Digital Parish: Gatekeeping and connections with Charles Vogl (part 2)

Ryan Dunn [00:00:01]:

Hey. This is Pastoring in the Digital Parish. You're a resource in point of connection for building digital ministry strategy bringing your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'm the proctor for this podcast, which really seeks to be the digital ministry class that you just didn't get in seminary. On this episode of pastoring in the digital parish, we're welcoming back, Charles Vogl, We just spoke with him a few weeks ago, and during that time, Charles talked about a couple things we decided we needed to follow-up upon. First, was that there's a loneliness epidemic in our society, and that's a clear need spiritual communities could be addressing. So we wanted to follow through on that. and keep in mind how we can utilize digital spaces to facilitate meaningful connection. Charles also mentioned that it takes a bit more effort to build real relationship in digital spaces. So we wanted to follow-up on some principles on facilitating valuable community connections. Throughout this episode, Charles also offers practical advice and insights on how to build a community that nourishes everyone's need for connection. As we begin, let me remind you of our sponsor and a super helpful resource for building thriving communities in ministry. It's called SAFER Sanctuary is nurturing trust within faith communities, and it's a new and comprehensive resource that continues their tradition of SAFE sanctuary's ministry by building on its trusted policies and procedures. So to learn more about that, go to safersanctuaries.org. or you can give them a call. 1-800-972-0433. Alright. Let get to know a little bit about our adjunct professor for this session once again. Charles Vogl, he is an adviser, a speaker, The author of 3 books, including the International Best Seller, The Art of Community, which was our lead in to talking to him. He's been drawing on 3000 years of spiritual traditions and Charles teaches the wisdom and principles that he learned there to build deep community and resilient relationships that foster innovation and integrity within organizations and around the world. Charles has an em dev from Yale where he studied spiritual traditions, ethics, and business as a Jesse Ball DuPont Foundation Scholar. His work is used to advise and develop leadership and programs worldwide within organizations including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Twitch, Amazon, ServiceNow, meetup.com, Wayfair, and the US army. So with all that said, let's get into part 2 of our conversation with Charles Vogel here. I'm pastoring in the digital pairs.

Ryan Dunn [00:02:52]:

Charles, I wanna back up our conversation. This is a kind of a 2 parter that this has turned into for us. And I wanna go back to really where we started the last conversation because I feel like there's so much more for us to explore there, especially in terms of how we think about the role of church leadership moving into the future. And you started off our conversation by talking about loneliness and how it it's really -- Mhmm. -- an epidemic now. And then I kinda glossed over that because I wanted to get into stuff. So let's back up to that loneliness epidemic. Mhmm. Why is it? Why are these feelings of loneliness that we're encountering in this day and age such a big deal?

Charles Vogl [00:03:32]:

So, unfortunately, that's a really big topic, and there is no single answer to that. So when I'm talking about these people looking at this for the first time, I point to big three trends that we've noticed in our culture. The first one is that Americans are moving physically moving where we live more now than, I believe, in any generation before, but certainly more than a generation ago. I don't have the exact statistics in my head, but Americans are moving something on average to five times as an adult. And, obviously, there's a bell curve there, but the point is it's the meaningful number of times, and every time we move, we separate ourselves from the people are connected to a, again, a given place, and in many ways, start over. Yeah. The second thing that we look at in trends is certainly since the 19 seventies, Americans are largely leaving their home faith traditions. Now, unfortunately, they're often leaving for very good reasons, and there's been a lot of ink used to write about that. But and for this conversation, we'll just notice that Americans are leaving their home faith tradition. So that means is Americans are largely not gathering regularly with people in a cadence and meeting with people that they ostensibly share some values and purpose with, as Americans did in the late 20th century. during baby boomer generation. And then lastly, a trend that we see that is really the elephant in the room is the use of social media. We know that social media is correlated. The increased use of social media is correlated with being more unhappy. And I'm a big believer that as we spend time with so in social media, there's above 0 1 to 1 ratio of time we're not spending, building relationships in the physical world. And my understanding is that research in about 2013. So, you know, about 10 years ago, but the the truth of it has probably not changed. An increase of connections on social media does not lead to happier life. Whereas the research is overwhelming that friends in our actual lives, in our actual neighborhoods, does improve our lives. We are more happy. So if we're spending more time in a medium that's not making us happy and we're spending less time creating relationships that make us happy, you can see where that, you know, over a lifetime, that leaves some pretty unwanted outcomes.

