For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
We've Been Here Before with Bishop Justin S. Holcomb
Barriers don’t bury the church; they clarify the mission. The Book of Acts reveals a pattern in which every barrier is followed by a fresh witness to Jesus.
In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Bishop Justin Holcomb using Acts as the centerpiece. From language and culture gaps to political pressure and outrage cycles, they discuss how a consecrated voice—rooted in promise, not panic—cuts through the noise and opens doors for real renewal. Their conversation points toward a practical path forward: witness over winning, promise over pressure, and trust that the Holy Spirit will write the next paragraph of the church's story. Listen in for the full conversation.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Justin S. Holcomb was ordained and consecrated as the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida on June 10, 2023. He was elected at a special Diocesan Convention on Jan. 14, 2023.
A native Floridian, the bishop earned his Ph.D. in theological studies from Emory University and has both a Master of Arts in theological studies and a Master of Arts in Christian thought from Reformed Theological Seminary as well as a B.A. in biblical studies from Southeastern University. He also studied at the University of Oxford during the summer of 1996.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. Today we have a very special guest, the Right Reverend Dr. Justin S. Holcomb, fifth bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida. Uh, Bishop Justin, welcome.
Bishop Holcomb:Well, thank you so much, Bishop Rob, for having me. Looking forward to this. I love talking to you, but being able to talk to you with uh some other friends listening in sounds like fun.
Bishop Wright:Well, it's mutual friend. Um, a little bit about Justin. He's a native Floridian, has a PhD in theological studies from Emery. He also has a BA from Southeastern University in Biblical Studies and has spent some time studying at the University of Oxford. Uh he is married to Lindsay, uh, and they have two daughters, Sophia and uh and Zoe. So, Justin, I wanted to have you on because uh I I like to watch you think, I like to watch you wrestle uh with what leadership means right now as followers of Jesus and uh and how do we embolden people to live into sort of what it means to be a follower of Jesus? And so you recently made a presentation uh to the House of Bishops about the voice of a bishop. And you know, I realize that not lots of us are bishops, and that's a good thing. Uh so so was there anything in your work uh that touches just what it means for me and other people, lots of people who just try to get up every day and are trying to figure out what does fidelity uh mean?
Bishop Holcomb:Yeah, well, absolutely. First, the talk was actually uh tailored for bishops after I already worked on it for lay leaders and and those discerning a call, just discernment in general as Christians. So a ton of that talk actually fits. The the first one is figuring out the the kind of what time is it question, um, or where are we? What's going on in this moment? And you know, uh Graham Ward is a theologian I like. He did a book called Cities of God, and he has a whole chapter on asking what time is it. I just had a clergy meeting and I said, What about this moment? You know, talk to your neighbor and then share what you think is going on in this moment and just hearing the responses. So, first is for us to assess what's going on in this moment, and then talk to some other people who might have a different answer. Because some people started out uh negative, it's divisive, it's caustic, and we get that, totally get that. Others stood up and said, but what an opportunity. And so getting that, getting that symphony of your brothers and sisters, your siblings in Christ who are who are assessing and answering the the question, what time is it? So that's the first one. But but the thing that I really wanted to do is I wanted to look at other examples uh of turbulence or uh uh disease that have been happening in the history of the church and see what we can learn from them. And so uh with your permission, I think you know, peeking first at the book of Acts is was where I started there. And I I love starting there because Acts uh you have four outpourings of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, Acts 8, Acts 11, Acts 19, and to whom the Holy Spirit is poured out to, those are different groups of people, which causes some uproar to the point that you need to have a council in Acts 15 to kind of figure out how are we going to do this together? But what's happening in Acts is you see there's barriers of geography, ethnicity, language, culture, gender, wealth, language. And then you have all of Acts has just a variety of other barriers, other headwinds. You have demonic stuff, you have worldly powers, you have persecution, you have government opposition, unbelief, internal disunity. There's some snakes involved, there's a shipwreck involved, there's hot mess.
Bishop Wright:Hold on, hold on, hold on. I gotta interrupt you. So what you're saying is that uh we've got a lot of history with trying to believe in Jesus in the midst of catastrophe and chaos and division and all this stuff. Yeah. So there's nothing, this is not new where we find ourselves.
