Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast

Nika Spaulding

Sharifa Stevens

Cultivating joy is an important part of our discipleship, as Nika Spaulding explains to Sharifa Stevens, BOW Team Member. Nika explains what joy is and why it is important for disciples of Jesus to manifest this fruit of the Spirit. We can have joy even when experiencing sorrow and duress. Both can be true at once. Cultivating joy in any situation of life allows us to look more like Jesus, especially during this time when leaders are causing God’s people to fear.

This episode is also available on video if you prefer watching it.

00:33 –Introductions

Resources

The Other Half of Church: Christian Community, Brain Science, and Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation By Jim Wilder

BOW series with Nika Spaulding on Lament: 1- Understanding Lament and 2- Practicing Lament.

Sharifa >> Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Ordinary Women. I am your host for today, Sharifa Stevens and I have the distinct pleasure of talking with Nika Spaulding today. Let me tell you a little bit about Nika. Nika is a proud graduate of both the University of Oklahoma and Dallas Theological Seminary, where she has a Master of Theology.

She’s currently working on her Doctor of Ministry at Northern Seminary. God gave her the privilege of planting a church in Oak Cliff, Texas, called St Jude Oak Cliff, where she is Resident Theologian. And when she’s not cheering on her Sooners, playing with her cat, Clive, who we might see later, or enjoying a good meal with her friends, she’s probably sneaking off to Oklahoma to snuggle with her favorite humans, her nieces and nephew.

Nika, thank you for joining us today.

Nika >> Oh, I’m excited to be here. It’s good to see you, friend.

Sharifa >> Good to see you, too. And I’m really excited about the subject for today, which is Cultivating Joy.

Nika >> Yeah. A big topic.

Sharifa >> Right. It is! So let’s get into it.

Nika >> Yeah. Love it. It’s interesting. Before we started recording, you and I were talking about how this topic of joy seems to be coming up in our individual lives. And then, of course, we’re talking about here. And really, I would argue starting in 2020, because of both global tragedy and then just tragedy in my own personal life, I was very acquainted with the idea of lament and grief and all of that.

And it’s been a really sweet gift to come up a little bit and have the Lord drop this idea, this massive, huge idea of joy in front of me. And so it’s a topic that I’ve talked about in both teaching opportunities as well as something I’m trying to cultivate on my current staff team at my church, and then also just in my own personal life.

And so it’s a small, tiny, big, huge topic that we get to try to talk about today.

Sharifa >> Absolutely. And I hope later you can touch on this more, but it seems like there’s always accompanied with joy, there’s a sense of grief.

Nika >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Sharifa >> Let’s just let’s get into it. What is joy and can it be recognized in us and God, is it written all over our face?

Nika >> Yeah, it tends to be. One of the ways that I was reintroduced to the idea of Joy was I was talking to a friend about wanting to really come up with really good questions as part of a discipleship program. So my idea was, hey, I’d love to partner people together, have them ask really important questions about God, about themselves, about their neighbor, and she said to me, Oh, well, then you have to read this book, The Other Half of Church.

And Sharifa, you and I have been in ministry context long enough, typically when people name things that other half or half the church, it usually is about women. And so I thought, well, that’s kind of, Okay. But this woman that I was talking to is actually fascinated by the brain. So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the book is actually about brain research and the role that joy and loving attachment play in the discipleship process.

And so what I love about this is they really beautifully define joy, but they also experientially help you. And so, for example, this is what I tell people when they say, what is joy? I say, Okay, just give me a second to be a little woo woo here, give me a second. Just grant me this moment, especially if we’re in the public sphere or somewhere where they’re not, you know?

And I say to them, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to take a couple of deep breaths just to kind of settle where you’re at. And I want you to think of a person who you deeply love and they deeply love you, someone that when you see them, you see delight on their face. They’re happy to see you and you’re happy to see them. And I want you to just take a moment and I want you to really think about that moment. And then I want you to take note of what happens to your body, what happens to your mind, what happens to like what is physically happening to you?

And in our better moments, people are able to imagine often that for me, I always think of my nieces and nephews, and I, in fact, have this like video of I visited them not too long ago, and we didn’t tell them I was coming. And they’re like and I’m like, and I’ve played this video for people to go, this is what Joy maybe at the loudest volume looks like in my life, but it’s not always that loud. And as people open their eyes back up, I say to them that what you’re feeling is approximating that feeling of joy as we experience it.

And so the researchers give this exercise and then they say, Okay, when we looked across the board at joy in a person’s life, there were kind of three big ideas that they came up with. One is it’s primarily joy is transmitted through the face, which is interesting because they say even though we have Zoom, which we’re doing this right now, they would say, you know, it really needs to be a little bit of life on life but Zoom is a good alternative. But it’s primarily transmitted through the face.

You express joy through your face, especially the eyes. And people talk about that, like the eyes give things away. You know, if you’ve ever been watching somebody, you see their eyes light up, even if there’s no smile or you see a smile, but their eyes don’t light up and say, wow, maybe not, right?

Yeah. So they talk about it being transmitted through the face and then they say it’s also relational. That you can have fun by yourself, you can have hobbies, you can have happiness, you can play, there’s sort of these ideas that you can have solo. But joy in all of their research is a relational thing. That it happens in the context between two people or between people and God.

Sharifa >> Do you think there was joy in existence when the first man was created, but before the first woman?

Nika >> I think the joy that he would have experienced would have had to have been with him and the Triune God. But I would imagine he felt there was a massive lack because I think it would be hard to not fully experience, let me say it like this, if God has wired us to be his image bearers and in the fullness of the Trinity, they experience joy as the Father delights in the Son, the Spirit and all of that. And that’s happening. And they have fullness of love and fullness of joy.

Then I would imagine Adam was thinking to himself, I would like a corresponding companion here to experience the joy that I see among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. That I believe he has with the Trinity. But there’s this creature creator distinction that I would imagine Adam goes, I need a creature here with me, like me.

Sharifa >> And not just Adam, but God as well. It’s not good.

Nika >> It’s not good. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Sharifa >> So, Okay, not to interrupt you.

Nika >> No, no, no, I love the question.

Sharifa >> Because I was like, oh, this is kind of juicy. Okay.

Nika >> Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s transmitted through the face, in the voice. It’s relational. And then the third thing they say, which you know, as a Bible scholar and Resident Theologian, I thought was important, it’s really important to God. So that was their third point was in this book, it’s written by Christians, and one is a pastor and one’s a neuro-researcher. I mean, this is what he does.

And his particular area of expertise is joy and attachment. And they talk about you will see this idea of joy and rejoicing and delight from start to finish through the entire Bible. And every good teacher knows if something’s important to you, you repeat it. Every good teacher tells you something’s important, they repeat it. And that’s my good teacher.

So when you do that, I mean, if you just and what’s interesting is there’s oftentimes (and you know this Sharifa from doing word study), sometimes there’s a word that really encapsulates an idea, maybe one Hebrew word and one corresponding Greek word in the old in the New Testament respectively, there’s many words to describe joy and rejoicing in this idea.

And so even if you were to look up the Old Testament of Joy, you would have several words that you would be looking up. Same for the New Testament. And you would also have idioms and phrases that maybe you wouldn’t think to look up. But when you start really getting into the Hebrew, you realize, wait a minute, the researchers are figuring out something that God already knew when he’s communicating to the Hebrew people.

Sharifa >> Do you have any examples of that that you’d like to share.

Nika >> Yeah. So when I learned, hey, joy is mediated through the face, you kind of go, “Okay, sure.” And then you start reading, for example, Psalm 16:11, this really incredible, I think maybe the verse I would take people to, to talk about joy because it says there is fullness of joy in the presence of God.

And I think, why that’s so foundational. I think some people think when they get before God, there will be fullness of disappointment, or fullness of wrath, or fullness of fill in the blank. And I think we have to consistently remind people that, no, no, no, the scriptures say when you are before God, the Father, the Son and the Spirit, there is fullness of joy. But what’s interesting is the Hebrew is actually there’s abundance of joy with your face.

It’s using this very same idea that the researchers, which really the researchers picked up what God was already saying. It’s not a surprise that the research corresponds to that. But this is not the only example. One of my absolute favorite example, I think Psalm 16 is maybe the most important example. But my favorite example is, and people know this verse well, Numbers 6:24-26. Yes, it says, “The Lord, bless you and keep you the Lord. Make His face to shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

And I think many times you will think this idea of God turning His face to you is sort of like where He’s been looking away, so now he’s going to look at you and consider you. And really what it’s getting at is, no, this is a blessing upon the people that God would delight in you. As God turns his face toward you, you would understand his great delight and you.

And the reason why I say this is my favorite example is I have a background in textual criticism which means I have a background and looking at ancient manuscripts of the Bible and the oldest manuscript we have of the Hebrew is called the Ketef Hinnom scroll. It’s like a little amulet. It’s not super big, but it’s the oldest piece of scripture we have, and it’s from about 600 BCE. So you’re talking like way back in the day, and this is the verse that’s on it.

So for God to preserve for us, he says—hey, I want you to kick around in the dirt and find this amulet. This super old piece of manuscript. And what’s on there is not, Hey, be careful when you have a boil, go see the priest. It’s not some Levitical passage. It’s not even, Hey, make sure you take out the Canaanites.

Though all scripture is inspired by God and beautiful and good and whatever God would have preserved, I would have received His gift. But here’s God saying—Hey, I want you to be reminded that my posture toward you is one of delight and that I want to bless you. And I want you to know that when I look at you, there’s joy.

And we can keep going. Psalm 87 – Restore us, O, God of Hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. Psalm 89:15 – How blessed are the people who worship you, O, Lord, they experience your favor. And that “they experience your favor”. in the light of your face, they walk.

And so it’s really beautiful throughout the Scriptures, and especially in the poetic Psalms and places like that, where you see God really does turn his face toward us. And when He does so, what we see looking back at us is delight. And I think that is maybe, perhaps the most important way that we can cultivate joy is to teach this idea that when God looks at you.

Let’s go back to that example I gave right where I say, Okay, close your eyes and imagine someone. Now I’ll have people say, Okay, close your eyes. I want you to imagine God, whatever image of God you want, I don’t want to create for you what God looks like, but whatever you when you imagine God, when you pray to God, what do you see looking back at you? And could you imagine that the God that’s looking back at you has delight on his face?

Could you allow yourself to see that really, he looks upon you with great joy and great love. His posture toward you is one of desiring to bless you and having delight in you. And that’s the part that people I think people understand the lie, right? People are like, Oh, I love my children, I love my spouse, I love my…

But when I tell people no, no, no, what if what if God looks back at you with delight?

And I recently taught in Pennsylvania, and a woman came to me after I taught on this, and she was like, that’s really hard to believe.

Sharifa >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk more about how viewing God’s delight as a light shining on us how does that revolutionize our theology and our practice?

Nika >> Yeah. I think the biggest thing with theology is so many times I think we like to separate the Son and the Father. So I think if I were to say to you, Imagine Jesus looking back at you, I think people could see delight, yeah, on a Jewish man’s face. I think for them they’re like, sure.

And I think if I said the Holy Spirit, depending on which part of the Christian faith tradition you’re in, especially if you’re in the more Pentecostal faith, you’d be like—Great. Not a problem. Or even if you’re in a more evangelical, maybe you’re not as familiar with the Holy Spirit. I think they’d go, Oh, posture, delight, sure. Okay, somewhere in there. But now imagine the God of the Old Testament that religious leaders for far too long have separated from his Son as if he’s not the full image of the Father.

I think so many times people say, hey, that particular member of the Trinity is very angry and disappointed in me. And I think what that does to your theology is it misunderstands how the Father and the Son are co-conspirators in your salvation, how they have delight in you, that they created you out of an abundance of love, not a lack, that God, while you were still sinners, sent his son to die.

Sharifa >> Say it. Say it.

Nika >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a theology component that I think is important. But what concerns me. Because I’m a theologian, I always joke that I want people to get their theological pop quizzes right. Hear me. I want my body, if somebody called them one day and said, could you define the Trinity? I want them to be able to articulate that.

But what I really want is, I want when they mess up that they know they can run to God. I want when they feel the loneliness of the world, that they feel the pleasure of God the Father. I think the praxis of it is if you do not believe in your bones that God delights in you, then when you need him most, which is often because we have run, we often don’t return. Which is why Scripture consistently says, well, I’ll come find you, I will come find you.

And when that woman came to me, she was in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania, she said to me, I just don’t believe that God delights in me. And another woman was standing there and she said, “Well, no one really does.” And I was like—Well, hold on, hold on though, I would argue that there are spiritual practices and rhythms that you could implement so that you actually could believe in your bones, that though you are frail, though you falter, though you mess up that the disposition of God towards you is one of delight, and that he loved you so much, he not only created you, he rescued you. He wants to bring you home to him and that changes the way we parent, that changes the way we worship, that changes the way we repent.

That changes all of our life. And I think this is why Joy is critical to our theological formation.

Sharifa >> Yeah. There are two ways I want to go with this because you have given so much food for thought and just the reiteration because this is important and deserves to be repeated.

Nika >> I love it.

Sharifa >> God’s love is the constant. His delight is the constant. And depending on behavior, depending on where we were born, how we were born, who we were born to – no.

But I want to first acknowledge that part of the reason so many of us do fear him is because of how we were taught. It is often related to trauma. It is often related to spiritual bypassing. And so I want to name those things because people aren’t coming to these conclusions on their own.

Nika >> Absolutely. They were taught that and they experience somebody who speaks for God, perhaps treating them in ways that lacks delight, too.

Sharifa >> Yes. And so I want to be gentle with the people. There are a lot of us out here.

Nika >> “We” – we might be in this category. Yeah, we got to learn this ourselves.

Sharifa >> I don’t want to speak in a “they” because there are a lot of us out here who are still healing and learning who God is because someone associated with God really hurt someone. Yeah. So I want to first acknowledge that. But secondly, you’re on a track to how we cultivate joy, how we do it.

And so I want you to get into the brass tacks of what cultivating joy looks like for those of us who maybe need to be reintroduced to who God the Father is, because it seems to me you didn’t say this and so I could be presuming, but it seems to me that part of cultivating joy is being safe. There is a safety and a grounding. Even if there are tragedies and traumas, it is a place of safety that is necessary to experience joy. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Nika >> You are spot on. That is exactly right. Even in this book, The Other Half of Church, the reason why the woman originally recommended the book is I had this idea of I’d love to pair two people together and have them ask these really vulnerable, exploitative if not done correctly questions.

And she rightly goes—Hey, hey, hey. They need to then be done in an environment where someone is safe. And the way that you’re safe is if you’re with someone who delights in you and is lovingly attached to you. In other words, there’s a commitment there. It’s not just—Hey, I think you’re fun, like we’re buddies, like we can go play pickleball. But we’re not, we’re not bonded in a way that lets you know I’m committed to you and you’re committed to me.

And that’s where that book really pairs them both together to say both joy and love, but love being attachment love. This “hesed” love. This “I’m with you” love. “I’m going to stick with you” love is so necessary in order for people to grow and change and heal. And so when you talk about asking how you cultivate, I’m a resident theologian, my default to everything is, “Oh, we’ll just teach on it,” which is wildly incomplete. So hear me say this, dear teachers out there, we got a hammer and we see everything as a nail and we got to be better. We got to like put some other tools in our toolbox.

However, we do need to teach it. You can’t not teach it. It just can’t only be that. But as I’ve taught it, one of the things that’s so important to understanding about joy is going back to that physical component. So looking at Psalm 16, the reason why I say it’s so important, going back to the fullness of joy in the presence of God, is it talks about a full bodied experience in worship – the full body.

So it talks about my heart is glad is one of the verses. It says that my tongue rejoices, right? This physical expression of joy and of worship of God. And then it says my body rests secure. And I just think, goodness, if there was a verse…

Sharifa >> Selah. Selah.

Nika >> Just imagine, what if every time you walked into church, instead of, “Where am I going to sit? Do I look Okay? Do I have friends? Am I safe here? Am I going to know the songs?” Instead if you walked in, because as you worshiped among the people of God, you knew, hey, my heart is glad in this place. I’m going to worship with my whole body, my mouth, my body. I’m going to bend, I’m going to stand, I’m going to eat, I’m going to smell, I’m going to do all of these things. And when I do that, my body will rest secure. That’s the goal. And so when we teach joy, it can’t be short of that.

That’s what I mean by teaching joy is helping people understand it’s not just an intellectual idea of—Oh, I like that person and God likes me. It’s could we cultivate an environment where people feel safe, where there’s an exhalation as they walk in instead of as they walk out? And teaching that I think is important.

The second thing I would argue about teaching it, too, is I’ve spent a lot of time in Philippians lately and I just marvel at Paul. He’ll have these throwaway comments sometimes that I’m like, “Huh?” And I always just want to be like, what was happening there? So you read the book of Philippians. It’s got some of the highest theology in there, right? It’s got this incredible poem about Christ didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be exploited and humbles himself. He talks about we’re stars in the sky shining? And you’re like, This is amazing.

And at the end, he’s like, a couple of quick things. Could you let Euodia and Syntyche know they really do need to get along. And then he’s like—And by the way, you should rejoice. And by the way, I’m going to say it again, it’s no trouble for me. You really need to rejoice.

And I was thinking about this, and it feels as if sometimes at the end of his letters, it’s like a mom writing to kids at camp and she’s like, “I hope you have the time of your life. You experience Christ. Make sure you put your socks in their dirty bag. Tell your brother I said hi.” Sometimes the closing thoughts are like, what? But the closing thoughts for Philippians: one, unity really matters in that letter, but two, rejoicing is through that whole letter. And when you consider the context, Paul is in prison, the Philippians are facing duress from the outside and the threat of disunity on the inside.

So he’s very concerned for them. He does respond to what’s going on with a high theology. And part of that theology is—I’m calling you to rejoice.

And what I said when I’ve taught this and I’ve thought about this, as someone who’s planted a church and I love my church, I love St Jude. And if I had to go away and I was writing a last letter and they were under duress, I’d probably be like, “Hey, make sure you get your finances in order. Set up a security team. Let’s make sure we double down on discipling the young ones because they’re our future and obviously, life is shorter than I thought it would be.” I don’t know that I would have, prior to doing all this research on joy, have said joy as many times as he says rejoice in that letter.

And that’s instructive to us. And so when we talk about cultivating joy, one of the other things I think when you teach about it is, it is essential to the life of the normative Christian experience needs joy even under duress. It’s not a luxury for when things are good.

Sharifa >> Especially under duress, I would say.

Nika >> Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And if you’re not careful, then right.

So the timing of us doing this, we lost a young man in our church this past week to a medical event he should have recovered from.

Sharifa >> I’m so sorry.

Nika >> Thank you. And here I am this morning talking to his mother, talking to his wife, his widow. And I’m making funeral arrangements and I’m planning a sermon on grief and I’m planning a funeral talk. And I’m going—this is a good time to talk about joy still, because I really do believe that it’s especially in these moments that we need to know that God delights in us, that we can delight in each other and that we can cultivate this in our churches.

And the reason why I feel so confident is not just that’s been the experience of my life, but you see this in the Word. One of the things Paul also writes in 2 Corinthians 6—he talks about how difficult life is. And then he says—we’re sorrowful but always rejoicing. And he puts those things together. And I think that’s why you’re exactly right.

And we quote Daniel the Tiger at our church a lot, which was born out of—so two years ago, one of my best friends put her 18 month old boy down to sleep and he never woke up. And in preparing for that funeral, I have to be able to say out loud, this is not what we want. This is not what we want. And the thing that I said is, “We want Hayden in the arms of his mother. That’s what we want. But if he’s going to be anywhere else, then we can rejoice that he’s in the arms of a savior.”

