 2021, 2022. And finally here we are, and not Minneapolis, but Charlotte, North Carolina in 2024. So I know what I felt like going into that General Conference, but I'd love to hear you guys talk about, because I do think you came at it really from different places. So I'd love to hear you talk about that.
Ron: So my job at General Conference, I was in charge of the prayer room for General Conference. And so I had to hire all of the spiritual directors. We had to coordinate who was going to be doing the prayer room, what times we had to meet with all the bishops who were going to be providing communion and organized what days they were going to do communion and then work with the worship team to make sure the bishop had what they wanted. I'll leave that alone. So that was my job during conference was every day staff in the prayer room being at the prayer room, organizing spiritual directors, meeting with the worship team to make sure we had bishops lined up to do the communion. And what I can tell you by and large, whether you were on side A or side B, whether you were for or against whether you were in or out, however you want to phrase it, by and large, what I saw were people grappling with what now. And they would come in the prayer room, we pray for them, we would anoint them, we'd provide communion. But there was this just this sense of we're past the rainbow. What now? We're past the cliff, what now? And no one seemed to confidently joyously have a stake in the ground and answer. There was just this pervasive sense of we did a thing, now we have to live into it. That's what I saw during General Conference.
Matt: For me, it was one of the first General Conferences, well, it was the first General Conference where I went and I didn't feel like I had to go and win the last several General Conferences, 2019 especially. I felt like it was our job to rally and to politic and to have our talking points and to win the day. I didn't get that sensation when I went to a General Conference 2024. I mean, there are still plenty of things to do, but I didn't get the sense of we are going to leave here as winners or losers. So there was a very different feel, at least for me in the room of we can lovingly lean into some legislations and really pay attention to some of this stuff instead of is this going to give the other side of the room fodder to overturn something? Right?
I just didn't feel like there was a sense that we had to win and I welcomed because we ended with love train, right? People all over the world join hands thought a love train. And a lot of my friends who had disaffiliated were really upset. They're like, see, see, they're doing a secular song and what are the love train nonsense? They should do come Sinners to the Gospel feast, which is also a great song, harder to sing, harder to sing. But here's my point is that friends, the line between the sacred and the secular is function. It is bred and it is juice until it is blessed and broken and shared. And in that moment, yeah, there's a secular song, but it was blessed and broken and shared in that room. That to me was affirmation that from my friends, some of our friends who are, and they're still my friends, but their anger at see, look at what they're doing. And just to say there was lament in me for them, I'm so sorry that this is bringing you anger that a singing a soul song is bringing you such anger and that I think that's sad. So for the first time, I didn't feel like we had to win something and then we went out singing joyfully. And that to me felt like worship.
Ashley: Yeah, the 2020/2024 General Conference, which was held in 2024 was just such a stark difference from the other General Conferences I'd been to. So my first full session was 2016, which I was still doing my PhD. I was an intern at the connectional table, and I remember being told by both my boss and kind of spiritual advisor to prepare for General Conference spiritually prepared to bring things with me that would center me. And I did not take it seriously. And I should have, because after 2016 General Conference, I really struggled with how to be in The United Methodist Church that conferenced in such a way as it did. And then that was only deepened in 2019. And when it came time for 2024, I was in the general secretary role and I was, me and Reverend, Dr. Meredith Hoxie Scholl took about 15 students from Drew Theological School and gathered with other seminary students from other seminaries, and we put 'em all in a room to help teach them the inner workings of journal conference share speakers and provide a space to do some of that reflective work in a safe communal space about things that happened.
