Today’s “Get Your Spirit in Shape” episode is part of our “Meet a bishop” series. Bishop Tom Berlin, a lifelong United Methodist who grew up near Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, credits his local church with creating a strong sense of community in his life. Following a call when he was a summer camp counselor, the 2022 elected bishop to the Florida Conference also is a prolific author. His newest book, “The Third Day: Living the Resurrection,” examines the lives of those most impacted by Jesus’ final days and how the transformative hope they found remains available for us 2000 years later.
Guest: Bishop Tom Berlin
- Bishop Tom Berlin is assigned to the Florida Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church.
- Learn more and/or order a copy of the bishop's newest book, "The Third Day: Living the Resurrection."
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This episode posted on Feb. 2, 2024.
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Transcript
Prologue
Bishop Tom Berlin, a lifelong United Methodist who grew up near Virginia. Shenandoah Valley credits his local church with creating a strong sense of community in his life, following a call when he was a summer camp counselor. The 2022 elected bishop to the Florida Conference also is a prolific author, his newest book, the Third Day Living The Resurrection examines the lives of those most impacted by Jesus' final days and how the transformative hope they found remains available for all of us 2000 years later.
Crystal Caviness, host: Bishop Tom, welcome to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.”
Bishop Tom Berlin, guest: Hey, thank you Crystal. It's great to be here with you today.
Crystal: I'm excited to have you as a guest. This is part of our “Meet a Bishop series” where we offer our audience an opportunity to get to know you not just as a bishop but as a fellow United Methodist, to talk about your journey, your faith journey, your call to ministry, and to learn more about you and what you're doing. You serve the Florida Episcopal Area and I want to definitely talk about the work that's going on in that area, but also you are the author of a new book called “The Third Day,” and we're going to talk about that today as well. So just to get started, you are a Virginia native and you spent a lot of your ministry in Virginia. Can you talk to us a little bit about growing up in church in Virginia and also about your family?
Bishop Tom: Yes. I have parents that are still living today. They still live in our hometown, Winchester, Virginia, which is the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, if you're familiar with that area. And I have two brothers, both United Methodist. And so our family has a lot of connectivity to the church. We were raised in church. That was a very important part of our life and it was really our community. When we went to church, we had friends that were there and Bradstreet United Methodist Church was a really healthy congregation that helped people gain their own spirituality and faith and also helped us understand the best of Wesleyan theology, which was to say that we learned not only the core beliefs of the Christian faith, the creedle beliefs of the Christian faith, but we also learned the practices, the Christian faith, how to love your neighbor as yourself, how to include those in your community.
And I was raised in the seventies and the eighties in that church and I guess I should say the sixties, seventies, and early eighties because I was in that same church my whole life. And so that church struggled with the same issues in America that the country struggled with, which was how do we include everyone? What do we do with the segregated church? How do we open ourselves to people of different races and ethnic backgrounds and live in community? And so I think those were things that they did well and those were things they did poorly just like most United Methodist. But I am really grateful for the people in that church and for the things they taught me and the faith that I enjoy today. It was really rooted in that experience of my family and my church.
Crystal:
That idea of community, that's something that if you're not in the church, you don't understand how binding that can be, where these are people when there's, they celebrate with you, they grieve with you, and they really are a support system. And I think that's such a beautiful, and that isn't unique to The United Methodist Church, but I do think that's what Jesus had in mind about the church is that we come together as believers. So it was really, I love hearing about how that experience, and I'm sure that growing up with that kind of community, there's some security there I can imagine as you are making your way through life.
Bishop Tom:
I think so. And I think people that do the work of pastoral counseling understand the importance of place in our lives and place has to do with relationships. It has to do with memories of where you felt secure. And I was very fortunate. Not everybody has a great church story. I actually do. I have a great church story that people were kind and loving and I think that church community, I often think about it, the school superintendent for the Winchester City schools was our Sunday school teacher. And so you think about the leadership that was assembled, but it was also true that what the church was doing was influencing the school superintendent who was taking that out in his work in the community. And so the Christian worldview, the way we think about loving our neighbor, the way we think about loving God and loving ourselves and keeping the great commandment that Jesus told us was the great commandment.