Ryan Dunn [00:05:57]:

Yeah. I I think about friendship in terms of, like, somebody who I can call to help me move or something like that. you know, social certainly social media does not offer that depth of connection or at least that accessibility of connection. Mhmm. But it does provide a not a feeling of connection, but it does provide a point of invitation. You've talked about, of course, the first point of community is being invitation. social media can can be that place, I think, or or at least digital forums can can be that place. And one of the interesting, I guess, avenues that you have lifted out is is Twitch. Twitch is kind of an interesting case because it can both put distance between people, but also you've looked it up that it it can connect people as well. My teenage son is into Twitch. I know a number of our listeners. have a presence on Twitch. And, again, you've noted that Twitch can fill us can facilitate some connection. So what can we learn from Twitch's community building practices that might help us to

Charles Vogl [00:07:17]:

fight against the the tide of loneliness in the sense. Yeah. Well, just to be clear, I haven't really tracked Twitch's evolution in recent years. There was a time when I was talking quite a bit with some of the guys there, very influential in what Twitch looked like and how it was developing. And I can talk about some of the lessons that I think are well known at least in certain circles. They're not as far as I know proprietary. know, one of them is we need to distinguish between different kinds of relationships. And when I'm talking about creating friendships, I've talked about relationships. where the connection goes both ways or said differently. In both directions, there's an understanding that the other person understands us intellectually understand this emotionally and accepts us who we are. And very often in Twitch relationships or any kind there's a broadcaster that's what we call a broadcast relationship where there is somebody who is sending out media, and other people may follow that. and they may feel connected to that personality, but it doesn't go both ways. And that's not bad. But that's not the type of connection that my work is talking about, and that's not the kind of networks of relationships that we need to build to get out of our slide of isolation. Okay. One of the things that Twitch recognized and we talked about quite a bit and that I know that they specifically support. This is understanding that in communities, people have different row roles. And one of the ways we can understand them is different rings of maturity in every given community. And this directly applies to ministry. So I may go into a room and let's say that's a barbecue, and it may look like it's just a bunch of members. And that's what someone who has no education and no a trained eye about what's going on may see. But to someone who's trained, they see, no. No. No. No. Some of us are visitors. And we don't know the norms, and we don't know the names of the people who are here, and we don't know how things are are usually done. And we don't know what we have permission to do, and we're just trying to figure that out. And some of them are full members, and they know that people expect them to be there and that they've had some kind of initiation. so they understand that, of course, they're supposed to be here, and they can learn and participate fully. as opposed to being visitors. And there are the people who are what we call elders, and they understand that their job there is to provide leadership at some level and how things are going to play out. And they have some moral authority on what's the right way and the wrong way to do it here. And if they're really mature, they understand that their job or at least one of their jobs is to help the newer members grow. in whatever way they wanna grow and in Twitch that is offer on video games. And then there's the, what we call, for the purposes of understanding this, principal elders, the people who have the most authority and the most wisdom about whatever we're trying to grow around and about. And very often, the principal elders are often the deciders of who can be in and out of the organization or the community we call those gatekeepers. And then when we look at the elders who understand their roles to help members mature, Very often, they can play gatekeepers, meaning they can say, look, you shouldn't be here. You're not interested in interested in. You're not interested in helping. or let me help you come through the gate of the ring of being part of this community. And when Twitch understood that, then they could change the privileges allotted to certain members of any subgroup to play these roles. And so then communities subcommunities at Twitch could grow in ways that didn't just overwhelm the broadcaster. they could have people support them. And they and the software was built to specifically do that, and Twitch could then look at any given community notice who, if anybody are playing these roles? And do they have enough? And how are we supporting them? To have enough people play those roles? To have people feel tech that they show up? as opposed to waiting the attention of just the principal elder.

Ryan Dunn [00:11:27]:

Oh, okay.

Charles Vogl [00:11:30]:

That there's a lot of ideas there. I don't know if I overwhelmed you, Ryan.

