What the Church Can Learn from Mr. Rogers

Why embodied love, trust, and kindness still matter

This week, the U.S. government voted to defund public broadcasting.

I saw the headlines, and before I could even form an opinion, I began to think about the role that PBS played in my life. I miss Mr. Rogers. I miss the man. The presence. The unhurried voice that made you feel like you mattered. The camera that lingered just a little longer than it had to. The zip of a cardigan and the change of shoes that signaled safety. And maybe more than anything, I miss a world that made space for those kinds of messages to reach kids through intention rather than algorithms. (Something my kids don’t experience much)

I Grew Up in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

I loved watching Mr. Rogers as a little kid. I loved the trolley that carried us to the Land of Make-Believe. I loved watching him feed his fish and visit interesting places. It was genuinely entertaining to my young mind. I didn’t think much about why I was drawn to it then. I just knew I liked it.

Looking back now, I think I was absorbing something deeper than entertainment. In a world where adults often seemed hurried or distracted, here was someone who moved slowly and spoke to me like I mattered. Where emotions at home sometimes felt complicated or confusing, Fred Rogers made space for all of them. Where church often felt like a place of right answers and good behavior, his show felt like a place where questions were welcome and being yourself was enough.

Mr. Rogers was doing pastoral work, though I wouldn’t have called it that at five years old. He wasn’t preaching sermons. He was simply present, consistently kind, and utterly genuine.

Now, as a church leader, I’ve realized something: We could all learn a lot from Fred Rogers.

The Gospel According to Fred

Mr. Rogers wasn’t just a TV personality. He was an ordained Presbyterian minister who saw television as his mission field. He believed that media could form the soul and treated his work with the reverence of liturgy. He also believed children deserved to be spoken to directly, gently, and truthfully. He never rushed. He didn’t condescend. He wasn’t flashy or loud. He just showed up with consistency, tenderness, and a cardigan.

And isn’t that what the church is supposed to be? A place of embodied love. Quiet trust. Stubborn kindness. Instead of noise and performance. Instead of a factory churning out certainty and shame.

What the Church Can Learn

Here’s what I think Mr. Rogers teaches the Church, especially right now, in an age of culture wars, deconstruction, and growing disillusionment:

1. Kindness Isn’t Weak. It’s Brave.

Fred Rogers was kind in a way that disarmed people. Make no mistake, it wasn’t passive. It was resistance.

When he sat with Officer Clemmons and placed his feet in the same wading pool, he was challenging racism with tenderness.

When he invited children to name their feelings, he was dismantling the myth that emotion is weakness.

In a world that rewards outrage, kindness is a form of rebellion. (I made a video about that here.) The Church has been too quick to dismiss it in favor of “truth-telling” that’s really just a mask for cruelty. The reality is, need a kinder Church.

2. Embodiment Matters

Mr. Rogers didn’t just say kind things. He was kind. His very presence (the pace of his speech, the calm of his posture, the softness of his eyes) communicated love.

As Christians, we believe in incarnation. That God showed up in a body. That Jesus didn’t love us from afar. He got close. He touched. He cried. He walked and sat and listened and stayed.

We need churches where love is more than a doctrinal statement. We need churches that move slowly enough for people to be seen. Churches that change their shoes at the door. Churches that show up on the floor next to grieving people.

3. You Don’t Have to Be Loud to Be Transformative

The modern Church has often confused volume with conviction. The Spirit isn’t always in the wind or the fire. Sometimes it’s in the whisper.

Fred Rogers never raised his voice. When he spoke before Congress in 1969, his testimony saved millions in public broadcasting funds. Because the world doesn’t just need louder Christians. It needs wiser ones. Gentler ones. More patient ones. Ones who believe, like Fred did, that every person is made in the image of God and should be treated that way.

The Neighborhood Still Needs Neighbors

Public broadcasting may be under attack, yet the neighborhood isn’t gone. Because the neighborhood was never about a network. It was about a way of being.

I believe the Church has a chance to become that kind of neighborhood again.

A place where people are met with compassion instead of correction. A place where the questions aren’t rushed and the answers aren’t weaponized. A place where children, skeptics, dreamers, doubters, and everyone in between are told truthfully, consistently, and without condition:

“I like you just the way you are.”

They don’t have to earn it. They don’t have to believe the right things. They just have to be themselves.

One Last Thing

This essay is for those of us trying to be leaders, parents, friends, or neighbors in a noisy, angry world and who wonder if gentleness still works.

It does.

It always has.

And Mr. Rogers showed us that.

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