It's interesting how that flows in both directions. It enriches the life of the church, but it also allows the church to enrich the life of the community. And in the time I grew up and in the town I grew up, I think that there was a lot of that going on. Certainly the people were not perfect, the pastors were not all perfect. It is church, it's a messy experience of community, but I have very fond memories and I feel it formed many of us. I still have good friends today from that part of my life that I'm an active relationship with. And I can just note the goodness in their lives today that also originated in that space.
Crystal: I read in your bio that you had your call such a call to ministry while serving as a camp counselor at Mountain T.O.P., which is an outreach community or a community outreach rather in Grundy County, Tennessee, which I believe this was true at one time anyway, it may not still be true, but it is the most underserved county in Tennessee. I don't know if that's still true, but even if it isn't, still there's a lot of need there.
Bishop Tom: Certainly, I think it's well documented that there are portions of Appalachia that suffer difficult circumstances due to economic poverty. That was true at that time. And I trust that you're right, that the statistics would show it's in some places still true today. And so we were able to be a part of a camp where people brought youth groups in. That's what we called them in those days. And they did work in that area, building outhouses, repairing roofs, porches, homes, wheelchair ramps, just all sorts of work that adults and students did together. And it was a very formative summer of my life. I would also say it was a formative. I was in college at that time at Virginia Tech. I had a professor who had a real impact on my life by having a lot of conversation with me about what I was going to do vocationally.
And it was in the midst of that time period that when I went to Mountain T.O.P., I realized watching the church work in discipleship where the Christian life became real to these students and really deeper discipleship for adults because they were in that camp environment and that culture, many of us who've worked in camps that experienced this, but also going out and doing work during the day that really mattered to people. People the week started and your roof was leaking. The week ended when it rained. Your roof wasn't leaking. It was the simplicity of that and seeing church come together for that. And United Methodist churches, there were United Methodist women's groups in those days who helped fund the work we were doing for different residents that we were serving. And just seeing the residents open their hearts and their lives to us and make us show hospitality to us and be guests in their homes as we did this work together.
All of that was very powerful. And in the midst of that, they had a habit in those days, I don’t know if they still do it at Mountain T.O.P., where they had this fish hook and they talked about the difference between being up on the mountain and having this camp experience, but then going home and what they called being in the valley below. In fact, singer/songwriter Amy Grant had written a song for them about this. And at the end of the week you could take this little fish hook. And one of the weeks that the campers were there, I really felt a call to go to seminary and to open my life to the possibility of being a pastor. And that was a very pivotal time, but it was the experience of watching the church in action and really the life in Christ that was cultivated in that camp that made a real difference for me.
Crystal: We're recording this in mid-January and we've had through the Southeast some really unusually cold times and snow and kind of unprecedented snow for a few decades. And I've been watching the news and time and time again, it's the churches that are opening their church, the church for warming shelters. It's the congregations that are coming together to do breakfast or to provide shelter. So I appreciate what you said that on a Monday, someone's roof is leaking and on Friday, their roof is fixed. The church, we definitely are not a perfect people at all. And you're right, we can't forget that there are many people who've been harmed by the church, but I do see areas where church people are coming up, stepping up time and time again to be there for their neighbors and to live out that commandment of to love your neighbor. So I can imagine that that experience at Mountain T.O.P. not only impacted you professionally, but probably just as maybe your worldview. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Bishop Tom: I think my worldview was formed around this by a church that taught Wesleyan theology and they didn't always say that. They didn't always say, this is John Wesley, but they believe that faith without works is dead. And from James, they believed that the sincerity of our faith would be demonstrated in our ability to keep the great commandment, which doesn't just mean love God, it means that your love of God is demonstrated in your ability to love others and yourself. It means remembering that Jesus said when you feed the hungry, when you give clothing to the naked, when you care for the sick and when you do these things, you do it unto me. And that that's a separation point between those who are following the Lordship of Christ and those who aren't. And Jesus is very clear about his ministry to the vulnerable and his ministry to the poor.
