#93: Winfield Bevins: Living Room Liturgy
Have you ever thought about what it means to worship God at home? Winfield Bevins has, and he believes we can do a ton to worship God at home with the ancient rhythms of the church. In our conversation, we explore what it means to create good rhythms in the comfort of your own home.
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EP. 93 Winfield Bevins
Tony: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the reclamation podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for faith and life. I'm Tony. And today is episode 93 of the podcast, and I get to sit down. With get this liturgical, Missy ologist. Really he's an author, a pastor, a speaker, great guy. His name is Winfield Bevins, and you're going to love his new book living room liturgy.
We talk about the impact of COVID on the family, about the marks of a movement. We talked about ever ancient, ever new, healthy rhythms for your family. So many great things to die into on how to bring a little bit of liturgy into your home. A little bit of Jesus a little bit, you know, moving closer in the faith as always the best compliment you can give us is to share this episode with a friend, leave us a review on iTunes.
It really does help get the word out. And if you haven't yet hit the subscribe button right now, subscribing is such a huge help. It really makes a big difference. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let me know. I can be found on instagram@twmiltorreclamationpodcast.com. Now without any further ado, here's my conversation with Winfield Bevins.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to have a Winfield Bevins with me, Winfield. How are you, sir?
Winfield: Hey, doing well doing well. It's good to be here with you. Excited to have the conversation today.
Tony: Yeah. Now you're you're recording from Asbury, which is home of the second best United Methodist seminary in the world after United theological seminary.
Is that right?
Winfield: You know, yeah.
Tony: You can neither confirm nor deny.
Winfield: Hey, I love, I love the, I love the crew up there at United, for sure.
Tony: Now explain to everybody you do at at Asbury because you have a very interesting position there, and it really facilitates a lot of the work that we're going to talk about today.
Winfield: Well, it's really interesting. My, you know, my kids ask me all the time, like, daddy, what do you do actually? And I, I just, you know, I tell them, I talked to a lot of people. I do a lot of networking. So my I'm the director of church planting at Asbury seminary. And so as we are as a global seminary, it's You know, we've got students from around the world and, and it's a interdenominational, even though it has a strong kind of Westlane Methodist heritage, I think there's over 140 denominations represented.
And so the last, for instance, last six years just in my program alone, we've trained, close to a thousand leaders in 20 different nations. And so it's just been a wild. Kind of ride. And so, yeah, so we do church planning, but I also do courses in, in worship and prayer. And so kind of. Kind of my heart is kind of recovering kind of Christian practices and spiritual formation for, for the sake of just everyday Christian living discipleship and mission.
Tony: Yeah. I think that is so critical. One of the things that we say around here a lot is that if you're not, if you're not dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions. Hmm, and that feels very on-brand with what what you're talking about here. So I'm curious as we jump into this, what are some of your daily disciplines?
I always love to ask people, right? What do you, what are your daily disciplines? What are the things that you have to do in order? In order to be. The best you that you can be.
Winfield: Yeah. I, you know, one of the things I've written on this, a number of, of of little books and resources is just practicing the daily office morning and evening prayer, rhythms of prayer, you know, as you kind of dig into the treasure chest of church history, you see that.
The church has had these rhythms and patterns that have formed and made disciples throughout the ages. And one of the challenges of our contemporary modern Christian context, especially in North America is we have no rhythms. You know, we've lost our practices and especially among evangelicals charismatics, you know, nondenom low church, you know, those coming from back, you know, backgrounds that don't have liturgical frameworks.
They've got Jesus, they've got the Bible. Maybe they have the Holy spirit. But when they don't have the, the frameworks and practices and we are creatures of habit I call practices essentially, Holy habits. These are, you know, we are what we do and what, how w what we practice on a regular basis. And especially in the middle of COVID and the pandemic is.
Oh, everyone's rhythms have they've lost their rhythms. And and so I think daily office is absolutely key for me morning and evening prayer. You know, there are these rhythms that are super helpful, the end of the day, practicing the daily examine, which, which is basically. It's a reflective practice at the end of the day, where you kind of go through your day and you invite the Holy spirit to come and guide you and, and show you things that, you know you know, maybe, maybe you left undone, maybe things you need to fix or make, right.
And then you just give those back to God and you're able to kind of end your day in a reflective way and hand over to God, your struggles, your successes. And you're able to sleep well at night, knowing that you've given to the Lord, you know, your, your day. So those are a couple of just some things that have been staples for me over the past few years.
Tony: Now, let's, let's dive into this cause I love the kind of nitty-gritty on practical stuff. When you talk about the daily offices kind of explain to all of our friends, listening what that is, and then how, how does that how does that work? Because one of the pushbacks, I hear a lot about. Practices liturgical practices or, or kind of pre-written out practices is man, you're, you're cutting out the room for the Holy spirit, but yet I know you to be a pretty charismatic guy, right.
