For Context: Dr. Jonny Morrison Episode # 04 🎙️ Episode Overview On this episode, we welcome another program grad in Jonny Morrison. Jonny is a pastor, writer, and church planter based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He’s known for his integration of theology, culture, and everyday life in ways that are thoughtful, creative, and accessible. Whether preaching, writing, or hosting conversations, Jonny is passionate about helping people develop a bigger imagination for God, experience the radical love of Jesus, and learn to recognize and join God’s work in their everyday lives. This conversation digs deep into the class on leadership from Dr. Alan Roxburgh. From there we discuss atonement theories and contextual theology. Another brilliant guest and discussion. Listen in! For Context is sponsored by Northern Seminary. To learn more about the Contextual Theology program (or any of the number MA, M.Div, and D.Min offerings), visit seminary.edu. 📚 Resources * Jonny Morrison: Prodigal Gospel * Gino Curcuruto: Following Jesus Into the Ordinary * Luke Stehr: Faith In Situ 🤝 Join the For Context Community If you enjoyed this deep dive, consider becoming a paid subscriber to help us keep providing the context behind the news. * Subscribe to the Newsletter: forcontextpod.substack.com * Leave a Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify Episode Transcript Gino Curcuruto: I am Gino Curcuruto Luke Stehr: I’m Luke Stehr Gino Curcuruto: And you’re listening to For Context, Luke Stehr: A podcast about Northern Seminary’s Doctorate of Ministry in Contextual Theology. Gino Curcuruto: On this episode of For Context, we have Jonny Morrison. He’s a graduate of the Contextual Theology program. He’s a pastor, a writer, a church planter based in Salt Lake City, Utah. And whether he’s preaching, writing, or hosting conversations, Jonny is passionate about helping people develop a bigger imagination for God, experience the radical love of Jesus, and learn to recognize and join God’s work in their everyday lives. This was a fantastic conversation and I hope that you will listen in and enjoy it yourselves. Welcome back to For Context. I’m Gino. Luke’s here with me. You want to say hi, Luke? Usually I talk Luke Stehr: Hey everyone, all five listeners. Gino Curcuruto: Yeah. Our guest today is Johnny Morrison. Jonny, excited to have you on. Would love for you to just maybe introduce yourself to our listeners and we’ll tell ‘em why we’re having you on later, but I think it’ll become very self-evident as you speak. Jonny Morrison: Yeah, yeah. It’s so good to be with you both. Excited to be a part of the podcast, as you said. I’m Jonny, I’m in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m a pastor of a church here called Missio Day, written a couple books, Prodigal Gospel and Light Is Air, and I was in the doctor of Ministry contextual theology program, graduated in 2021, so I think I got a walk right after COVID, which I feel very grateful for. So we actually got to walk. We were masked, but we got to walk, Gino Curcuruto: But you got to walk Jonny Morrison: And none of our classes were disrupted by COVID, so nothing was on Zoom. Everything was in person. I wrote during COVID. I was kind of like the perfect cohort for that moment. That’s a great window. Yeah, it was perfect. We went to a Cubs game. This is not what you asked, I’m sorry. Gino Curcuruto: No, this is great. Tell the story. in Chicago when we were there to graduate and it was the first Cubs game that was open to the community, so the energy was insane. It was the best time to graduate. There was so many people there. Bill Murray comes out and sings “Take Me out to the Ball Game.” It’s like the city opens for a moment and then I get a walk and I was like, this is the best experience That is the first good story around COVID and education I think I’ve ever heard. So thank you. My heart is warmed. Luke Stehr: You just, like, hit that window perfectly. Jonny Morrison: I just feel so grateful because then I was with them, I was talking to some friends who did the program almost right afterwards, like Jim Pace and they were on lockdown for so long and they had one of my favorite classes they had to do on Zoom and it sounds like it was one of the worst classes because they had to do it on Zoom with Roxburgh. But I loved that class and I loved being with him. That’s why I was like, that would be brutal. Gino Curcuruto: Also, that class, that particular section of that class is kind of legendary in the lore of Northern Seminary. Yes, Luke Stehr: That’s probably another podcast. Gino Curcuruto: Yeah, I won’t go into it. Luke, you could ask Jonny a question, change the subject. Luke Stehr: Well, while we’re on the subject, what was your favorite class? That’s one of the questions we would’ve asked at one point, so we’ll just get into it now. So why was your time with Alan Roxburgh so formative? What