And I feel really great that I grew up with a family who believed that and with a church that believed that and it's deeply influenced my life. Mountain T.O.P. was a summer long experience of that that was very powerful in my life, but it only worked because it was yoked with that larger church experience. So you really can't microwave that value. You can't do that in one summer, although some people do have stories how a summer changed their life. I'm really lucky that that was baked into the people, the culture in which I was raised. And it was done from multiple in multiple ways. And I'm really grateful, and again, I don't want to make more of that. I grew up in an imperfect family and an imperfect church, and I really can't make a case that we were just out there every day. But it was a regular part of life and it was an expectation that you thought about other people that you were considered and that you notice people in your community.
I mean, my father served on a board, led the board that built the Salvation Army Shelter in Winchester, and that was discussed at our home. And he was a CPA. He used his business contacts to help coalesce people that would help do that. That was a normative. My mother was on the free medical clinic. No, no, not free medical clinic. She's a part of a nursery, Fremont Street Nursery in Winchester that served populations that were underserved and helped them get into an educational process that was pre-K. And that was discussed at our dinner table. So when you take a lifetime of modeling to your children and then you help them have access to church where that's a value, and then you put them in a community where it's a value, and then when they're in college, they go to the camp or it's a high value that just forms a person and we've got to do Christian formation. We've got to think about the multiple ways people are formed and not just one-off experiences where maybe on a weekend they get it. We've got to think about the totality of how the Christian life is developed.
Crystal: How can we do that better?
Bishop Tom: Well, I think that churches have to think holistically about Christian discipleship as Christian formation. And certainly weekends are important and certainly camps are important and certainly everything, it's all important. But currently, if you look at the statistics of the amount of time that students and adults are spending on social media and think of social media, not just as a platform where I go through Instagram or whatever the platform is, but think of it as a space of formation. It's forming what you say. It's forming what you think. It's forming what you think is acceptable and unacceptable. Now think about the amount of time parents aren't accessing their kids and doing intentional formation in their homes. Now think about how much time do churches really have with kids? I was in a church yesterday and the kids were standing in the back waiting for the children's sermon.
The only thing I could think of is, oh, if we just lost 20 minutes of instructional time, because what I know is that church is only going to get about 60 minutes of instructional time with those students if they show up every week. And most parents are only coming to church one and a half to two times a month. So I think there's a burden on all of us. There's a burden on parents, there's a burden on grandparents, there's a burden on the church pastors laity to just think together what is it we're trying to do? And I think what we're trying to do is make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Well, if we really want to transform things, we've got to think of the total culture we're building, and then the church has to think, how can we resource that and how can we be the place that's vibrant that people want to come to? Until about 13 months ago, that's what I did every day for a living. I thought about that with a staff team and we really tried to think about how can we create that culture. And I just think that's the work of any church of any size.
Crystal: Well, I know in your conference in the Florida Annual Conference, one of the things that you've kind of been a bright light or guiding star, I guess is maybe another way to say that, are the Fresh Expressions of church. I believe Michael Beck is a part of your conference. Is that true?
Bishop Tom: Yeah. And Ken Carter who proceeded me is an author about Fresh Expressions. He's the one who brought that value into the Florida Conference. And essentially what I've tried to do is instead of recreating the wheel, I've just said, let's just take what we've been doing and let's keep doing it. Let's not start over because some new person appeared. Let's just trust the Holy Spirit's already working. And that that's kind of my approach to local church life as well. I think the Holy Spirit's already at work in a church. When I show up as the new pastor, I don't need to be bright and shiny. I can step in and be a part of the community and bring leadership as a pastor in that way. As a bishop, I think that's also true. So my primary focus is on local churches to help them become vital and to think about where do new churches need to start?
