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