Talk Stigma- Live From Phoenix

Hello, everyone. My name is Pastor Seth Perry. I want to welcome you all to the Talk Stigma livestream here on the Cadre Sphere. And I'm here with Pastor Peter Weston Miller. We're at Phoenix at the churchwide assembly here for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which we're both pastors. I live well with bipolar disorder. I have a lot of challenges keeping my attention span going. At a long conference with this, I'm looking out at seating for about a thousand. Peter, you also, you know, can tell your story a little bit, just in brief, like for yourself as a leader and a pastor.

Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. Where to begin? Yeah. So you call yourself Neurospicy. What's that all about? Well, I think for me, my understanding and work on my own kind of way that I'm wired the way that the way that God created me is. Is an ongoing journey. Yeah. And I think it's been. It's been good to kind of name for myself the ways that. That first call to kind of my own brain chemistry. Really. Yeah. Really creates an opportunity for me to lead in this church. So I think I've appreciated.

And you're kind of. I was initially scared a little bit. And everyone who's tuned in right now, welcome. And you can ask us questions about being leaders in the church, being leadership, leadership in general as well, and how neurodiversity or maybe a mental health condition that affects your attention span. I mean, gosh, we had some long days been really. But we're still here voting and making things happen and working with people and meeting people from all across the country and also the world too.

You know, we've had folks from the Holy Land here. We've had folks from Europe. And, you know, we've had to sit and pay attention to all that. So what's your hack? And also, let's say here we got Speak Wonder saying hello, Phoenix, hello to you and Amer, hello. And I'm glad you're here as well. So what are ways in big meetings like this that you people who are watching right now are able to tune in? I mean, we're asked to be here today from 9 until 5. And this is a Friday. Right. And we did have a day where we went till 9pm But Peter, it's worth it.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think for me, what. What really does kind of help in my hack for staying focused or kind of working within the confines of add or. Yeah. Or the. Or the advantages. ADD is really talking to neighbors in those kind of in between times too. Getting a chance to debrief a little bit. Getting a chance to talk out what some of the. Some. The. Of some of the details, some of the big picture elements are. I think for me, we get into the weeds a lot in this kind of stuff. We get into the nitty gritty.

And to be able to debrief that, to talk through it, to both, kind of let my brain breathe too, in the midst of that has been really important. That's why being a roommate with you has been good, because we let our brains breathe together too. You gotta take that time. Absolutely. And I want to say one thing that has really helped me is exactly what you said, neighbor, like, which is like a total Christian concept. Right. I have needed to lean on the help of other people, also debrief what's going on with me in my own mind when, you know, we've sat through maybe three hours straight of stuff, you know, and also allowing us to let go of the shame of our past because we both were raised in a church probably where we were told didn't understand.

Yeah, they did. The church didn't understand. You gotta be quiet, you gotta obey the rules. Those, those things from back in the 80s for me, you know, children should be seen and not heard. That still is related to church in the back of my mind, even though I'm a pastor now. We were even talking about that just now in the last session. People were talking about how, you know, should, you know, including youthful voices and, you know, we process things differently. People who are younger than us, they were just sharing about that.

So how much that shifted. Exactly. And that language has shifted and I think really giving space for a variety of different perspectives to, to destigmatize. That has been really, really key for being a leader and, and to then be able to kind of step up, name and claim what that looks like for. For the real practical realities of being in a community and making. Making decisions on behalf of a huge. A huge body of believers. One thing I want to talk about too is that before I get to our final point, we'll end on a happy note.

What I want to say is we used to be and were founded as a church of homogeneity or a homogenous perspective on learning, on being and. And all in all the things like gender and behavior and even like my past of use of substances and everything, there seemed to be just one way of thinking about this. But what I'm seeing here, and we're out looking right now, I'm out looking at all the different tables that represent different areas of the United States, I'm seeing different perspectives. But the best thing that I've seen is people learning in different ways and having different basic needs in terms of how they interact here.

Because we're voting on things, people are putting forward motions, and all these different identities and expressions and ways of communicating have been represented at the microphones. How has that made you feel? Yeah, I mean, I really do think it. It helps everybody to feel seen and heard. Yeah. And uplifting. Just kind of uplifting those perspectives. Yeah. And rooting those in policy, rooting them in our kind of shared vocabulary, too, has been really beautiful. I've had a. It's been great.

So what. What for you, then? The final thing I want to say is we've had a lot of fun. And I got a comment here from Speak Wonder. She says, I believe there is room for emerging language around Christianity, but basic princip remain timeless and unchanged. Thank you for your perspective. I want to just wrap up by saying this. You and I have had a lot of fun. We have. I think that one way that, you know, we have had belly laughs and giggles and we've, you know, pulled up funny videos and stuff. So what is that?

Why is that always important? Why do I always have those core memories from being at camp? And, you know, I've had kind of flashbacks to camp about how getting that kind of break, getting the giggles out, all that. Why is that? Okay, it should be uplifted. It's spirit led, whatever. Tell me about why that's so important to you. Well, and I love that point, too, about kind of the core elements of the faith, the core stories of the faith. I think Jesus had a lot of fun. I think there's. We often don't read kind of scripture through that lens of irony and playfulness and sarcasm and.

But there's a lot of that that's in there. That's really. That's always been kind of clues to me to be my authentic self in these moments that we really do celebrate the wide variety of who God has created us to be. And I think it helps us to ground that learning or that growth. And for me, that's been transformative this week because I think we've been able to really listen, to bring who we are to the table, all of these. All of these tables, and then be able to bring that. That back to. No, I'm excited for that.

No, I'm really excited for that. I want to thank everyone for tuning in and watching this on replay here in the Cadre sphere. And, hey, it's Pastor Seth Perry tuning out from Phoenix at the ELCA churchwide assembly. And I'm having a great time. Looking forward to being back next week somewhere in Minnesota. And we'll talk later. Whoops.