Bishop Holcomb:That's the whole, yeah, yeah. You pay, and keep on interrupting me because that's the whole point. And I'm 52. So I'm 52, and I was talking to some seminarians a few weeks ago, and uh I still remember the 1980s, uh, the whole more majority movement, just different movies that are taking place. And I was like, y'all, this we've been here before on both sides, politically culture. There's a book called Culture Wars by James Davison Hunter, and he wrote that decades ago. Why did he write a book called Culture Wars? Because there was a culture war happening. And he he he starts out that book as go back and read it. I mean, people need to read that book. He has some other new books out, but it's called Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter, professor of sociology at UVA. When I was a priest in Virginia, uh he was my chair of the sociology department, and I was his priest at church, and it was just fun working with him. But he did dispatches from the front and he would tell stories, snapshots of this perspective, this perspective, and how they all collide into a culture war. And that's exactly why I start with Axe, because you have, we've seen this before. This isn't new. This moment isn't a distinctively, it's a distinctive moment that has real tangible effects for people on the ground in real life, but it's also distinctively American that does have implications for other places in the world. Uh so starting with Acts is helpful. Because there's also, you know, the the the apostles are they're you know, they're Middle Eastern Jews under Roman occupation, and they have one-third of Acts or speeches about uh Jesus and the kingdom. And they're talking to multinational groups in Jerusalem, they're talking to Samaritans, some Gentiles, uh people who are despised, you have God-fearing people who aren't bought into the whole Jesus is Messiah, you have pagan polytheists, some philosophers, a Roman governor, some kings. You got in and and what's cool about their voice, getting this now. This is answering your question is when you go through that, uh, one third of the the speech one third of Acts are speeches, and they do one irreducible thing over and over again. Is that they are pointing to and being witnesses to, and this is uh it's your language that you got from Acts. I still remember hanging out with you at a House of Bishops meeting, and and you just sat up and said, our job is to be witnesses, and that's what actually made me think of Acts when I was uh got you got me thinking about it. They would be witnesses to the person and work of Jesus Christ, especially his death and resurrection. And their voice, uh uh so for Christians, our voice shouldn't be co-opted, it doesn't need to be defensive, doesn't need to be managerial, doesn't even need to be therapeutic, it needs to be proclamation and witness to another kingdom. Um, I think get vertical is the shorthand. Like let's uh we have something to say here and now, but we also have more to say. And watching, watching the apostles and the other leaders with all of this diversity, conflict barriers to whom they're speaking, and they would tailor their message. You can you can listen to Paul talking to some Ephesians elders, and then you watch him in Acts 17 talking to, you know, pagan philosophers. I mean, he's wise, he's not just talking the same jargon or same so he'd accommodate, uh, but he'd accommodate in the same direction of what he was witnessing to. That that that's the first thing that stood out.
Bishop Wright:So I'll say what uh what I'm what I'm hearing you say is I think, you know, put my my sort of practical baseball hat on, is I'm hearing you say a word of encouragement. And the word of encouragement is is that uh we as difficult as things are, and of course, uh, you know, a couple of millennia ago, they didn't have a 24-hour news cycle, right? So uh it's coming at us, you know, in in technicolor. Um, so that's one big difference. But I'm hearing you say, nevertheless, um, despair is not required to, you know, in all of this. In other words, we've been here before. Um, we're here now because other people found their way through that. Um, you know, when the chips are down, people started talking about Jesus again, about what it was to live for him, what it was like, all those sorts. Am I right? Am I hearing that right?
Bishop Holcomb:One, yeah, thank you. 100%. I'm saying, on one hand, don't take the bait for despair, fear, or hopelessness, because uh talk about Jesus and who he is and what it means for you and the world. And he is making all things new. This is not like pie in the sky, just say nice things that everyone can get agree with, but to be encouraged, 100% encouragement, because what's fascinating when you look at Acts about all of those barriers. So they in Acts there's a barrier, and then there's a speech about Jesus, King Jesus, Messiah. And then there's usually a phrase that says, and the Holy Spirit added hundreds to the church that day, or thousands to the church that day. It seems like God likes, you know, when we are weak, he is strong. Uh, that that principle that of reality that seems like all of these barriers actually don't thwart the expansion of the kingdom of God, but rather seems to fuel it. And so maybe this moment, we need to have our eyes wide open, but it's not a moment of despair or fear, but should be like like through the roof encouragement, because uh, as we learn from C.S. Lewis, uh, you know, God's not safe, but God's good. And uh and uh that's that's the Aslan that seems to be on the move doing some pretty awesome work. And I I know it's going on in different churches, different dioceses, but other churches, other denominations, uh, the Lord seems to be doing something pretty, pretty encouraging and special right now.
Bishop Wright:So you're you're a bishop in a specific place, uh, a specific context, Central Florida there. You're the fifth bishop there. So what does all this what does all this mean for you day to day uh as you try to uh invite people to know Jesus Christ through the Episcopal Church in Central Florida?