And Meredith was with me at 2016 General Conference. And so she and I both told our students, bring your emotional support, whatever, because you might need it. As the votes kept coming down and passing on consent calendar, most of our students thought that we were bananas, that we had told them that this could be this really emotionally triggering thing that you need to make sure you have something that will ground you. And I just remember telling them, I am so glad that this is your first General Conference and that your first General Conference is truly an experience of holy conferencing, of how we're supposed to be when we come together and discern the spirit of God moving through the people called United Methodist, that this is how you experience that and you experience in a place where love train breaks out purely by a movement of the Holy Spirit and bishops come off the stage and everybody's dancing around. I never would have imagined that happening at a General Conference. And the fact that it did is absolutely beautiful. And for me, it was reaffirming of not only my commitment to The United Methodist Church, but to the way that The United Methodist Church can be and can witness in this world.
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Crystal: I remember just having a lot of hope going into, but I felt like we did go in as one church and we came out as somebody else. So I want to talk specifically about some of those historic votes because I think that's what the past year and a half learning to live into those votes and what that looks like as a United Methodist Church who now has said, we can do this and we can do that, what that looks like. But I don't want to skip over. I would love, I'm going to, Ashley, I'm going to put you on the spot and talk about the historic votes, but please chime in if anyone else wants to talk about that.
Ashley: I think the votes at 2024 General Conference were historic for many reasons. Not only because they overturned the harmful language of the last 52 years that we had in the Book of Discipline, particularly around LGBTQ plus persons, but also just the way that those historic votes were cast. I mean, it was mostly on consent calendar, so it was without the acrimonious debate, the harmful language spoken from the floor and recorded in the daily Christian advocate that wasn't there. And so that in and of itself was historic yet alone, the outcomes of the votes themselves. And I remember sitting with the other general secretaries when the first, I think it was the funding ban was the first one to be overturned. And when it was overturned on consent calendar, we all kind of looked at each other, y'all all see you're reading the consent calendar the same way that I am, that this was on there and there was no discussion about it.
It just passed. We were all kind of thinking back for our days of our polity classes and making sure we were remembering how the church functions correctly. I think for so long it felt like it had dysfunction. So the historic votes for the first time in our history as a separate denomination apart from Wesley, so since 1784, this is the first time we're on paper. We're not excluding anybody from any level of the church. And that's huge. And that's been the thing that I've focused on the last couple years is just how amazing an opportunity that is for the future United Methodist Church that we are not discriminating on paper against anybody, and how do we ensure that the future United Methodist Church, so the present and future can actually live into that and embody that. That's the work that we have to do now, right? On paper, we look great in practice. We've got work to do, so let's do it.
Matt: I love the beauty of the mundaneness of the passing of these legislative pieces. So saying, I knew folks who would come in who were observers and they were ready for the celebration or ready for the lament, just ready for the thing. And then, yeah, we did the same thing. Wait, did we just pass that with the consent calendar? Did we? And I felt like, okay, finally, some of these things are becoming commonplace, not because they're unimportant, but that people are not being defined wholly by these items and the things that separate us. It is not defining in the same way that it is part of the community. So for example, in my previous appointment, we had a lesbian couple who attended the later service, and I had an open conversation with them as some of these things were coming down, I wanted to check my language of is this okay or how are you hearing this kind of thing.And they were like, look, we don't want to be made an example of we want to come to church, we want to raise our kids. We want to be a part of the community, and we don't want to be a token. We also don't want to be like, oh look, we have lesbians in leadership. She said, we want to be accepted as every other member is accepted. So there's something beautiful about some of these things passing to say like, oh, because I know that this particular couple was like, thank God there's a beauty of the mundaneness of that which helps us celebrate in other ways. I thought it was actually, I was shocked. I was surprised. I did same thing, Dr. Bogan as kind of like, wait, did we just do that? Oh, okay. That was much less dramatic than I thought, but maybe that's a really cool thing.
Crystal: Ron, do you have anything you want to add? You were there. You were on the floor, you were in the room in the prayer room, you were hearing people coming and going.