And many local churches are finding Fresh Expressions to be a new way to help people in healing situations with recovery groups. They are sometimes for combating loneliness. They're calling people together in dinner groups and they're often meeting in restaurants rather than the church building because that's a more accessible place for people that don't know Jesus. Many of these recovery groups are focused on certain populations, maybe younger populations, maybe older populations, maybe single populations, maybe gay and queer populations. So there are different ways that people use the fresh expression model to say, how can we get together and have conversations about Jesus as our spirituality and how can we especially reach people who may never walk into a church door because maybe they have experienced church as a negative thing in some way in the past, or maybe they've never been there, but they've read a lot about the church and what they've read isn't appealing.
So Fresh Expressions gives the church the chance to open up. And so Michael Beck talks a lot about this model of life where we are both and we're both the traditional church and we have Fresh Expressions, and we're this blended ecology of both things. And I think it's sort of like music. The church I led, we just celebrated everybody's music. Maybe you like more traditional music, maybe you like a band. It didn't matter to us. Just come and enjoy the music. But we don't have to be at war with each other about the music. We can just say, well, I don't go to as much of that kind of music, not my thing. But I love the fact that other people love Jesus through that. And when we focus on Christ, every way is a good way, if it's a valid way, if it's a Christ honoring way. So I think Fresh Expressions are that way. And yes, I'm very supportive, very excited.
Crystal: On the Council of Bishop's website, part of your biography, it says, in a time of difficulty in The United Methodist Church, he finds hope in the love and resurrection of Christ and the ways he sees the Holy Spirit active among those committed to the congregations where they live and serve. I'd love to hear a little bit about what's happening. What else, besides the Fresh Expressions, what else is happening in the Florida Episcopal Area that you'd love to just tell us about?
Bishop Tom: I am hearing more and more clergy. And as recently as last night, I was with a group of easily 150 clergy and lay people. The crowd may have been larger, but it also may have been smaller. So I'm going to not over project, a pretty good number of people. And I'm hearing more and more people say, Hey, church is actually getting fun again. Like we're not arguing over affiliation. And since Christmas Eve in January, we're having good attendance. People are being very generous. There are factors that are factors of congregational health that people are saying, you know what? This is actually good. And in the Florida Conference, we've got some wonderful things that are happening. I was at a church yesterday. It was a church building that is no longer being used by congregation. The congregation finally said, you know what? The end has come.
And so we had this empty building and a new church is launching there called Compassion United Methodist Church. Jill Beck is going to be one of the main leaders, and they're partnering with a nonprofit to bring in, they're converting the educational space to be a shelter for a sober shelter for women. So these are women who are women who have sobriety issues, and they're going to come there. They have to go through detox first, and they come there to have counseling support, 12 step groups, but also to get a license, to get a job, to get a resume and to really transform lives. But there's also going to be a church that'll meet in the sanctuary and the focus of the congregation is going to be the women's shelter among other things. And it's a both. And that's exciting to me that we're going to bring that level of healing, which is a place where, and we're partnering with a nonprofit to do that.
So they've got the expertise, but community leaders are really excited about there because they're like women need. We have a new Inspire Leadership Academy in Florida, and it's the brainchild of leaders of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and for clergy women in the Florida Conference. And the goal of the academy is to equip Wesleyan leaders who build a beloved community and they're training people, Hey, how do we become a more diverse church? What are the cross-cultural cross skills we've got to develop in leadership in order for us to have churches that look more like our community and they're taking that on in the Northwest District, we are really hit hard by affiliation in that area. Well, we've got United Methodist who said, we don't want to go with our disaffiliated church. We want to stay United Methodist. And in Madison and Monticello, we've got churches, a new church that's forming and they've been gathering for weekly worship. The Presbyterians have welcomed us into their building and said, pay us utilities only, just come and use the building. And St. Paul's and Trinity United Methodist Church are providing lay and clergy support to them so they can have holy communion. And so they've got what they need. And they had a fabulous Christmas Eve service. They've been meeting weekly. So I can go on and on.