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Nika >> And both of those can be true. And the thing that I quote from Daniel the Tiger that I quoted that day and quoted many, many days is “You can feel two things at the same time, and it’s okay.” That’s how the song goes. And so there’s a whole song to it. And I think what a profound truth that we should teach children. You can be sad and rejoice. You can feel a lot things. I think about this, we know this as adults, but we don’t talk about it like we know it.

We know what it’s like to hear that this gal gets engaged. And we can be genuinely excited for her while also, “When’s it my turn?”

Sharifa >> Yeah, right.

Nika >> We can feel such sadness when someone moves away, but truly confident this is what God’s calling them to do. And why we tell people these are competing feelings as if that’s not the fullness of the human experience and as if the Scriptures don’t declare this is what it means to be human, is we can feel these things.

Sharifa >> This is really the fullness of humanity, isn’t it?

Nika >> Yeah. Yeah.

Sharifa >> It’s less of an oversimplification saying, Oh, you only have permission to have one of these feelings.

Nika >> Yeah, yeah.

Sharifa >> It’s truly the fullness of humanity that God is allowing us by giving us these complex emotions, but not leaving us in one.

Nika >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> Not leaving us. And I think that’s part of I think you were referencing 2 Corinthians earlier.

Nika >> Yeah. Yeah.

Sharifa >> That is the tension that Paul is raising throughout that first chapter. And God’s comfort is like the canopy of all of these emotions being held in tension because life isn’t all good. Life isn’t all bad.

Nika >> Yeah. It’s complicated and hard. And honestly, I can point to Paul all day, but ultimately I’m going to always point back at Jesus, right?

Sharifa >> That’s right. Amen.

Nika >> Yeah. And you have this moment when he’s in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating blood. He’s under so much duress.

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Nika >> And I think we sometimes in our triumphant desire to rush to Sunday, can tell people, “well, it’s alright. God’s in control. He’s going to rise again.”

When Jesus himself knows, he knows, he knows there’s going to be victory. He knows this is his weird, upside down coronation. He knows he’s about to rise again. He knows. And yet there’s great agony.

And we see the same thing when his friend Lazarus dies. He knows what power he possesses as the life and resurrecting one. And he weeps. There’s this humanness to Jesus that I also think we need to, it’s almost I feel like I give people permission to feel, if you’ve ever been to counseling, then you’ve probably been familiar with the feelings wheel. And I tell people, oh, yes, we have them around the house, just in case. My favorite word on ours is forlorn. And I don’t get to use it very often.

Sharifa >> That’s your favorite?

Nika >> I know. I just think it’s such a good word one we don’t use enough. But what I’ve said in the past is I think it is positionally true that Christians have victory and we have a secure future and we have great hope and we know we will win. Right? There’s victory in Christ. That is positionally true.

But experientially, we have to experience the full wheel. And too many times we don’t give people permission to do that. “Don’t worry, you’ll see him again.”

Sharifa >> What is that even for?

Nika >> I think it’s for the person saying and not for the person receiving it.

And so to grow comfortable in the midst of lament is maturity. And to allow for joy in the midst of a broken world is maturity. And I think all of this is important to understand when you teach joy. Because if you’re teaching joy, so one sidedly that it’s either an intellectual idea or it’s a luxury when things are good, or hey, when things are bad, we’re not going to be sorrowful, we’re just going to be joyful, you’re missing the full picture.

And instead the full picture being it’s a full bodied experience that we participate in, even in the midst of a Genesis 3 world that yet we do have salvation, but we’re not there and we can experience it in the midst of sorrow. And those are the important parts of teaching and that is why I say when I say teach joy, teach all of it, right, is sort of what I would encourage. That would be one of the ways.

Going back, you asked about cultivating. So teaching, of course I said everything’s a nail, but I’ve grown as a teacher.

Sharifa >> Well, teaching can happen in more than one fashion.

Nika >> That’s such a good point. So I’m just going to keep hammering nails since you said that.

Sharifa >> Right. There are different nails. They’re different.

Nika >> That’s exactly right. Yeah. But in addition to teaching, I think modeling is also really important. I put modeling, when I think about one of the most palpable parts of scripture for me, when I lost my sister, I really felt like evil had been thrust upon my family because of the way my sister took her life.

It just felt as if we had been attacked, that there was evil in that moment. And so I would often spend time in those first few months telling the enemy you’re going to get yours. And when you do, I’m going to laugh in your face. And some of some of that was just my own grief.

Right? Some of that wasn’t really theological. That was just me needing somewhere to put the anger that I felt and the pain and the grief. And then some of it was reading Revelation 18 and 19. And there’s this massive culmination at the end of time where Babylon is this representative of every evil empire. And, you know, Babylon always seems to be winning. And we know that Babylon won’t win in the end, but for now, it feels like Babylon wins at times.

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Nika >> And you have this massive cosmic battle in Revelation. And then in 18 and 19, what you get to experience and what you see happening is those who are in Christ are celebrating as Babylon is being finally vanquished for all the harm that she has brought in this world and all of the pain. And there are those who cling to Babylon and they weep for her and you think, you silly, silly people.

But those who have been harmed by Babylon and in specifically Revelation 19:1-3 talks about just this throng of people. And I always encourage people, imagine if you’ve ever traveled the world, you hear joy, you experience joy differently depending on the context you’re in. Some places there’s sounds and songs and so you think of the cacophony of all the joy you’ve ever heard happening in that moment. And one of the things that I think is important for us to do is model that now. If we are to be now who we will be, then, then our eschatology, where we’re headed in the end is to have implications for our ethics now.

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Nika >> And so we need to experience joy now, which also means in our churches, we need to allow people to experience joy the way that they actually experience joy.

Sharifa >> Ooh, that’s messy.

Nika >> That is extremely messy.

Sharifa >> That’s unruly.

Nika >> Yeah, there’s a misunderstanding bound to happen which means you need to have curiosity and grace, and you need to also think maybe I don’t need to be at the center of what joy looks like. Maybe I need to be on the outside and put Jesus back in the center and delight in all these expressions. Yeah, yeah. Which will be hard for folks.

But this is what I come back to, I’d say if the goal is Christoformity and there’s many ways to be like Christ in all the expression of humanity.

Sharifa >> Christoformity, for maybe people who don’t understand that term, can you just explain?

Nika >> Yeah, yeah. If the goal of being truly human is to look more and more like Christ, who was the representative human, if you want to know what it means to be the best version of Sharifa or the best version of Nika, we need not look at Cosmopolitan. We don’t need to look at neighbor. We can look at Christ.

And then because God is good, we can look at other mature believers and say, Okay, these are the things that I want to cultivate in my life, because when she does that, she looks like Christ. But ultimately the carbon copy we’re trying to get after is Jesus.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Nika >> And in us bearing God’s image, the way that God created us in the diversity that he’s created us, in the multitude of languages, the multitude of expression, the multitude, the way people worship, if that’s the goal, is for people to be more like Christ, then it’s not that we’re giving them permission to express joy, it’s that we’re encouraging them.

We’re not a gatekeeper. It’s that we would stand back and say, however you experience joy, we should practice that in our church spaces and create a safe and healthy and loving space for people to do that. And joy is vulnerable. I mean, that’s the part when I say model it, Brené Brown, she talks about joy all the time in her research, and she says joy is the most vulnerable emotion for her because the moment you start experiencing joy, there’s this little voice in the back of your head that says, When’s the other shoe going to drop?

Or are people going to be like, See, here you were out dancing in the streets like David when the ark comes out and you looked a little foolish and you looked a little… and so all of a sudden, joy is just so fleeting. But if it’s an intrusion from God, if it’s an intrusion into this world that is filled with so much of what the Holy Spirit is calling us to be and do, then we need to model that.

Which means those of us who lead in church spaces, in home spaces, in whatever spaces we lead, we need to risk that vulnerability and we need to experience joy. Even if it means the next day the shoe fell, even if it means people go, “Oh, you’re a little funny there.” You go, “Hey, I just love Jesus. I really do.”

Sharifa >> I don’t want to be the one that cultivates a regret of joy. That can’t be our role.

Nika >> Yeah, somebody else can do that. That can’t be us. You can’t be known for that. Yeah. As I always say, haters hate, lovers love. I think people who are hype people, hype. Right? There’s a sense of you cultivate what it is that you desire. And I think if someone’s vulnerable enough to express joy in our churches, I think we should protect vulnerability, not exploit it. And that should be a posture that we have over and over again.

Sharifa >> Amen.

Nika >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> I feel like that is a great place for us to stop for today. Although we could talk about this for hours.

Nika >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> But Nika, I was wondering if you would like to pray for the people who are listening, who want access to this joy and want to cultivate joy.

Nika >> Yeah, I would love to. Let’s pray.

Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit, your word is very clear. And what a gift that you preserve that for us from the scroll from 600 B.C to the Scriptures we have in our hands today, your Word, your people and your Spirit declare you are a God of delight. That when we are in your presence, there is fullness of joy.

And so God where we do not experience that yet, would you help us to not run from that, to feel shame from that, to worry about what is lacking, but instead would turn to you and ask you to give us more? Would you help us to build rhythms? Would you help us to build spaces where we can encounter delight, not just from you, but from each other? Would you make those places safe and loving and kind and good?

God, I pray for my friends who are feeling sorrow that you would comfort them. I pray for my friends who are feeling grief that you would remind them that though they weep for the night, joy does come in the morning. Would you make us more like your Son? Joyful. Yes, sorrowful but joyful still. Would you bless my friends with the gift of joy, God? We ask this in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. And God’s people said Amen.

Sharifa >> Amen. Well, thank you, Pastor Nika for your time. This was rich.

Nika >> Thanks.

Sharifa >> I appreciate it. And I’ll be praying for you for this funeral coming up.

Nika >> Thank you. I really do appreciate that.

Sharifa >> For all of us who are listening or watching, if you would like to see more podcast videos, resources, you can do so by going to our website at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Thank you.

Nika >> It’s been a pleasure. It’s always good to see you, friend.

Amy Julia Becker

How do our churches and groups become communities of belonging? Our guest speaker, Amy Julia Becker, describes herself, “Through my writing and speaking, I desire to challenge assumptions about the good life, proclaim the inherent belovedness of every human being, and help us envision a world of belonging where everyone matters.”

Amy is the author of To Be Made Well, White Picket Fences, Small Talk, and A Good and Perfect Gift. In this conversation Amy Julia joins Kay Daigle to talk about ways that churches can become communities of belonging for people with disabilities.

You can link to a video of this conversation if you prefer.

Don’t miss BOW’s many other resources on caring well for our neighbors.

Amy Julia has suggested some resources that work for groups that include people with disabilities. Two ministries, With Ministry and Bethesda, have created resources for groups that include people of all abilities. Also Erik Carter’s Wheel of Belonging that provides a visual picture of the things people with disabilities need in order to feel that they belong. All of these resources can help churches and their groups become communities of belonging.

0:33 –Welcome & introductions

Kay >> I’m Kay Daigle and I’d like to welcome you to this episode of the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast and Video Series. Our special guest today is Amy Julia Becker. Welcome, Amy Julia.

Amy Julia >> Thank you for having me, Kay. I’m really glad to be here.

Kay >> We are so excited to have you. Amy Julia is a writer, and I would call her a deep thinker. She’s a disability advocate. She’s a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Seminary, where she earned a master of divinity degree. She’s an author of a number of books, including A Good and Perfect Gift, White Picket Fences, Small Talk, and her latest book, To Be Made Well.

So, Amy Julia, let’s begin by telling our audience what happened in your life that really caused you to see the world differently and become an advocate for people with disabilities?

Amy Julia >> Sure. Yeah. Well, again, thank you for having me. And I would say it’s interesting because if I look back on my whole life, there have been multiple moments that have caused me to see the world differently. But the one that really changed my perspective or began a change in perspective in terms of disability came when I was 28 years old.

And my husband I had been married for a number of years actually. At that point we got married pretty young and we were having our first baby. And when I gave birth on December 30th, 2005, two hours later, actually, the nurse called my husband out of the room. He came back into the room and told me that the doctors suspected our daughter had Down syndrome.

I knew very little about Down syndrome at that time, or even anything related to disability and especially intellectual disability. And so I would not say that my perspective changed immediately, but that was the beginning of a really big shift in the way I thought about disability. But honestly, ultimately, it was a shift in how I thought about our humanity, not just in terms of my daughter, but in terms of all of us.

Kay >> I read your book that tells that story, and I so appreciated just your honesty about your feelings and the journey that you went through in that time. So let’s talk about disability and let’s talk about the church. We’re really going to try to focus a little bit on how churches become welcoming spaces for people with disability. Tell us what you see happening in the church that is unwelcoming and how we can change that to make churches more welcoming.

Amy Julia >> Sure. You know, it is obviously each church is an individual space and community. And what I would say is there are some very basic things that can be unwelcoming and those might be architectural so that might be having experiences of people who use wheelchairs. And the only ramp that is available is, you know, outback next to the dumpsters with things pushed against the door that have to be moved, it’s clearly saying, sure, we have a ramp here and it’s going to be hard for you to get into the building.

Right? I mean, so there’s some architectural things that might communicate exactly the opposite of welcome. And those are worth looking at. And generally in terms of statistics, one out of five people says they are experiencing disability of some kind. Most churches probably do not have 20% of their congregation that they would say are experiencing disability. If there are no people with disabilities in your church, then something you’re doing is not welcoming them because they’re in your community.

So I think that is just helpful to think about. Actually, one of the other things that is harder to understand as far as whether it’s communicating welcome or not, is the presence of specialized programing for people with disabilities. Because sometimes if you are a family with someone in your family having disabilities, you don’t want there to be a separate program for one child than others.

Or as an adult, you don’t necessarily want to be segregated from other people because of your disability. You want to be a part of the body of Christ. That, again, is not always the case. You might have kids who have behavioral concerns or sensory issues, and they really need protected spaces. So this is a harder one, I think.

But again, individual churches can actually talk to parents and talk to kids and talk to adults and say, What do you need? How can we welcome you here and make this space one where you belong? There are lots of things. Again, depending on size, you know, you can obviously have people who have large print or if you’ve got people with intellectual disabilities, sometimes having more graphics and graphics alongside words to communicate, things can be helpful.

Having more embodied experiences of worship can be a helpful way to welcome people who are not, as able to read quickly lines of text and really looking for ways to build community that don’t depend upon either everyone having the same physical or intellectual abilities. All of those things can communicate. Welcome. And I guess it’s the inverse of that that might suggest you’re not welcome here.

Kay >> Absolutely. We were members of a large church some time ago, and my mother was, she didn’t have a disability, but she was old enough where walking far was difficult for her.

Amy Julia >> Yeah.

Kay >> And I guess that is a disability.

Amy Julia >> Yeah.

Kay >> I didn’t think of it as actually a disability, but she really couldn’t walk far because she didn’t actually walk enough and didn’t have the endurance to walk very far. And the handicapped parking area was actually not very close to the main area of worship.

Amy Julia >> Right.

Kay >> The door was, yes, close to the parking places. But the door that led to that particular area was not close to the main area of worship. And so really the only way that you could do it was to drive through the front, let her out by herself, which

Amy Julia >> Had its own issues.

Kay >> Yeah. She wanted somebody to walk with her. And if I was with my husband, it was fine. He could drive the car, we could get out. But if we didn’t have him, it was really difficult. And she wasn’t comfortable going in there by herself. And from the front, it wasn’t much closer to the area that we were walking to. It was a little bit closer. And she felt more comfortable, I think. But that just showed me what you think may be a great area, isn’t always. I guess if you talk to people, you might learn that it’s really in the wrong location.

Amy Julia >> And I think that is such a great illustration on so many levels. One that, as you said, and I’ve certainly experienced this with my own grandparents and parents now where I’m like, Oh, they don’t have a disability, they just use a walker. And you’re like, Well, maybe that would be counted as a disability. And it’s just a funny way in which we identify people.

So I like that you identified that. But then also recognizing I did the same thing in my church, I noticed someone who uses a cane having trouble getting in to the church door. So I brought it up at a council meeting and we built a ramp. And then I noticed the same person with the cane struggling to get inside the church door again.

And I finally actually talked to her and said, What do you need in order for it to be easier to get in? And she said, Well, I need a railing in addition to the ramp, you can’t just put a ramp there and make it easier for me. And it was exactly what you were saying. It all worked out because we had put the ramp as it happened in a accessible place. For both the sanctuary and the parking lot. And so we could just add a railing to it. But the fact that none of us thought maybe we should talk to the people who would actually be using this, and that happens all the time. There’s a disability kind of slogan, “nothing about us without us”.

And I think that sums it up really well that we who are not experiencing the same challenges physically or intellectually can presume to know things that we really don’t know. And that is such a welcoming thing in and of itself. How can we make sure that this space is accessible for you? Or in the case of like a parent with a small child, how can we make sure that this nursery or this Sunday school classroom or this whatever we’re talking about is accessible and welcoming for your family?

I’m sure there are things we will learn, and the process of having that conversation is an act of welcome in and of itself.

Kay >> Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I like being asked about things that affect me. And of course, people with disabilities would like to be asked how to help them as well. I totally understand that. That’s really helpful. And it’s such a basic thought. What if we ask them? Maybe we’ll get some different answers. Yeah, what else?

And as we think about special programs and how to staff those, do you feel like the people in our church, let’s say that they had a Sunday morning class for some people with disabilities of some kind, mental disabilities, possibly some physical disabilities. What kind of training would the people need in order to really effectively love on the people in the group?

Amy Julia >> That’s a great question. There’s a guy named Erik Carter who’s now at Baylor University. He was at Vanderbilt, and he’s created something called The Wheel of Belonging, specifically looking at questions about people with disabilities in church context. And what I love about the Wheel of Belonging is that he says we think that this is going to need training and you’re going to have to tear down parts of your sanctuary in order to get wheelchairs accessible.

And he’s like, actually, what people with disabilities want are the same thing that everybody else wants. And it doesn’t mean that they are going to be received like you can get to those things in exactly the same way. But they want to be welcomed. They want to be known, they want to be befriended, they want to be loved, they want to be included. They want to be needed, have ways in which they can serve.

Just as so many people in our churches want to be able to not just receive ministry, but actually be a part of the ministry. So again, that’s going to look different from person to person. And it’s not to say, oh, no training needed, just jump right in there. We don’t want to be presumptuous. At the same time, the basics of human connection, kindness, friendship, those are really what people need as far as training, and curiosity.

So our daughter Penny has Down syndrome, which means she has an intellectual disability. It also can involve some physical disability just in the sense that she is less kind of manually dexterous than other kids. But that’s not how it’s going to present quite in the same way. So with intellectual disability, people often assume A) that the person with the intellectual disability can’t speak for themselves. That’s often wrong. That’s a wrong assumption. So Penny knows, she’s now 18, that if someone speaks to her directly, they are respecting her, they look her in the eye.

And honestly, her friends who don’t have that same verbal ability, they also know that someone is giving them respect when they are looked in the eye and someone speaks to them, even if somebody else has to speak on their behalf or they’re using perhaps a communication device. So I think that sense of like make eye contact.

And Penny, when she was younger, she sometimes would get overwhelmed and sometimes she would be overwhelmed because she was upset about something. Sometimes it was overwhelming because there had been a change of plans and that was really challenging for her and she would tend to shut down. So she would just kind of withdraw within herself and not be able to speak. And eventually we learned in our family that when that happened, that actually for her the easiest way to communicate her for herself and by herself was through writing.

And so if I if she was upset about something, I would usually find. And she actually told me this, that I could write, what are you upset about? And she could write the answer, but she couldn’t speak it. That’s the type of thing that you can’t say that’s just not true for every kid with intellectual disabilities.

But if you are starting to get to know Penny and you notice that she’s shutting down instead of thinking, I must be doing something wrong or she must have a problem that can’t be resolved, to go in this case to the mother and say, hey, your child seems to be shutting down. I’m not sure what’s going on and have a conversation. That really is going to go a far away.