And full of the Holy spirit. So help me help me merge those things together for somebody who may not be deep into this world.
Winfield: Yeah. So you know, I don't know if a lot of your listeners are coming from the Methodists world or just method ish, Methodist Methodist. So to begin with, you know, I tell Methodists in Westlands John Wesley was an Anglican.
Yeah. And Wesley, you know, a lot of times we focus on a lot of people look at the explosive growth of early Methodism. They look at the move mental dynamics. But what shaped and formed the heart and the spirituality behind that was practices. Exactly what we're talking about. John and Charles Wesley practice, the daily office, and essentially what is the daily office?
This is a historic framework of, of. Prayers that can help shape us in the word. Setting aside time in the morning, maybe noon there, you know, there's multiple hours of the day that you can pray. But what I've found is morning and evening prayer, or two really nice rhythms that really work for me and most people.
And one of the things that I've done with seedbed is I, I put together a little, it's just a contemporary daily office called the field guide to daily prayer. And it's a cardboard cover little book. It is sold tens of thousands of copies churches buy them up and they hand them out like Bab distract, a little light.
Oh, like, so prayer in your church, church plants. I'll hand them out. It's a great, it's a great little introduction in the way I tell people. Is is this stuff. It provides us with a framework, a structure, not a straight jacket. So again, I call myself a charismatic with the seatbelt. But, but these little liturgies, if you will, these little frameworks for prayer, actually help us go deep and, and using some of these written prayers.
That have been prayed throughout the history of the church can really enhance and just come alongside our spontaneous free kind of spirit filled prayers. So I, I don't see it as an either, or I see these as like frameworks structures that help us and undergird the rest of our lives.
Tony: So typical, how long does it take to go through the daily office?
Winfield: Yeah, the daily, the office, essentially, you know, you kind of open up, usually there's scripture reading you know, there's a prayer, you know, som reading, you know, you could follow a full blown lectionary plan. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not, legalistics when it comes to this by any stretch of the imagination.
Oftentimes there'll be a prayer of confession, you know, come to the Lord and just kind of, you know, ask the Lord to clean your heart. You know, again, the other thing that I, I like to remind people is many of these prayers are the same prayers that John Wesley and others have prayed. These were normative prayers for them.
And then the Lord's prayer is really a staple, you know, for, for me that I pray with my family, my children, prior to coming to Asbury, we just really encourage everybody in the church to really make that a prayer that you pray throughout the day. And it's, it's a prayer that we can pray together. I think that's the other thing that's unique about the daily offices.
By joining in these hours, we're joining our prayers with millions of other Christians around the world. But we're also, many of these prayers are timeless and we're joining our prayers with Christians throughout the ages. So we're praying with the church, whether we're praying in a closet by herself or whether we're praying in a room with others.
The daily office is, is a real beautiful way to that roots us in regular rhythms of prayer, but it also connects us with the church in our prayers.
Tony: No, I appreciate that. I, I grew up Catholic. And so when I was deployed with the army in Kuwait, one of the things that was really meaningful for me is knowing that when I went to mass on Sunday, my wife was also going to mass and we were hearing the same readings.
Yes. And that was a way that we connected, I think a lot of And, and here at restoration where I passed her now, like one of the, you know, w we, we look more like a main line you know, contemporary worship center without without those kinds of prayers that have stood the test of time helped me understand the gift that comes with knowing that man, I'm praying the same prayers as John and Charles Wesley, or as some of, you know, the saints that have gone before us.
Winfield: Yeah. I mean, again, we're joining our voices with the saints and, and this is. You know, rather than trying to make it up on your own every time and kind of wing it, sling it, you know, you know, a lot of, especially in the West, you know, we're used to kind of John Wayne Christianity, you know, just kind of make it up as you go.
And again, I'm all for innovation. I'm all for contemporary relevance, all of those things. However, I don't think it's an either or I think that's from a. From a church leader stand point, I think you can be rooted in relevant. I think you can be ancient and modern. And that's kind of what I would advocate for.
I'm not necessarily encouraging smells and bells and showing up on Sunday and all of a sudden, you know, burning incense w what I'm saying is we can actually embrace. Elements of the great tradition of the church for today. And there is wisdom that has been passed on through the ages. You know, core examples of this would be like the, the apostles.
Nice seen creed. If you're going to play in a church, why create a new statement of faith when there's a state in there, there are essentially these creeds that Christians have affirmed that these are the core Christian doctrines throughout the ages. And it it's multicultural. It's, it's intergenerational it's.
It has stood the test of time throughout the ages. These are documents that emerged in the ancient near Eastern world. They were used all throughout. You know, you know, the proliferation of Christianity and Alexandra and Africa. So recovering some of these things I think can really offer some helpful ways for us to.