Ryan Dunn [00:11:34]:

I am a little overwhelmed.

Charles Vogl [00:11:35]:

Oh, okay. I would like to know -- -- cut it all out if you want. The way this applies to the ministry is when we have people show up in our ministries, we need to understand that someone who's visiting for the first time is having a very different experience. and has very different needs than someone who's been coming for 6 months. And if we wanna get them involved in our ministry, they almost certainly need to meet an need to meet an elder in that community. It could be a ministerial committee community. that is taking the time to show that that person is seen both intellectually and emotionally, and they're accepted for who they are right now. And then they get an invitation to another experience where there will also meet somebody who will demonstrate that they see them intellectually and emotionally. And we call that person, that elder who provides that experience and gatekeeper. They're helping someone cross into the gate of the community. And we have to identify those people because if we don't have gatekeepers for people to meet, then they don't get connected. Yeah. Which is to say everybody at the barbecue is not having the same experience, and we can't treat them the same. Alright. That makes

Ryan Dunn [00:12:50]:

Total clarifying sense. I understand it now, and and I think naming that intentionality in terms of identifying these roles in in building community is is hugely important. I think it's something that a lot of us in the church world, we just kinda default into and assume

Charles Vogl [00:13:08]:

that these things are gonna happen organically. Yeah. They just hope they get lucky. I mean, they don't say it. I hope they get lucky. They're just like, we'll just make burgers. and it'll all work out. Well, it'll work out if you get lucky. Right. I'll give you an example. I was part of a a week night ministry here in Berkeley, California at a local church, and I was going there for a couple years. And at this particular service, this week night service, it was open to everybody. If anybody come off the street for reasons you understand, they could come in. The problem was there weren't other events that we could invite regulars to that were more intimate where we had a boundary where it wasn't just anybody who can walk in all the time or said differently, we couldn't create a space that was safer. where the conversations could go deeper because it was always what we call an outer ring experience. It was the ring that you would come to if you're a visitor trying to figure out, like, what's going on here? And do I like you? And do I like this? And do I wanna come back? And that's fantastic. You need to have outer ring events if you want people outside your ring to figure out if they wanna join your community and be inside the ring. But if you only have outer ring events, then you never have the safety to have the deeper, more emotionally intimate conversations and experiences because you're stuck in an outer ring event. And that minister who was running that either didn't wanna spend the time to create inner ring events or didn't care to listen to me when I said your participants are desperate for more intimate experience. and

Ryan Dunn [00:14:39]:

got results consistent with that. Yeah. Well, it's scary to do the inner ring stuff. I've been thinking about it in my own context. Like, it it's easy to have the outer ring event. But that vulnerability that is -- Mhmm. -- involved in the inner ring event is is intimidating to a lot of people.

Charles Vogl [00:14:59]:

I don't think it needs to be. You know, for example, Ryan, you go to Thanksgiving. Am I right? I

Ryan Dunn [00:15:06]:

actually, in the last few years, no. Okay. That doesn't have it. Yeah. Are there any family holiday you attend? Yeah. But yeah. I mean, certainly, yes. There are there are family experiences or even large group experiences. I mean, I'm involved in a church community, and we have just what you've talked about. We have our our barbecues and our -- Mhmm. -- our arena level or invitation level events there for sure. Mhmm. Well, my point is is that most people don't wanna go to a family holiday, be that an Easter Easter brunch or Thanksgiving dinner,

Charles Vogl [00:15:36]:

where every time anybody who's walking by can come in. Yeah. At some point, there there's a line that says, you need to be in our family or connect your family or be invited by someone in the family who wants you to be there and be here. And if every family holiday event, and birthdays, and anniversaries were no. No. No. If you just see that we have hot dogs, you can come on in and stay. those events will start feeling less protected and that the kind of conversations families can have when they know that everybody here because they're part of the family or support of the family aren't gonna happen. Right? And those are outer ring events. And so that same is true of the ministry. After I've been showing up for 6 months, I wanna have conversations that aren't the orienting conversations and that level of superficiality to make the team relationship. And they don't need anything big. Right? They can literally be over pizza, but they need to happen.