Bishop Holcomb:Yeah. Well, one is being uh we're we're actually one of the most diverse ethnic and linguistic and cultural places. Uh and so having a pretty good idea of what that diversity looks like, uh we had to change our Hispanic uh ministry commission to Latino Ministry Commission because it wasn't expansive enough. It wasn't inclusive enough of Haiti and Brazil and others. And that commission has done some amazing work. They did a heat map of population movements just in our diocese. And, you know, where where do mostly Colombians live now and where are they moving? What about those from Puerto Rico and Kissimmee? What about Venezuela and Mexico and just Haiti, and trying to figure out where that is. And so one is just trying to see who's here. Uh also, we're in Florida, but we are because we had we are both, you know, Orlando and Vero Beach and uh and some other Lakeland, some other, you know, more urban centers, then you have rural. So we got we got blue and purple, got blue and red all over the place, like most uh churches do. Uh we're not seeing on that. And so what it looks like is uh uh encouraging the clergy to say, uh answer questions, but don't take the bait uh on on I need you, and and they feel it because people come in and say, hey, uh bishop, you know, priest, deacon, speak up. I got a team over here that needs needs some attention. Um again, we don't, I'm not saying we never speak up on any of these issues, but uh that's why I said let's not be co-opted. Um we got we got a message that has been entrusted to us. This is 2 Corinthians, uh uh, you know, uh that's different from other organizations, which is that in in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself. That's a different story. Uh, we don't say only that story, but let's say mostly that story. And really just encouraging that. What we've been seeing, and I said it, you you know, you know how this works, Rob, is you you work on a talk or a sermon and you have all your points, and you sometimes your segue line from point one to point two, it's not the main thing. You're just trying to get to your second point. In a diocesan address, I said something like, Let's have this be the year of baptisms. And I wasn't the whole point. I was trying to get to another point, and people ran with that. Yeah. They're excited. We we've got baptisms in the lake, we have 20-year-olds, a bunch of babies. We have some 80-year-olds getting baptized. And so uh just seeing what a group of clergy pointed in the same direction, uh, looking at acts, seeing what happens with that. That's what's been fun to kind of see how this plays out.
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, I'm glad you brought that up because uh I I think that it's a good time to be the church right now. I I hope that's what we find in the book of Acts and beyond, is that when the political chips were down, so to speak, or when there was division and consternation, maybe even worse, oppression, authoritarianism, the way we sort of worked our way through that was uh to baptize, uh, was to welcome, was to share radically, um, was to sort of, you know, pack light and hit the road. Um, you know, Will Willemond has this great line about adventure. You know, uh Jesus says, you know, sort of go, and go is like uh, you know, meet me there, in other words. Go is not just a command. It's like, I'm sending you my coordinates. If you're looking for Jesus, find me on the road, right? So, so I find generation after generation that that ends up being the expression. As soon as the church gets too sedentary, uh, gets locked into its own buildings, um, then some next group of people come along, uh, you know, dreamers and doers come along, and then they say, Hey, what's this whole business about visiting the prison? What's this business about going, caring for elder and orphan, all that sort of stuff? And they start getting on that. And then all of a sudden, you know, you get this sort of revival that starts to happen. And it always happens from the edges. Um yeah, so I think our job, uh, and uh, you know, a retired bishop now, actually a deceased bishop now, great friend John Bruno, formerly a bishop of Los Angeles uh some years ago, told me that the bishop's job is to provide cover for the expressions from the edges, right?
Bishop Holcomb:Wait, wait, wait, say that one again.
Bishop Wright:The bishop's job is to provide cover for you know, this fidelity, these expressions of faithfulness, revival, renewal that are on the edges. So even as the bishop perhaps stands in the center uh and does the work that needs to happen at the center, he or she uh has a high degree of sensitivity uh and appreciation for the way that the Holy Spirit seems to work. And it seems to work from edges uh in rather than from in out. And so I think that's, you know, if we look at the church historically, that's sort of the way we've made our way through these kinds of times. Is uh is we preach, is you know, my my parable right now, maybe you have one that's guiding you personally and professionally. My parable right now is the parable of the sower. So, so what is success for me right now? What is my work? It is to throw the best seed everywhere I can throw it so that it might just catch somewhere, uh, but with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and then some work on the edges then gets going. Um, so you know that's that's sort of the parable I'm using. And I think that is the way um to uh help us to make our way through. Also, um, it is to remember that these men and women that we put on a shelf called the saints uh were not actually spiritual super athletes. Uh they were flawed people, falling forward as best they could. And uh, but they met uh, you know, they got to an intersection and decided I'm gonna be faithful. And uh and that's why we're still talking about them. And uh, so so sort of that's sort of in my back, those are sort of a few things that are in my back pocket when I'm when I'm sort of encouraging people. Uh, because, you know, what we know about God is that as much as we want to make God sort of a polite high tea guest, God is wild. Uh, you know, and God is, you know, a wilderness God. And God, you know, I like to say that the Holy Spirit is sort of like uh uh the two-year-old personality of God, right? It's like I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do, and uh, and y'all are gonna have to catch up. But uh, nevertheless, um, you know, I think that's the work is to bring that vision of ministry and the holy one back to the center of the church, uh, because God knows we need it.