stands out to you about that class? Jonny Morrison: I loved my time with Roxburgh. That class I thought was so helpful. Roxburgh was so the way he thought was so helpful to me, he could think so historically, so contextually and he had such a power of narrative, historical narrative to be able to lead us to a moment in time. And I’m in the program at such a fascinating moment. I mean everybody probably says this, but I’m in the program at such a fascinating moment. I start 2017, 2018, so I’m the everybody’s wrestling with how did the Evangelicals vote for Trump? Everybody’s wrestling with what is this doing to our communities? And then we’re about to enter into, well, we’re already entering into Black Lives Matter movements. We’re entering into a reckoning with racial and gender justice in the church and then the pandemic is about to happen. And I felt like Roxburgh, I’d read lots on race, I’d read lots on critical theory. What Roxburgh did though was give me a historical accounting that I felt was so helpful to hold those things together. It was like, I mean to do contextual theology and then to give tools, which is Fitch does this very well too, but to give tools about engaging in the neighborhood really well, and I loved the level of rigor that Roxburgh required. So Roxboro was also my supervisor on my thesis and I loved working with him again, which I was warned against it. People were like, “he’s really intense.” I was just grateful. I was like, He sent my proposal back to me like fourteen times though that’s not even an exaggeration. It just kept coming back again. I felt pretty grateful for. I’m still really proud of my thesis in the end, but that was my favorite class maybe by far. Luke Stehr: That’s awesome. So for people who maybe have never thought about contextual theology, have never read anything by Alan Roxburgh, how would you give a Cliff Notes version of his accounting of history that you referenced? Jonny Morrison: That’s a good question. So Roxburgh’s work is broad and I think that you could, there’s a lot of things that he’s talking about, but a lot of what he is wrestling with is the leadership structures of churches and maybe you could say the corporatization of local churches and the professionalization of clergy and how did clergy become sort of a management class versus stewards of the spirit. And that’s I think so much of his work if I was to simplify it is about that, like, when did seminary become about training managers and executors versus training midwives and artisans? And one of the languages is detectives of Divinity Roxburgh’s also a real poetic, which I’m such a sucker for. And so that’s so much of his work and I found that that’s ended up being what I wrote on in my own thesis is that was the exact question I was wrestling with in our local context is why did we have the imagination for pastoral leadership that we did and what were the other options available to us? Gino Curcuruto: I want to dig, Question into ask. Luke Stehr: That was a beautiful answer to that question. Gino Curcuruto: Beautiful. I do want to get into a little bit more about your thesis, but first, if it’s okay, I kind of want to hang out in this Roxburgh space. Jonny Morrison: I’m happy, I love it. Gino Curcuruto: It it’s, it’s great timing. That was our last seminar and so full disclosure, Luke Stehr: We’re working on our papers for him, Gino Curcuruto: We’re working on our papers. He also Luke Stehr: Subscribes to this, so if you’re listening, Dr. Roxburgh have mercy on us. Gino Curcuruto: I found his class very similar. It was fantastic. And his ability to just put any, he was just asking us what’s on your mind? What are you experiencing is what it felt like. Then he would just go back in history and bring us up to the current time, whatever the subject was. The breadth of his knowledge and his ability to put it inside of a narrative like you’ve said was amazing. I’m also thinking that if you’re not thinking as a contextual theologian, you may totally miss the value of what he’s doing as just a guy telling stories. Jonny Morrison: Yeah. Gino Curcuruto: Does that make sense? Yeah. Jonny Morrison: Oh, Gino Curcuruto: Totally. Jonny Morrison: It’s almost like a history class if you don’t understand contextual theology. Gino Curcuruto: And because he’s a more seasoned, experienced theologian and philosopher, it’s just like, here’s the old guy telling us stories from the old days, but that’s not at all what he’s doing and his ability to give us maps for things and be poetic. And so I’m not sitting here just trying to compliment Al Roxburgh, though I will. I was just going to say, I think that the idea of it being contextual theology that he’s inside of what he’s doing, his leadership teaching is really important and I think that some people, I won’t speak for anyone in our class, but I’d wonder if historically through this, if there have been people