That said, last thing I’ll say here, there are definitely resources available for churches. There’s a ministry, I think it’s called “With,” but I might be wrong about that. We’ll have to check. But that they have just developed materials for integrated Bible study. When you’re trying to have a Bible study with intellectual disabilities and typical people in the same room together. And there certainly are others. There’s an organization called Bethesda that’s done Bible studies specifically for a group of people with intellectual disabilities. And there certainly are more resources out there as well.

Kay >> That’s wonderful. Can you provide us with a list of some of the resources you’ve already named and you might name in the rest of this conversation?

Amy Julia >> Yeah.

Kay >> And it’ll be downloadable on our website for those of you listening, as soon as we post this podcast.

Amy Julia >> Sure.

Kay >> As I think about churches welcoming people with disability, I know that there’s a young man in our church. I’m not sure exactly how old he is, but he obviously has a hard time sitting. He doesn’t sit in church and he moves around a lot. And sometimes he makes some loud noises. And I’m just sure that out of a large congregation, there are people who have probably complained and thankfully they have allowed him to stay because you can tell when music is going, he’s enjoying it. I mean, he’s rocking back and forth. He seems to love to be there. And I’m really thankful that he is still coming there.

But I did read an article recently about someone whose husband was one of the pastors in the church. And basically the church told them that their child who had some similar disabilities, I’m not exactly sure what they were, that their child was not welcome in the service. What can we do about that?

Amy Julia >> Yeah. So this goes back to kind of what is our assumption of welcome as a congregation and what’s the posture of our heart, especially towards people who don’t conform to the expectations that we’ve always had. And that is something that we can address in lots of different ways. Some is by doing some teaching. We can teach not just about disability, but about kind of human difference. And what it means to welcome those who are not behaving in the ways that we expect.

There’s, I think, a lot of scripture that can speak to that. And again, trying to do that, I would say with an understanding of mutuality, I think 1 Corinthians 12 & 13 are really helpful here. The idea of the body of Christ, where the nose needs, the elbow needs, the kneecap needs the brain, you know, and we can keep going and recognizing how incredibly different those body parts are and yet how much we all need one another.

So trying to do some teaching along those lines, but then also recognizing that what comes after 1 Corinthians 12 in terms of being the body of Christ and having different gifts is a passage about love that says you can have all the gifts in the world and if you don’t have love, which starts with patience, literally, that list of what love is, it starts with patience.

If we don’t have that, we’re nothing. And so again, I think there’s a role for teaching. There’s also a role for modeling. And so that might be having someone with a disability read scripture from up front or participate in, whether it’s ushering or whatever an appropriate activity is for people with disabilities, but saying not just you have we tolerate your presence in the pews, but we recognize you as a contributor and a potentially even a leader within our congregation.

If that again, not everyone is going to be a leader and it’s fine if that’s true of people with disabilities, but that those opportunities are even out there, that people can be kind of held up and modeled in that way. And then I think sometimes if you have someone who is what would be perceived by others as being disruptive, there are two things that can happen.

One is, from up front, there could be some, again, message not singling out that individual and saying, we’re really glad Justin is here today, even though he makes noises that you might not understand. Right? That could feel really uncomfortable and awkward. But to say we are a congregation that really welcomes you as you are, I mean, to make literally an announcement from up front that says we want to welcome you and we know that sometimes it’s hard to be neighbors to one another. So, again, you’re trying to welcome the person who feels uncomfortable with the guy who’s speaking “out of turn.” So I think that that’s posture of welcome.

Another thing I’ve heard about, especially for parents of children typically on the autism spectrum, who, again, are kind of making noises that you don’t expect, I have heard over and over again of someone in the pew behind them coming over and then expecting that they are going to be chastised for bringing their child into church and instead saying, “I’m so glad you’re here with your family today.”

So there is just a sense of, yes, there might be people who complain. There also can be people who say, “I’m so glad to be in this space with you,” and tell the family that also tell the leadership of the church that because generally the leadership of the church is only hearing from the people who are upset, not from the people who say, I am really glad to be a part of a community that welcomes whoever it is.

So those are just some thoughts on what we can do to really, again, create that environment of welcome from up front, but also from the back.

Kay >> Right, right. And really what we’re talking about here is just loving one another. Isn’t it?

Amy Julia >> Yeah.

Kay >> Just loving the other person for who they are and welcoming them to the church as Jesus welcomed to everyone.

Amy Julia >> Absolutely.

Kay >> That’s what we need to do. And I’ve heard you mention the idea of a place of belonging, and I think that’s a wonderful phrase to use for what the church should be for people with disabilities.

What does that require from us as individuals to help create that sacred space? We’ve talked more about the church, but what about just us as individuals creating welcome for those who come? And you’ve mentioned going over and saying something to the family and that kind of thing, but do you have any other ideas on that?

Amy Julia >> So I mean, again, I would say posture of the heart is where it begins and then practice of the people, right? We have to put those hearts into action. And that is usually going to happen in relationship, not always. But I think about for me, recognizing that there is more. Exclusion is pretty easy to understand, you’re not welcome here, you’re excluded from here. Tolerance, you’re welcome here, but we’re just tolerating you. Inclusion goes a step beyond that in terms of we not only are tolerating your presence, but we’re glad you’re here. Belonging is we wouldn’t be us without you. You matter here, right? You’re not just welcome here, but you matter.

We see you as a gift to this community. Just as much as we see you as someone who needs this community. There’s a sense of mutuality. And that only happens with practice and taking time. And again, that’s true for us with each other when we’re not talking about disability, but it’s certainly true when we are talking about disability, when we’ve got someone in our congregation who does not communicate in the same ways or who does not move in the same ways, who maybe can’t express the same interests or offer the same type of impressive singing voice or something like that.

It might take longer or it might be harder to say, “Okay, Lord, how can I see the image of God in this person and receive from them, believe that they are a gift to me, and receive that gift from them?”

I often think back to when our daughter Penny was actually about three years old. So a long time ago we had two teenage years with her twins with Down syndrome come over to our house. And I was still very much like unfamiliar with the world of Down syndrome at that time. But I had gotten this idea in mind that everyone is a gift and I need something from everyone I encounter. And that is as true of the teenager with Down syndrome as it is of the Nobel Prize winner. But I haven’t necessarily practiced that idea. So I think that my posture, my heart posture was good. I didn’t know how to put it into practice.

And so Molly and Maggie came over and they not only had Down syndrome, they both were on the autism spectrum. They did make noises that I didn’t know how to respond to. They both were still carrying dolls. They were lovely, obedient to their parents, but I couldn’t have a conversation with them. And I really over the course of our night together, at first I found myself kind of sinking, like, oh, gosh, what if I’m wrong? They seem to be people who just need me. They need me to do things for them. Or they need their parents.

Thankfully, we had a couple of hours together, and at this point, our son William was six months old and he was a very wiry, tense, colicky baby who just squirmed and cried for most of about nine months until he could walk. Thankfully he walked early.

Anyway, he was about six months old at the time. And there was this moment in the evening where I walked into the living room and William was lying on the floor, kind of limp as a rag doll, in a way I’d never seen him before. And I don’t remember whether it was Maggie or Molly, but one of them had her hand on him, and she just was sitting with him. And he’s lay there gazing at her as calm as I had ever seen him in his entire life when he was awake. As if peace itself had sat down next to him. And it was one of those things where I was really cool, but I also thought that maybe I was making this up in order to feel good about my ideas of mutuality.

I just said to her mom, I said, You know, Holly, I’ve never seen William be so calm before that so sweet, something like that. And she said, Oh, yeah, that’s Maggie’s gift. And I said, What do you mean? And she was able to tell me of multiple times in Maggie’s life when she had seen someone in the room who was upset and gone and put her hand on them, whether it was like an elderly woman or a young person, a baby in this instance.

And that her presence was peace. It was. And it was just fascinating to me because it was like I needed that posture of my heart. I needed to be looking for it. But it also was not going to come quickly and it was not going to be something that was valuable in this impressive way. But truly, it was a gift, and it was one her mom knew about.

Kay >> Wow. I love that story.

Amy Julia >> It was really a beautiful, truly transformative moment for me. You asked about that earlier in terms of I want to believe that this is true, now I believe it’s true. That every person I encounter has a gift to give and they need something from me. This is a mutual thing. I knew I liked that idea, I wasn’t sure it was true until that moment.

Kay >> Well, I think that’s just a wonderful idea for us to think about as we encounter other people. Your idea of there’s a gift here that I need to search for, that I need to watch for. What gift is God given this person that they’re giving to the rest of us in the world? That’s a wonderful mindset to go into such conversations, I think.

As a parent of a child with disabilities, how else can the church or just those of us who want to help in some way, how do we help you as parents?

Amy Julia >> That’s a great question. The thing that I think is kind of universally hard about being a parent of a disabled child comes down to time. So sometimes there’s hardship that has to do more with there’s real pain that this person is experiencing in their body. And that’s a really hard thing as a parent to know you’ve got a child who’s in pain. Or sometimes the hard thing is that they’ve got a specialized diet or serious allergies, so there are lots of different hard things that can happen.

But I would say pretty universally it takes more time to be in a disabled body or mind than to be in a typical one. And so that sense of helping out when it comes to providing time, that is one thing that I think we can give each other in general, but certainly we can give to our friends who are experiencing disabilities. And within that, again, I’ll go back to curiosity in terms of just asking, what are the particulars of a situation. But for the most part, I would say time.

And then the second thing I would say is friendship. Yes, sure, there are parents who need that friendship. But kids with disabilities and adults with disabilities even more so actually, loneliness is really a real problem, a real hardship. And it can be intimidating for those of us who are in more typical bodies and minds to think about what it would mean to be friends with someone who’s disabled. And yet that is a gift we can give. And as we were just talking about, it will only be a gift that we receive as well because we get to know this person. But the gift of friendship would be a tremendous one. And honestly, anytime someone gives friendship to Penny, they’re ultimately essentially giving it to me as well. So yeah, time and friendship are what kind of spring to mind.

Of course, there are seasons if someone is experiencing their 27th surgery where bringing a baked chicken is also really helpful. There are other ways to show up.

The last thing I’ll say is there’s a real distinction that’s important, I think, between compassion and pity. And people with disabilities and their families do not need pity. Pity is like a distancing mechanism that basically says I am so glad I’m not you. I feel bad for where you are, but I’m not there. Compassion is very different. It is I want to be with you where you are, even if that’s a painful place. So we, I think, need compassion, but we don’t need pity. And that, again, is true of most of us as humans, right? That we need compassion in the midst of hard places and people who are willing to enter in, not with easy answers or theological grids that tell us what we’ve done wrong to get us to this place or even what we’ve done right to get us to this place. But really just a sense of I’m here with you in the same way that God wants to be here with you.

Kay >> Yeah, I love that. That’s a really good distinction. I appreciate you’re adding that in here. I think that’s really important.

Well, I highly recommend Amy Julia’s books and of course, the book about her journey as the parent of a child who had been diagnosed with Down syndrome is a very honest and really it’s just a lovely book. I highly recommend it. Its name is A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny. And it was a delight for me to read that book. And I just completed your latest book and I wanted to mention that before we go, To Be Made Well. I would call it a really thought provoking read, at least for me. And I admit, I’m still processing it and I’m going to go back and reread parts of it again. Would you tell us just a little bit about it?

Amy Julia >> Yeah, absolutely. To Be Made Well in some ways is a book about healing, but not in maybe the ways we might expect. Right? So this actually happened early on in Penny’s life. Someone pointed out to me that every time we come to gospel narratives about healing, we tend to focus on the miraculous aspect of some sort of physical or bodily transformation.

But they said what’s also always going on is that that person is being restored to themselves, to God, and to community. In fact, probably the least important part is that physical transformation. But the most important part is that restoration. So I started to have a lens on different stories in the Bible and really in thinking about healing more broadly for my own life and in people around me that was not just about feeling better in my body, but actually about what does it mean to be healthy and whole.

I have a friend named Brian Brock, who’s a theologian of disability and has a son with Down syndrome, also, who’s had a lot of different medical and health challenges throughout his life. And Brian says of his son, Adam, that he’s the healthiest person he knows because he lives most fully in the presence of God.

It was those thoughts and conversations that I think, as well as some personal experiences with back pain, that led me to write, To Be Made Well, to ask the question of what does it mean to understand Jesus as a healer? So what is the nature of healing? What are the things that keep us from experiencing healing in our mind, body, spirit and community?

And what does it mean, especially for Christians to participate in an ongoing work of healing that I believe God wants to do in the world? As you know from having read it, there’s one biblical story that kind of runs through the entire book. But that story is like a guide into those topics of what is healing and what keeps me from healing and how can I participate in healing.

Kay >> Well, I very much enjoyed the book, so I wanted to give you a chance to tell people about it because I feel like a lot of people will be interested, and there’s certainly a connection with people with disabilities with your book on what it really means to be well. I really appreciate the book, and I’m really so glad that I found it and read it along with the other book.

And I’m very interested in reading the one on White Picket Fences which is about racial division, right?

Amy Julia >> Yeah. I mean, it again, you know, disability, as you can tell, is kind of my entry point into lots of different topics. But I think for me, as someone who came from married parents and is white in a country that prizes whiteness, and had access to education and all sorts of kind of social stability and what we might call social privilege, when I had a child with an intellectual disability, I realized she was both born into that same place and excluded from it.

And so that got me thinking a lot about not only what does it mean to be excluded, but also what is unhealthy about this place, this position that I find myself in as a person with social power. So thinking again about that sense of mutuality and what it means to break down social barriers, not so that other people can necessarily come in and be exactly like me, but so that we can actually give and receive and maybe make a new way forward in the world. We live in a time still, I wrote the book six years ago, something like that.

But we still live in a time of great social division and the thought of being able to respond to that with hope, with a mind towards healing, rather than with cynicism or despair or anger. That was really what I wanted to explore in that book was what does it mean, especially as people of faith, to be able to actually build bridges and break down barriers rather than create more of them? Yeah, as we live in our current moment.

Kay >> I look forward to reading the book. I really appreciate that. I think our audience by now can see that I’m right, that you’re a deep thinker, and all of these books are built on some of those thoughts, and you’ve shared them all with us as you write. I really appreciate that.

You can find Amy Julia’s website at AmyJuliaBecker.com, and Becker is B-e-c-k-e-r. And all of her books are listed there, and she has a podcast. And many of you will find that interesting, and you can connect with her there.

You can also find more of our podcast episodes on our website that deal with loving others, caring for other people at beyondordinarywomen.org. Click the resources on the menu and go down to Caring Well to browse that topic and other areas where we need to care well for others as Christians. And you can also browse all of our resources there.

So thank you again, Amy Julia. Is there anything else that you’ve thought of that you want to add before we leave?

Amy Julia >> I think the only thing I will say is just to kind of underscore that the desire to care well and honestly a willingness to make mistakes in doing that, there’s courage in that. And to say I’m sorry when that’s what’s happened is really we need that so much more than some sort of perfect plan to incorporate people with disabilities. Really, what we need is, just again, time, friendship, curiosity, gentleness, compassion and anyone can offer those.

Kay >> Well, thank you for those words of encouragement. I think we all can do those things, and it won’t take any special training and it won’t take any special knowledge to be a friend and to love other people. So thank you again.

Amy Julia >> Thank you.

To BE the image of God—what does that mean and what difference does it make to you and me today?

Nika Spaulding unpacks it for those of us who are unsure or perhaps our understanding is incorrect. To BE in the image of God is a crucial concept if we want to live out our identity in Christ and interact with people in the world around us as God asks us to do.

Optionally, watch the video version of this episode.

Nika’s Suggested Resources

0:32 – Intro

Kay >> I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to this podcast/video episode. Our special guest today is Nika Spaulding. Welcome, Nika.

Nika >> Thanks, Kay. I’m excited to be here with you.

Kay >> Well, it’s always great to have you. We always love it when you are our guest. Nika is the Resident Theologian at St Jude Oak Cliff in the Dallas area. She has a Master of Theology from DTS and our topic today is about the image of God. We’re talking about what it means to be God’s image. Explain that a little bit for us, because I think we usually we would say what it means to be in the image of God, but what does it mean to be God’s image?

Nika >> Yeah, that’s really good. I like that you clarify that because I think that’s an important part of this conversation. We use the phrase image of God, or imago dei if you’ve heard the Latin one, this idea of humanity at the end of creation, God makes the heavens and the earth. He makes all these days; he fills the days. It’s incredible.

And then creation crescendos at the top and kind of breaks from the pattern. You sort of have a creation, day and night, creation, day and night, day, night. And then all of a sudden, the camera zooms in and God gets to the top of creation, which is in Genesis 1:26-27. Let’s make mankind in our image male and female and you have this image language that gets picked up there.

And what’s really interesting about that is people forever have been talking about the image of God. It’s a big idea in theology, but sometimes people will talk about it as if it’s something you can do, or it’s something that you receive, or maybe like you can bear it or you cannot bear it. And really I think an important distinction is, no, no, you just are the image of God. You don’t do something to become the image of God. We just exist as the image of God because that’s what it means to be human. It’s all humans are the image of God rather than we can act like the image of God. And one of the distinctions that I like to make is sometimes people think that we are the image of God because we’re rational.

We were talking about pets before we hit record, and I love my dog more than I probably should. But I have to accept at some point that humans are more important than my dog. I may not emotionally accept that, but I can intellectually accept that on some level. And people will say, well, yeah, because you can reason, you can marry, you can logic, sort of all these things. And it’s like, well, that then means people who with intellectual disabilities then don’t image God. And we wouldn’t say that. We would say people with disabilities, people at the end of their life, people who lose their capacity to think and reason still are the image of God.

And so when we talk about the image of God, I think it’s important to talk about it from the biblical, ancient, Near Eastern context. And how the first audience who hears they’re the image of God, what they would have thought of as opposed to what philosophers 2,000 years later would have said about it.

Kay >> So, who was the first audience for this?

Nika >> Yeah, so I love this because when we think about Genesis, the story is in the beginning. But when you think about the first audience, it’s really the people coming out of the Exodus. And so, Moses writes the first five books, and we believe that he wrote them around the time. So if you think about it, the people have been recently enslaved by Egypt. They probably have been around foreign gods and foreign practices, and Moses rescues them. And the natural question is, who’s this God that just rescued us? And Moses is like, I’m so glad you asked. And so, the first part of Genesis 1 is this introduction to who God is and what God has created. And then he tells you and by the way, I’m not only going to introduce you to who God is, but I’m introducing you to who you are in relation to God. And that’s what Genesis 1 is doing.

And so it’s really a people who are coming out of oppression, who are going to go into the promised land as God has promised them. And they’re asking and answering the question Who is God and who am I, who are others? And that is who it’s written to. And I think that’s really important because they have a different idea of what it means to be the image of God than I would if I had never heard this and somebody said I was the image of God, I don’t actually know what I would have thought of, but they would have had really concrete ideas based on the world that they live in.

Kay >> And what would that be?

Nika >> Yeah, I love this. One, I’m stealing all these ideas from Carmen Imes, who wrote Being God’s Image. And then my friend Nathan Wagnong, who did his doctoral research on the image of God. And what both of them have done is they said—Okay, in the ancient Near East, which is where the people are, where they exist, where they live, what did the image of God mean then?

And there are four big things. And so the first one is this, it’s corporal. And what I mean by that is a fancy word for it’s material. It’s not an idea, but it’s a thing. And so most of the time when you hear image of God in the ancient Near East, they’re thinking of an actual statue of a god that is in a temple that’s like made of something. And that statue is meant to reflect the glory of the god that it’s representing. And so I always make the joke, it’s a material world and we’re all material girls. And so part of what it means to be the image is it’s more than intellect. Like we were just saying, it’s more than reason. It’s more than your spirit. It is your whole self bears the image of God, your hands are good, your mind is good, your body is good. And all of you, not just your mind, but all of you, is meant to reflect the glory of God. So that’s the first thing is that it’s material.