To see how we belong to the church and can bring unity among Christians among different nationalities to say, Hey, these are common prayers. These are things that we have in common.
Tony: So we're doing a sermon series right now on the Nicene creed, as a matter of fact, where we're bringing this back into the church here at restoration, because one of the things that have had God's really put on my heart lately is the difference between a historic faith and a cultural faith.
Yes. And I, and I think that the cultural faith is becoming really dangerous. Yeah. Because culture is really trying to speak into what we believe now, more than ever before. Ha as you look at church planning and the work that you do how, how do you, how do you. Like, what are some of the keys?
Like if you were going to plant a church tomorrow that to help stay relevant and rooted in a worship service, are you doing the Lord's prayer every week?
Winfield: Yeah. So that's a good question. So again, the work I do it as very we work with all models. We work with, you know, all sorts of Pentecostal charismatic.
Now. So if you're saying me and kind of how I would do it and have done it, like we transitioned our church. Let me just kind of use that as a beta test or tell us about that. So our church, we planted a church on an Island in the outer banks, North Carolina, which they call it amazing. Yes. They call it the outer banks.
Cause it's out there like it's, you know, it's on an Island. We were there playing at a surfer church. The Lord blessed it. It grew dozens of people were coming to faith. I, I quickly struggled with how, what I was, what was I going to teach them? And I had made it through seminary and never really heard of the creeds.
And for me providentially somehow stumbled across a book on the apostles creed. And I was like, this is brilliant. This is the oldest statement of faith. That Christians around the world have affirmed. It's essential. It doesn't get into secondary, you know, who, blah, like this is what can, this is what I can teach new believers.
But also, you know, so many of our churches are made up of X Catholics or Baptists or ex-Mormons, or, you know, they're coming from all these different places and the creeds, we can say, you know what. We're not reinventing our faith. This isn't some nationalistic, you know, politicize. This is what Christians have always believed.
And so if I was planting a church again, and so I say that in retro, our church, Was a kind of non Dinham surfer church that kind of became we, we embraced elements of the liturgy. We started following loosely, the church calendar. It started with a good Friday going into lent. Holy week we did a good Friday service before Easter one year and our, our people loved it.
And then the next year I kept pressing into, I said, Hey, we're gonna, we're going to do a Holy week service. We're gonna do stations of the cross. And then I discovered, wow, there's this thing called the church calendar, man. Like you can fast and pray for 40 days, you know, and Easter doesn't just show up, you know?
And it was amazing. Like for me it was life-changing. It was like, wow, praise God, this here's a timeless discipleship pattern. That we don't have to invent it. And I think as a pastor and a church planner, you're always winging it. You're always coming up with the next big thing. The next series. Well guess what, there's a thing called the lectionary.
You don't have to win it every week. There are these seasons of like, Wow. There's advent. You mean there's a whole season that happens prepares you for Christmas. That's really cool. And there's scriptures that go along with it and there's for families. Guess what? They're they're you know, little practices that can take place in the home.
And what I discovered was. An ancient discipleship framework that has worked for hundreds and hundreds of years. And this is how disciples have been made. I call it following Jesus through the church calendar. So in answer to your question, if I was planting a church freshly or transitioning a church, which I have, you know, start following loosely, the church calendar, you know, start with the two big rocks of what I would say, advent, and Christmas, lent and Easter.
Tony: Yeah. And that's, that's, that's what we do here typically. So I will always do advent. We always do lent, cause I don't know how to, I don't know how to do Christmas or Easter without advent or lent, but that's the Catholic in me.
Winfield: Well then guess what if you're a model, mild charismatic church.
There's a season called Pentecost, right? And the colors red. Hallelujah. You can get, you can actually follow the church here and be Pentecostal.
Tony: Now, how long ago was the surfer church for you?
Winfield: We planted it in 2005. And we were there for 10 years prior to coming to Asbury. And the church is still there now.
Tony: You're Anglican. When did you become an Anglican priest?
Winfield: Correct. So again, w what's funny is we transitioned this hippie surfer. If surfers can, can do liturgy, anybody can do it.
Tony: I've so many questions about your story that we're going to dive into. Because I want to know more about this Anglican priests surfer church.
So are you guys doing contemporary music or hymns?
Winfield: Yes. So the answer is yes. And so essentially what happened? Here's how it happened. I, I had Again, I'm trying to kind of condense it, but we're here for that. So, you know, I kind of was on this journey of recovery. We'd started embracing these little elements and some of my, some of my dear friends from college, their church was a vineyard church that had become Anglican in Atlanta.