There's just so many good things in Florida and I'm excited about what clergy and laypeople are doing here. We've kind of got the story out there that it's all gloom and doom and it's all falling apart. But I think what Richard Rohr has said is so true. The Christian life is going from orientation to disorientation to reorientation, and we're in the zone of reorientation now. We're building a new United Methodist Church. We want it to be more diverse. We want it to be inclusive and loving of all people, and we want it to be full of vital congregations and Fresh Expressions where people help other people come to know who Jesus is and enter the Christian life. So Crystal, the problem with that question is we could do a 30-minute show on that because I'm pretty excited not about me. I'm excited about laypeople and clergy in Florida because they're out there doing the work. And I'm thrilled.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing. I know what's just a, just a few examples of all the good work that's going on there for thank you for your leadership too, just as you said, just to the Holy Spirit's already at work. And so just to let that keep happening, I definitely want to talk about your new book called “The Third Day” and this is available at Cokesbury. And we will put a link on the episode page for this podcast. This is such a beautiful, poignant book about sharing stories of how those closest to Jesus were impacted by the resurrection. And I shared with you before the podcast, I just found I was in tears multiple times, both with just the reality of the humanity of how these people were impacted, but also the hope and just how beautiful it was. Tell me a little bit about why now. Why now for this book? Why is this a good time?
Bishop Tom: There's never been a time in my life that we've needed to think about the resurrection more. And so the book, it's six sessions, six chapters, and it's great for a small group studies. It has videos, it has a study guide to make it easy for whoever's leading. And you're set up for success with this book if you want to have a small group or if the whole congregation wants to do a sermon series and then start small groups. And everywhere we look right now, people are telling me they feel a lack of hope. Well, our Christian hope is not about circumstances, about the resurrection. It's a theological hope that's greater than all circumstances. And it's why we need it right now, because many of us are feeling sad about the world, sad about the church, sad. And it's that disorientation that I described earlier when Jesus died on the cross, that was the greatest disorientation that first disciples could have experienced, and they thought it was over.
And so Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb not thinking that it's going to be empty. She thinks it's going to be with Jesus' body and she's going to prepare him and it's done. And so we look each, we look at different characters, we look at Mary Magdalene, we look at Thomas, we look at the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we look at the Apostle Paul, and with these six different scenarios and characters, we ask, what's the difference between what Peter experienced at the resurrection and what Mary experienced and what Thomas experienced? And by looking at those individual things, what you realize, Crystal, is that different people draw different power from the resurrection. And that's true. What I need from the resurrection is probably different from what you need or from what any of your listeners need. So the book tries to open up six different avenues and it asks you, Hey, is that helpful to you?
Have you ever thought about that? And I find that we spend six weeks of Lent really most people focusing on the cross one week focusing on the resurrection. And here's what we miss. It was the resurrection that convinced the early church that Jesus was Lord and Savior of the universe. They couldn't walk away from the resurrection and say, well, he's a wise teacher. And I really believe a lot of ways, no, no, when Jesus said, at the end of Matthew's Gospel, we have the Great Commission, and Jesus says, all authority in Heaven on earth has been given to me, some doubted. That's what Matthew tells us and the others believed, and the reason they believed was the experience of the resurrection. So let me ask you a question. Why do you think the stories of the resurrection in the book elicited that level of emotion from you? That was a deep emotion you experienced, and I'm really curious as the author, what do you think did that for you?
Crystal: I think I felt a connection to the people who were familiar characters to me from the Bible. But in the book, I felt a connection to what they actually were experiencing. And that just felt really real to me. And I then had my own, just as you said, I had my own questions and my own responses to if I had kind of putting myself in that space and how had I responded. So I think that's what happened, particularly with Mary Magdalene. And when I had never heard or read that she's considered an apostle to the apostles and kind of putting her in that space, for me that was really impactful and just changed a very familiar story for me. But it changed who she is historically.