The second thing that would have been really interesting for them is when God says, we’re going to make all of humanity our image male and female, he democratizes the image of God. And where that’s different is in the ancient world, either the image of god was an actual statue that represented the god or it was just the king. They believe the king, the Grand Poobah, whoever was at the top was the spokesperson for God. And this is a very normal idea in the ancient world. So it’d be normal for you to think like, Oh, that guy, the one in charge, he’s the image of God. And when Moses says—No, no, no, no, no, all of us are the image of God—that would have been a really wild idea. And it tells the people who are coming out of Egypt, “You all belong to the royal family.”

One of my roommates grew up in a very sweet, loving Christian home. I did not grow up in the same environment. And so sometimes we like joke about how our childhoods are very different. And she told me she used to wear this shirt all the time in middle school that said something like, be nice to me, I’m a daughter of a king, therefore I’m a princess or something to that effect. And I want to make fun of her. And then I told her, it’s pretty good theology, though, because this idea of you’re the image of God means all of the people of God belong to God’s family, not just the king. And so that’s the same thing. So the first one is material. The second is democratized.

The third one is it’s familial language. In other words, it’s family language. One of the other places we see this image language is not just in Genesis 1, but in Genesis 5, it talks about after Adam and Eve have sinned, they’ve left the garden and then Cain kills Abel. In Chapter 5, the story moves forward and it talks about Adam has an image, Seth. And so it calls his own offspring the image of Adam and this idea of it’s kinship, it’s family language that’s connected to the image of God. And so God’s not just saying—Hey, you’re a royal people—but he’s also saying—and you’re in my family. And that, I think, would have been really wild for the ancient Near Eastern Israelites to hear this, because there were stories in the ancient world of gods having family, but they were all gods. So the idea of a God having family of humans, that is a really beautiful and incredible idea.

And then finally, the last thing is it’s functional. So it’s material, it’s democratized, it’s family, and then it’s functional. You have a role to play. And so right after God tells them you’re my image, the image is supposed do the work of God in the world, he tells them you’re to rule and reign. And that’s what people talk about. I go back to my dog. As much as I love my dog, she’s not supposed to rule my house. Now she does, we need to admit that, I’m kidding. But humans were given the responsibility to reign over creation, to do what God would want. As we say, do heaven like on earth as it is in heaven type things. That’s what an image bearer is supposed to do, an image being not a bearer, an image being.

And so we have this not only is it a beautiful privilege, but it will also have been a beautiful responsibility that the people of God would have understood as they’re coming out of Egypt that, hey, you have work to do. You’re meant to do good in the world as the representative of God here on Earth. And when you think of that, that’s a really beautiful, big, responsible way of thinking about what it is that we are still supposed to be doing, not just those in the ancient Near East.

Kay >> Do we see image of God verbiage anywhere else in the Scripture?

Nika >> Yeah, I mean, I think this is where Jesus comes and you have this incredible Colossians passage where it says he’s the visible image of the invisible God, right? And you have this incredible moment where you go, if you want to know what God’s like, look at Jesus. And that can go too far, right? Where people are kind of like, well, the Old Testament God is a little wonky and wild. I’ve read those stories of the flood and the conquest, but Jesus, tender, mild Jesus in Colossians cuts right through that. And says, no, no, no. He is the image of that. And yet then Jesus calls us to follow him and to do those very same things.

And so, this idea of image, it’s taken from Genesis and it moves all the way through the biblical story as if to say, hey, this is a real responsibility that we all have. And when we’re not sure how to do it, God sent himself to be the perfect representative for us. But the image of God is something that it’s a really beautiful theme that gets pulled all the way through. And we see it most beautifully in Jesus. But we’re not off the hook, right? He goes and he says, hey, do all the things that I’ve taught you to do, teach all the things I’ve taught you to teach. And I think that’s really important in this understanding of being God’s image, not bearing God’s image.

And I think about, I taught on this recently and I said, “Okay, imagine, I live in a world where my family has always kind of ( I’ve said this to you before, Kay) where we make strong women and kind men.” So the idea that somebody would come to my family and say, “Hey, we think guys and gals are both important.” We would have gone—yeah. I mean, that wouldn’t have been earth shattering to me.

But I think about, Moses leading the people out of Egypt. And I try to imagine myself in the sandals of a 14-year-old Israelite girl. And she lives in a patriarchal world. There’s a pecking order man, women, children, slaves. She’s just been oppressed by Egypt. And I’m sure, that has a psychological effect upon you that you don’t think you’re valuable and worthy. And she’s been, you know, they’re not wealthy. They’re an enslaved people that they’re trusting God to provide their daily bread.

They’re not exactly the elite that are heading into the promised land. And then here’s Moses telling her you matter, you belong to God, you’re in God’s family and you have a role to play. And you also are part of that royal family. I just think that message probably would have been hard to internalize.

I think that is part of what makes the image of God hard is it almost seems too good to be true. And if it was too good to be true then, I still think there’s probably many of us today who go, really? I’m the image of God and I’m going, well, yeah, actually, I think I think that’s really important for you to know about yourself.

Kay >> Yeah. And I was about to say definitely that same problem is true today. People cannot fathom that. They can’t accept it. They can’t understand how that could possibly be true.

Nika >> Yeah. Well, and I think one of the difficulties about the image of God is not only is it hard to believe for ourselves, but if I put myself back in the sandals of the Israelite girl, I think, one, I would be blown away that I as a female could be the image of God, because most only men. There were female goddesses. But for Yahweh, who likes to call himself father. I would be going, in what way am I the image of God? So, I would have been blown away by that. I would have been challenged to realize I can’t bear God’s image alone. That’s part of this language as well as like male and female.

This idea of a community bears God’s image. And that would be hard, where there was so much division between men and women in the ancient world. I have guy friends now I go play pickleball with and goof off. But really, in the ancient world, there was a male domain and a female domain and they cross, but not in the same ways that in more modern times that we see. And so, I think that would have been a challenge. Sure. But, where I would have probably maybe been a little frustrated, is when I would have been thinking about those stinking Egyptians who treated me so poorly and wronged my family, wronged the people I love for so long. And I would have been challenged by that message that they, too, are God’s image.

And I think that is not only the double side of this that makes the image of God hard is if we get to the point where we accept it for ourselves, which we should, we also have to accept it for every human. And we as humans have a tendency to want to degrade and diminish. And, sort of, well, I’m an image of God, me and mine are, yeah, it makes sense that we are the image of God but not the Egyptians, right? And God puts a challenge right there in Genesis 1 to see all of humanity through the lens that God does, which is they are ultimately the image of God. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t boundaries. It doesn’t mean there isn’t justice. Certainly, all of that applies. But we as Christians are too quick to dehumanize in our rhetoric and sometimes in our behavior and Genesis 1 stands in stark contrast to that and is a challenge to us, not just for ourselves, but for the way that we treat our neighbors.

Kay >> Well, I mean, isn’t it true that really for centuries the church leadership said that women were not made in the image of God? It was only men.

Nika >> Yeah. This is why you got to go to seminary sometimes and learn all these words and all these things, right? There’s this really beautiful interplay in the Hebrew where there’s sort of a source and a thing that comes out of the source. And what I mean by that is out of adam, man, comes adamah, woman. Out of the earth comes the humankind. You have this corresponding language.

And when you read the Hebrew, there seems to be this really strong correspondence between adam and adamah. When you translate it into the Greek, now you got aner and gune. And so suddenly it seems as if you’re saying, man is made in the image of God and woman is made in the image of man. And when you do that, you inevitably end up with a pecking order. You end up with God’s up here, and then men are here and then women are here. And that is not at all the language that is in Genesis 1 when you read the Hebrew and certainly not the message that is throughout.

I always joke that people go, why is there two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, and I’m like it’s because God’s a really good storyteller. And so in Genesis 1, he backs the camera out 30,000 feet, creating the world and everything in it. Then he zooms the camera in and suddenly you have a really relational God talking about Adam and Eve. Adam doesn’t have a companion suitable for himself. He brings in all the animals and gives names for them. And then he creates a woman out of Adam’s side. And even there where he talks about an ezer, that language, that Hebrew word for what a woman is. Many times our English Bibles translate it as “helper,” and that’s not really a good translation of what it is. It really is more like a suitable companion, which is how the NET, our alma mater DTS, translates it.

So ezer is already a word that has a lot of strength. And so I think over the years, whether it be unintended bias or not, it’s crept in. And we’ve allowed this idea of the image of God to be reserved for one half of humanity. When the Hebrew is saying, hey, man is incomplete without woman and the two of them together bear God’s image. And that has such huge implications for what we even understand what it means.

I always tell people if you lived alone on an island and you had no other people on that island, I would say to you, sure, you’re going have to do the best you can to be God’s image there. But if you lived out on that island and there were other people there, but you just refuse to talk to them, you’re not actually living into the image of God because God himself exists in a community, three persons, one essence as a Trinitarian God.

And so, when God himself says, let us, plural, make humanity male and female, you see this community piece of the image of God that goes missing when only men are the image bearers. And so, I think it’s an important distinction and hopefully the better writing is coming out and kind of putting that away. But you’re absolutely right, for a long, long time, men were the image of God and women were grateful to have men to be after. And thankfully, I think we’re coming away from that and getting better theology and better study on this.

Kay >> Right. I totally agree. I wanted to bring it up, though, because some of our audience may have heard this, that men are made in the image of God and women are not, or they knew that for many centuries that was the teaching. So how is it that we know that that’s not the case? So thank you for laying that out for us. I think that’s really important for women to understand.

Nika >> Absolutely.

Kay >> They are made equally in the image of God, just as men are.

Nika >> Yeah. And I think, you look at the Bible, people sometimes say the Bible is not good for women, right? Or they’ll make accusations against God. I go—I don’t know, if you read it seems like God really loves women. He seems like he’s constantly using them. I mean, you look at the Deborahs and the Marys and the Nymphas.

This weekend on Mother’s Day, I preached about Eunice and Lois. Paul is writing to Timothy, who’s planted a church in Ephesus. And he tells Timothy, hey, I know that you have a sincere faith because of your mom and your grandma and they passed that on to you. And I think, here’s this older man writing to a younger man. Things are hard in Ephesus when they planted the church. There was rioting, they have pagan worship of Artemis there. Things are tough for Timothy. Things are tough. And Paul doesn’t say to him, hey, man, buck up, eat Bible for breakfast. And get out there and be a man. Instead, he says, hey, don’t forget you have a sincere faith because you had a good mom and a good grandma. And I think there’s something really tender and beautiful and I made the statement, “Every good man knows a mom got them there and every good woman that was a mom got them there.”

And I think this is important to understand: God allows his own son to be entrusted to a young woman. And there is so much about the Bible that’s beautiful. And when we start with the right understanding that men and women are the image of God and that means we need each other. Then hopefully that moves into spaces of cooperation and love and community as opposed to the fighting and the friction. The world does fighting and friction just fine. What if Christians could come together and do unity and love and companionship? We might show the world there’s a different way.

Kay >> Yeah. The whole idea of being the image of God, I never heard this. I wish I could remember exactly when it was that I began to hear this teaching. I had gone through Genesis. I understood we were created originally in the image of God, but nobody talked about what that meant for us. It was just a fact out there: we are made in the image of God. But a fact that did not apply to me necessarily, did not mean anything to me as far as how I was to live. It’s real interesting.

I’m so happy that this has become just more common teaching, I suppose. That you hear this now a lot, that people remind us that we’re made in the image of God and so are all these other people that we don’t necessarily like. They are also made in the image of God. And we need to treat them as being made in the image of God. And it certainly has application to, as you said, people who have less mental capacity than the average person. It has so many ramifications. It was sad to me that I had never really heard any of this until I was probably 50 years old.

Nika >> It’s sad to me too, because it was actually one of the driving ideas in the early church movement. I read a book by John Dickson. It’s called Bullies and Saints, and he rightly takes some of the complaints about Christianity, says, you’re right, that was not a good moment. But we also do have good moments and it’s a really beautiful book.

And he talks about in the early about 200 to 300, it was so normal to infanticide in the Roman world. You know, if you had a child and couldn’t afford it, you just dispose of the baby by throwing it out into the wild. And he had so many firsthand primary documents where people were just like-hey. And there was a soldier to his wife who said—hey, if it’s a boy, I’ll send you a little more money, but if it’s a girl, go ahead and toss her out. And it was Christians, driven by this idea of the image of God, saying hold on: even babies, even children, even infants are worthy of protection and goodness. In so many worlds, even our own today, because children just have full status, they’re not protected in the same way that men or adults or money-makers are, so there are massive implications.

I think we lost something along the way when we got rid of the image of God, and I’m grateful people are bringing it back.

Because the ways I was introduced to it, Kay, is that you’re in the image of God because you ‘re creative and God is creative, and God is powerful, and you can be powerful. And I thought, “What if I’m not powerful? What if I don’t have those abilities? Am I still the image of God if I end up in a coma? Am I still in the image of God if I have a disability?”

I’m thankful there are people like Carmen Imes and other scholars have come along and said that we’ve got to think about this in a more holistic, whole life way. And the biblical context has been a real gift where people have studied the ancient Near East and gone—we’ve gotten this wrong and if we get it right, that has huge implications for how we view ourselves and our own worth and dignity and how we view others’ worth and dignity.

I think this is a really important concept for the church and grateful we get to talk about it for Beyond Ordinary Women. It should be a normal part of theologic discussions in our churches.

Kay >> Absolutely. And I hear it far more frequently now then I did. And I’m really thankful for that. So what other applications are we to take away for today? If I am the image of God, what does that do?

Nika >> Yeah. So, the first big one is you belong to the family of God. And we had a tough couple of weeks at our church. A young man passed away unexpectedly. And so on Mother’s Day, knowing that his mom would be there, I said, we need moms but we also need mamas. And I talked about in the Bible there is what we call fictive kinship—this idea of you’re not just your family is the family, but the family of God you belong to. And I made the point, I believe that God understanding that family was everything in the ancient world said—look, families can fail; people can fail; dads can fail. Life is cruel. You can lose people. So when you belong to me, you belong to a bigger family.

I’m sure everyone listening can think of people in their lives who have been like moms, who have been like dads, who have been spiritual brothers and spiritual sisters to them. And so that’s one of the things is when you understand that you are the image of God, then you understand you belong to a big spiritual family, which is a comfort if your family hasn’t been great and even if your family’s been great, it’s a responsibility to go out and be somebody’s spiritual mom and daughter and sister and care and love for them.

And so I think we have to take that seriously, that we belong to the family of God. And I made the comment, sometimes this looks like all the moms in our body took care of the reception, because the mom who lost her son was hurting. She couldn’t do the reception. And that’s what it looks like when you belong to the family of God. You step up and you care and you love when times are hard. And so, I think that’s the first one.

I think the second one is we bear the responsibility of bringing heaven to earth. That idea of we are called to rule and reign. We didn’t lose that when we forfeited Eden. And I think sometimes maybe we go—well, we ate the apple and we’re out. And I go—no, no, no, no, no. The idea of (Even the proverbs talk about this.) that where we bring wisdom, it’s as if we’re bringing Eden to the world. Right? The idea is we’re still supposed to be God’s representatives here, which means we’re to do the work of God’s kingdom, the work of goodness, the work of love, the work of justice, the work of mercy. All of these things that God, if you don’t know what they are, I would say read the Sermon on the Mount and just do whatever Jesus told you to do.

Kay >> Absolutely.

Nika >> Yeah. And so I’d say, start there. Read those three chapters of the Bible—5, 6, 7 of Matthew—and you’ll be set. And then keep reading because you will find other amazing things to do. But that is an important thing that no one’s off the hook. Yes, it’s a privilege to belong to God’s family. It’s a beautiful gift, but it is also a responsibility, I think one that we have to take seriously.

And then finally, I would just say, there’s no getting around it. We’ve talked about it. You have to treat everyone with worth and dignity. You just do. I don’t know a lot of Christians who go around just beating people up, right? I don’t. That has happened in our history. But the average person listening to this podcast is probably not in danger of causing any physical harm.

But I think we’re all in danger if we really check our rhetoric that we can sometimes use language that’s dehumanizing. That we can use language that is not fitting of those who you know. You can disagree with people. You can call people out for the wrongs that they’ve done. You can be just but sometimes the name calling, the gossip about them, some of these things, I just think, that’s not how we would talk if we really took seriously that that person is worthy of dignity and honor. They may not be acting like it. They may not be somebody that you need close to you in your life. But we don’t return hate with hate. We return hate with love or at least distance. And I think sometimes especially in our politics or maybe even in our, I always joke, when you watch sports, you’re just like—I hate that guy. And you think—okay. Hopefully you don’t talk like that in real life.

I always tell people, you always know if you’re too caught up in sports when someone gets injured and you think “good!” and you go—wait a minute, that’s a real person. I shouldn’t actually celebrate that. And so I think there are just times maybe we should consider our online speech, how we talk about people when they’re not in the room and maybe the ways that we talk about, when it comes to those hot button issues in life where there’s people of a different race or different political persuasion or whatever, we use terms and phrases I think we need to put away if we’re going to be serious about the image of God.

Kay >> And I think that often we categorize people because of some of those things.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> And it enables us to sort of distance ourselves from any of those or any of those problems. And that’s just not the way of Jesus. That’s not the way we image God. God is there. God is with them. And he loves them as much as he loves us. And they are made in his image. And the idea of being the image of God is one of those ways that we know we’re not supposed to live that way, that we are supposed to see people and empathize with their problems and their needs instead of blaming them for everything that’s wrong with them.

Nika >> Yeah, I think that’s so good. Yeah.

Kay >> Well, thank you Nika. This has been very helpful and hopefully it will help a lot of people out there as they think about how to live out their lives and show forth God to the world and do the work of God in the world.

We have some other resources that sort of border on this idea. A year ago, I took a trip to the border and I talked about that and seeing those people who were coming in as people instead of just numbers and a problem, and that is called “Learning to Love Our Neighbors.” And you can find that by going to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, go up to the menu, under Resources go down to the Caring Well on the menu. We also have some video and podcasts for other groups that sometimes we marginalize. We have “Sexual Identity and Gender Identity”, which is really purposed to help us understand how to love people that we don’t necessarily agree with the choices they’ve made. We have several resources on Racial Reconciliation, and we have one on Sexual Abuse in the Church.

So I think all of those are really dealing with people that we need to care and love well who are not necessarily like those in this audience. That we would be listening or watching what you’re talking about.

Nika >> I think that’s terrific. Yeah.

Kay >> So, we invite you to browse those and browse our other resources. And we thank you again, Nika. It’s always fun and a privilege to be on air with you.

Nika >> I love it. I’ll come back as often as you invite me. I love Beyond Ordinary Women. I love what you all do.

Kay >> I’ll invite you more.

Nika >> Great.

Kaitlyn Schiess

Politics and discipleship–do they go together? How should church leaders approach politics? Well, politics and discipleship do relate, but not necessarily the way that some of us as Jesus followers think. Because of the division and confusion about this subject, we at BOW called for help for this highly partisan election year. Author Kaitlyn Schiess joins Kelley Mathews to discuss what having a healthier and more biblical approach to politics would look like.

Whether you’re a church leader, a mentor or a parent, Kaitlyn can help you learn to communicate and assess political questions in a less strident way. Kaitlyn doesn’t tell us how to vote, but instead she discusses about how to think and talk about this subject well.

This episode is also available on video if you prefer.