And I ended up calling on and they were like, man, you gotta come out here and see what the Lord is doing. And I flew down there. Trinity Anglican in Atlanta. It's a large Anglican church. It's like a hipster Anglican church in Atlanta with like multiple sites and service. Love it. Yeah. And I remember Chris saying to me like, and you've been splashing in these waters, your ministry, your whole ministry.
And there comes a time where you ask the Lord, can I get in these waters? And so long story short came back. Shared with our church board, Hey, I feel like the Lord's calling me to be an Anglican minister and the church was like, if you're going to be Anglican, shouldn't we be Anglican. And so we kind of went on a journey together and you know, there's only so far, you can take surfers and to kind of.
Hi church liturgy. And that was never the goal. The goal was how can we be more Sacramento, more faithful in our worship.
Tony: So did you guys start doing the Eucharist every week?
Winfield: Yeah, I mean, we moved from more infrequent to more frequent. I had two retired priests that had joined the church. One was just there they'd still are just dear friends and mentors.
One was a retired Episcopal priest. The other was a minister had just retired. From Virginia, who is from the church of England. And he would always let me know when I was doing things wrong. He'd be like, it's not proper procedure, man. Thank you for that. And but so, yeah, so we began, what we ended up doing was we started in an earlier high church service.
And we use the, you know, a lot of churches will say one church, you know multiple sites. Well, we we're one church with, with two expressions. So we had a robed, you know, kind of high church service. And then our, you know, more contemporary was a blended. You know, were kind of, you know, very contemporary music, but we infused it with hymns.
You know, the communion was, was a little bit more informal, but we had the table. People would pray for each other as they come up to the table. And it was really brought together what I would call. I use the language of three streams of evangelical, charismatic, sacramental, and we tried to just kind of embody those different streams and it was beautiful.
And so we had the more high church and then several times a year, we would bring everyone to gather for kind of what became a big community gathering. Our Christmas Eve service was at the Hilton and it was a true, we would process in with robes vestments that the worship team just did all like traditional Christmas hymns, but it had a very Kind of just a genuinely blended spirit filled atmosphere of high church.
You know, I'd preach, I'm a preacher and I get excited, you know, I get happy clappy with you too, you know? So again, I think my thing is I, and I, I'm not advocating kind of cut and paste or kind of patchwork. I think there's deep theology behind the framework of, of the, the traditional liturgy. And that could be another podcast where, but essentially there's a fourfold structure that all.
Kind of the traditional liturgy follows and Robert Weber would be someone who had recommend that it's done a lot of work around this. And I actually talked about it in my every ancient, ever new book. I've got a chapter on this where the fourfold framework is you gather there's a gathering, which is the worship.
Usually there's a call to worship. You gather the second. Part is the hearing of the word. The listening, we, we, we hear the word of God. Read, you have scripture readings and you have the sermon, then you have a confession usually the creed will come in then then you'll have a transition to the third movement, which is the Lord's table, which is communion or feasting or feeding.
And so it kind of climaxes with the Lord's supper, the table. And then what I love about, I tell people it's the missional shape of the liturgy and that the fourth movement is the sending go. You are sent the Latin mass, you know, it was an ex Catholic. You know, you remember the mass? Well, the mass is called that coming from, you know, the Latin Misa meaning go, you are sent.
And so the whole historic framework of the service builds to the sending of the people of God to go back out into the world on mission.
Tony: I'm interested to get your opinion on this. And I don't mean that to sound negative, but I don't know if it's okay. So w why do some high church experiences feel like. A root canal that, cause when I hear you describe that, I'm like, Oh man, I w I want to, yeah, I want that. I want that. Right. But, but I grew up and and, and even participated in some liturgical worship experiences is that we're just, that felt like void of the Holy spirit.
Void of passion. Yup. Void of like anything that was relatable. And so when people come in to the contemporary church where we lead today, it's, it's like, man, there's so much spirit here. What's the difference in spirit, I guess.
Winfield: No, it's a great question. Again, you can, the way I described those three streams by themself.
Can become their own kind of fundamentalism. So is liturgy without the word. And so again, you have liberal kind of liturgical churches that, you know, they don't have the gospel anymore, but they got the liturgy and you go there and it's just dead. And or if you've got the, the, you know, the liturgy without the spirit, then it's just, ritualism.
The evangelical, you know, without the spirit and liturgy kind of becomes kind of a conservative fundamentalism or a legalism or some weird Christian nationalism. And then the charismatic stream by itself becomes care's mania, you know, and it kind of gets out there and wacky and, and so I think when you bring those together, The liturgy by itself.
And let me just say this liturgy alone will not form you. I don't think the word alone will form you and the spirit alone won't form you. But I think when we bring these to hold these in detention and the churches that I've experienced, that actually live into that tension, that's when the sweet spot happens.
And I think that's what. God's desire for the churches is to be holistic and to embody these different streams in a, in a beautiful way.