Ryan Dunn [00:16:30]:

Well, you've been engaged in this work for several years now, both pre pandemic and now post pandemic. Have you sensed that there's a little bit more of a resistance against those those deeper level events now that we're into the post pandemic era?

Charles Vogl [00:16:46]:

Or are are people just so hungry for it? Enough research, you know, it's really going out there. It's a big country out there. What I find when I'm traveling is people Rit Large are so ignorant of what it takes to create context where people can connect. that they're spending a lot of time and inevitably money making events or people almost certainly can't connect. And I don't remember what I shared our last conversation because that was some weeks ago. You know, I have several examples where I went to events where people spend a lot of money lot of people spent time attending, and they set them up so that we couldn't connect because these are too too loud. Or it it wasn't clear who we're supposed to talk to. I go to places where people are there and somebody wants to put on a movie or they wanna play music so loud, it's hard to talk. And there's this, like, thinking, like, well, that's more festive. Okay? It may feel more festive. It's also literally working again the activity you wanna have happen, which is I want people to get to know each other enough they wanna see each other again. Right? And feel known and see. I can go on and on. And I just it kills me when I see people gathering, and they want to to connect. They They want support doing that, and the person hosting is is ignorantly creating it in such a way where that if that happens because they got lucky.

Ryan Dunn [00:18:11]:

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Ryan Dunn [00:19:47]:

I'm wondering if we as leaders and facilitators of community, if we need to invest in helping people feel a sense of openness and vulnerability and trust where they do want to move to that next level event. Or or if we're living in a time when people are just like, I'm okay being anonymous and just part of the crowd.

Charles Vogl [00:20:10]:

Well, first of all, Americans are not okay with it, and that's clear in the research. Right? And quite frankly, we can look at the most morbid of statistics and that's our suicide rate. Now I I don't think we need to wait until someone is has set suicidal ideations where we say, wow. This is a problem. We there's a ministry opportunity here. But we're at a place where the suicide rate is horrifying. And, you know, talking to people who are connected to the DOD, I hear that it's even worse than we think it is for a number of reasons, and it and we think it's horrifying just with the public. It's just it's just a freaking nightmare. Ryan. And anybody who says, well, people really like to be alone. Like, I'm sure that's true some places, and our culture is literally killing ourselves. And and and To those who think that's hyperbolic, the top tier universities of this country are spending literally tens of 1,000,000 of dollars to help their students not kill themselves. I'm not saying, like, address depression or trying to make feel bill better, literally keep their students from killing themselves. And these are our kids in the top educational institutions of our culture. And and that's an expense that is just considered a requisite line item of a top tier institution in this country. So It's just so, like, for me to say anything, you know, against that. Now there's a bell curve on how people respond to connecting with others' invitations. And You know, according to Marissa King's work, she's now in Wharton. On any given group, you're expecting about a third of them to wanna connect with people. A third, largely wanna stay home and watch Netflix and read books. And then a third wanna connect, but at some point, there's a tipping point in how connected they are, and then they they pull back. And so if you're hosting events, your experience of that is is, gee, they were interested, and they weren't coming. And, like, now we don't see them much. They're not that involved. So that's just kind of the context if I understand her work correctly, which is to say if there's any given n, you mentioned Twitch earlier. You know, there's over a 150,000,000 Twitch members. You know, of that, out of a 150,000,000, we would only expect 50,000,000 to be really responsive to an effort to connect. And even out of that, I really believe we have to, as people who are creating ministries or creating events, really expect a greater distribution and participation and flows don't know, that means that about 80% of your yield is gonna come from 20% of your participants, 80% of volunteering, maybe 80% of your donations, 80% of your, you know, you know, bringing food, like, whatever it is. Yeah. That's a church rule. It's like, yeah. Yeah. 20% to it. -- save you a 5 people in any government group, like, we're only talking about really getting a hundred people really involved. And you may do better, but don't beat yourself up for only getting 40% involved. Right? And I talked a lot of organizations who understand that. And so let's say they get the 49, you know, number and they beat themselves up for their failing. And I'm like, no. You don't understand your double high 5 territory.

Ryan Dunn [00:23:18]:

Yeah. You can just hit home run. Okay.