Bishop Tom: Yeah, I was raised by strong Southern women, and so I didn't grow up in an environment that discounted women. You knew from an early age to take women around you pretty seriously. But many have been raised in families and traditions where women aren't taken seriously. And Mary Magdalene is the first one who proclaims the resurrection. She's it. She went and told the story to the men because they weren't there. They were afraid. And we can understand why they were afraid. We don't have to shame the men. This isn't like women are good and men are bad. This is just, we are all together figuring out the resurrection. But it really is powerful to realize Mary's the first one, and Mary was the one who is described as at one time being possessed by demons. Mary's the one that frankly a lot of people have discounted through a false narrative.
The church had developed a false narrative about her being a prostitute. And none of that's biblical. Mary is a woman who had deep issues that are described as being possessed by demons. We don't even know what they were, but what we do know is Jesus healed her. And after the resurrection, this is what that chapter gets at after the resurrection, here's what Mary knew, the stuff Jesus took out of my life is never coming back. It's never coming back. And the only way her story gets told is that she, I believe, told it over and over and over and over because the gospels, every gospel writer, the gospel writers all know about Mary. So how do they know about this woman? Because in first century, a woman's voice would've been discounted. I think everybody was like, oh my goodness, this is the woman who told the apostles and I honor the church. I honor the fact that in the first century, people wrote that down and gave her that space. So I'm so glad you had that experience. That's just one of the apostles that we write about. But I think it's a great example and I appreciate you raising it.
Crystal: Well, thank you for writing the book, and it is true. It's perfect for, as we're going into Lent, this book is available and just would be, it really drew me in. It was a very quick read, but also the stories I just appreciated. I think I used the word earlier, the humanity that you brought.
Bishop Tom: Crystal, the way I would say it is if you know anybody who needs hope in any form, this is a great book, and especially if they already hold a Christian faith. But frankly, if you've got a friend that isn't a Christian but might be open to a spiritual conversation, because just sort of interesting, the basic, the Lordship of Christ salvation, all of that gets discussed in this book. And so if you know somebody who needs hope, I think this is a fresh space to go, and it's the biblical space to go because you know what? United Methodists, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's right. And I know some people think we don't, but we do. And I'm proud of it and I'm really happy to have written a book about it.
Crystal: Well, thank you. And again, the book is “The Third Day” and we will link to the Cokesbury link on our episode page where that book can be purchased along with the video and the leader’s guide and all.
Bishop Tom: Yeah, the videos are on Amplify and everything's really easy to access.
Crystal: You mentioned earlier when we were talking that you and your wife like to hike. Tell me a little bit about why that's an important way to spend your time.
Bishop Tom: Yeah, I think this is, we've always enjoyed being outdoors. Karen's run marathons. She's a very active person. I try to be an active person as well. I'm not a runner, but I'm a walker. And we find hiking to be a place where we can enjoy our family, we can enjoy each other, but hiking also has spaces of silence where you just take in beauty. And I think one of the, in more recent years, one of the spiritual practices has been really helpful for me is to just to observe beauty. Sometimes that's art, sometimes that's human beauty, great things that people are doing and just hearing them and enjoying them and listening to them or pointing them out to people as they're doing them. But some of it is natural beauty. This morning I looked across the street from the office here in Florida.
Florida has amazing birds, and especially this time of year, as you said, it's January when we're talking, and I just watched this heron walk across. He was actually walking down the sidewalk right in front of me. That doesn't happen in Virginia very often. And so I find beauty and hiking connects me to that, and it gives me a chance to sometimes talk with my wife or our kids about it or whoever's with us. But sometimes it gets me a chance just to be silent. And I think silence is also a great spiritual discipline that's become more important to me. In recent years,
Crystal: Have you found some special places to hike in Florida?