Tony: So you, your newest book, living room liturgy is, is really all about this idea, that those concepts in your home what. How did God lead you to this place saying, Hey, I need to give home worship some framework for good theology, good practice and good spirit led worship.
Winfield: Yeah. I mean, again, a lot of this converged from my own journey I saw how you know, I again had this faith in Jesus. I had the Bible and I was just. Telling people they needed to go pray. I need to, I needed that for myself. I needed a framework and that's where discovering stuff like the daily office.
Well, as a pastor and a church planter leading a growing church, like one of the critical issues was how do families. Do discipleship in the home. Nobody's talking about this stuff, but I was a pastor kind of wrestling with it. So last year in the church, I read a little book and I didn't publish it, talking to Asbury.
I published it with Seabeck called grow at home. A beginner's guide to family discipleship. So that I would say that is, if you say, all right, you've written these different little liturgical resources, what, which, so think of that as like the foundational it's, it's a little book churches buy those out, hand them out to families and it really, the chapters are for FA for parents.
And then the end of the chapters have just. Grow at home sections, like how to read the Bible together, how to do family worship together, how to do mission together, how to follow the church year together and as like recommendations. And then this new living room liturgy that just came out, it was kind of.
Kind of the fruit of that, if that makes sense, like trying to put together a little book for, and it's, it's more than a little book. It's a really nice hardback, cloth, golden boss, cover living room liturgy. That's just designed to be just really nice. Kind of a beautiful gift book that families can kind of leave on their coffee table and just use over the years.
And what I did in that book was just put together a collection of just little mini liturgies. If you will, for ordinary times difficult times, there's a whole section of difficult prayers for seasons and then prayers to follow the church here. So if a family, for instance, think in terms of like advent rolls around and you're at the home and you're like, man, every year I was winging it with the advent wreath in the house and stuff offline.
Well, selfishly I just threw all that stuff in there and said, all right, here's a book that I can use for my family. To give us a little liturgies, there's a little liturgy for a birthday. There's a liturgy for planting a tree. So there's ordinary stuff like that. But I also I finished this up in the, kind of the beginning of the whole pandemic in my closet.
Tony: Yeah, because you have three girls at home, plus yeah. That's your wife, right?
Winfield: Yeah. I'm the one guy, man. And so the Lord working from home, I was in a dark closet writing this book. I would come out for afternoon tea and but what's beautiful about it. Is it, it pressed me to put liturgies in there that, you know, You know, I grew through, it was really profound, you know, like, you know, some of the prayers are historic prayers, but some of my rope, you know, like there's a prayer for, you know, a liturgy for difficult seasons and challenging times, there's a liturgy for you know, kind of justice that I put in there.
You know, just so kind of the stuff we've been experiencing, kind of in the timeliness of it allowed me to kind of put in things there that I felt were significant for the times that we're going through.
Tony: So let's talk about that shift to at home worship, right? As a, as a pastor and, and you and I were kind of talking about this before we hit record, I don't think attendance is coming back anytime soon, the statistics say that, that we were averaging, the average church attender was 1.6 times a month.
My prediction post COVID. If they ever get to post COVID, it will. Come on. Some will be 0.6. I think, I think the average person will come to church about once every six weeks and they will call themselves a regular attender. Yeah. W w what are, what are the impacts of all that in, in, in the life of the body?
Winfield: Well, you know, the good, bad and the ugly is just what you just said. And so I think. Well, there's multiple things that I think one is I think what it is revealed for most churches in the United States. If, if you know, again, if that's your kind of listenership, probably predominantly.
Tony: My sister in Germany listens every now and then, but that's about it.
Everybody else is here in the U S .
Winfield: The sister in Germany will say for those in Europe as well in Western context, we have Focused on the church gathered at the expense of the church. Scattered. Hmm. Tell me more about that. And you, you do, and I'm, you know, you have the, kind of the missional organic folk.
And I, I do a lot of speaking in those realms, but I, I actually have a high ecclesiology. I like to gather as much as the next person.
Tony: I mean, you can't be, I think it's hard to be liturgical without being without gathering. Right? Like you don't buy those investments to wear around the house.
Winfield: That's right.
And I do have the vestments.
Tony: You got it. Your head, you got a priest collar. I've seen it.
Winfield: Yup. Yup. So I, I think one of the things that I think the Lord, actually, again, it's a season of disruptive grace is how I kind of describe it. And I've heard it described where I think, you know, this is kind of just revealed fault lines that were already there and has revealed, you know, I imagine for millions of Christians in the United States that are just used to the Sunday morning show and going and hearing a good sermon, waving out a few people, grabbing a donut, then leaving that type of Christianity is not the future and it was not the past.
I think that was a modern. You know, kind of expression of kind of modern evangelicalism. So let me just say this. I think the future, at least the near future, you know, one of the things that was helpful for me early on was Andy crouch came out with a thing, which you probably heard where he said, Hey, this COVID thing is either going to be a a S a blizzard, a wa a bad winter, or a mini ice age.
And most in probability it will be a mini ice age and most organizations and churches have no plans for this to be an ice age. 80% of, of non-profits churches, businesses will potentially go under like that. That was crazy. This has proven to be an ice age and in an ice age, you have to. You can't just go out and grab food and come back.
You have to actually rethink everything. Yeah. And, and what, what I would be doing. The healthy churches that I'm seeing are thinking hybrid, they're thinking, and this is one of the things that has made quite honestly, as very so successful over the last few years. We've we had the highest record enrollment this fall of the history of the school.
And. Part of it is I think we do hybrid. Well, we do in-person and we also do online. And I think, I don't think it's an either or I think if I was pastoring and leading, I would figure out how do you do, how do you do online? How do you do live streaming, but how do you do micro discipleship? Yeah. And so for instance, I'm in a band I'm in a Wesley band.
Yeah.
Tony: The fancier all the time. Cause I'm in one, two. I meet every Friday with my band mates. Awesome. And we confess our sins and we laugh and cry together and it's beautiful.
Winfield: There, there you go. So, and again, so, you know, you're kinda, you're coming from a Wesleyan frame. So I talked to like, I, I do like reform pop cuts and you know, a lot of people are like, What, what is a Bay?
You know, tell me about Wesley, you know, and that's the neat thing is there's, there's a huge interest right now in this among kind of non Weslyn people that are, which I'm so excited about. Because when this started, my band just went to zoom. We have not missed a week of discipleship and formation since this started.
And so each week, how's it with your soul, you know, what are you struggling with? What sins do you got? Like we're maybe we've been going after it. And that has been, what I love about the bands is there's three to five. And I know I'm preaching the choir, but I'll I'll preach anyway, you know, three to five, anyone can do them.
There's no curriculum, it doesn't cost a dime. You can do them anywhere. You can do them in, you know, someone's backyard. You can do them at a bar. You can do them social distance. You can do them on zoom. Like I would. I would do. I would just put all of my energy into how do I gather people in column, whatever you want.
If you don't want to call them a band, call them a soul care group, call them a triad, call them, call them anything.
Tony: Yeah, we're getting ready to start. Class meetings here is our primary focus for sure. For 2021, I just think building community. I heard Carrie new Hoff talk about the idea that a community is going to be the number one currency of 2021.
And the problem is, is that it won't be, and this is going to be hard for most churches. It won't be large communities. Yes. You know, what, what has never stopped meeting? What is still going like wildfire are the 12 step groups that we host in the church.
Winfield: Well, that's right. I mean, you can social distance, these small groups.
And I, you know, one of my friends, who's a large church pastor who you know, they had been doing kind of more liturgical sacramental stuff for a number of years and right. I mean, this is a large church. They literally are revamping everything staffing. He's like the hardest thing we're doing in the season.
Isn't because we're losing money. We are actually are having to let people go because we're realigning the staff around discipleship and small groups.
Tony: So this is, this is my passion, right? Like I think that the, the pruning of churches that's going to come as a result of this to use your term, I, Sage is going to be such a blessing to the church.
Now it's going to hurt like, hell. It's going to hurt like hell, right? I mean, the Bishop here in West Ohio conference, Bishop Palmer suggested that there might be up to 200 churches that don't make it through this. And part of me grieves that, and the other part of me celebrates it. And I find myself in that tension.
Winfield: It's going to accelerate.
Here's the thing. These churches were going to close any way in the next 10 to 15 years. Right. And, and many of them sadly need to close, and this is accelerating everything. And that's where you know, but you know, I've, I've, I work in, in England is a lot of the work that I do. I serve on the center for church growth and church planning with diocese of London.
And one of the officials was telling me a week or two ago that out of the 400 something churches. Potentially half of them will be closed within the next year or two. Wow, sir. Like I'm telling you, like, there we are in the middle of a tsunami and nobody because it's spread out, we're distant. Like we will not see the impact of this.
It is an ice age and unless a church transitions, th th I, I jokingly say this, but I mean, if you think. By taking your, you know, a janky service and doing it online, that was already bad before it was different. Not as good as you can't do what you were doing poorly before. And just do it online and expect people to put up with that mess.
I mean, I say that jokingly, but again, I think every church is a church plant right now. Every church is going to have to rethink this stuff. And in some ways for the leaders that are willing to embrace the moment. Yeah, I think it's a gift to cut all the baggage, all the stuff that wasn't working and as a relevant and get back to discipleship, only those churches that press in to.
Real discipleship, the currency of community. You know, those, those are the things, the formation, the give people, practices give families stuff that they can do together in the home. If you want to keep families, you gotta, you gotta figure out how you're going to disciple kids in the midst of this. So these are some of the ways that I'm thinking.
Yeah.
Tony: So as this podcast releases, we're heading into the Lenten season, I would curious, curious what are the things you know, that you recommend for families to do, you know, liturgy wise or, or, you know, formation wise during the Lenten season that, that people can start implementing, you know, basically next week when, when lent begins?
Winfield: Yeah. So again, From, from a family perspective you know, two books that I would recommend is the, in there both with seedbed publishing seedbed books, seed bed.com is grow at home. Has a whole chapter on how families can do the church year together. And there's a section of practices that families can do in the home.
Through the season of lent. And so I would highly recommend that super accessible the books, maybe. I mean, it's just a little book, you know, families can go through it together. It's I wrote it for families. Then the living room liturgy book is kind of like, it has prayers for each week of lunch. It has a, so it's less practices.
So the grow home is more practices. The liturgy, the living room liturgy book is actual prayers and just little mini liturgies. When I say liturgies, don't think, you know, wearing a robe, you have to wear a robe in the home. These are little one-page liturgies, that families of all ages shapes and sizes.
Maybe you're a couple and you don't have kids. This gives you something to you. Maybe you're a single, you know and you're a single young adult living under dorm. Anyone can use these prayers is kind of my thing is I'll break it out and use it by myself. Throughout Christmas we used it each week throughout Christmas and advent.
You know, so this, you know, those two resources, one is kind of grow homes, practices for families. And then the living room liturgy is like actual prayers and liturgies that you can use during the Lenten season.
Tony: So kind of a, both, and now what's happening in your what's happening in your house? This Lenten season?
What are you in the girls doing?
Winfield: Wow. I just, I literally just took down the Christmas tree a couple of days.
Tony: That's true. As we record this, do you guys, I mean, do you guys have any Lenten traditions?
Winfield: Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah. I mean, oftentimes we find ways to serve together. We look at things that we can do in terms of serving and giving back.
Oftentimes as a family, we fast together at all. Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say is that oftentimes we will kind of share, like, what is, what's something that you can kind of give up to grow closer to the Lord this year. We, we use kind of framework of like, what do you need to give up? Or what do you need to start?
You know, maybe there's a new practice you need to. Pressing too. And maybe you hadn't really been reading the Bible that regular, maybe it's reading through a book of the Bible. So sometimes it's, sometimes it's giving something up, which, you know, I often will, you know, focus on giving up a particular something, an area of my life.
And and then the other thing is like, w what discipline do you need to like really kind of hone in during a season. Yeah, no,
Tony: I think that's a good practice. Now, when you, when you do, how old are your kids?
Winfield: 16, 14 and eight. Bless you. Yeah. All girls.
Tony: Yeah. So I have two boys and a princess. Okay. And when she was born, I told the boys, Hey, protect your sister, protect, you know, like super excited.
I'm putting her hands, all that jazz. And then now that she's eight, I'm like boys protect yourself. I got nothing for you. Like I love Shiloh's world and we're all just working in it. Yeah. So H how do you, how do you navigate I mean, we, we. Are your daughters really into liturgy too? I'm kind of curious.
Winfield: Yeah. I mean, again, when I say, when I say liturgy family homework, I mean, I'm not, this isn't smells and bells.
Tony: Yeah. You guys are sitting around the table basically saying the Lord's prayer together. Maybe
Winfield: Lord's prayer, you know, we'll have scripture reading. We'll, you know, again, I'm, I'm an ordained minister, so I know there's a whole argument about, you know, like communion in the home and whatever.
So, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll do well. Now kind of do the stuff, you know, presiding over the Lord's center. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, usually they call that a fringe benefit. It is a fringe benefit of being minister at home or shipping at home in the middle of a pandemic. So but yeah, I know family worship for us is very simple.
You know, it involves scriptures prayers. Some of them are, you know, usually. Usually they're from the heart. And what's what stable is the Lord's prayer. And then usually a collect that kind of that's what I like about a collect is it, it collects us. And which is kind of what the word kind of originally comes from.
And in the early church, this was a prayer that would bring everyone together around the collect. And so we're collecting around a theme. So if you're like, Hey, we're going to do a liturgy for a birthday. Well, there's a prayer that we're coming together around this particular prayer. So the colleagues of the seasons of the church year that are used on Sundays, usually follow whatever that rhythm is.
Tony: Got it. And, and those are kind of some of the things that you have, the resources that you have in, in in the book, living room liturgy, just kind of prayers. Because a true confession first time I've ever heard that word. Colic. Is that what? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. As, as you said that, I thought is he, is he saying, Kalik like, what happens when I can't get my hair down?
Like it's like collect? Yeah, no, I, I appreciated the definition. I it's and I love learning new words. So there you go. So above and Well, I mean, this has been so, so intriguing and so rich where I know my listeners are gonna want to know more about you and the book. Where's the best place for them to find you on, on the interwebs.
Winfield: Yeah. So the, the other book I will mention it came up with Zondervan and 2019 it's it's ever ancient, ever new. The allure of liturgy for a new generation were actually interviewed. Hundreds of young adults across the us that. Have come to embrace liturgy Christian practices, discipleship.
I think it's a hunger for discipleship. I actually really believe we're in the middle of, I think there's a movement. I wouldn't say it's a great awakening, but I would say there is a movement of Christians. Contemporary Christians that are just hungry for roots, they're hungry for practices and all the stuff we've been talking about.
So I talk about that in the book. My personal website, Winfield bevins.com kind of is a catch all. It's got, you know, old, you know, but most of my books are on there. And some of the different things that I'm involved in. Twitter, when you know, Winfield Bevins, you know, as my Twitter handle I'm on Facebook.
I'm also an artist. I do Archinaut graphy.
Tony: Oh, I have a machine that I follow you on Instagram. I was checking you out on Instagram and we'll link to all these things in the show notes. And so we'll make sure everybody has access to them. Again, such a rich conversation. I love the way you think about things and I appreciate your, your bent towards all of this.
The last question I always love to ask people is it's an advice question. And it's about giving yourself one piece of advice, but I like to take people back to that particular moment in their story. And for you, what I'd really like to hear is if you could go back and talk to the, the pasture when you were in the middle of this great liturgical movement with the surfer church, if you could go back and talk to that younger version of yourself, what's the one piece of advice you're giving them.
Winfield: Yeah, I think as I look back and this, again, I, I, I do a lot of stuff around just soul care for leaders and pastors church planners. And you know, if, if I had it to do over again, I would, I would have just stressed less. And the Lord, really the blessing when we left the church, Was the Lord just really showed me his church, not my church.
I led oftentimes as if it was my church and if it all depended on me and I just would have stressed less, I would have spent more time with my family. I would have, you know, just done more, more stuff with the kids. And the last few years I've really had that gift. And I think my eight year old, she, when she came along, it was really kind of like.
A gift to just say, Hey, you know what? Just be with your family in the evenings. And a practice that I started a couple years ago. Cause I do write so much. And just a lot of what I do is on the computer is, you know, my computer is off at five o'clock. You know try to put up all screens. So when I, when I'm done, I'm done.
And I'm there with my family afternoons. Like as soon as we get off literally it's three, o'clock my time. It's tea time. And I'm going to go up there and spend 30 minutes an hour with my family having an afternoon tea and evenings, weekends. I just really try to make sure that. If I, if I'm off the clock and I'm not getting paid for this, I'm going to be with my family.
And that's where I do a lot of my art, a lot of my thinking, Oh, that's great. Just creating space for reflection and thought is just so, so important. And the stuff we worry about as leaders. You know, most of that stuff just does. Isn't even a big deal, you know, it's like in, in a month or you'll forget about it, you know, and most crises that we face in reality they aren't crises and we worry, we sweat the small stuff.
And so I think that's. Maybe that was a long answer to your question.
Tony: Long answers are what we love the most around here, because it, it helps us dive a little bit deeper. And so I, I appreciate the answer. I appreciate you. I appreciate the generosity today. It was a an, a great dialogue and and I thank you.
And I just want to tell everybody to go out and pick up Pick up your copy of, of living room liturgy. As a matter of fact, as we were podcasting, I just, I ordered a text message, my children's minister director, and he said, Hey, I want you to pick up these two copies of the book. We can hand out to families that lent.
So if you forgot registered restoration, you may be getting a copy for lent. So I appreciate Winfield.
Winfield: Great to be with you today. Thanks so much.
Tony: Thank you so much for taking the time today to listen to Winfield. And I talk about. Living room liturgy. I love the way he talked about rhythms and Holy habits, how to be rooted and relevant.
You know, just such an important dialogue for so many of us given how discombobulated or our lives can be in this season. As we enter kind of this post COVID slash what does the new world look like? Kind of discussion. I think I think the conversation was helpful for me and I pray it was helpful for you.
I'm thankful to be on this journey with you guys. As a reminder, hit that subscribe button, share this episode with a friend and leave us you on iTunes. It's all very super helpful. I don't know how many other words I can say. Very super helpful. That's crazy. But you get the idea. I'm trying to motivate you to do that.
If you could, it would mean a lot. I do appreciate you. I appreciate you being on this journey with me. Appreciate being a part of the reclamation community. So thank you guys so much. Next week on the podcast, Kate Warman, we're going to talk about, thank you for rejecting me. It's a great conversation.
I think you're going to love it. I look forward to connecting with you guys real soon.
