Cruciform Conversations

(This podcast is produced in partnership with Future of Faith, where I serve as Ministry Practitioner Coordinator and Associate Researcher. Please check out Future of Faith, follow the YouTube Channel, and sign up for the best newsletter around!)

My observation is that the way technology is impacting our lives and the world it’s created is that we’re just worse at being human.

We’re not doing great. We’re not doing great as a people.

We’re not flourishing; not finding healing and wholeness. And so the biggest question I think I keep coming back to when we ask our community is, “How is the world we’re creating, how is the community we’re creating, going to allow people to have a more human experience here than what the world offers?”

In this latest conversation with the Ministry Practitioners from Future of Faith, we explored the challenges and opportunities we are encountering in our diverse ministry contexts. In this episode, you will hear from an ecumenical group of leaders who are serving the church across the country and in very different traditions! This was a super fun conversation. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections.

Find out more about the Ministry Practitioners and the team at Future of Faith.

For far too many Christians, the life we have been taught to live has exhausted rather than sustained our faith. For many others, we are simply exhausted from white-knuckling our way to righteousness. Many others are exhausted and worn out from the constant attacks by religious authorities. How do we respond to and discover goodness when our faith is exhausted?

If you don’t try to understand women, you feel like you need to control them. Which you know, instead of putting the effort in to understand and glean the wisdom that is available, you go into control tactics, which we’re seeing in spades everywhere right now…

You know, that was how I felt my entire career the men were standing and saying, “Now just calm down, no, just slow down.” And so, I mean, I had some that really respected me, but we need to we need to look at it differently because we’re losing so much. The church is losing so much of what God intended by the diminishment of women.

- Dr. Janyne McConnaughey

In this week’s episode, I sit down with Dr. Janyne McConnaughey to discuss her new book, An Exhausted Faith; her expert work on trauma and its relationship to spiritual formation; and her journey of coming to terms with her trauma and its impact on her spiritual life. Janyne is brilliant, funny, transparent, and a gift to the church!

If you want to understand how our nervous system directly affects the ways we try to connect with God, you won’t want to miss this conversation. We examine the question of why so many churches are resistant to conversations about trauma and empathy, and the ways she has had to turn herself into a pretzel to gain acceptance by male clergy. Unexpectedly, we also take a deeper dive into the larger questions of gender mutuality in the church and how our communities are diminished when we have a limited imagination for who God calls and empowers. Janyne has several great books and resources to check out. Find links to her work below.

(Here is a link to a video Janyne mentions - a short primer on understanding our nervous system and how it functions.)

Dr Janyne McConnaughey, PhD is an award-winning author and a leading voice in helping the spiritually exhausted understand the intersection of trauma, the nervous system, and faith. Her most recent book, An Exhausted Faith: What If the Struggle Isn’t Spiritual? answers the question, “If it isn’t a spiritual problem, what now?” that was asked by readers of Trauma in the Pews: The Impact of Trauma on Spiritual Practices.

Janyne’s passion for encouraging other survivors of childhood trauma began when she walked into therapy at the age of sixty-one. Realizing healing was possible for survivors, she first authored three memoirs, the Brave series, in which she described the effects of childhood trauma and her path to healing.

Janyne builds on her forty-year career in teaching, teacher education, ministry preparation, and expertise in early childhood development to help educators, caregivers, and church ministry workers understand and apply trauma-informed practices. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tabor College (Masters in Education: Neuroscience & Trauma) and served for five years as a Board Member for the Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN), two as Board President. Janyne, her husband Scott, and rescue dog Weber live south of Seattle and enjoy spending time with children and grandchildren.

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Connect with Janyne’s Work

Amazon Author Page

Website

Substack

(Make sure you check out my two articles exploring the themes of Live Laugh Love - “Whose voice is coming out of your mouth?” and “Worship Music, Christian Aesthetics, Mommy Bloggers, and the Prosperity Gospel.” )

One thing that just keeps coming up for me is the way that hyper-individualism has gotten into our understanding of the Christian faith. And that’s so much what’s at the root secretly of MLM culture and a lot of what goes along with biblical womanhood. A lot of it is just 1950s consumer culture: “How can I manifest myself by buying things?”

Then that gets transferred into your faith walk, where you practice your Christianity by buying a product from a particular business. And that’s not what we ever see in the Bible. - Rachel Darnall

I was excited to be joined this week by Rachel Darnall, to interact with Live Laugh Love and to riff on the themes we encountered in the book. We move through a host of topics, exploring the origins of many ideas about biblical womanhood that still dominate evangelicalism today, the theology behind multi-level-marketing schemes, and how our culture shapes our reading of scripture and our understanding of God.

Key topics

* The influence of 19th-century holiness theology on modern culture

* Connections between biblical womanhood and historical movements

* The fallacy of ‘I’ve never heard of this person, so I can’t be influenced by them’

* The impact of consumer culture and marketing on Christian life

* How social media influences and commodifies relationships and faith

I would highly recommend listening to a previous conversation I had with Rachel about Patriarchy and Purity Culture, and you should ABSOLUTELY check out her YouTube channel and subscribe to These Troubled Times.

Rachel’s Bio: Rachel Darnall is the host and creator of These Troubled Times, an audio and visual road trip through the history, theology, and culture of Christian fundamentalism. Rachel covers the rise, fall, and resurgence of Christian fundamentalism in America, from revival tents and “Old-Time Religion” to “the culture wars” and January 6th, 2021. She completed her MA in Theological Studies from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2024.

In addition to her scholarship and media creation, Rachel is a Curriculum Developer for the Anastasis Center (Shout out to our friend Mako!)

(To stay up to date on the podcast, you can subscribe here on Substack or find us over on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Please subscribe and leave a review!)

What happens if our theology doesn’t take trauma seriously?

When we fail to pay attention to, learn about, and take seriously the trauma that we and others experience, we not only limit healing that is taking place, but we run a serious risk of perpetuating trauma and re-traumatizing those we claim to love.

We must take trauma seriously if we are going to participate in the good news of God’s reconciling work!

To that end, I was delighted to be joined for this week’s podcast by the Rev. Dr. Christine Young Hung. In our conversation, Christine shares some of her own story of learning to make sense of trauma and her work helping churches reckon with their own trauma and create ministries that are trauma-informed.

We dive into neuroscience, how trauma lives in our bodies, how the incarnation informs our theology of trauma, and practices to create safe spaces for others.

As always I would love to hear your thoughts, reflections, and insights from the conversation.

Resources Mentioned:

Trauma in the Pews by Jayne McConnaughey

The Body Keeps the Score

Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining

Trauma-Informed Ministry Conference at NTS

Connect with Dr. Christine Youn Hung

christine.youn(at)gmail.com

Facebook

The NOW Movement

(To stay up to date on the podcast, you can subscribe here on Substack or find us over on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Please subscribe and leave a review!)

When was the moment you discovered that Evangelicalism, as an ideology, is empty?

Ideology is indeed empty at its core. All political systems are founded upon an inaugural (primordial) trauma that establishes what ‘we’ are for versus what ‘we’ are against. Playing off the fears and insecurities of people, an antagonism is created that sustains the System. For Zizek (to oversimplify), this is what is real, this is ‘the Real’ that drives the System.

American democracy, for instance, does not embody any transcendent ideal such as the inalienable rights of each person to pursue, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Instead, this ideology is driven by the antagonism between those who wish to accumulate wealth in freedom and disadvantaged people who are victims of this wealth accumulation. This antagonism, covered over by the idea of ‘freedom’, founded the American system of democracy as it rebelled against the monarch of the British Commonwealth at the time of the American Revolution.” - David Fitch, The End of Evangelicalism, p. 25

This week’s podcast is a great conversation with my friend Gino Curcuruto, who, like me, is a pastor and contextual theologian. We dive into our decades of journeying inside of evangelicalism, the moments when the ideologies at work became apparent to us, and how contextual theology is making us hopeful and helping us love our neighbors better.

You can connect with Gino on Substack, where he has been working his way through the book we discussed, The End of Evangelicalism by Dr. David Fitch. His latest post in the series is really helpful!

Also, make sure to check out his podcast for Northern Seminary called For Context!

On a humorous note, you will also notice immediately that Gino and I are twinning! We are so alike, both in our work and in our middle-aged white guy pastor appearances, that we are meme-worthy.

As always, please share your thoughts and reflections!

“You sure use the word cruciform a lot, Greg. Why? And also, what does it mean?”

If you’ve ever had that thought as a reader of this Substack or podcast listener, here is a conversation for you!

It was such a delight to sit down with Dr. Michael Gorman recently. Dr. Gorman’s work first introduced me to the idea of cruciformity (inspiring the name of this Substack and podcast), and his biblical scholarship continues to prove incredibly valuable to my understanding of God's nature and what it means for us to participate in God's life and mission. Our conversation begins with a basic exploration of what cruciform means, and then we wander through scripture, diving into a biblical theology of cruciformity.

“But staying with John, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Well, who is that word? So the word is Jesus Christ. Well, where was that word? That word was with the Father, that word reveals the Father. No one has ever seen the Father. The Son, who is the eternally begotten one, who’s with the Father from the beginning, he has revealed him. And in John 1:18, there is a really interesting word there.

God’s son has explained God, and the Greek word there is the word from which we get the word exegesis. So, in other words, exegesis is the word for the explanation of a text, right? God’s son, Christ, is the self-exegesis, the self-manifestation, the self-explanation of God.

So when we see Christ. We need to see Christ’s love as God’s love, Christ’s self-giving character as the character of God.

Dr. Gorman helps us understand how cruciformity, as a framework, invites us to grasp the empathic and self-giving nature of God, develop a beautiful theology of atonement, and consider how we live out our faith in community and ministry to the world. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Resources that we mentioned in the conversation:

Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

Reading Revelation Responsibly

Inhabiting the Cruciform God

Paul and John in Harmony

(This podcast is produced in partnership with Future of Faith, where I contribute as the Ministry Practitioner Coordinator and as a Researcher. Please check out Future of Faith, follow the YouTube Channel, and sign up for the best newsletter around!)

I want to be very distinct about what we’re seeing is not a movement away from faith. They’re believing in other things; they’re believing less, and their confidence in the church and church leaders has declined.

And so to kind of qualify that, they’re sharing the internet with us; they see the fall of pastors, they see people being arrested; they see harm coming from people who profess to know God and love God…

They’re looking for faith that feels real to them, and so our hope is that in living out what it really means to be a believer and a follower of Christ is that they will be exposed to more examples of what that really looks like. True revival only comes with repentance and I do believe that there are leaders of our generation that need to take a moment to say we repent for the thing that we’ve made it. - Keturah Boston

Sorry that I have been so quiet the past two months! My work for Future of Faith continues to expand, and I have been helping with some qualitative research projects. But a few weeks ago, I sat down with our amazing team of Ministry Practitioners to record this conversation.

There are very different narratives going around about the state of the church. Some are trumpeting signs of revival. Some are recounting their celebrations of revival. Others are pointing to the steady and steep decline in church participation. With all of that going on, we wanted to stop, pay attention to our unique and diverse ministry contexts, and bear witness to the ways we see God at work in them. Find out more about the Ministry Practitioners and the team at Future of Faith.

(To stay up to date on the podcast, you can subscribe here on Substack or find us over on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Please subscribe and leave a review!)

Episode Summary:

In this insightful conversation, Dr. Courtney Skiera-Vaughn shares her extensive experience in cross-cultural trauma, human trafficking, and sexual ethics. She explores how cultural perspectives shape our understanding of trauma, the myths surrounding human trafficking, and the importance of humility and contextual understanding in addressing these complex issues.

What I saw there (in Uganda), as well as what I have learned in a variety of other cultures, is that in these cultures that are more embodied, many of the trauma symptoms show up somatically. So they are physical symptoms, not emotional. So it’s going to be headaches that are so bad you can’t see. They are stomach aches that are not explained. It is these these other types of things, those are the primary, not the emotional.

And with my dissertation that I did looking at how stress and trauma are conceptualized within Uganda, who does not have, they do not have vernacular words for stress or trauma. A lot of my participants were saying, in general, the quote was, " You in the US separate who the human is. You separate the body from the emotions and the mind and the spirit. In Africa, we are one, we are whole.”

We have to recognize that 85% of the research we conduct is conducted in the West. Less than 5 % of research is conducted with a non-English speaker as a researcher. - Dr. Courtney Skiera-Vaughn

My journey to understand sexual ethics took a marked detour when I first encountered sex trafficking survivors. Hearing their stories, studying their experiences, and growing to understand the larger forces that created their vulnerability sent me on a 20-year journey. This series on Cruciform Sexuality, and much of my ministry, was born out of an encounter that took place when trafficking became real to me for the first time.

One of my beloved companions on this journey, whose research, co-labor, and friendship have deeply impacted me, is my friend Dr. Courtney Skiera Vaughn. I was delighted to sit down with her this week to record a conversation about her research, wrestle together with some of the hard contextual questions regarding sexual ethics, and to reflect on our own journeys.

As with all conversations in this series, we dive into difficult subject matter around sex trafficking and exploitation. So be aware of your own health, needs, and limits.

In this episode, we talk about polygamy, and I reference this case study I wrote for this series.

Connect with Courtney

In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with my dear friend Dr. Kelcie Vercel, searching for sociological insights into the lived sexual experiences of young adults. Connecting the methodology of sociology to the work of contextual theology, we dig into the research about the lived sexual experiences of young adult, how they are being educated, the social scripts they are learning, and how this insight can shape a redemptive ethic.

Kelcie helps us explore the cultural and social influences shaping sexual ethics, behaviors, and perceptions in contemporary society. Our conversation delves into topics like pornography, unwanted sex, and the impact of cultural narratives on individual and collective sexual experiences, offering valuable perspectives for faith communities and educators.

As always, it’s a great help if you share the podcast with friends, and I would love to hear your feedback and insights!

A Cruciform Sexual Ethic must reflect the teachings and life of Jesus!

It is a simple truth, but vital for our work in examining our own sexual ethics and understanding what is shaping us.

In this conversation, I chat with my friend Dr. Ryan Huber to explore the complexities of sexual ethics through a cruciform lens, emphasizing the self-giving love of Christ. We discuss Jesus' creative interpretation of scripture regarding marriage and sexuality, the cultural shifts in understanding these concepts, and the importance of community in strengthening relationships. The dialogue also touches on the eschatological vision of relationships, suggesting that while marriage is significant, it is not the ultimate fulfillment of human connection. Instead, the focus should be on the transformative power of love and friendship within the body of Christ, leading to a deeper understanding of what it means to live out a cruciform ethic in today's world.I found the conversation to be a helpful test case for the Cruciform framework, and insightful when considering the dominant evangelical teachings on marriage and family. Too often, marriage and family have been treated as the promised end of our life in Christ, rather than life in Christ itself. I would offer cruciformity as a helpful corrective to this misalignment.

Connect with Ryan:

Ryan’s books

Formation Time Substack

Bohoeffer On Substack

New Canaan Society