Bishop Holcomb:Well, that sounds like Annie Dillard, her, her, her line about we're handing out like we got hats and we need, we need uh we we need uh uh what's the the the thing for a roller coaster, a little strap. You need like a little strap strap in and give people helmets because the sleeping god may awake, and we're like tinkering around with with all this liturgy and theology, but like we're we're messing with a batch of TNT. Like, let's be careful because that god might awake and you don't know what's gonna happen. Your your thing about the edges, I love that. It's powerful, and it re- I'm gonna give an example from uh from St. Augustine because he actually does that. And the example was from City of God. Uh where you have going back as another example where you have a bunch of Roman refugees pouring into North Africa. Rumors are swirling that Christians are to blame for the fall of Rome. You have polarization inside the church, you have two heresies, Donatism and Pelagianism. We don't worry about those, just trust me, they're heresies. And they would interrupt, they would erupt into fighting, not just yelling, but actual violence in the church and in the streets over these heresies. And his whole thing was a love reordered by grace, not the lust for domination. So that's what he talked about a love reordered. So your heart's being captured. That's who these saints are. They gave up on the lust of domination because their hearts and imaginations were captured by God's patience and condescension and love for them. But but what Augustine does, and this is what's so beautiful about the edges, as a bishop, he was he was a bishop. He's writing City of God to dispute. He's doing public dispute about these rumors. Like Christians aren't to blame for the fall of Rome. You guys made your own hot mess. Don't blame us for it. What happened during all of that was that there were some women who were violated during the sack of Rome. And he, in the middle of his public disputation, he shifts from disputation as a rhetorical skill to consolation. And he then starts talking directly to the women who were violated. And he compassionately consoles and tells violated women that chastity belongs to the will. And he says, Not even when the body is violated is it lost. And he's he's consoling from the edges because this Roman honor, shame, dignity thing, he's challenging the honor, Roman, the Roman honor code that would, the Roman honor code would tell a violated woman, hey, out of your own honor and your family, you should, you should commit suicide. That's virtuous. And he's saying, uh-uh, uh-uh-uh, before God, your you are glorious. He used the word, I think it's glorious twice, once about the city of God, and then second, only for women whose bodies were violated. And he says, you are glorious. And this is a really powerful, like when you said the protecting from the edges, here you have a bishop with all of this swirl. He could have given his voice only to disputing public disputation, which he did. And then he stops and he's like, No, I'm consoling specific people uh who I know they need to hear that their dignity wasn't taken. That's that's that's not how this works. Um wasn't minimized. So that was a another beautiful example. And then you have um uh another example who and it's about the the Christian's voice that sounds similar to Augustine, which was Bernard of Clairbeau. And he basically just this was convicting for me. I needed to hear this as a bishop. And he he wrote a book called On Consideration. And he says, Hey, you're as a Christian, as a leader, your bags, your voice isn't a bag of rhetorical tricks. It it's ministerial. It's an instrument. Your voice is an instrument for Christ. And he points to Isaiah 6, where uh Isaiah says, Uh I'm a man with unclean lips, uh, with a bunch of other people with unclean lips. And then you know, the angel takes the tongues and consecrates their mouth. And he looks at that and he says, Hey, Christians, your your voice may need to have some restraint because it belongs to your vocation as a Christian. Avoid idle talk and keep your mouth for Christ. So sometimes silence is the best thing because it serves Christ's speech to his world, the world that he's making completely new. So um, those are other dimensions when we're thinking about the Christian voice. And you got me going thinking about that protection from the edges image.
Bishop Wright:Well, you know, what I like about this as we sort of head uh head to a wrap-up, what I love about this is um in all of that, there's some practical bits here. And that is, you know, if we're gonna go with Augustine, uh, he reserved his best encouragement for people who have been uh oppressed, abused, afflicted, and shamed. And so uh, you know, I'm always trying to distill the practical pieces. And so um, you know, the data uh is available to all of us wherever we find ourselves, and we can find out so who is that population where you are? Right, who are abused, oppressed, uh been taken advantage of, uh shamed, etc.
Bishop Holcomb:And so who are the people that others are using for their narrative that they're doing? That's what he he could have leaned in on them, and instead he took he took the people that were being manipulated and exploited for other narratives and said, No, how about consolation? That's what I love about your practical point there.
Bishop Wright:So, so I mean, so so you know, then there's that whole idea about the incarnation. If, if, if Jesus is the best and where he ends up is uh, you know, in the worst situation, uh, so that others might have a resource uh to manage life, then you know, then the gospel work now is the best for the worst, right? Um, our very best to the worst case scenarios. Uh I like to call them the fingernail dirty places. Um I I just I just love that um because I think that you know uh people here, people like me and you get talking about all these things, and you know, the school teachers, uh the daycare workers, uh, you know, my folks who build houses and pick crops uh here in Middle North Georgia, et cetera, are looking for, you know, one thing or a couple of things. So so they they get the whole Jesus is my friend and Jesus is my savior and Jesus is my resource, my North Star. I I think they get that. But I think, you know, in these disorienting times, um, you know, where everybody's competing for our attention, um, I think people are looking for, you know, that one bit that sends them back towards the good news. Jesus was clear when he stands up uh, you know, as a youngster uh, you know, about his father's business. He's later clear at 30 years old uh about uh, you know, he understands the words of Isaiah uh as his marching orders, right? Uh that he's to, you know, acceptable year of the Lord, uh release captives, good news for the poor, et cetera. So I think a lot of us uh are just looking for a couple of deliverables that will help us to know, uh, know that we know that we know, right? That we are uh moving in directions that please the Lord.
Bishop Holcomb:Yeah. Well, I I can I jump in I if we have time, I don't wrap it up, but uh that's what I think for Christians. Um, we need to have a voice of promise. Uh people have been given bricks in their backpacks all over the place. Hey, you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. But the the main voice of the Bible is a voice of promise. God's a promise-making God and a promise-keeping God. That's why I like being a bishop. I go do confirmations and I'm pointing to the promises of baptism. And in our tradition, we say you're marked as Christ's own forever, and you're sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever. And I get, I stand there every Sunday and I say, every one of these people is a testimony of God's faithfulness to them and to us. God is faithful. So God makes promises, and it's not just wish fulfillment. These are a solid promise. And so our the Christian language should look less like exhorting people all the time, like, hey, let's be these people. Make sure you're doing this, and just bossing people around. The the fruitfulness, the activity we do comes out of gratitude for being given the promise. And so gratitude captures you, and then you start doing the very things that uh you're supposed to do out of gratitude. No, so the Bible does this all the time. Says things like, be generous. Well, you can bark at people and say, be more generous, give more money. But when the Bible says be generous, it says, be generous because your heavenly father has been exceedingly, extravagantly generous to you. You've experienced generosity. You've received generosity, the promise of generosity. Therefore, give it. Forgive as you've been forgiven. That kind of and so you got to talk about the promise that leads to that. The other one, the last one, is just uh so like Christians, let's be people of promise and let's tell a better story. Uh, the story of Golgotha goes right to what you were saying, the dirt under the fingernails. We we talk about Golgotha, we talk about loss, death, grief, trauma, betrayal, lack of injustice, uh, injustice. And then we also talk about resurrection. And and so we know that death is real. This is what Christians are so awesome about. A Christian funeral is spectacular because we grieve, like those who have hope. We wear white and we cry. We're angry at death and we have hope. And so the better story, when we say, let's talk about the personal work of Jesus, we're talking about death and resurrection. We're talking about, we know that death will break our hearts and our bodies, but that's not the end of the story because uh there's a different story. And it's the it's the story of this that's why we witness to Christ, because that's a story worth living and dying for. And that's that's where this, I think, collides is give the promise, don't just boss people around and tell a better story because we got the best story going.
Bishop Wright:We're gonna leave it right there. I can't do better than that. That is phenomenal. Yeah, we do have a good story. We say the greatest story ever told, right? We do. God so loved the world, right? Uh, that he gave his only begotten son. That that's I mean, uh, it's not just a sign of the football stadium, John 3.16, right? It's a way, it's a way to live. So uh, Bishop Justin Holcomb, uh, Bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida. Justin, thank you.
Bishop Holcomb:Thank you, friend. My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. As always, it's a blast talking with you.
Bishop Wright:You as well, man.