Charles Vogl [00:23:20]:

Yeah. So we need we can respect that there's a bell curve there. With that said, you know, those who are in that bottom, let's just call it 66%, that doesn't mean they don't wanna talk to anybody. That doesn't mean they don't need connection and they don't need relationship that create more resilience for them and the challenges of life. And, you know, I have hundreds of friends at this point. I I'm not saying that lightly. I mean, like, actual friends I can call right now, and they would help me if I asked for it. I'm also, you know, way out in the bell curve. But for other people, you know, 6 friends is a major life changing experience. In fact, we know half Americans don't have more friends. that's horrific because that's where we are in America, which is to say, if you and I create a ministry and it looks like Let's pick someone. Scott doesn't come very often, but our ministry has helped Scott have 2 people in Scott's life. Scott can call. when Scott gets a bad diagnosis, that is life changing. And we don't need to question whether Scott really got only got no two people. It only came one through the time whether we have failed in our ministry. Yeah. Does it in a country where half people have do not have 4 friends, making 2 friends because you're participating in ministry is legit life changing. And when you have kids involved, we're talking about shifting more than 1 generation. Yeah. And I'm gonna exaggerating.

Ryan Dunn [00:24:51]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's the need that we have within ministry to to be aware of now. Perhaps it it even paints a picture of what professional ministry might look like in the future where I mean, It might be risky to say that we're gonna let go of, like, theological study. I'm not saying that we're going to get rid of that, but a focus might shift on to something like companionship and and mentorship. Just to be that kind of elder person who ushers somebody through these concentric rings of of belonging.

Charles Vogl [00:25:25]:

You know, I'd I'd like to brought that up, Ryan, because I think that a lot of people mentioned I've met, you know, they've put in the time to often officially get credentialed ministry, be that graduates work or not or Chaplin's credentials. And there's an enthusiasm with exegesis. Right? Or Hamlet. Oh, totally. Yeah. You know, God bless you.

Ryan Dunn [00:25:43]:

Yeah.

Charles Vogl [00:25:44]:

But there's a reason that the lot of us went and spent years learning ex Jesus and everyone who's coming over barbecues did not. And I think that I I've seen this happen before where I think that there needs to be humility pill that people don't want to sit and listen to us show how brilliant we are because we did all the reading and can think smart. Right? They only need enough that feeds them. Right? They don't need us to you know, I've saw some preaching recently. I was like, man, there is way too much thinking going on for this Oakland, you know, East Oakland Inner City Church sermon that needed to happen. because nobody is leaving this room remembering that. Right. And I don't even understand how it's relevant. But, wow, did I get that you can use a lot of works?

Ryan Dunn [00:26:32]:

Yeah. And so -- And really all the people want is to know the person. Yeah.

Charles Vogl [00:26:36]:

Or they just want to get a new perspective that helps them relate to their life in a way that more meaningful and helpful. Right? And as long as they get that, that's enough. So there's two things I wanna speak to that. The first one is when we bring people together, We know that as communities emerge, and I'm taking this out of the research that looked at long standing spiritual communities. There needs to be 3 components, or we can name it as 3 components. And that there needs to be head heart and hand experiences. And what I mean by head is the head is that ex Jesus. Right? And the parsing of whatever you wanna parse. great. I'm glad that's part of it. Mhmm. But head isn't enough. At some point, we the heart and heart is simply that emotional experience. what is emotionally going on in this experience as opposed to, is that a deft use of words and references? And when you talk about vulnerability, inviting people to be vulnerable, that's a heart experience when someone chooses to share that kind of emotional vulnerability. and then thirdly, the hand doing something. And that can be volunteering, but it can also just be building something together or preparing a meal together, but physically doing something that isn't just talking about emotions and thinking things in our head. And I think a lot of people in ministry, their training is thinking and writing. Mhmm. Often talking. And so those those latter two parts, which are requisite, don't get any attention or or get inadequate attention. And then the other part I wanna say about this besides the head, heart, and hand areas that have to be there, is ideas we really need to notice what do people need as opposed to what's convenient for us. And, you know, I I everybody listening has heard of Teresa Calcutta. Right? She is not famous for her evangelism. Right? And her deaf exegesis and homologics. She's famous for finding sick people and caring them often caring for them and often caring for them until they died. and then finding more people who need care. She knew, because they were sick, what they needed, delivered that, and that was a totally valid ministry. And when we're doing ministry in the loneliest era, maybe of people, I think it's pretty clear amongst the things what people need, and it's not to show off how deaf we are with fancy words.