Bishop Tom: Hiking's a little bit more difficult in Florida. So this summer we went up to the Finger Lakes, Florida is very flat, and in the summer it's very, very hot. But we did go do some hiking. We did some biking down in the Everglades after Christmas, and that was amazing. The Gators are just laying on the side of the path. It's like 28 of them on the loop, 13-mile loop, 28 alligators. We went into, we did what's called a swamp walk in Great Cyprus Park where we got to go back into the Cyprus glaze. And you walk through marsh to do this. It's remarkably beautiful and the water's crystal clear. And so again, it's just this exposure to beauty, this exposure to how nature works. And we're at a time where we better start figuring out how to take care of nature because it's losing its ability to take care of us given the way we treat it. And so I just think part of this is connecting to that greater question of our stewardship of the land and the water and all the resources. And the same way that you're going to have better relationships with people when you love them. You're going to have a better relationship with creation when you kind of love its beauty and love how the fascinating ways it works. God's done a remarkable thing in the created order.
Crystal: Well, and that's very United Methodist of us to take care of creation. Part of our social witness even is to creation care. And sometimes I think it's good to be reminded of that. So thank you. Well, as we finish up, is there anything you wanted to talk about? I know there was so many things we could have continued to sharing about today, but is there anything specific topic that you wanted to talk about that we didn't?
Bishop Tom: No, I think you've really done this so well, Crystal, and I am grateful. I'm grateful that you pointed out the book. I believe that people really would do well to reconnect with the resurrection and the hope, because once you reconnect with it, it helps you read the book of Acts, the letters of Paul and the Revelation of John, if you don't have a strong doctrine of the resurrection, the New Testament loses its power when we talk about whether it's everlasting life, whether it's forgiveness, whether it's new life in Christ and how that affects us right now. So thank you for raising that and I hope that's helpful to people.
Crystal: Thank you. Well, I'm going to now ask you the question we ask all of our guests on “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” How do you keep your own spirit in shape?
Bishop Tom: I've sort of covered a little bit of that when you asked me about the hiking. I would encourage people along with all of your spiritual disciplines. I mean, we're Methodist are about orthodoxy, what we believe and what we know in head, but it was also orthopraxy, which is one of the basic practices. And the early movement was built on practices. It was built on prayer, it was built on singing. It was built on Christian conversation. We all know those. There are about eight spiritual practices. And as I just said in more recent years, I found it important to find places of beauty to observe because it balances the considerable amount of negative information in the negative ways people treat each other. Today, people on the whole don't treat each other as well as they used to. So we've got to find God's beauty to help us do our best and not buy into a narrative that everything is cynical and everything's bad and all people are bad, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that, and I think silence. And when I say silence, it's calming your spirit so that the Holy Spirit can then speak to you, creating space, reading the scripture, and then just being silent. I believe in prayer. I also believe in silent prayer so that the Holy Spirit can begin to tap us on the shoulder. And I'm really grateful that God does that with me. I don't hear a lot of loud voices from God, but I do feel the presence of the Lord directing me, and I'm so grateful for that. But you have to create the space
Crystal: That's important to remember, and you have to be so intentional about that because our world doesn't naturally make spaces for that silence.
Bishop Tom: And if you've got an active spirituality the way I do and a bit of a type A personality, you need that. And it doesn't come naturally to most of us. So it really is not just a practice, it's a discipline. You have to kind of say, I'm going to do this.
Crystal: Well, Bishop Tom, thank you so much for being with us today. It's just been a pleasure to get to know you, and I appreciate you sharing with us, and we will just continue to pray over you and your leadership there in the Florida Episcopal Area.
Bishop Tom: Hey, thank you, Crystal. It's been great to be with you and with those that are listening today, and I just really appreciate you. So thanks.
Epilogue
That was Bishop Tom Berlin, Bishop of the Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church, discussing his call to ministry as well as his new book, “The Third Day: Living the Resurrection.” To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you will 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 podcast platform where you listen. Thank you for taking the time to join us for “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we are together.