Kaitlyn Schiess, The Liturgy of Politics, https://www.amazon.com/Liturgy-Politics-Spiritual-Formation-Neighbor/dp/0830848304

Kaitlyn Schiess, The Ballot and the Bible, https://www.amazon.com/Ballot-Bible-Scripture-American-Politics/dp/1587435969/

Vincent Bacote, The Political Disciple, https://www.amazon.com/Political-Disciple-Theology-Public-Ordinary/dp/0310516072/

Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics, https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Our-Politics-Spiritual-Renovation/dp/0310367190/

The Holy Post Podcast, https://www.holypost.com

Curiously, Kaitlyn, https://www.holypost.com/curiously

0:32 – Introduction

Kelley >> Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast. I am Kelley Mathews. And with me today is Kaitlyn Schiess. Kaitlyn is a friend from Dallas Seminary. I was long gone by the time she got there, but I went back on campus as a GTA and I actually interrupted a conversation she was having with Dr. Glahn, a mutual friend. And I learned later that that might have been the conversation where you guys were talking about you writing your first book. Was that right?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah.

Kelley >> Thank you. We’re going to be talking about the church and politics because that’s kind of like your shtick these days.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah.

Kelley >> And we welcome the wisdom you’re going to share with us. So thank you for being here. Tell us how politics and faith became your go to topic.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, I keep joking that it wasn’t something that a career counselor ever said. You know, you really should talk about the two things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table – theology and politics.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Kaitlyn >> When I went to college, I thought I was going to go to law school. So I started out as a political science major, switched to history, but thought the whole time I would go to law school. And went to a school in Virginia, Liberty University, that was very politically involved in the years that I was there. There were a lot of politicians on campus. There were a lot of media on campus asking students questions.

So at the same time that I was at a place that politics and especially the relationship between faith and politics was really central to the conversation happening around me, I was also discerning a change that felt really scary at the time, really uncertain, from going to law school to going to seminary, which I had never considered and really had no model for that. Didn’t imagine doing that.

Longer story – but I had been kind of forced into volunteering, not really volunteering forced into by my mother who was working at a church into working with middle school girls for a summer camp and had an experience both a personal spiritual experience and loved teaching them and loved being around them.

And so went to seminary in Dallas. And when I first got there thought leaving behind all my interest in politics and my interest in law, that’s just behind me now and the 2016 election was happening my first semester of seminary so it was a conversation on campus and I pretty quickly realized both that my peers around me who were preparing to pastor or to teach Bible study or to serve the church in some capacity weren’t sure how to handle this.

They both could see that politics was affecting their churches. Sometimes it was splitting their churches. It was causing great division and harm in their churches. And even outside of those extreme examples, it just was affecting how people thought about themselves and their lives and their neighbors. They could tell that there was something the church should say about this or their role in teaching people or shepherding people needed to consider politics. But they were very understandably wary of that and didn’t know what to do.

And I quickly realized, Oh, I have an interest in this. I want to keep reading and bring the gifts that I am learning to these people that are my peers. But also I kind of quickly realized I have a strange good temperament for it. It doesn’t make me as nervous as it makes some other people. So pretty quickly I realized, oh, it’s still challenging, it can still be exhausting, but I enjoy going into churches, which I spend a lot of my time now doing and helping and saying, “How could we have a better conversation about this? What biblical resources help us think about this well? What resources for having good conversations are available to us?”

And I like now being the person when a pastor or a professor at a Christian school or someone who leads a Bible study says, “I need help.” I love being the person now who says, “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It is scary, but I would really love to help you.”

Kelley >> Well, then you’re perfect for this entire conversation because that’s really what we want this video to be, a resource for leaders, specifically women. But I have a feeling these principles are going to be for anybody who are leading the church right now in another election season with the same people involved in a lot of the same tensions and conflict even that you experienced back in 2016. So this doesn’t seem to be going away.

Kaitlyn >> No.

Kelley >> And the things that you’ve learned are going to be really helpful. So let’s jump in. Right now you are a co-host with the Holy Post Podcast, which is great fun and you do a lot of great interviews. And you’ve just recently started your own podcast, called Curiously, Kaitlyn, which I think is genius, because what you do there is take really high theological questions, and I love how you put them on the spot, make theologians break it down to what a kid could understand. And all the adults in the room are breathing a sigh of relief because we all have the same questions.

Kaitlyn >> Yes.

Kelley >> And we secretly don’t feel like we can ask them anymore. And so this is a great way for the adults in the room to learn how to break down big ideas into applicable bites. Right?

Kaitlyn >> Yes. Thank you.

Kelley >> We’ll put a link to that. And hope it’s great. But what you’re doing is taking theology and making it real for our lives. And we need that in politics.

Kaitlyn >> Yes.

Kelley >> That’s how we approach it right now. So you’ve written two books on this topic.

Kaitlyn >> Yes.

Kelley >> Do you feel like the first one, maybe more in line with what we’re talking about today, The Liturgy.

Kaitlyn >> The Liturgy of Politics. Yeah. In some ways the books are very similar. In some ways they’re different. The first one does more focus on spiritual formation and how are we becoming the kind of people who can engage in politics well? And what resources does the church have? We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We have resources from our history that we can draw on. Yeah.

And the second one, The Ballot and the Bible, it seems initially like it’s about how Scripture has been used in American politics and our history, which is initially what it is about. But I keep having especially pastors, but also just regular people tell me, Oh, I got this book, and I realized it’s mostly about how we read the Bible. It was like, Yes, that’s kind of the trick. It’s really about how we read the Bible. And it’s similar to the first one in that, on one level, I am offering here some helpful ways of thinking about how we should and shouldn’t read the Bible.

But at the end of the day, a lot of the examples I’m talking about in that book aren’t examples that a list of rules for interpreting the Bible could help us solve. They’re still about spiritual formation, just like the first book is. They’re still about what kind of community are we in? What kind of practices do we have? How do we become the kind of people that when we come across a passage in Scripture that is counter to our political preferences or ask something really hard of us, that we can be the kind of people who can hear it?

I kept feeling like, Oh, these go together very well, because most of the work that I’m doing now, yes, it’s about helping people read the Bible, but at the end of the day, it still really is about how are we as communities becoming the kind of people who can read the Bible well? Not just by lists of rules, but by practices and habits and living in community together.

Kelley >> OK, so if you’re a women’s director or pastor or whatever title you want, and you have a small group who are interested in trying to figure out how do we approach this year or next six months, what’s a healthy way to step into the dialogue that’s going on around all of us?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah. Oh, that’s a great question.

One thing I would say is I think there is a role for intentional conversation about politics. As I said, a lot of my work is going to churches and saying, “OK, we’re doing a workshop on a Saturday or I’m teaching on this for a particular amount of time and we’re going to really focus on it.”

But I think what’s most powerful, which is why a lot of times when I go to churches, I ask, “Instead of giving a lecture or a sermon or a workshop to the whole group of the church, Can I spend time with the small group leaders and the Bible study teachers?” Because what I think is actually more powerful, more effective, is when our conversations about politics come about organically as we are studying Scripture together instead of saying, “Hey, show up on a Tuesday night for us to talk about politics.” Because if you do that, people come ready to fight some of the time.

Or if it’s a planned conversation, sometimes there’s just dynamics that are really hard. Whereas I have seen the most fruitful political conversations about things that people disagree on when we are six weeks into studying Jeremiah and we all are there because we care about the Bible and we care about learning what God has to say to us. And we’ve all built up some credibility with each other of like, I’m trying to understand this and I don’t know all of it. And you don’t know all of it, but I’m not coming in with an agenda of what I want to kind of shove down your throat. We are learning together about this.

And oh my goodness, this passage comes up that talks about how we use our money or talks about how our leaders should function, or talks about how God expects nations to work well. And we’re in it and we’re having a conversation and someone (because politics especially during a presidential election season is all around us in the media), someone draws a connection and says, well, if it says this here and we’re talking about this how does this apply to this policy or this politician or this issue in our community?

And it doesn’t mean the conversation won’t be hard. It doesn’t mean you don’t risk offending someone. It doesn’t mean that people won’t disagree. But it’s a very different thing for that conversation to happen when you are six weeks into a Bible study, then for you to say, hey, come with your political opinions to a weekday event and we’ll hash it out. And again, I think there can be a real role for that.

And I really love teaching people, whether it is in a one day workshop or at my own church through a multi-week Sunday school class, going, “Here’s a biblical theology of politics. Here’s Genesis to Revelation.” It’s not just a few isolated passages that explicitly talk about government. It is everything that teaches us how to live well in community. I love doing that.

But I think it’s better, and what I often tell pastors, but also just anyone who teaches the Bible, is, if you can get in the habit of every time you come to Scripture, every single verse, every single word, you assume says something both to my personal spiritual life and to my public political life. Not that it’s a verse that then tells me what policy to support or what politician to vote for, but that it shapes how I view my community and myself and my obligation to the wider world, if you can learn that as an instinct to not separate out the Bible into parts that are about me and parts that are about my community, and I teach people to approach Scripture that way, that has huge effects on how we talk about politics together because we have shared language and understanding that’s coming from Scripture, not just from our ideas about politics.

Kelley >> Yeah, I appreciate the idea that whatever we’re talking about related to politics and the Bible, they’re related. They’re connected because we are all connected.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah.

Kelley >> And that we do this in a community or in a more healthy way versus me and the TV, me and this one person, me and this article online, whatever. The Bible speaks holistically. And that’s a challenge because you only have so much time with the people under your care. And that may require long term planning for the Bible studies you might pick out. That sort of thing. But yeah, it’s more holistic. And that’s pretty tough in our culture to, I don’t know, maybe I’m just picking on culture, but I don’t see a lot of long term planning and bringing things together.

What do you think are some of the most common challenges, and you may have already touched on some of this, for pastors or any church leader specifically during an election year? This thing may be obvious, but go with the obvious.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah. One of the things that’s so hard is it’s right in your face. And the way people learn to engage it, by their media consumption and by the conversations they have outside of the church and inside the church, the way we’ve learned to engage with this is to lead with really intense emotions that we’re not always cognizant of, and our sense of identity and who we belong to is all wrapped up in our politics. And we learn that way of thinking about politics I think primarily from our media consumption. And then when it shows up in the regular life of a community, which it makes sense that it would, we’re not just dealing with policies or politicians.

Politics is about how we live together in community. Which means it’s about who we believe humans are, how we should live well together, what things we value. So it’s not bad, and it makes perfect sense that it would show up in our churches.

I would prefer that a pastor not say, “Here’s who you should vote for or what policy you should support.” But politics more broadly and how we live well together, of course, it will show up in our churches and it will show up in sermons because the Bible talks about how we should live well together. It’ll show up in our life.

But the way we have learned to engage with it is this way that is unaware of where the depth of emotion is coming from and wrapped up in identity and community. So I often will tell people if you get in a conversation at church and it’s about politics and it seems really heated really fast and you’re unsure why, it’s not just because of the policy or the politician, it’s because of all of these other things humming under the surface.

An example I often give is I remember early in my work in this having a conversation with, and now most of my conversations are with people I’m not in deep relationship with, it’s I’m traveling to a church or I’m going to a school, but this was back when it was like someone I have been ministering to for years. Have a conversation. It gets really intense. I was completely surprised by it.

And at one point I just stopped and said, “OK, this seems really important to you. Can you tell me a little bit more about why it’s so important? Why does this feel so central? Where is this emotion coming from?” And the conversation we got into had nothing to do with politics. It was about family background. It was about some past difficult experiences. It was about her sense of who she was and who were her kind of people and who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

And so I think the challenge is not only is politics wrapped up in all those things, which makes sense because of course it’s about our lives and our communities, and it makes sense that it would be all wrapped up in these emotions and stories and backgrounds, but we’re not aware of it. We don’t talk about it. We think it’s just about the policies and the politicians.

And so this is how on social media and in real life, you just get back and forth facts. And here’s my article and here’s your article, and we’re never actually scratching the surface to the deeper issues that are underneath. And that’s, I think, the real gift of people serving in ministry is you actually have this tool, this skill that a lot of people talking about politics don’t have. You’re used to going, “Hey, there’s something deeper under the surface. What questions do I need to ask? What do I know about you and your family and your background that I can ask about that can help me understand?”

But in the church, we’ve often said politics is this other sphere. It doesn’t have anything to do with our regular life. If we thought of it as no, this is part of our life, we could actually use some of the skills we’ve learned to help us do this better.

Kelley >> And we have the permission, usually, if we’re in positions of spiritual leadership we kind of have people’s permission to talk about things like this and to get a little personal. But the challenge here is being able to pull those together and remember and acknowledge that politics and how we feel about it and what we believe is integral to who we are. Not a separate partisan type of thing. Yeah. Good.

So one of my questions you’ve already kind of jumped into, What do you think are the deeper spiritual issues that we need to grapple with beyond our favorite policy? And I think you touched on that when identity and finding that we tend to do that whether we know it or not. We find it in outside people, and really we’re supposed to find it in Christ. So those are ongoing growth and struggles that we all deal with. So if you’re running a Bible study sometime this year, in the fall even, and you have the option of addressing politics in some way, what direction might you go?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, I will say at my own church for our women’s Bible study this last year, we went through the Book of Revelation and it was really good. I know that sounds like such an awful answer to give, but it’s really good and really helpful. And part of what we did, and we had to do some work at the beginning because people are scared of Revelation.

So we did some work at the beginning that was like, you don’t have to be scared. Here’s all the reasons you don’t have be scared. Here’s the ideas about this you may have picked up from like pop culture that are not true. They’re not from the Bible. And I think it helped that it was a group of us women who wrote it. So it was like, we don’t have to pick between the camps of whose interpretation of this were going with. It was internal to our church and we’re lucky to have a bunch of very theologically trained women to write a study like this.

But what I loved about it, this was this last Bible study season but we were already in it. Honestly, the political season stretches so far now. But what was so great about it was one Revelation helps us kind of get appropriately disoriented from the world. We are in it, we’re in the politics of it. We accept the way the world tends to think about politics. And Revelation so unsettles you, like, oh, maybe things aren’t the way I thought they were. Maybe there’s more going on behind the scenes than I thought.

But the other thing that was so helpful that we kept focusing on in the book, in the study, because so often people get freaked out about Revelation because they think the point of Revelation is to scare you about scary things that are coming, instead of the point being to comfort the saints who might be suffering.

So we focus on through the whole thing, and I think this is a great tactic to even respond to what you were just saying of what are some other underlying spiritual issues, another underlying spiritual issue often in our politics is that we have bought the lie that we have to play by the rules of the world because it’s up to us to fix things.

And Revelation is a powerful response to that. That not only says no, actually you can take a breath like you can be comforted in the coming return of Christ to make all things new, to wipe every tear from every eye, to live in reconciled community with all of creation, to redeem everything that has been broken and corrupt, that can just help you breathe a little bit, especially if everyone’s coming into Bible study and read the news and things are bad. And there is great suffering in the world. It’s not a lie. It is real. There is war, there is violence, there is corruption, there is deceit.

To come in and say, OK, but Christ is coming back to make all things new. And that is a comfort to me. And to have descriptions of the suffering saints on earth crying out to God and those prayers being powerful and mattering.

I think one of the underlying spiritual issues we have to deal with is not only we are not saving the world, God is saving the world. We get to participate out of God’s grace and in glimpses of the coming kingdom of God on Earth, including in our politics. But where we often go wrong is when we start to think the weight of the world is on my shoulders. And if I have to fix things, I can justify cutting some corners or mistreating some people made in God’s image. And Revelation was a help.

And it doesn’t have to be Revelation. But I do think one of the things we can do to both address the underlying spiritual issue and not just have it be, OK, we’re just talking about politics, is where in Scripture could I find this combination? Which is they’re all over the place. The prophets do this. Jesus talks about this. This combination of the weight of the world is not on your shoulders. You are not the world’s savior. And you joyfully get to participate in glimpses of the coming kingdom of God. And that combination, that tension, is something that has been missing from a lot of Christian political life, really sadly.

Kelley >> Yeah. The idea that we can do what we can with the Spirit’s help to bring the kingdom in a little bit right now. That’s our job as the church. And I call them outposts, like we’re an outpost of the kingdom. And of course there’s so much going on out there and sometimes it’s right next door, like in our church, it’s not always those bad people out there, obviously.

Yeah, I appreciate your reminder that as leaders we can remind our people who’s in charge. There’s this comfort. I find it really funny that Revelation came up because where I work, we have three studies in Revelation coming out this year. Which, of course, we’re all laughing. Three different people who came to us with three different ideas. So they even approach it differently. So we all have a good chuckle that, Well, why not this year? Sounds appropriate.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, it does.

Kelley >> Your second book, The Ballot and the Bible, really addresses a lot, like you briefly gave it to us, the way the Bible is used in our culture. And of course we’re here in Dallas and we minister to anyone who finds our website, but there’s a lot of Dallas people and leaders. And so everyone around here knows the Bible pretty well, or so we think. What verses, do you have that pop to mind, that tend to be the most misused?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, that’s a good question because that’s part of the challenge is even for people who know the Bible really well. Some passages have been so used in our political life that we forget where they come from or the fact that they really belong to the Bible. They don’t belong to American politics.

One that comes up a lot. It’s come up a lot already in this election is the line from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus calls the people of God a city upon a hill. And it’s not describing America. It is describing the people of God, which is important. But I think what’s more important is that little phrase has been plucked from its context and used so much sometimes in ways that the politics behind it are fine, like it’s not a bad thing that someone’s advocating for.

But when we’ve used that phrase so apart from its context, what often happens is we forget what it meant in its context, which was not you are a powerful, prosperous, shining people. No, it meant you are, the language right after, a light to the world. And a few verses later, Jesus says that the poor and the persecuted and the meek are blessed. So if you put it back in its context, suddenly it doesn’t seem like it’s talking so much about upholding all of the world’s standards of success and goodness. It’s actually is showing a real upside down version of those where the people you don’t expect are actually blessed, and the community that doesn’t necessarily seem to be flourishing actually, surprisingly is and is being faithful. So that’s a big one.

And there are other uses similarly of kind of plucking phrases from Scripture that are about Israel or about the people of God in the church and applying them to any earthly nation. America does this a lot, but in the past, many nations did this. We were not the only ones that often would go to promises given to Israel, promises of land or promises of protection, and said these are promises for us. And part of the problem is not only that we pluck them out of their context and use them in other ways.

Part of the problem is that we think that these are the options for how Scripture can inform our political life. The option is either this verse directly addresses me and my nation, or it must not mean anything to my political life. And I don’t think those are the two options.

So example, I briefly talked about in the book is when I was finishing writing it, there was a big conversation about forgiving student loans, and a lot of people went to the passage about the Jubilee. This regular rhythm of basically every generation forgiving debts, returning land to original owners, like a restart on the kind of economic life of the community. And people said, OK, we need to forgive student loan debt because of the Jubilee. And other people said, no, the Jubilee has nothing to do with our political life because it was about Israel and not about us.

I don’t think either of those are good options. One too directly says we just pull the verses out and apply them directly to political life. The other one says, Oh, that’s about Israel. Not us. So it has nothing to say to us. I think instead doing good biblical theology means we look at those passages about Israel and say, These are the things God cares about in a community. These are the things that God says communities need to function well. So God has said to God’s people, Hey, if you don’t have mechanisms for fixing these inequalities, they’ll get worse and worse over time. And so we need a mechanism for addressing the fact that over generations some people can accumulate a lot of wealth and others will have less.

The Bible doesn’t tell a modern democracy like America what mechanisms we should use for addressing those problems. But it does tell Christians that God cares about those things and we should be faithful in trying to figure out how to advocate well for vulnerable people in our communities.

That’s, I think, like the middle between these two bad options. There are other options. And I think we’ve often fallen into those problems of either saying, I just plucked this verse out of its context and it can apply directly to political life, or the only passages that deal with political life are a handful of passages that explicitly talk about government. No, I think it all says something to us. It’s just a little more work that we maybe want to do.