Ryan Dunn [00:29:15]:

Yeah. Definitely there. Alright. Thanks for laying it. Okay. That's good. Good. And, you know, things that we know on a cognitive level, but, oh, yeah, it is so deceptive when you take that class on, like, I don't know. Modern hermeneutics are something that I wanna floss everything that I just learned when people are looking for yeah, just a a deeper level of connection in terms of relating to a person. Well, when I was in divinity school, it was a common

Charles Vogl [00:29:42]:

phrase that the fiscal teaches you how how to teaches you so you can never talk to other people. Because the the vocabulary buying you needed for the intro conversation

Ryan Dunn [00:29:55]:

was out of the grasp of virtually everybody else in our lives. Right. Yeah. If you used the word exajes the first time I heard that. I was, like, e x o j e s u s. I'm like, why are they cutting G side of everything? I didn't know what it meant when I heard the first. I remember I anyway,

Charles Vogl [00:30:10]:

And then I think there's a, like, a a switch flip and said, okay. Great. Literally turn around, walk out the door, and go talk to people who don't have this vocabulary be effective. And I met quite a bit of people who can't cross that bridge. Right? They're still stuck in the other side there. And I think and and I went to this duty myself. I think part of it is getting the confidence that says, the confidence, though, that we know we don't need to show off how many smart things we did learn to be actually effective in the world. And here's the truth, why nobody cares. Mhmm. If they wanna hear fancy talk with fancy words, there's a podcast in a book available for them for free somewhere, and they don't need it from us.

Ryan Dunn [00:30:57]:

Well, we've talked quite a bit about church specific stuff. I wanna broaden our our conversation to some of the other communities that that you work with. Specifically, you've talked about working with brand communities, and and we can unpack what that means a little bit. But building a a community with a larger organization or or a brand per se requires a little bit of of trust. And so I I'm wondering within this age where people are just a little bit slower to move from one level of relationship to the next, like, what are some ways that that organizations build trust at large so that they can facilitate a deeper community in connection.

Charles Vogl [00:31:45]:

Well, the fundamental there is you and I, Ryan, don't wanna be connected with any people, be they connected to an organization or not. who are disinterested in our welfare. Mhmm. We keep showing up, be at a church, be at a pool of organization, or a commercial organization because we think that people there are helping us grow in the way we wanna grow, which could simply mean do something that we think is important. Right. And if the organization's attitude, no matter how it's worded, if the actual attitude is gee, we just wanna extract from you as much as possible. Eventually, that will leak out. Right. And, Ryan, I know exactly how many weekends you wanna spend next year with a group of people whose only interest is how much stuff they can from you, be that time, attention, or money. Right. Even I can count that high. Yeah. Exactly right. So when you say how to build trust, well, the first is answer the question, how do I want the people who are gonna give me their attention to grow in a way they wanna grow? And then what will support them in doing it? And then when that's demonstrated that there's that commitment, there's a now a foundation of possible trust. And what very often proves it proves the trust is worth it is when the organization will make a choice which either is not a maximum yield for the organization or actually is costly for the yield in order to hold the integrity of that commitment. So I'll just give an example from one of my Twitch days when I was talking to the Twitch guys. You know, Twitch is not a perfect organization, and every day I talk which we'll agree with that. So please don't, you know, confuse this as picking a organization that has done everything right. But it's a good one, and I wrote about it in my book. Twitch, at some point, made a an upgrade to their software, and they destroyed an archive of very important videos to a very important community of Twitch, and it was all gone. And it was a total mistake. And it would take several engineers weeks to do it, and it was unclear at the beginning whether they could do it. And I remember, Marcus Graham, it goes by DJ Week, was an executive at Twitch at the time, and he told me how he immediately got on their socials. and started broadcasting that this was a mistake. We made it, and we're working on it. And we don't know how long it'll take to fix. And he told me that that experience gave his team and the organization a lot of credibility because they didn't try to explain it away or just go silent because Twitch is gonna make their money no matter. But they they realized they had harmed a certain community that wanted that back. and they invested real engineering resources to get that back. Instead of just saying that's old, we're upgrading to the new, and we're moving forward. And by showing that they weren't perfect and that they were gonna invest in solving problems that they had created, that gave them credibility that he would say later when other things went poorly, gave them some wiggle room. in trust with their followers instead of the followers just assuming they're a greedy tech company with maximum expansion who will steamroll anything in their way and then holding the task for that. is, I guess, transparency and vulnerability,