Ron: Yeah, no, just the same point. It was almost like people were giving birth, right? Folk would run up to the prayer room and say They just passed. They'd be whispering. It was just this settled excitement of, oh my God, I can't believe what just happened. But whispering it as if I said it out loud, they'll catch it and try to stop it. So that just kept happening during General Conferences. But again, I go back to this, I may have started here, but just this piece around identity, because I think that from 21 to now, at least from the vantage point of where I sit in the conversations I'm in, there's always this sense of who are we now and what does that mean? How do we lean into that? And again, I saw that at General Conference we'd have bishops come into the prayer room to pray and just want to sit still not be talked to or prayed for, but just needs space to wrestle with delegates and from different countries and different folk. Just trying to make sense of this moment of, okay, we did a thing now. And I think that's indicative of how we move forward is to make space to accept what has been and what it means to us.
Crystal: Yeah. And I do want to talk about, I don't want us to just stop at May of 2024 because we've had now a year, we've had 16, 17 months of, Ashley said it really well. On paper it looks like this, but we all know living into it is where there's growing pains. Honestly, we're kind of still like toddlers trying to figure this out. So what does that look like from where you guys are standing?
Matt: Yeah. So two Sundays after General Conference was Pentecost, and I was preaching on Paul and how Paul's understanding of salvation changed over time. So early Paul, which is one Thessalonians, he said, we will be saved. Middle Paul, one Corinthians, he says, we are being saved very Wesleyan. And then when we get to Romans, he says, we have been under the second Adam. We have been saved. So it's a realization. So I'm preaching this on Pentecost Sunday and I get to, nothing can separate you from the love of God. Paul didn't start there, but he eventually got there. And as I'm saying this, a trans woman walked into the sanctuary in a skin type purple dress and sat on the front row of the church. And I felt immediately the spirit of Asbury was being tested. As Ashley said on paper, we had just passed that we would not be shunning anyone.
And here we are, two Sundays after General Conference, my former congregation was being tested and a lot of folks asked, well, what are we going to do about this? So I said, well, I'm going to take her to lunch and get to know who she is. And it was just a fascinating human being, but for a lot of people it was too much too soon. When you have spent, and this is what Paul talks about in Romans 14, in terms of eating meat and not eating meat, it's not whether you eat meat or don't eat meat, it's being with your neighbor in charity because there are a lot of folks who cognitively appear understood that it was changing, but in their heart, they had spent a lifetime othering people and now the other is sitting with them and it's too much too fast. And we had a lot of people leave and that was heartbreaking. But to your point, Dr. Bogan, on paper, we had solved a lot of issues. And in practice we still have a long way to go as a community of faith. So Dr. Bell, to your point, what now a lot of work, what now? A lot of work on the soul of the people and living into the, can I drop some marketing, the vitality of who we are as United Methodists? So the what now hit us real quick.
Ron: Yeah, I think I spoke at probably five or six if not seven different annual conferences that year. And I can tell you some annual conferences, specifically those up north. It was a party, literally there was one annual conference where they had balloons on stage and it was a party and there were other annual conferences, some closer crystal to where you and I live where it was a funeral. It literally was a funeral. It was just sad. It was quiet, it was full of grief. And so I just think depending on where you were and with the larger makeup of the annual conference was or is, there was a different experience. There was a different experience. And I think being able to hold both of those things together that for some people this is a party for others, this is a funeral and we're all united in our methodism. And what does that mean and what does that look like is the challenge. I think now
Ashley: I think what brings me hope in this, what now moment is the work that is going on within The United Methodist Church, particularly the new vision statement and this really critical work that's being done at most levels of the church about who are we and what kind of witness are we going to be in this world? And really there's been a renewed interest in our history and our heritage of what it's meant to be Wesleyan or Methodist and how we show up within certain spaces. And for me, that's been incredibly awe inspiring to see and to see people really want to make bold statements about who we are, even if it might make some folks uncomfortable. And that's something that we haven't done historically. When other churches have split off, we haven't actually changed or done the work of identity. And we're actually at least it seems like doing that work and I can't wait to see it continue and to see it be lived out and embodied in new ways.
Matt: And I'm going to name drop Todd Rossnagel, who is the head of communications for the Louisiana Annual Conference, and he's going to be so touched and thrilled that I just said his name on a nationally recognized podcast. But Todd said this all along that in 2024, we spent a lot of time and prior, we spent a lot of time in saying who we aren't. And it's now time to concentrate on the story of who we are, which is, and that's the secret behind Love Your Enemy, is that you're no longer defined by which is outside of you is the secret to loving your enemy. So just if you ever have Todd on great guy and he knows what he's talking about and he likes to send me Cubs swag anytime I mention him in public. So I look forward to maybe a Jersey disco go round, but I think Todd is right. We spent a lot of time talking about what we're not, and now it's time to talk about who we are.
Crystal: Well, thank you, and I'm so glad that you're going to be getting some new Cub swag and Todd is great. So thank you for mentioning that. This is the perfect segue because we have talked about really the time span of the last a hundred episodes, four years, and I'm going to ask you to all the profits now and kind of look if we in another hundred episodes, if get Your Spirit in shape continues and it's four years, who are we going to be going to be in four years as The United Methodist Church? And we'll put this in a time capsule, we'll open it up in four years at the 300th episode.
Matt: I think initially, I mean let me be real, smaller, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think there's a season of pruning, there's a season of being intentional about what we are planting in which seed based on our resources, and there's, maybe it's Barna, I forget, that talks about how churches need to prepare and decreasing their budgets by 10% per year to get a handle on this. And I don't think that's untrue in the short term. I think that is true. But I also know enough that now that to use another metaphor, the wild olive chute has been grafted onto the root that has been established and that is disease free. The sin of homogeny is that you open yourself up to disease. So diversity is the antidote to that. And what happens when you graft in the wild olive chute to that which is existing, you get really great wine, it's going to take a while to get there. There's going to be a lot of hard work with fewer servants in the fields with us together. But at the end of the day, after we crush, all that has grown. You get good wine at the other end of it. So I do think it's going to be smaller. I think it needs to be much more intentional and streamlined, but eventually there's going to be some really great wine on the other end of it,
Ashley: I hope bolder and that probably will lead to smaller. But if the United States and the world continues towards this path of Christian nationalism, I think The United Methodist Church has to be bolder. We have to be bolder in defining what Christianity is, what Wesleyan is, what United Methodism is, and scream it from the rooftops in order to show that true Christianity is all about love, full stop and not about anything else. And so I look forward to seeing us be bold and taking risks and making statements and putting our bodies out front to face corruption if we have to phrase it head on.
Ron: Yeah, I would agree. I think historically as goes the government, so goes the church Freedom Methodist church, you can kind of track those two things together. And so I think when you look at where our nation will be in four years and then parallel that to the church, what you will discover is this fearlessness that I think will be bred out of a sense of we, God left. To Ashley's point, why not be bold? Why not step up? And so I think about my kids at 10 and 14, they're not going to pay the capital campaign to keep this building's roof up. They're not going to right, but they will protest and show up for the community and feed and serve and do. And so I think you're going to begin to see in four years a lot more of entrepreneurial activism tied to a Christian biblical base that is fearless versus what we know of as sustained historical church. And so I think you'll begin to see that shift louder in social media than we see it now in four years.
Matt: And I think the church will do well to recognize there's a phenomenon with my kids. I have four kids, so prayer is accepted now my kids deal with screens. Okay. It's very simple, but I think it's really profound. Anything that is letterbox is deemed entertainment, movies, music, videos, everything. Things that are vertical where they scroll is deemed as truth. That's how they learn about the world, whether it's good or not information, that's how they learn through reels and TikTok and this kind of thing. The church needs to recognize that we need to stop being about entertainment and entertaining people and making things feel good and learn to be truth. We need to change our orientation, so to speak with this next generation and recognize the way Dr. Bell, like you were saying, they're not going to give a rip about the sanctuary as much as they're about their neighbor on the street protesting to make change happen. So we need to change orientation. We need to stop being entertainment and start being truth, and then we will get closer to where we need to be.
Crystal: Yeah. Wow, that's exciting. And also we've got a lot of work to do to keep moving in that direction. So just to bring us full circle, our Gary Spirit and Shape listeners know that the final question we ask all our guests is how do you keep your spirit in shape? So rather than ask each of you that question today, we put together a little audio package from our archives that we're going to just drop in here and share next. And so just take a listen.
Ashley: So I really think lately, so we've been doing the Mad Mamas Group since January. It's a new thing we're trying out where being a mom these days, you're pulled in so many different directions between kids and work, home, family life, and we meet once a month, which probably could be more often, but again, as moms, it's really hard to schedule it. And we sit in a circle and we drink wine. But we've started asking ourselves the questions that Wesley originally asked his bands. And again, this, I don't mean to keep plugging books, but this originally comes from Reverend Chris Hecker's Grace group models where he's updated these questions. And what we've discovered the three months that we've been doing this is that we never make it past the first question that takes the full time that we're there. And that first question is, how is it with your soul?
And we sit around drinking wine and just spilling our souls out to one another in a way that is beautifully vulnerable in a way that kind of breaks through. I think so many of us, because of social media and just the way that we are supposed to present ourselves in this world, think that everybody's life is going well except their own. And this is a space where we can really share how it is with our soul. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. So we've learned, we all have a lot of souls. Some of them are doing good on a given day and some aren't. But that for me is where my spirit has been. Finding community access for growth and energy for growth and kind of a safe space to not be okay too.
Ron: Oh, so I've got five things, and I usually do this on Fridays, and today is Friday. I get my Jeep washed. I go have a good cigar and a great old fashioned. I get my hair trimmed up and put together and just spend the day if I can with family outside. If it's warm enough, a long drive, that's important to me.
Matt: So I'm super proud of myself. I set an automation to my phone. If you have an iPhone, there's a little deal where you can set automations. When you arrive at home, it texts your friend that you're there or whatever. So I have set my phone to text me every day at sunset, and the text said, what was a blessing today? Every day it causes, and I get surprised every day, just the kind of world I live in. I'm like, oh, I got a text who text me. Oh, I did. I text myself. It always surprises me because Sunset is at a different time every day that it automatically causes me to stop and to ponder and to consider what was a blessing today. And I do think it's helpful even at midnight, even in the darkest of time, is there something, is there some way we can remember hope? Is there something over which to be thankful for and may be small? It may be hard to see, but at least every day when the sun sets, I'm reminded to think of a blessing of the previous day, and that's just been for me in my own soul. That's just been really, really helpful.
Crystal: I want to thank the three of you for being here. It was, I just loved being here to hear it and appreciate your ministries, your wisdom, just all that you do, your selflessness for The United Methodist Church, and it's been a really fun time and so special to have you for our 200th episodes. So thank you so much.
Ron: Well, thanks for having inviting us. Yeah, I'm honored and so excited to see where this goes.
Matt: Yeah, and I wonder how many people you asked before you asked me, I'm just kind of scratching my head like, crystal, what were you thinking? Who said, no, let call him up. No, thanks for having us. This is great. This is great.
Epilogue
That was the Rev. Dr. Ron Bell, Dr. Ashley Boggan and the Rev. Matt Rawle joining us as guests on our 200th episode. To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners, [email protected]. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener during these past 200 episodes and we invite to join us for the next 100!. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
Today's podcast episode was brought to you by the United Methodist Communications Foundation. As you've listened today, a pastor in Zimbabwe reached thousands with a message of hope on social media, a church in rural Montana continued discipling the next generation online. From local churches to global platforms, from small villages to large digital audiences. Your generosity sets real ministry in motion, equipping these messengers with tools, training, and support. For a limited time when you give $200 or more or join our Storyteller Society with a gift of $25 a month, you'll receive a limited edition Cross and Flame mug. Give now and make your impact at UMCom.org/GT2025. That's UMCom.org/GT2025.