Kelley >> So what I’m hearing is as leaders, we can help our people by teaching good Bible study methods. Just learning a better way to read and study and know our Bibles and avoid the cherry picking, avoid mixing metaphors, all of those things. So if you’re a woman teaching or leading a ministry right now, consider over the next few months and beyond this election season, this is going to be a perennial thing, of teaching Bible study methods. Maybe take a hermeneutics class that would come in handy at your church level.

All right, so let’s wrap this up. What would an ideal healthy relationship with politics look like in a church? If you could walk in maybe on your own or any other church and say, May I see a really healthy vibe here when it comes to their relationship with politics, what does it look like?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that. I actually do think I see that in my church. I’m thankful to belong to a church where that’s true. And healthy is different than perfect. We’re not going to be perfect on this until Christ returns, right? We’re going to have conflicts. We’re gonna have difficulties.

But I think what would show a really healthy church on this is on one hand, politics is not a separate part of our life that we ignore. So it’s a part of our regular relationships. Pastors and Bible study teachers aren’t afraid, when a passage in Scripture talks about something that we think is political, they can talk about it. People in pews after church if the sermon helped them think well about some local political issue, can turn to a friend and have a conversation about it. They can learn that they disagree and it not ends their relationship.

So on one hand, it’s like we do talk about it, and on the other hand, it’s in its proper place. It doesn’t take over the life of the church, and we don’t substitute that for the varieties of other ways that we share the gospel, that we display the kingdom of God. This doesn’t take too much prominence in our public life.

We both really care about how we vote and how we advocate and the politicians we support. But that’s one piece of our larger, what I would still say is a political life, where we show up and help at a crisis pregnancy center, or my church this weekend is helping set up an apartment for a new family that’s seeking asylum, fleeing some kind of disorder in their previous country and settling here. And as they deal with all the legal issues, they need a place to live. So someone comes and sets up an apartment for them.

So things like that that are, I think, still political in the sense that they shape our common life together. They help us love our neighbors well. Political, even just that word, right. The root of the word, political, polis, Greek word, that just means city or community. So we’re just building a community together.

But I think a healthy church would say we have a variety of ways to get involved in loving our neighbors. And some of them are like at my church, there’s a group of families who all send their kids to public schools that meet regularly because things that happen at the school board in our area really matter. And what I love, too, is people in our church who don’t have kids in public school, who send their kids to private school or who homeschool their kids, show up to these meetings, too, to say, Hey, these kids all belong to our community. I want to know what’s going on, too. So we’re going to be involved. But it’s not done from a place of anxiety as if we have to fix everything.

That’s that second part. It doesn’t take this place of prominence where everything we do is defined by our politics. So that balance of we talk about it, it matters, it’s not everything. I think you can see glimpses of that if a conversation pops up and you’re able to handle it, handle disagreement especially, with some level of kindness and calmness. That tells me you’re in a church where politics is not abnormal. We’re not so freaked out that the temperature rises the minute it comes up. But on the other hand, we’ve learned that we put it in its proper place.

Kelley >> So other than your own books, do you have any recommendations for leaders who might be trying to navigate these waters?

Kaitlyn >> Yeah, a couple. One, Dr. Vincent Bacote, who teaches at Wheaton College, has written a tiny little book called The Political Disciple. And it’s tiny in a great way because it would be a great four-week small group study. And he is just giving here’s a biblical theology of politics. Here’s ways to think about your engagement in the world that are really great.

Another one that I would say is my good friend, Michael Wear, has written a book called The Spirit of Our Politics. And that’s, again, it’s in the same line of what I do in terms of he’s not really talking about who to vote for or what policies to support. His big line, and I’ve spent the last year going to fellowship with his organizations, I’ve heard him say this so much is, what matters is the kind of people we are. The kind of people we are will determine the kind of politics we have. And so he’s another person that’s just helping us think.

And he’s using the work of Dallas Willard, who wrote a lot about spiritual formation, to say, how does this work on spiritual formation help us think through how to be the kind of people who I think Michael would say, regardless of how you vote or what policies you support, the kind of people who love their neighbors well and see the image of God in others, even when they disagree.

Kelley >> Great. I’m going to have to pick up that first one because I have the second one.

Kaitlyn >> Yeah.

Kelley >> I really appreciate the way you’re combining discipleship with politics. So what we do with the issues of the day directly relate to who we are, and we can’t separate them as much as we think we would like to.

So when we are discipling people or leading them, helping people realize that the way we choose to interact with others, the way we think through issues, all those things, they come from a place of how is our relationship with God, how do we think about ourselves, what’s our identity issue going on?

So it’s not an out there kind of issue. It’s not something beyond the walls that we have to make a policy statement about. These are actually issues that we each have to grapple with, kind of personally with us, the Lord, our families, and then our church communities as well. So yeah, it’s not so easy. There’s no dividing line here. It’s all merged together. Anything else that I’ve totally missed that, you’re like, Oh, I need to say this?

Kaitlyn >> Not anything big other than I think what I wish I would have said earlier, because it’s something I think is important to always say is the most consistent instructions in Scripture about our political life are to pray for our leaders. And I said this earlier about Revelation, but it is true, prayer matters and it also changes us. And so when we are tempted to look at our politicians locally or nationally and forget the image of God in them or in the people that support them, it is really helpful to say God is the judge of their actions.

I want to use the power I have well and faithfully and make faithful judgments about who can wield power well. But I don’t have to fear if my judgments are not perfect because they won’t be. I can go to God who it says in Revelation not only hears the prayers of the suffering saints, but it says the prayers are purified before they come back down to heaven as God’s power. So we don’t have to fear that we don’t get it all right exactly. God purifies our prayers before God acts. So we can take great comfort in that, I think.

Kelley >> Awesome. Yeah. Taking comfort in who God is. It’s really the bottom line. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. For all of you who are watching and would like to see this video and all of the content that we have in our show notes, we’ll have Kaitlyn’s books there and her podcasts and a little bit of the bio and any of the other videos that Beyond Ordinary Women offers to you to resource your ministry. So we hope you’ll take a look at all of those. Thanks so much.

Nika Spaulding

Kay Daigle

What are the top 10 things not to do as a Bible teacher?  Experienced and gifted Bible teacher and preacher Nika Spaulding joins Dr. Kay Daigle in this fun and informative discussion of the top 10 mistakes that they’ve made themselves or seen other Bible teachers make that are best avoided.

Are you a Bible teacher? If so, you’ve likely discovered some of these yourself, and we would love to hear from you. Reply with your comments so that all of us who teach the Bible can benefit from the wisdom of your experience. Check out the entire podcast episode or the video version to help you avoid the errors that Nika and Kay have made.

Don’t miss the helpful resources found below or download the resource file.

Feel free to contact Kay at [email protected].

1:51 #10, Fail to compare interpretations from more than one source.

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to this podcast and video episode. Today I’m talking with Nika Spaulding. Welcome, Nika. We’re glad you’re here.

Nika >> Oh, thanks, Kay. I’m glad to be here.

Kay >> Nika is the Resident Theologian at St Jude Oak Cliff in the Dallas area, and she has joined us on a lot of episodes, actually. And we’re so happy to have her on this one. She and I talked about it, I don’t know, a month or two ago, just the topic and are finally getting together to discuss it. And we’re excited about it, thinking it’ll be a fun episode for all of you, particularly you Bible teachers, because, what we’re going to talk about are the top 10 things NOT to do as a Bible teacher.

I think that probably one or both of us have done most of these. There may be a couple that, I think I added one that I know for sure, I’ve seen somebody do and it wasn’t good at all. So I think I did add one that I had not done but maybe Nika has done it. So it might be that we’ve done all of these at one time or the other. So anyway, we’re going to start like any good top 10 with #10. So Nika,

Do you want to start talking about it or do you want me to?

Nika >> No, I can go and should we admit every time we’ve done it or should we just let people guess?

Kay >> I think I’ve already admitted.

Nika >> OK, fair enough.

Kay >> Yeah.

Nika >> This one I think I’m fairly certain I’m guilty of. And especially when you’re first teaching the Bible, you can get overwhelmed with all the sources, right? You go, OK, I’m going to study John 1. And then you realize, oh my goodness, they’re hundreds of commentaries on just John 1. And so if you’re not careful, especially if you belong to a certain theological tradition or a church tradition, you can tend to only look at those types of interpretation. And you don’t look at what have we said throughout church history? What do people from different traditions say about it?

And so it’s an easy mistake to make. But I know that when I started reading beyond my tradition, the passages became more rich and I began to understand them more deeply. And I think I became even more confident as I taught and looked at it.

Kay >> I totally agree.

Now some commentaries are going to give you more interpretations than others. Some just really stick with the main one, I think. But you’re right, sometimes church history and things like that affect it. So if you don’t have a commentary that would add those things in, you probably need to check another one. There are some things online. Do you have any suggestions?

Nika >> Yeah. So there’s a great website by John Dyer, who’s down at Dallas Theological Seminary. It’s called BestCommentaries.com. And what he’s done is he’s sort of said for every book in the Bible here are more technical commentaries, here’s more pastoral, and he tells you the background of the author because that also helps. That’s sort of an advanced level thing that you learn. You kind of go, Well, this is maybe what somebody from the Reform tradition might think about Romans 9-11 versus somebody from a more Arminian background. You’ll get very different interpretation.

So I would say if you’re reading through any book about a book of the Bible and they never tell you what the other guys think, that’s probably not the most trustworthy commentary. The better commentaries say, Hey, there’s three ways that we can look at this and understand this. Here’s why I land here. But they’re very fair to the other position. So that’s what I would encourage is BestCommentaries.com. And then take a look at what he recommends. And I usually find some great resources from there.

Kay >> Yeah, I do too. I use that as well. So that’s a great recommendation.

Nika >> Love it.

Just make sure you do your own work. And that also includes stealing other people’s stories. It’s not just I’ve heard you’ll hear the big stories, right, of pastors that plagiarize an entire sermon. You kind of go, oh my goodness, like I’ve heard this sermon before. Don’t do that. First of all, it should be very obvious. Don’t do that because you need to spend time in the Word. You need to allow God to work through you and in you.

But sometimes if you need an illustration or a good story, it might be tempting to steal people’s stories. And it’s just, one you’re going to get caught. The truth always comes to the light. And two, it’s so inauthentic. It breaks trust and trust me, the best stories are the ones that are yours. I mean, those are always going to end up being the best stories when you teach.

Kay >> Yeah, I taught the last two weeks, and I was with a couple of the women last night who were there, and one of them started talking to me about it, and all she mentioned were my stories from both times, not the scriptures. The stories. And your own stories are really the strongest.

But if you do have a great illustration from a friend, something that’s happened in maybe a friend’s life, I would say check with them, tell them exactly what you’re going to say to make sure that you’re being true to their story. And you can also make it much more generic so that somebody could not trace it back to who this person was instead of telling, well, my such and such, my best friend, the person who live next door to me.

Nika >> Yeah. You know, your address is 60… Yeah.

Kay >> Yes. Don’t do that. If you want to tell one of those stories then check it out with the person before you do.

Nika >> Yeah. I think that’s so important. If you’re not in the habit of doing that… I know my roommate every now and then will do something silly or goofy and then she’ll look at me and go, You’re not going to use this as a sermon illustration, are you? I think. Well, I mean, not without permission.

And so, you want to make sure you’re also, people want to trust you. If you’re going to be teaching the Bible, you need to not only be trustworthy in the way that you handle the Word of God, but you need to be trustworthy in the way you tell stories, especially in this digital age, right? These things get put on the Internet and they live there.

And if you’re telling the story and you think, well, it’s a friend of a friend of a friend, but suddenly someone finds out, you can really hurt someone. And so just be careful. I mean, there’s this temptation to go, this is the best story this will land so perfectly, but it’s maybe not going to honor this individual, honor the person. God will give you plenty of resources in your stories. Honor the person before, you know, go for that slam dunk of an illustration.

Kay >> That’s really good advice. Really good advice.

That’s really good advice. And you’re the one that wrote that, Nika. Tell me what’s behind this particular one.

Nika >> Yeah, I’ve always been the kid that kind of was out front, loud, boisterous. I think it’s part of playing sports at an early age. And so when I started teaching the Bible, I remember people saying, well, you have this gift. And then that meant some of my friends go, I don’t have that gift. I can’t teach. And I thought, there’s some there’s really the truth that the Holy Spirit, when he hands out gifts, yes, he does give some to be teachers. But to say, well, I have a gift and to not work at it and practice it and to put in the time and the effort and the energy like you would for any other thing that you would want to be great at.

And it’s like, I think about pickleball. I play all the time. All the time. And if as a pastor, someone who communicates God’s word, if I spend all this time playing pickleball and just thought, I’ve got this gift, so to speak, and I don’t need to learn from other great teachers, study the theory of teaching, read books on preaching. Right?

Evaluate yourself afterward and go, Where could I have been better at this? Or Where could I have been more clear? So I just think to say entirely, oh, this is a spiritual gift, therefore I can’t do it. Or it’s a spiritual gift, and I can kind of be lazy about it, misunderstands that this is also something that we work at and we grow at and we get better at over time as we work on it.

Kay, you’ve been teaching for, you’re a young lady, so at least five years. But I mean, how have you worked on this as a craft over the years?

Kay >> Well, I’ve definitely grown because when I started teaching, honestly, nobody taught me anything. It was just more or less, I’d just get up and talk. There was a lot of work I put into it, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I think that at that time I started paying a lot more attention to sermons and teaching of other people and how they went through the text and how they structured it and those kinds of things to just sort of learn on my own.

But eventually when I went to DTS, I took a class in it, but before that, I had just really learned a lot on my own, I think. But it was really helpful to actually have somebody give me a structured way to put my message together. Not that I always do it exactly that way, but you have to leave room for God to show you something. I remember one time I was part of a teaching group and the leader of the group said, try to stick with three main points, three main points. A week or two later, I mean, I had six.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> It was just what the narrative gave me, and I couldn’t ever distill it down to three. So it’s good to work on your craft, but it’s also good to know that you have freedom.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> But you’re not just saying I have a gift.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> I’m not suggesting that.

Nika >> Yeah. Well, and I think that’s, especially when you’re young, I go, how do you know, if you don’t try? I mean, I think there’s opportunities to be taught how to create a sermon. When my friends are like, do you just kind of get up there and start talking because I don’t look at my notes a lot when I preach. I’m like, you think I’m capable of just walking up on a Sunday and having like three points and sort of a So what? Yeah. I’m like, no, no, no. This is years and years of working at it.

And, Kay, you talked about learning on your own. One of the best things that I try to encourage young teachers of the Word is find someone you admire, you admire the way they teach and listen to them. But don’t just listen to them to receive the teaching, but say, why are they so effective? What can I learn about how they organize their thoughts? What can I learn about their pace, how often they repeat things? It’s like watching sport film, What makes this basketball player great? How do they shoot the ball? How do they dribble through all those things? You can do that for preaching as well, especially for somebody that you would like to emulate. I think that is a great first step on the road to learning how to become a better communicator of God’s word.

Kay >> Absolutely. I totally agree.

Nika >> This one, #8, sort of plays into #7.

Kay >> It does.

Nika >> Yeah, which is things NOT to do.

This is one of those that I go back to. During COVID, when the whole world shut down, my roommate and I ended up working from home like a lot of people did. And I remember there was this moment when she came to me about a month into Covid and she goes, I had no idea how much Bible you studied to get ready to teach theology classes or to get ready to preach.

And I remember thinking, Do you think I just know all this information? An hour and a half’s worth of theology class on Tuesday and a 30 minute sermon? You think I can just, she was, Wasn’t that what seminary does? No, no. And so it was a good moment for me for her to say, Oh you put in a lot of time into this. And I thought, well, yeah, I thought that was assumed. And she was like, No, I thought maybe an hour, you prepped for an hour.

And so, this shooting from the hip, if you’re gifted and talented, you can kind of get away with it if you’re familiar with the passage. But it will catch up to you because that’s not where the secret sauce of teaching God’s word comes from. It’s from those hours that no one sees that you’re in God’s word, in prayer, asking God to teach you so that you can nourish his people. And that is the real, that’s where the recipe really comes together so that you can serve a nourishing meal to people.

Kay >> Absolutely. My husband asked me last week when I was working on the lesson I was doing last week, he’s like How many hours? I mean, he walked in again, I don’t know how many times he walked in and said, What are you doing? Or he calls on the phone, What are you doing? I’m working on my lesson, working on my lesson, working on my lesson. He walked in and he was finally like, How many hours have you spent on this? And I’m like, I have absolutely no idea. I have absolutely no idea. I don’t keep track of it. I don’t go in expecting it’s going to take a certain amount of time. I just have to keep working on it until I feel like, I’m there. I’m sort of there, you know?

Nika >> Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That’s where people go How long does it take you to sermon prep? I go, it depends on how familiar I was with the passage. And often those are the longer ones because then you get surprised by something. And then you, I don’t know about you, Kay, but I end up on a rabbit trail doing research on things that have nothing to do with what I’m going to be talking about. But that’s part of it, right? It’s sort of immersing yourself in it.

I always tell people you don’t have to be 12 steps ahead when you’re teaching, but you want to be two to three. People want to know that you’ve done the work and that you are bringing to them something that you believe will honor God first and foremost, but also will encourage rebuke, and teach and struggle, whatever that sort of thing that God is trying to get you to communicate to them. That happens in those hours of study and reflection and prayer. And there’s no shortcut to it, not if you want to be a great teacher.

Kay >> That’s just very true.

Well, I think we’ve all been guilty of that, that there was so much information that nobody could leave figuring out what the message was even about. And I think some of those rabbit trails are part of the reason that you’re really tempted to do it. Because when you’re studying and you’re off on this rabbit trail, you think this is just so interesting. I need to tell them about this. They’re going to love hearing this. Well, maybe so, but they’re going to forget what the main thing then I want to teach them is if I keep adding this information. And too many details.

Last week when I was teaching and I was teaching from the very beginning of the Abraham story, and it was talking about how old Terah was, his dad. And they’re trying to figure out, the numbers don’t really jive. So I got into all these numbers and I was trying to put it in there and I thought the audience I have doesn’t need this. They don’t. They’re not looking at those numbers. They don’t care about those numbers. I will just create confusion if I tell them this. So I had to dump it.

Nika >> Yeah. I think it’s especially true, for me, it was harder when I got out of seminary right away because I kept thinking, out of my own insecurity, I want them to know that I know about that number problem. In case there’s some woman in here who’s like, why didn’t you address the number problem? And then I learned, one, that’s not the point of teaching, right, is to make sure that everyone knows I knew about some obscure thing.

And so, one, you have to keep focus on what is the point of this? Is this for me to show off what I know or to demonstrate hey, I really did my homework? Or is it to communicate God’s truth to these women or these people, whoever it is that God’s entrusted you to, for their growth, for God’s glory and their growth. And I had to remove myself from it. Because I think, I’d be like, well, I want y’all to know that I know that that is it, you know? Instead of just going, Hey, what is the main thing?

And one of the things that, with young communicators, I kind of say, OK, if there’s only one thing that you would want them to walk away with, well, this and this, I go, no, no, no, hold on. You’re going to have time to teach them a lot. But if there’s one thing you want them to walk away from, did your talk communicate that clearly? And if it got lost in the details, then let’s go back and let’s cut. And I think all great communicators know what it’s like to say, and I’m really interested in this one thing, however, I’m going to for the benefit of those I’m talking to, I’m just going to cut it.

And then I don’t know about you, Kay, but I just force my roommates to listen to me talk about it. I just go, hey, this isn’t going to make it on Sunday. But I’d like for you all to know there’s a number issue with Abraham. And here’s what I think and then they go, OK, thank you so much. And so you.ve got to have friends that you can kind of just talk Bible with so that you don’t have to be tempted to do it on stage.