Ryan Dunn [00:35:23]:

an important part for the organization to relay as well.

Charles Vogl [00:35:27]:

It is vulnerability starts getting a little bit squirrely because some people interpret vulnerability as just dump your insecurities into the ether. Yeah. And that's not vulnerability that's that's dumping. Often, it's whining. So when we talk about you know, Renee Brown is the most famous scholar and speaker of vulnerability. And when I respect by her worker, she says that you need to measure your vulnerability in ways that are culturally appropriate. And so the vulnerability is important. She describes vulnerability as sharing things that you're afraid if others knew they would reject you. And that's why vulnerability is scary because there's this fear to reject If it doesn't feel scary, it's not real vulnerability. So the vulnerability is important because it it shows people that we are aware that we're not perfect and that we'll let them see that we're not perfect. And when we want to create a space where other people will be vulnerable and I mean, above 0. I don't mean that we invite spaces where people dump all of their trauma every time they show up right away. it's very important that we as the host go first. And I can't tell you, Ryan, how many times I've been to some kinda leadership retreat or workshop. And they say, oh, this is the the leaders will say, this is a safe space. We're all safe here. They never define what safe means. or how it's safe. And they say and and you can be vulnerable here, and then they fade to black. And what they've said in their example is we want you to be vulnerable here, but we're unwilling to be vulnerable here. So we just wanna see if you'll do it. And if it works is because you got lucky, because there's someone here more sophisticated and brave than the hosts that create that space. So if there's a space where we want people vulnerable, we need to show that it is in fact a safe place to be vulnerable by going first. And then if someone breaks the safety of the space, say, by attacking, we need to reset the boundaries and show that is in fact safe. And I've seen that fail too where someone says they wanna be vulnerable and someone's vulnerable, and then they get attacked, and then nobody holds down the you know, the rules, and then, well, that ended. Yeah. Mhmm. So it is important, Ryan. But if we are gonna create those spaces, we understand what's required there. And I know when I'm leading my workshops and someone and I invite people to share something, and it there's an opportunity to be vulnerable if they'd like to. for example, I don't say who wants to talk, or who has this interesting story, or who wants to speak to this? I don't say that. I say, who will be generous and brave and share whatever I'm inviting them to share. And this way, when someone does speak, let's say it's you, Ryan, You're not raising your hand as somebody's like, I like to talk in rooms. You're now sharing where the context has been set oh, Ryan would like to be brave and generous. And then because I've done that, Ryan, no matter what you say, and it might be terrible. Right? You might stumble a lot. You might wanna tell us about family members who are sick, but doesn't come out well because, you know, you're so upset about it. It doesn't matter now because I've already framed you as brave and generous. And I can say, you know, Ryan, thank you for being brave and being 1st. and it sounds like this is still really upsetting to you. And what I've done there is I've taken care of you I've shown that you're gonna be protected when you step forward in that vulnerability. And that's a signal to everybody else like, ah, if I come forward, this is I'm actually gonna be taken care of instead of, like, hope it works out.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:15]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Vogl [00:39:17]:

And I've seen that fail in rooms over and over again.

Ryan Dunn [00:39:20]:

Yeah. They just they just -- I believe we all have. And, yeah, we still don't yeah. We still don't learn the lesson. So I'm Yeah. It's it's it's been helpful to to kinda have these specifics called out for us. This is -- Mhmm. -- been some proactive leadership type stuff. And I do have, I guess, just one final question for you. We're having this conversation because your books were recommended through our community by members of our So you've talked about some of the research and resources that that you've called on. What are some books or or research or resources spots that you might recommend for us.

Charles Vogl [00:39:59]:

Well, you know, I've specifically wrote my book for the community, I believe, that's listening now, right, people who are ministry. And and one of the books one of the books is called Building Brand Communities. And I wanna be clear, a brand in my work is simply an identifiable organization that promises value. Yeah. So that can -- I think virtual commercial social artistic it doesn't matter. So it does apply to people ministry. Absolutely.

Ryan Dunn [00:40:25]:

Yeah. I just wanna second that that I believe that churches are in in a broad sense, brand communities who

Charles Vogl [00:40:32]:

bit the criteria that you just lifted out there. Yeah. Yeah. Not all tranches are promising the same value. Right? Mhmm. I mean, some of them lead services in Spanish, and some will lead them lead them in Korean, and they're not the same. Right? Mhmm. So in addition to my work, which has been read which I wrote specifically to support people bring people together, One of my favorite writers on this is Marissa King. In her book of Social Chemistry, it was released just a few years ago. She did such a fantastic job really serving the research on, first of all, how lonely we are. And then what differences it makes when we connect what we need in place so that we do connect. And then what I think is really important the kind of people who connect us, and she articulates 3 different kinds of hubs because not everybody could people do it the same way. And if we do it in the wrong way, we actually create something toxic. I won't go into that here, but she has a fantastic job about that. And then Priya Parker's job, the art of gathering, I think, is a required reading for everybody who's gonna spend real time and real money bringing people together. So those are 2 those would be the next two books I would turn people to.

Ryan Dunn [00:41:50]:

Cool. Alright. And I asked that with a specific thought in mind that we're here doing this podcast about pastoring in the digital parish and leading in digital spaces. And It can be very enticing to try to put the the medium before the actual practice where, you know, we get excited by the new technologies and the possibilities that it might open up without being intentional about the core issue that we're trying to build. build communities. So so putting in mind these these avenues that we can research that really help us to focus on the relationship building aspect and not just the technology building aspect is, I believe, crucial for our our community. So thank you. I'm glad to hear, Ryan. Yeah. And thanks again for being gracious to to come back and speak with us once again. anything on the horizon that you're excited about that you wanna share?

Charles Vogl [00:42:45]:

Yeah. This October, I'll be leading a full day workshop at my home parish, Oakland City Church, which is in East Oakland. And this is gonna be the 1st full day workshop I'm leading for ministers, both Lei and ordained. And we're inviting many parishes to send lay leaders and audience leaders to participate in that. And we're hoping we start something, something that, you know, echoes. So if anybody would like to join us in that, You can reach my team at my website, charlesvogel.com. That's charlesvogl.com, and we'd be very excited to invite others to participate. And then my team is looking forward to creating full day workshops for ministry professionals and history volunteers. around the country. And we know that getting a full day commitment for somebody is a lot, so we understand that we come to a city and we can make broad invitations to many, many parishes, then we can fill enough room enough people in a room to make that worthwhile and hopefully really shift the needle on a lot of ministries.

Ryan Dunn [00:43:49]:

That is gonna put a rep on this session of pastoring in the digital parish. If you wanna check out the previously mentioned episode with Charles, it called the Nonliness epidemic in building meaningful community. Another good episode to follow-up on this one is called the importance of branding for ministry. We just talked a little bit about branding and trust, and the episode I just mentioned goes further into depth on that. I'm Ryan Dunn. I would like to thank resourceunc.org, the online destination for leaders throughout the United Methodist Church, they make this podcast possible. And they host our website, which is pastoring in the digitalperish.com, where you can find more online resources for ministry. I also wanna thank safer sanctuaries for their support. Again, safer sanctuaries, nurturing trust within faith communities is a new and comprehensive resource. that continues the tradition of safe sanctuary's ministry by building on its trusted policies and procedures. This resource contains the logical grounding for the work of abuse prevention, basic guidelines for risk reduction, age level specific guidance, and step by step instructions on how to develop, revise, update, and implement an abuse prevention plan. Speaking of community, if you wanna connect with the pastoring in the digital community while then check out our pastoring in the digital page Facebook group. You can also send me questions and ideas for future sessions at digitalperish@umcom.org. Another session comes next week in the meantime. peace.