Kay >> That is really true. Definitely.

Nika >> One of the things that I think is really, really tough is this one. And I think this for especially if you’re a woman who’s teaching a Bible study at your church, most likely at some point you are going to pick a book of the Bible. And I think this is one of the things that separates really mature teachers from those that are growing.

And what I mean by that is you might be teaching in a narrative, right? So Kay’s talking about the story of Abraham. Abram before he becomes Abraham. She needs to do a good job to set the gal up for next week to understand where we’re at in the story. But if she wanted to, she could just say, Oh, here’s a covenant. Now I’m going to spend 30 minutes just teaching on what covenants are. Well, while that’s interesting and helpful information in general, now everybody’s lost, how we ended up moving out of Ur of the Chaldeans all the way to wherever God’s calling Abram because she didn’t teach the story. And so that’s why I’d say that is it’s so tempting, right? You see prayer in the narrative and you think, OK, let’s talk about the ten ways to pray to God. And you go, Oh, that’s for a different talk. And so it’s hard to avoid though.

Kay >> It is. And sometimes you have to give some information. I mean, it’s interesting you use Abraham’s Covenant because that’s what I teach next week. And, I’ve been thinking, how much do I tell them about a covenant? Because they need to understand it to even understand what happened between God and Abram. But I do realize it can’t be all about that. So when you have a limited amount of time, you have to be sure that you’re getting across the main thing and giving them some help with understanding the background of what’s happening.

Nika >> Do you feel like it’s harder to do in the narrative books than, let’s say, Paul’s letters? Do you feel like it’s harder to stay in the story because it’s story as opposed to, sort of like do this, don’t do this?

Kay >> I think, well, I don’t know what I think about that. Because you can do the same thing in the letters. You can get off when Paul’s talking about justification, you can get off and start talking about James. It can happen. You can be in Romans and suddenly you’re teaching James because you’re teaching justification. So I don’t know. I think it’s just sort of a temptation the whole way through. And then the stories, it’s easy to skip little things, especially if you have a group that has studied it. It’s a lot different if you’re standing in front of a group that hasn’t studied it at all. And there is a big difference that might be we need to talk about some time.

Nika >> Yeah, that is a good point. I think you’re right, Kay. When you’re teaching in a Bible study where the women have already studied the passage and now you’re teaching, you can take for granted some information that they have. Whereas when you stand up in front of a group, maybe you’re doing a one-off talk or you’ve been invited to speak at a conference, you have to really do some of the heavy lifting of explaining the background. And that adds complexity and difficulty to the way that you teach as well.

But I think it’s easier to teach to people who are going through the book than it is to just walk into a space and go What do y’all know? You sort of have to assume that they know what you’re talking about. And so more explanation is required in those moments.

Kay >> That’s true. That’s a really good point.

I would say that probably every teacher has done that to a certain extent because we’ve seen other teachers that we admire and we want to be more like them. Or we just don’t like who we are and we try to project an image of somebody else.

Nika >> Yeah. Wow. That hit deep.

These aren’t plays. We’re not actors, playing a part. We are God’s women who have been entrusted with God’s scriptures to communicate to his beloved people these truths about him. And we’re trying to do it as authentically and as with love and with truth and with grace and with mercy. But it’s vulnerable. So when you say that I think, gosh, I actually I kind of understand the temptation to say, well, if I’m someone else, then that’s a little less vulnerable if I pretend to be someone else communicating in that. But people can sniff that out, especially young people. Young people can sniff that out pretty quickly.

Kay >> Yeah, absolutely.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> But I do think it’s a temptation for all of us to hide a little bit of who we are. And it does get tricky when, maybe a story that you might want to tell about yourself involves other people or your family. Because you aren’t always able to use those stories, even if you’re telling something bad about yourself, which might be a really good story to tell. But it might be a negative effect on somebody else who’s involved in the story.

Nika >> Yeah. You want to be careful with that.

There’s a model in Paul that’s like, hey, I’m the chief sinner. Right? That is true. But I don’t think Paul had a self esteem problem. I don’t think he went around feeling shame and despondent so much as he just spoke of it as a reality of what but in Christ I’m a more than conqueror. But in Christ I’m seated at the right hand of the throne. And so I think being careful about the way you speak about yourself because it will teach your women also how to speak about themselves. And you need to be careful with that as well.

Kay >> That’s a really good point on that. OK, let’s go with we’re getting down to the top three.

Nika >> So #3. And this is tempting to do. This one, I had to learn the hard way, I think.

Feedback somewhere in the process and afterwards.

And the reason why is I wanted, sort of like it was like this secret thing and I wanted to get up on stage and just be like, here you all go. I’ve prepared, me, I have prepared this entire thing for you. And I’m the expert and I’m good at this so I can take all the credit, which, first of all, I can’t take any credit, it’s the Lord working through me. And secondly, I got better when I would say, Hey, dear roommate, can I run this by you? Or, Hey, what do you think of this illustration? Does it make any sense? Or, Hey, I’m having a hard time thinking of a way to connect these two ideas. Can you help me? And you only get better when you invite people into that process. You don’t need to hoard this information and then sort of present it for the first time.

Kay >> I think that’s very true, and I can’t say that I’m very good at doing this though because I don’t have a lot of people to give me feedback. I think it’s hard for some of us when we’re working at home particularly, and having to develop a message and you don’t really have anybody else around. And I have many friends who are great Bible people. I mean, I could I could get them on the phone. I just don’t because they’re not just right here.

Nika >> Sure. Well, it’s hard when you’re in the midst of it. I honestly don’t invite much feedback in the early process. That’s study. That’s where I’m kind of trying to just get my head around. My head pastor is great about, Well, have you thought about this and have you thought about… Mark, Mark, Mark, I haven’t thought about anything yet. It’s all just ooze in my brain. I need to congeal it somehow. And then once it’s sort of taking shape, then it’s nice to have people helping me sculpt.

But one of the best things I did when I was a young communicator, I was just learning how to really teach to big audiences. As I got feedback immediately after. And the reason why is I taught on Wednesday morning, and then I taught the exact same message on Thursday night. So between Wednesday and Thursday, I would always joke that Thursday I got the better talk every week because I would step off the stage and a woman named Gigi Hornberger would come up to me and go, OK, here’s what I thought you did well, and here’s what I think you could have been better and here’s what I would keep and here’s what I would consider cutting. And it requires that you let your ego go a little bit because, you think, wow, I did a really good job. And then she comes on and goes I don’t think that was super clear and I go, oh, OK. But what it was really, it was an invitation in 24 hours to get to do it again.

And so that’s what I’d say is if you’re young, especially give the people you trust, people will give you feedback. There always be good to flatter you and then you’ll have people that they’re just harsh and that’s not helpful because it is so vulnerable to teach God’s Word. But find people who are for you and love you and know how you communicate, and ask them for feedback. And that will also help you grow in this craft and gift of yours.

Kay >> I think that’s really great advice. Really great advice. OK,

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> And I mean, I feel like right now in the series I’m in, I’m spending way too much time on slides.

Nika >> Sure.

Kay >> Way too much time on slides. I haven’t made slides in several years. And so it’s sort of like Aagh! I’ve got to make all these slides. They are time consuming. They take your time away from really the message itself. What I try to do is work on the message first and get that really down. So I know I’ve spent time in God’s Word. I know I’ve spent time with the Lord about the message and then work on the slides.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> Now usually I have to do some editing after that because as I compare what I’m going to say, to exactly what the slides say, sometimes it’s not particularly good. But the less you’re used to making slides, the more time it takes.

Nika >> Yeah, that’s so true. And I would encourage anybody who, if that is becoming an absolute thorn in your side, I have a reputation for being the worst at slides. It’s just a known thing. It’s been true for about 15 years. People at Watermark would go, Why are your fonts messed up? Why does this not look good? And now at St Jude, where I minister, people like, Wow, your slides are really bad. And I’m like, Thank you.

And so a couple of things. One, if you put so many words on the slides that women stop listening to you and they start reading the slide, that’s not a good thing. So I would also caution anybody who wants to put just a ton of information on their slide, I’d say, hey, you might want to edit that down as well.

Secondly, slides are not as important as you communicating God’s Word. And so if this is the area, you go, Man, I’m great at the verbal part, the slides are tough, then I would say get a young person to help you with the slides. Have them come and do it.

Kay, one time I was teaching, and it sounds like you’re going through Genesis. and I was teaching on Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, and that’s a big chunk. I think it’s in Genesis 24, it’s a long, long passage. And I only had two kittens in bride and groom clothes, that was the only slide. And they were like, This is your only slide? And I was like, I just I didn’t get to it. It’s not important. But in that preparation, you want to think, OK, what are the illustrations and what are the slides that are helpful for people to remember this? You don’t want people to walk out and then 2 hours later they go to lunch with their friends and like, What was it about? And they’re like, I don’t really remember.

Slides and illustrations serve the purpose of allowing people to really embody the message and carry it with them and be able to retell it. So spend time on them. But if that’s the only part of your message that’s not any good, then I will be the first to tell you join the club. I’m also bad at them.

Kay >> Yeah, I do need to cut back on the number of slides I have. I know that. So next week I will not have as many slides as I had this past week.

Nika >> I love it. All right. #1, and I think this is one of those things that is true of anything you’re doing in the Lord.

God is the one living and moving and feeding and nourishing. And it’s amazing that not only is he working through you, but he’s also working through the people listening to you. And this is how I know this is true, is one, I remember I taught one time to a very large audience, and as soon as I stepped off the stage, I was like, I didn’t love it. I want another shot. I feel I could have done that better. And three women excepted Christ that night. And I just thought Well, how? I mean, but again, it’s not you, and so that happened.

And then my favorite is when people come up to me and go, you said X, Y, and Z, and that changed my life. And you look at your notes and you look at the recording, you didn’t say X, Y, and Z. God clearly was speaking to them in ways, you’re like, that wasn’t one of my points, but I’m so glad it ministered to you. And so this is God’s work in your life, and you will be amazed at what God does despite you. You’ll be amazed at what God does through you, and it takes the pressure off of you. You just have to be faithful. You don’t have to do anything else but be faithful. And God will do all the work.

Kay >> Absolutely. It’s good to remind us about that when we think it was really terrible. And then, something happens like three women were saved. I’m not sure I’ve ever had anything quite that big happen, but, somehow God spoke to somebody and they tell you about it. And you had finished by thinking, I hated this.

Nika >> Yeah.

Kay >> Or even gone into it thinking, I really don’t like what I’m saying. I’ve never arrived at something I’m really happy with and my time’s up. I’ve got to say this. This is the only message I have and then you discover that maybe it was God’s message all along because he said something through it.

Nika >> Yeah. Isn’t it amazing when God, I think that’s the thrill of getting to participate with God on mission, is he really doesn’t need us. I mean, he really doesn’t. And, you know, the ways that God has communicated throughout history and through people, but he wants to. He wants to use you and me and you, dear listener.

And when we come to the Lord to say this is what I got, I gave it my best. I prepared, I was faithful. I did what I felt like God was calling me to do. And if I’m honest, I don’t think it’s the most winsome, I don’t think it’s the most sparkly. I think it’s a B, B+. And then someone comes to you with tears in their eyes and say, I really needed this this morning, and you think gosh, what an unbelievable gift, that God let’s just be a part of that.

And so maybe that’s the last thing I just want to say to you listening is you get to be a part of one of the most amazing things in the entire world. That God would allow you to be on mission with him. It’s such a privilege. And we have to steward it well. Which is part of what we’re doing with this top 10 list. There is a responsibility of stewardship. But you also just get to sit back and watch God do things that you couldn’t do in your own power. And that is such an amazing front row seat to get to watch.

Kay >> Amen. Amen.

So thank you, Nika. This was a fun topic. I enjoyed it a lot.

We have other videos and podcasts on teaching. We’d love to have you look at those. If you go to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, look at the menu at the top on Resources and go down to Teaching the Bible. You can find it. Don’t worry, you can find it. It’s not that hard. Because we have a number of resources in that area.

We hope you’ll join us again and browse at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Nika and I have a number of episodes. We’ve talked about all sorts of interesting things, and you can find those there as well.

What does helping women who struggle with porn look like? What can Christians, especially Christian leaders, do? Dr. Joy Skarka joins Dr. Kay Daigle to share her personal experience and knowledge to help Christians understand how to care well for women caught up in porn. Joy provides a wealth of information and practical suggestions for both Christian women who influence or lead other women and also parents who desire to protect their children. Helping women who struggle with porn is essential to loving our neighbors.

You can connect to the video version if you prefer. Don’t miss the helpful resources found below or download the resource file.

Feel free to contact BOW at [email protected].  Joy has previously joined BOW to discuss Recognizing Rape Culture which is available as both a video and podcast episode.

0:31 Introducing Joy Skarka and her ministry

Kay >> Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries podcast and video series. Today, our special guest is Dr. Joy Skarka, who is on the Authentic Intimacy Team. She has been doing that since 2020 and she has built there a transformational ministry for women dealing with sexual shame and pornography. So welcome, Joy. We are so delighted that you were able to join us.

Joy >> Oh, thank you, Kay. I just love the resources that you’re creating, and I’m glad to be here.

Kay >> Oh, thank you so much. Joy previously has joined us for a podcast and video on rape culture. So if you missed that, you might want to look back for that. Today, though, we are talking about caring for women struggling with porn. And Joy actually has a book coming out about that. It is going to be called Her Freedom Journey: A Guide Out of Porn and Shame to Authentic Intimacy. When does that book come out, Joy?

Joy >> Yes, this July, July 2024. How come, Kay, we always get the hard topics on these podcasts, right?

Kay >> Yes.

Joy >> These are some hard topics that we’re covering.

Kay >> It really is. And I really wanted to start really by talking about how in the world you got involved in ministering to women who struggle with porn.

Joy >> Right. It’s not something people normally raise their hand and volunteer and say, hey, I want to talk about porn and helping women.

Joy >> You don’t see a lot of women talking about it. So I’d love to just share a little bit of my story. And I think to sum it all up, God, took my pain point and made it my passion. He really just brought me to this place where I just had this burning desire to help other women because I couldn’t find that help. And so flash back, I was in college and I had just experienced a date rape, which is kind of why we talked about rape culture on the last episode. So this is a follow up to my story there.

But I had experienced that trauma and I lacked a sex education, so I had no idea kind of what had happened, what was going on. And so that brought me to Google, which is a bad sex educator. And I started typing in my questions, and that’s what led me to pornography. And so it started as a sex education, but then became my coping mechanism when I was struggling with the trauma, the grief, loneliness, stress, really anything. That’s what I turn to. And I was exposed in fifth grade so I was 11 years old. A friend showed it to me, but then it wouldn’t be an issue in my life until later in college.

Kay >> So I think most people don’t think that this is a struggle for women. They really consider that men are the ones who watch pornography, are addicted to pornography. But I have heard that the number of women is growing quite a bit. What can you tell us about that?

Joy >> Yeah, this historically has been known as, talked about as, a men’s issue. And we know that since the Internet has come, it just has made access to pornography way easier, more accessible, on your phone. You have your phone everywhere you go. And so those numbers have increased for women. And one of the largest porn sites, I’m not going to say their name, but they actually release a year in review every year where they share their statistics, which I find fascinating that they share all this, but they share how many women access their site every year. And so for the last 15 years, I think it is every year that’s gone up, that percentage. And so in the last year, 2023, it was 36% of viewers were women.

Kay >> Wow.

Joy >> That’s a lot more than people would ever guess or know about. I teach a class at Dallas Theological Seminary on sexuality and ethics. We just had a talk on this and all the men in the room, the men that want to be pastors or counselors were shocked. They all said, really? I thought this was a men’s issue. So, yes, everybody is surprised when they hear that number.

And there’s a few reasons why I think that this number is increasing. First of all, the porn industry knows this that women are starting to watch more and more. So they’re actually creating specific female friendly options. Think of it like a romance movie. But more graphic. That’s what they’re offering now. And women are loving it. They’re watching more and more of it and they’re getting you hooked. Once you’re hooked, you’re addicted. Your brain changes. They know that they’re going to have you be a customer for the next years. So it’s sad that just the way that they’re now marketing to women because of this.

Kay >> That is really sad. I hate to hear that.

Kay >> Do you think that women hide this more than men do?

Joy >> I do. And especially Christian women. So in the non-Christian circles, it’s a lot more freely talked about where it’s just assumed, oh, you watch porn with your boyfriend. Or it’s more casual conversation.

So a pastor might say Hey, men, this is for you. Women, you don’t have to listen right now. We’ll talk about you in a second. But for right now, men, listen up. Let’s talk about porn. So that’s an example we hear all the time. And then even in like recovery ministries, there’s normally like a sex addict group for men. And just now they’re starting to have more options for women. Normally, it was just a betrayal and beyond kind of group for the wives of men addicts. Which is important. That’s really needed work. But we also have to have that option there for the women that are struggling with this issue.

Kay >> Absolutely. So how does porn impact a woman’s relationships with other people, their relationship with God or even how they see themselves?

Joy >> Yes. So even if we look at shame, there’s so much shame around this topic with because no one’s talking about it because we’re women and just because it’s about sexuality, something so personal and intimate.

And so if we go to Scripture and just see in Genesis story what happens when they first are exposed and realize they’re naked, they hide because of this deep shame they have from one another. So they hide, they cover themselves, they run away from each other. And that’s exactly what happens with women struggling with porn. They hide from friends. They keep it a secret. They don’t tell anyone. They hide, if they’re in a relationship or married, they don’t want to tell their spouse.

We actually have women at Authentic Intimacy. We offer a lot of small groups online for women on a variety of topics. But one question that comes up a lot is do I have to tell my husband about this? They don’t even want to bring this to him. They’re afraid how he’s going to respond or what’s going to happen. And so, yeah, there’s a lot of secrecy. And also because maybe they did have bravery to tell one person and it was responded to really negatively. And so like maybe in shock or Wow, I can’t believe you watch that or really you watch porn or they just never bring it up again. There’s silence around the topic. And so those kind of reactions make a woman never want to share again, sadly. And keep the struggle to herself.

Kay >> Yeah, absolutely. I can understand that. Well, how can leaders–and you know most of our audience consists of women who have some sort of leadership position. It doesn’t have to be some large thing. It could be leading a small group. It could be mentoring someone else that’s leading them. It actually could just be as a mother and their children, because this is a topic certainly that they need to deal with. But let’s think about leaders of women particularly. How can they begin a conversation about women struggling with porn so that the women in our congregations or our small groups are or wherever we connect with them can begin speaking to somebody about that, can begin looking for a way out.

Joy >> Yes. So to speak to those leaders. First of all, thanks for watching this video, because that’s your first step. You saw this title. You clicked it. You thought, let me learn more. And education, that is your first step because this issue is rarely talked about. You might not even know that women are struggling. And so thank you for just admitting that Hey, I want to learn more. And watching this video and knowing, too, that if you’re still trying to figure this out and learn more, think about the leaders that you are over so that, like you said, Kay, the small group leaders or maybe the women discipling other women or the youth ministry, those areas people don’t know that this is a topic. And so they have no idea how to begin talking about it, how to help people.

So that first step is educating yourself. And then I would encourage you to educate those leaders in your ministry. So that could look like a one on one kind of conversation. It could look like you’re having a training. It could be going through a small group curriculum together to be educated.

One thing I recommend is, is finding someone to share their story so that they can put a face to this. And, you know, it’s one thing to hear statistics, but to hear someone like me share their story of the struggle. But then also the freedom, which will I’m sure we’ll talk about the healing that comes too. That makes it so much more personable.

And so if you don’t know someone like that, which I’m sure there are people in your ministry, in your churches who have a story like that. But if you don’t know of anyone, I’d be happy to connect. That’s something I’m really passionate about is being that first person. I like to say I go first so others can go second. And what I mean by that is I share my story so that other people then can say, Oh, I’m not alone. Other women are struggling with this too. Like it’s a safe thing. I can come forward. And so I would talk about that.

And one other thing, Kay, too, for the first early steps is admitting your own sexual brokenness as a leader. So a quote that Julie Slattery, she cofounded Authentic Intimacy, that she always says is that we’re all sexually broken. And some people hear that and they think, Huh, well, I don’t have a porn addiction or I’m married and life is great right now. What does this mean? What she’s saying is, we’re all living in this fallen sinful world. None of us know what it means to not have a broken sexuality. And so there must be something you can share out of that brokenness. Whether that’s you struggle with lust or maybe you are married and you actually hate sex. I mean, that’s a form of sexual brokenness. And we have a lot of women in our ministry, in our groups who will admit to that.

So those are just some of the first early steps that a women’s minister or a woman in leadership can do.

Kay >> Those are really good thoughts. And when I think back, I spent ten years leading women’s ministry in churches. It was over the ten years there were two different churches, but only one woman ever came up to me and told me about this struggle and she was already dealing with it. I mean, she already was getting help. She wasn’t asking for help. She was just asking for accountability. She just wanted, felt like I should know, that somebody in the church should know. And I thought that was such a brave thing that she did. But that just shows you how little the conversation is out there. And I certainly never talked about it with the group or anything. So I’m sorry I didn’t have your training back then.

Joy >> Yeah. And you know what, Kay, too, as the years go on, it’s becoming more of an issue. And so I’m sure other women were struggling back then too, and didn’t tell you. But there’s also research saying that the younger generations now, more and more of them are struggling. So now maybe the younger generations, it’s more relevant than it was maybe back then when you were in those positions. But as a leader, a lot of church leaders say to me, I’m afraid to bring it up. I’m afraid to open that can of worms is a quote we hear a lot because they say, what if we don’t have the resources? What if we can’t help them? What if we don’t know what to do?

And so what I say to them is, the issues are already there, people are just struggling in silence. So if you bring it up, nothing is going to change. They’re still struggling but then what you can do to kind of prepare for that is to educate yourself and to provide a list of resources. So find resources now before someone comes to you, like a counselor. I recommend a certified sex therapist, a Christian sex therapist to help. Or what books are out there, what resources, support groups, recovery groups, can you provide to this person so that you’re not empty handed if they do come to you? And that kind of helps them feel a little more prepared, the leaders, for if someone does bring this up.

Kay >> And speaking of that, can you give us a list of some educational material, possibly other ministries, that would help? We’ll certainly let them know about your ministry later before we shut down. But can you give some sort of list that they can download if they’re interested?

Joy >> Yeah. I also want to mention, Kay, how important this is for parents. And I’m going to share a few resources for the parents because the average age of first exposure is 7 to 11. Some research says 7, some says 11. So that means if you’re not talking to your kid about pornography and they’re already 7 to 11, you’ve got to start, you’re missing the boat here. Because that means younger ages of kids, if that’s the average, are seeing this.

And so kids are seeing it from their friends. They’re even finding it in their own home accidentally clicking on an ad or something pops up. It’s crazy, Kay, even on YouTube like the kid friendly app version. I had a parent email in and say Oh my goodness, I thought that was safe and my kid somehow was watching porn and I saw them, just from accidentally clicking on it. It was like a five year old boy and he wasn’t searching it out. The porn industry is horrible and they know if they can get to those kids, then they’re going to have clients for years, for decades. So it’s disgusting.

Kay >> Yes

Joy >> So what I’d say to parents here are a few resources to kind of start those conversations. So the Birds & Bees is a great ministry that has an e-course/videos. You could play for like a small group setting so you can watch it on your own or with a group and they teach you how to just start having these conversations about sex with your kids. Because so much of this goes back to a lack of a sex education in the home where parents aren’t talking about sex. And if they’re not talking about it, then the kid, when they first see porn they don’t know, Oh, Mom and Dad’s a safe person for me to run to and tell them that I just found this, that I discovered it. So helping parents navigate those conversations is really important.

Another ministry is called Defend Young Minds, and they have some great books where you can actually read it with your kid in kid friendly terms. So it’s called Good Pictures. Bad Pictures. Instead of calling it porn, it helps teach your kid. Oh, that picture is bad or this picture is good and it helps them to have language so that when they see this on the bus, a person shows them porn on the bus, a kid, they can go to mommy and say, hey, mommy, on the bus, someone showed me this bad picture. They were naked.

They’ll use terms like that. So that’s just the first thing that comes to mind.

Joy >> And then for adults who are struggling, there’s a lot of great ministries. So Pure Desire has some groups, recovery groups. She Recovery is another one for women specifically. And then our site, Authentic Intimacy. We talk big picture sexuality in general, but we also have more specific groups for women on this topic.

Kay >> Thank you. I know that’ll be very, very helpful to many women out there. Thanks, Joy, for that.

Kay >> Well, tell me, is the struggle different for women than it is for men with porn?

Joy >> Yeah, so people ask this and it’s hard to tell because there needs to be more research done on the actual brain. But there are some differences I noticed that I can share. So, for example, women are more likely to start with erotica, which is called a soft porn. And some people don’t even think to consider it porn like when 50 Shades of Gray came out, that book. I know that was a few years back, but there has been so many new books come out and you’ll hear and see Christian women reading them all the time, not thinking anything is wrong with it.

But we believe that the same thing happening in your brain reading erotica is the same thing happening when you’re watching pornography. You get that dopamine rush. Your body is physically reacting to it. And so that’s kind of a difference between men and women. Women often start more likely with that soft porn and work their way to maybe more harder just like drugs. You get used to it. You get desensitized. The same with pornography.

I actually had a woman in one of my support groups that I was leading she started just by reading her grandma’s erotica that she had. She had no idea it was wrong. Actually, the grandma gave her a copy of the book, didn’t think it was a problem. Flash forward years later, here she is in my recovery group. She said it got so bad, she started joining online chat rooms and then met up with a guy in person. And so women are actually more likely than men to do that, to want to meet up in person with somebody and have a sexual encounter. So that’s one of the differences.

One of the surprising things is historically in the past men used to watch more abusive porn than women. But we’re seeing now that women are actually watching more abusive porn. And what’s sad about it is the research is saying they’re doing it as a way to cope with their own sexual trauma. Since more women have experienced rape and sexual assault and abuse, they’re actually wanting to watch the same porn, like their experience, as a form of coping. Which I know some people hear that and they’re like, well, that doesn’t make any sense.

But yeah, that’s kind of a trend we’re seeing.

Kay >> What about shame for women? Is that any different, particularly Christian women? I would think that there would be a lot of shame involved in it, which is probably one reason they don’t talk about it.

Joy >> Yes. So definitely a lot of shame in Christian women. I just interviewed Curt Thompson. He wrote The Soul of Shame. I kind of consider him like the Shame expert. And I actually asked him that question. I said, Have you seen a difference in sexual shame between men and women? And his response was interesting. He said that both, he thinks both equally just experience intense amounts of sexual shame, but maybe that the women just keep the issue more to themselves than maybe men do, was his comments. I found that fascinating. And that’s a great book, too, The Soul of Shame. If you want to learn more about shame.

Kay >> Great. Thank you. Well, let’s think about discipleship areas. Whether you’re the minister to women in a church or small group leader or you’re mentoring someone or possibly it’s just a friend that you’re advising, how do you disciple them? What are some things that you can do as you move forward with someone who wants some help, and hopefully is getting help other places, maybe professional help, but needs a friend to walk alongside her. How would you do that? How would you approach that?

Joy >> Yes. Thank you to those women who want to do this. I needed that person. And just to share a little bit of how this worked in my life. I was a college student when all of this happened and I went to a college ministry event with CRU and heard another woman, a woman leader share her story. And she said she was struggling with pornography and habitual masturbation. And Kay, I had never heard a woman, let alone a Christian woman, say either of those words. And so I went up to her afterwards and told her I was struggling and just being able to say me, too, and knowing I’m not alone was so healing. Took away a lot of the shame in the beginning of my recovery journey.

And so that was a huge first step. And then I started meeting one on one just weekly at Panera with another woman from my church. And we didn’t know of any books that existed or any resources. We would just read the Bible at Panera and talk about my struggle. And it was so life changing to feel known and loved and seen and she never judged me. I would come to her and say, Oh, I messed up last night and I watched it again. Or I would come to her and say, You know, I’m just so tired. I don’t even know if I want to continue recovery, it’s just so draining. That honesty I would share with her. And she created that safe space where I could share that with her.

Sometimes women might not feel that safe. You want it to be this safe space. And I’d be honest like that, and she would just listen and ask great questions and give empathy. And occasionally she would share her story too in her struggles. But she was just so great at this. And so that’s just an example of how it worked in my life.

And so a few other things, some helpful tips for these women leaders. Help this woman get to the root issues of her struggle, not just simply focusing on behavior management. So what I mean by that is sometimes you hear people say, and they mean it in a loving way, but they’ll say something like, Oh, can’t you just stop watching it? Like, why are you watching it? And sure, I mean, a woman could decide, I’m just going to stop watching it, but she’ll just turn to food when she’s lonely. And then now she has a binge eating problem. Or she’ll turn to hookups, something else. And so you really have to get to that root issue and figure out what is going on there.

I have a few others. You want me to share some more ideas, too?

Kay >> Absolutely. Yes. I mean, whatever else you can tell us would be really, really helpful.

Joy >> OK, great. Yes. Because sometimes I know this can for a person, a leader listening, this might feel like a lot. (laughter)

Kay >> It may and it may take a while for her to educate herself and she may need to watch this or listen to this podcast a number of times. And, you know, just begin. I would just say begin. But you have a place to go now. Once you have that person, you can come back to this and listen to all that Joy has to say. But don’t feel overwhelmed.

Joy >> Yes.

Joy >> That’s a good message of hope, Kay, too. Because, yeah, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of pain as you’re walking through a woman with something like this because there are so many layers.

And on that root issue piece, like helping her unpack, maybe she has a daddy issue. Maybe she had childhood sexual trauma. There’s just so many things that could be around this porn struggle. And it’ll take a while to get to those. And you aren’t, maybe you’re not a counselor, and that’s OK, too. You’re not trying to be a counselor here, but really just help, ask questions, encourage, point her in the right direction.

A few other things that you could do, and something we’ve noticed at Authentic Intimacy, is really help her to grow in her relationship with God. So much of this is actually an intimacy issue. And I want to unpack that because this is really important for us as Christians. Is we tend to think it’s a porn issue. But really, this woman has an intimacy issue. She’s trying to feel loved. She’s trying to feel connected. And so maybe her intimacy with God, maybe she doesn’t really believe he is who he says he is. She doesn’t believe he’s good. She doesn’t trust him.

I know for me, I didn’t believe God could actually meet my needs to be loved and my desires to feel wanted and known. And so the more I spent time reading his word and worshiping him at church, just it takes time. But that just helped me tremendously on my freedom journey because that intimacy with God is just next level, nothing on this earth. And I tell women that not even a husband, because so many, especially single women, young women, want to be married. I say, you know, that’s not going to fix your porn problem. Marriage is not going to fix your porn problem. Intimacy with God is so key.

Kay >> That’s really helpful. And that’s something that any woman can do for another woman, is to help her turn to God, and talk about the Bible together and talk about the Lord and encourage her to delve deeper into the scriptures and spend more time there. Spend more time with God. I think that’s really good.

Anything else that you want to add?

Joy >> Yes. About kind of what you just said made me think about how recovery is a journey and so it’s a daily act of surrendering to God. And so helping that woman see this not as something that could happen overnight. You’re really investing in this woman, investing in your relationship with her and working on gaining that trust, helping her feel safe and helping her realize that this is a journey. It’s going to take time and patience, especially if it has become an addiction in her life. Her brain has changed. Porn changes the structure of your brain, as crazy as it sounds. So helping her rebuild those pathways.

Joy >> And then one other thing, just big picture, too, is helping her understand God’s design for sexuality. And if we go back to what we talked about with parents not talking to their kids about sex, those are the people who are now grown up who didn’t have a sex education didn’t have a safe place to talk about this.

And so there’s a lot of shame around a woman’s sexuality. Many women just feel shame for even having desires or have questions, curiosities. And so that keeps them, that shame keeps them in a cycle where they’re stuck. So, for example, they watch porn, they feel shame. Then they think they’re too far gone for God to love them, that they’re stuck here forever. T hey turn back to porn and it’s called the shame cycle. And I just believe that’s one of the key routes that keep them stuck. So helping a woman to kind of break free from that shame cycle is really important.

Kay >> I think those are all really, really good suggestions. And most of that, you know, except for maybe about getting to the root issue that may really need somebody who has a little bit better counseling background or understands those things, any woman can do these other things. Help somebody become more intimate with God, help them understand God’s design for sexuality, and help them understand just that daily surrender to God.

I remember when years ago, I had a woman come to me and she just wanted a mentor and it just scared me to death. I mean, that much scared me to death. I can totally understand how somebody could feel fearful of doing this because you don’t feel qualified. You don’t feel like you know enough. You know, I was maybe 40, but I still just didn’t feel qualified to mentor. That just sounded too heavy, too much responsibility. You know, it really did scare me. And I don’t want women to feel this way because God can qualify you to do this. You’re just sharing your own life. If you’re walking with the Lord, if you are in his Word, if you’re surrendering to him every day, you just share that, your own walk with the Lord, with somebody else.

Joy >> That’s so true. Those times at Panera, that is where I can look back and say, hey, that was so life changing.

And yeah, she wasn’t a counselor. She didn’t have training. We were just reading the Bible and talking, and she was asking questions. And so, yeah, any woman who is solid in their faith and pursuing Jesus can do that.

Kay >> Right. That’s great.

So, Joy, tell us more about what your ministry offers that may be of help to the leaders out there as they seek to minister to others and also help the women who are struggling with porn who may be listening to this conversation.

Joy >> Yeah. Thanks, Kay. Thanks for inviting me to do that. And gosh, I’m just so passionate. I just love our ministry so much. In 2020 we launched a leader brand called Sexual Discipleship. It’s under our big picture, Authentic Intimacy. And it’s Sexual Discipleship. That’s where we train our leaders on how to have these conversations. On what does the Bible say about sexuality. We have pastors, leaders, small group leaders, lay leaders, we have some high school teachers at some Christian schools, everybody who just is getting these questions because in today’s day and age, you can’t avoid questions about sexuality in ministry.

And really so many people are leaving the church because about different topics around sexuality. If people don’t know how to talk about them, that’s a problem. We have cohorts, e-courses, training materials to help leaders know how to navigate these conversations around sexuality. And so then at Authentic Intimacy, that’s where we more have resources for women and men, married and single, who are struggling on their journey, either not knowing what God’s Word says, maybe it’s a porn addiction, maybe there was an affair in their marriage. Maybe there’s grief as a widow lost her husband and doesn’t know what to do with her sexuality. Maybe a single woman that’s saying, well, what does it mean to be single and sexually whole? Lots of questions like that. Some of our common ones. Actually, Kay, our most read blog is called Is Masturbation A Sin?

Kay >> Really?

Joy >> Out of all of our topics, that is the number one read blog every year. It’s crazy. People are asking that question. You should do an episode on that.

So those are some of the things we do blogs, podcasts and online groups at Authentic Intimacy.

Kay >> And what is the website for that?

Joy >> Yes. It’s AuthenticIntimacy.com. And then the leader platform is SexualDiscipleship.com. And both of them are membership communities, meaning you pay a monthly or yearly fee and that gives you access to everything. Access to me, I meet one on one with members and leaders and answer questions and access to Julie Slattery, the co-founder. We have office hours where leaders can come and say Hey, someone asked this question at church and I’ve no idea how to respond. What would you do? And they get to ask Julie that and hear her response.

It’s been really fun to partner alongside with churches and ministries on this journey and just help people navigate because there are tough questions out there. People are asking tough questions and to give people that safe space to ask and find answers.

Kay >> And I assume you have some resources for parents as well on your website.

Joy >> We do. Yes.

Kay >> Great. Thank you, Joy, for joining us. This has been a very helpful conversation, and particularly I believe it can really be helpful to some leaders out there who are wondering what to do about this. And churches need to start facing this problem and not just ignoring it. I think this is really important. I appreciate so much the work you’re doing. I just really applaud you for tackling this and your heart for people who are dealing with this. Thank you so much for joining us.

Joy >> Thanks, Kay. And thank you leaders for listening. Really, even if you just mentioned the words pornography and women in a small group, in a sermon, anywhere, and someone hears that and then they feel safe and can come share their story and ask for help, that’s a game changer. So thank you for doing that and educating yourself on this topic.

Kay >> That’s a great word. Well, we have many other resources on BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. And we have other resources on Caring Well for others. And that’s where you’ll find this. That’s where you’ll find Joy’s and my conversation about rape culture. And we invite you to go there and just browse around, particularly in the Caring Well section if you’re looking for ways to care for those whom you love, the people that are under you, the people whom you serve and minister to.

Thanks for listening to the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast. You can find more podcast episodes and other resources for leaders by going to Beyondordinarywomen.org.

Do you want to lead small group discussions toward spiritual growth? Do you feel you’re just treading water with your small group? What can you do as the leader to cultivate disciples?  Kelly Arabie and Kay Daigle talk about ways to lead small group discussions and promote spiritual growth at the same time. Grow as a leader so that you encourage spiritual maturity in this third of three videos/podcast episodes. Part 1 – Essentials, and part 2 – Preparation are available on podcast.

You can connect to the video version if you prefer. Don’t miss the helpful resources found below.  Feel free to contact BOW at [email protected].

1:29 Contrasting ways of leading small groups don’t and do foster spiritual growth

FYI: The “Open Questions” and Small Group Leadership Handbook resource links are found below, as well as on the “Podcast/Video Extras” page.

Journal about these questions or discuss them with a more experienced leader:

To lead your small group toward spiritual growth requires preparation for the leader. Kelly Arabie joins Kay Daigle in the second podcast in this series of three so small group leaders can prepare well to be ready for the group meeting.

Sometimes we think of leading a small group as simply getting each member to talk and at the same time keeping the conversation on track. But if our goal is spiritual growth for the group members, it requires more than showing up and reading questions from the lesson. This kind of leadership requires deliberate preparation in several areas for the leader.

You can connect to the video version if you prefer, and don’t miss the helpful resources found below. Feel free to contact BOW at [email protected] if you have questions. If you missed Part 1 of this series, Essentials, connect to the podcast.

Journal about these questions, or discuss them with a more experienced leader:

0:33 Intro & defining a disciple

What essentials are necessary to lead your small group to spiritual growth? You can take actions right now that will help! Listen to encouraging ideas from Kelly Arabie, BOW Ministry Team Member, and then incorporate those necessary ingredients to foster discipleship in your group. You’ll soon be focusing on the essentials to lead your group toward spiritual growth yourself.

In this first of three episodes in this conversation, Kelly reveals her shepherd’s heart as she explains and illustrates these necessary ingredients for Kay Daigle, Founder of Beyond Ordinary Women.

Alternately, you can connect to the video version if you want to watch the conversation and also listen in. And please don’t miss browsing the helpful resources found below for leading small groups. If you have questions, contact Kay Daigle at [email protected].

         If you have never led a group, which area most concerns you and why?

Resources:

What is rape culture? Dr. Joy Skarka joins Kay Daigle to discuss it and ways to better care for and support victims in the church. Often the church is guilty of supporting rape culture. Joy speaks from her personal experience as well as her study and ministry focus on sexuality with Authentic Intimacy. This is a must-see episode for every disciple of Jesus. You can choose to watch it on video if you prefer. Don’t miss the helpful resources found below.

Topics:

2:26 – Joy’s story

Resources: