In the Season One finale of The Church We Dream Of, host Kia Gutiérrez reads from the closing chapter of her book, Emotions as Messengers. The episode makes a clear case: emotional health is the map back to identity, purpose, and healthy connection, both at home and in the church.

Kia recaps the book's three-part framework that's anchored the season:

• The Messenger — what emotions are and how they function in the body
• The Message — the seven primary emotions and what each one theologically communicates
• The Mission — sitting with emotion, managing the gap, and practicing forgiveness, boundary setting, and reconciliation

From there, she reads the chapter's central argument: emotional health isn't a self-help detour from faith. It's the real work of becoming people who can be trusted with the ministry of reconciliation.

The hypocrisy the world can already feel. Speaking as both minister and therapist, Kia names the gap she's witnessed and lived between preaching connection and practicing management. People aren't unwilling to draw near to Jesus because of bad theology. They're watching the distance between what's claimed and what's lived.

Healing over performance. The church's credibility depends on trading the performance of being a savior for the slower, harder work of being healed.

Small is not a consolation prize. Taking emotional health seriously changes the shape of church itself. Kia argues for slower timelines and smaller, deeper community, pointing out that Jesus had twelve disciples and one ministry. Strong small group culture isn't optional. It's the foundation.

Pace as theology. Healing is embodied and relational, not resolved by reading a book. Kia draws a line to the Israelites' forty years in the desert as time spent getting to know God, not a delay, and invites listeners to hold their own healing on an unhurried timeline.

A full year ahead. Season Two will spend an entire year with emotions as messengers rather than moving to a new topic, treating transformation as something that takes sustained time.

21 episodes, six guests, and a podcast that grew from a nervous first Substack-only post to a show now ranking in the top 20% of all podcasts on Spotify. Listener favorites include the pilot episode, The Language of Trauma, Jesus Remembers with Christine Luxam, and Back to Eden, a conversation with Kia's husband on marriage and conflict.

Emotions as Messengers includes a seventeen-session study guide, designed for individuals, couples, small groups, or church leadership teams.

• Where have you confused managing your emotions with actually feeling and stewarding them?
• What would it look like for your church or small group to slow down enough to build real relational depth?
• Looking back ten years, what dreams has God already brought to fruition?

Season Two begins soon, dedicated to a full year of going deeper into emotions as messengers, scripture, and emotionally healthy church communities. Subscribe so you don't miss the first episode.

Subscribe, leave a review, and join us for Season Two.

Keywords: Christian emotional health, trauma-informed church, faith-based therapy, church healing journey, emotions as messengers, faith and emotions, shame in the church, American church transformation, Christian community, church we dream of podcast

Episode OverviewKey ThemesA Look Back at Season OneA Note on the BookReflection QuestionsWhat's Next

In this episode of The Church We Dream Of, Kia Gutiérrez continues the book party series for Emotions as Messengers, walking through the heart of Part Three: The Mission. If you have ever known you were supposed to feel something but had no idea what to actually do with it once you felt it, this episode is for you.

Kia unpacks what it really means to sit with an emotion (hint: it is not about being still), introduces the concept of the gap as the space between feeling and acting, and walks through forgiveness, boundaries, and reconciliation as the three practical tools for responding to what your emotions are telling you.

• Sitting with emotion — why it is a choice to stay connected to your body, not a posture, and how disassociation and emotional "loudness" can both mask whether you are actually doing the work
• The two fears that block emotional presence — the fear of drowning versus the fear of inauthenticity, and why people who carry these fears so often end up married to each other
• The gap — why reason and consideration are part of the original image of God in you, not opposites to emotion, and why slowing down often makes things messier before they get healthier
• Forgiveness redefined — forgiveness as transferring the account of what is owed out of your hands and into God's, rather than minimizing the harm
• Boundaries that protect relationship — why healthy boundaries exist to protect connection, not to punish or control, and how they differ from the self-protective walls built from trauma responses
• Reconciliation and the honest mathematics of shared trauma — why people who share the same source wound (often family) struggle to heal each other, and how the body of Christ can be a bridge while those relationships heal

One of the most personal moments in this episode is Kia's reflection on why reconciliation can feel impossible within families or church communities that share the same original wound. She offers a compassionate reframe: this is not relational failure, it is the honest math of shared trauma, and the broader body of Christ exists in part to offer connection while those closer relationships heal.

Emotions as Messengers: A Faith-Based Guide to Understanding Your Emotions to Reconnect with God, Yourself, and Others is available on Amazon. This episode covers material from Part Three, including the chapters on sitting with emotion, the gap, forgiveness, boundaries, and reconciliation.

Subscribe to The Church We Dream Of for the next episode, the final episode of Season One, where Kia closes out the series with the final chapter of the book and a full season review.

Keywords: Christian emotional health, faith-based therapy, trauma-informed church, forgiveness and boundaries, Christian reconciliation, church healing journey, emotions as messengers, sitting with emotion, Christian marriage and family therapist

In This EpisodeA Note on Family, Church Hurt, and Healing DistanceAbout the BookConnect

Show Notes:

In this episode, Kia continues breaking down the seven primary emotions from her book Emotions as Messengers — covering disgust, fear, and anticipation, plus a look at how mixed emotions work together.

What we cover:

Disgust isn't just an unpleasant reaction — it's holy discernment in the body. Disgust signals that something sacred is being violated, whether through betrayal, exploitation, or harm to a person's worth. Kia talks about writing this chapter not only for those who've experienced harm, but for those who feel they've caused it too. She unpacks how trauma shapes our experience of disgust, and why receiving this emotion well starts with one thing: taking it seriously.

Fear gets a reframe many of us have never heard in church. "Do not be afraid" isn't a command to shut the feeling down — fear's real message is look out, pay attention. At its core, fear is the guardian of attachment. It shows up when the distance between us and the people (and the God) we need has grown too great, calling us back to connection rather than away from it.

Anticipation is the forward-leaning emotion that never fully resolves — and that's by design. Every good thing we reach for (marriage, healing, community, belonging) arrives, is genuinely good, and still leaves us reaching. Kia draws on Augustine's restless heart to explain why: we were made for a connection only God can fully satisfy.

Mixed emotions: Kia closes with how these primary emotions blend like paint colors, creating the tension and depth we feel in real life — and why holding multiple emotions at once without forcing a quick resolution is its own form of surrender.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Emotions as Messengers by Kia Gutiérrez — available exclusively on Amazon
• Dr. Tim Mackie / The Bible Project (on parallelism in the Psalms)
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

Coming up next: Part Three — The Mission. Once we've received the message of our emotions, what do we actually do with it?

The Church We Dream Of | Episode Show Notes

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Church We Dream Of podcast, host Kia Gutiérrez continues her series unpacking her book Emotions as Messengers by diving into Part Two — the heart of the book. After laying the theological and psychological foundation in Part One, Kia now gets practical. What are your emotions actually trying to tell you? And what does it look like to receive them well?

This is Christian emotional health in action — not as theory, but as a lived, embodied practice rooted in the character of God. Kia walks through four of the seven primary emotions: joy, anger, surprise, and sadness, asking the same four questions of each one and revealing how each emotion is a message from God designed to draw us back into connection with Him, ourselves, and our Christian community.

In This Episode, Kia Covers:

• The four questions asked of every emotion in Part Two: What is it communicating? How does it reflect God's character? How has trauma shaped it? What does it look like to receive it well?
• Joy — not hype or optimism, but a signal that God is present and you are safe enough to receive it
• Anger — the emotional immune system, designed to defend what God has declared good
• Surprise — the shortest emotion and the most direct invitation to surrender our limited perspective to God's
• Sadness — the emotion that assigns value to what has been lost, including the small everyday losses we tend to dismiss

Key Takeaways

• Joy is not scarce. It is the natural atmosphere of nearness to God — and your body was designed to live there. Receiving joy is an act of surrender, not performance.
• Anger is not the opposite of faith. It is the emotional immune system. You cannot be angry about something you do not care about — and what you are angry about tells you exactly what you are made of.
• Surprise is the moment your nervous system says wait — reality is larger than your predictions. It is the most direct practice of releasing the illusion that your plans keep you safe.
• Sadness is not weakness. It is the body's way of honoring what mattered. Even small sadnesses are worth acknowledging — because God is not disappointed when you are disappointed.
• All four emotions are part of God's original design. Emotions and faith were never meant to be separated.

On Trauma and Emotional Health

Each emotion in this episode is explored through a trauma-informed church lens. Kia addresses how past wounds shape the way we experience or avoid specific emotions — and how understanding that dynamic is the beginning of receiving the message well. This is not willpower. It is not white-knuckling your way into feeling. It is creating the conditions in which your body gets more evidence that God can be trusted.

Chapters Referenced

• Chapter 4 — Joy
• Chapter 5 — Anger
• Chapter 6 — Surprise
• Chapter 7 — Sadness

Coming Up Next

Kia unpacks three more of the seven primary emotions and then dives into mixed emotions — what they are, why they matter, and what they reveal about the complexity of the human experience God designed.

Get the Book

Emotions as Messengers: A Faith-Based Guide to Understanding Your Emotions to Reconnect with God, Yourself, and Others is available now on Amazon. If this episode gave you language for something you have already been experiencing, the book will take you deeper.

👉 Search Emotions as Messengers by Kia Gutiérrez on Amazon

Connect With Kia

If you are a woman of faith learning to reconnect with your emotions, your calling, and your community, this christian women podcast was made for you. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs it.

The Church We Dream Of is a faith-based podcast exploring shame in the church, emotional healing, and what it takes to build the Christian community we all dream of — one honest, faith-filled conversation at a time.

Episode Show Notes

Why I Wrote Emotions as Messengers — A Behind-the-Scenes Reveal

Episode Summary

Host Kia Gutiérrezm, of this christian podcast, pulls back the curtain on her debut book, Emotions as Messengers: A Faith-Based Guide to Understanding Your Emotions to Reconnect with God, Yourself, and Others, releasing July 7, 2026 — her 35th birthday. This is a raw, personal, behind-the-scenes look at where the book came from, what it covers, and why Kia believes it is a missing piece in both the church and the psychology world when it comes to faith and emotions.

In This Episode, Kia Shares:

• The story behind the book — a defining moment at age 19 on a YWAM base in Mexico that led her to declare, "I never want to feel again" — and what changed her mind
• Why emotional health is not just a self-help issue but a deeply theological and biological one
• How the psychology of emotion and the character of God are inseparable
• What the book's central thesis really means: emotions are messages from God
• A reading from Chapter 1 on the science of emotion and God's original design
• A reading from Chapter 2 on what she calls "the redacted message" and what Jesus' incarnation has to do with your nervous system
• A reading from Chapter 3 on shame, attachment, and what it means to be fully known
• Why church leadership development and healthy community depend on our ability to hear and respond to our emotions
• How this book is different from every other emotional health curriculum out there

Key Takeaways

• Emotions are not a design flaw. They are part of God's original blueprint for human connection and Kingdom purpose.
• Cutting off emotion does not protect you — it costs you. Kia shares the science behind why numbing one emotion reduces them all.
• The line between letting emotions run your life and ignoring them completely is a holy one — and this book helps you walk it.
• Healing is both supernatural and natural. Neuroplasticity and the power of God are not in conflict.

Chapters at a Glance

• Chapter 1 — What emotions actually are and why God designed them
• Chapter 2 — Why we stop feeling (hint: it is an attachment issue, not an education issue)
• Chapter 3 — How shame interrupts emotional connection in community
• Parts 2 & 3 — How to hear the emotional message and what to do with it (coming in future episodes!)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Emotions as Messengers by Kia Gutiérrez — available now on Amazon
• YWAM (Youth With A Mission) Discipleship Training School (DTS)
• Attachment theory and trauma-informed couples communication
• The theology of the Fall, incarnation, and what Jesus saves us from

Get the Book

Emotions as Messengers is available exclusively on Amazon. If this episode resonated with you, grab your copy, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs it.

👉 Search Emotions as Messengers by Kia Gutiérrez on Amazon

Connect With Kia

If you are a woman of faith wrestling with your emotions, your church experience, or your calling, this faith-based podcast was made for you. Subscribe, leave a review, and join Kia on the journey.

The Church We Dream Of is a faith and emotions podcast for those who are hurt but haven't given up — on God, on the church, or on themselves.

Episode Show Notes

Episode Summary

Nine months in, and the Church We Dream Of podcast has never shied away from naming what is broken in the American Western church. But naming the wound is only step one. This episode is the disclaimer no one gives you before the real work starts — and it might be the most important conversation yet.

Host Kia Gutiérrez, licensed professional support provider and minister, walks you through what the church healing journey actually looks like before you dive in — because if you are expecting a straight line, you will quit too soon. If you have been doing the work of American church transformation and wondering why it feels harder instead of easier, this episode is for you.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Why healing almost always feels like falling apart before it gets better
• The three emotional realities you will encounter on the path toward Christian emotional health: silence that looks like failure, fear tied to shame, and trauma responses disguised as preferences
• Why your nervous system chose shame — and why letting go of it is terrifying and necessary
• How rigid relational preferences are often trauma responses keeping us from the connection God designed us for
• What it means to put something at Jesus' feet — and why it is not about releasing control, it is about discipleship
• The difference between I am the problem and this solution is not working — and why that distinction changes everything
• How emotions and faith work together on the path toward genuine Christian community

Also In This Episode

Kia revisits conversations from earlier in Season 1 — including interviews with Sam (living in chaos), Dr. Amanda Anderson (high-functioning shame in the church), and Billy (navigating difference in the church) — weaving them into a unified framework for what transformation requires in a trauma-informed church context.

Big Announcement

Kia's book Emotions as Messengers: A Faith-Based Guide to Understanding Your Emotions to Reconnect with God, Yourself, and Others is now available for pre-order! After two months of deep writing, Kia has packaged five years of personal, professional, and faith-based therapy research into one resource designed to give you a custom roadmap — through your own emotions — for building the church you dream of.

📖 Pre-order here: https://a.co/d/0h9gdKyX | Official release: July 7th

Key Takeaways

• The healing journey is not linear. Disorientation is not a sign you are doing it wrong — it is a sign you are doing it at all.
• Shame in the church is not just a personal struggle. It is a nervous system response with deep relational and theological roots.
• What we call preferences are often trauma responses in disguise — and Christian emotional health requires us to know the difference.
• Discipleship and emotional healing are not separate tracks. They are the same road.

Episodes Referenced

• Sam — living in chaos
• Dr. Amanda Anderson — high-functioning shame
• Billy — navigating difference in the church

Coming Up Next

Kia unpacks the first three chapters of Emotions as Messengers — the original message of emotions, how that message gets interrupted, and what she calls the redacted message.

Connect With Kia

Subscribe to the Church We Dream Of podcast and join the conversation about what it takes to build the church we all dream of — one honest, healing, faith-filled episode at a time.

The Church We Dream Of is a faith-based podcast for those who are hurt but have not given up — on God, on the church, or on themselves.

What does it actually cost a church to pursue racial inclusion — and why don't more churches pay it? Pastor and ministry veteran Billy Thomas joins host Kia Gutiérrez for an honest, practical conversation about race in the church. Drawing on over two decades of multicultural ministry across Texas and Mississippi, Billy helps us understand what the church we dream of could actually look like.

What You'll LearnAbout

• Why representation in church leadership is the most powerful signal of welcome
• What Black and white worship traditions can learn from each other — and what's lost when we don't
• The real cost of racial inclusion, and why pride is the price most congregations won't pay
• How understanding why a tradition exists changes how you receive it
• Why curiosity is the most underrated bridge-building tool in the church

Our Guest

Billy Thomas has over two decades of experience in pastoral ministry, including roles as youth pastor, associate pastor, and interim pastor. As a biracial man — half Black, half white — Billy brings a uniquely personal lens to multicultural ministry, bridge-building, and discipleship.

Highlights

The church merger that started it all — Billy's first pastoral role dropped him into the middle of a merger between an Assemblies of God congregation and a Church of God in Christ church. Two traditions. Completely different cultures, worship styles, and histories. No roadmap.

Worship as the first battleground — Billy unpacks the musical and historical differences between Black and white church traditions, including why Black worship leaders historically gave the congregation the next line before they sang it — and what happened when elderly white saints learned to worship in an entirely new style.

Two First Baptist churches on the same block — In a small Mississippi town, Billy discovered two nearly identical red-brick churches across the street from each other. Same name. One for white congregants, one for Black. Not 50 years ago. Within living memory.

What inclusion actually costs — The price isn't money. It's asking longtime members to release their preferences — and trusting that doing so opens the door for people God has been preparing to walk through it.

Quotable

"You can't say there's one right way without knowing all of the ways. And none of us could come to know all of those ways."

"It's not about how do we get them to change to be who we are. How do we adopt into that culture?"

If you're a minority in leadership: speak up. No one at the table will learn if you don't.

Subscribe, share, and join us next time on The Church We Dream Of.

Keywords: racial inclusion church, multicultural ministry, church diversity, Black church history, racial reconciliation Christianity, church leadership representation, worship across cultures, church culture change

Memorable Quotes

"Shame is this irredeemable core experience of just feeling like everything I am and everything I did is a mistake and should be hidden... the crushing shame that came from feeling less than everybody else with no chance of getting out of it.""I can now without shame tell my story. I'm going to be shameless about it. Here's the mess. Here's the dumpster fire of my life. We're all dumpster fires. We burn brighter together.""Conviction is because I've done something wrong. And I can pinpoint it. Shame is such a vague thing of something's wrong, you are wrong, but there's no direction. There's no solution.""I refuse ownership of shame. I don't own shame. That's not mine.""Do it scared. I love to be brave. I love to be courageous. But sometimes courage is just doing it scared."

Call to Action

Start asking yourself, "What if?" What if you're not the terrible person shame tells you that you are?

Resources

• Book: Shamelessly Redeemed: My Journey from Brokenness to Identity and Purpose by Dr. Amanda Anderson
• Previous Book: #RelationshipGoals: The New Relationship Manual by Dr. Amanda Anderson
• Practice: Anderson Therapy Group:
• Publication: Family Therapy Magazine article on TikTok phenomenon

https://www.andersontherapygroup.com/index.html

Here are the show notes for this episode:

The Church We Dream Of — Episode Show Notes

Episode Title: Walking by Faith in the Chaos of Life | A Conversation with Samantha Barnard

Episode Summary

In this episode, host Kia Gutiérrez sits down with Samantha Barnard — chaos coordinator, children's ministry leader, wife, mom, and lifelong woman of faith — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it looks like to walk out your faith one step at a time. Sam shares stories from her childhood, her marriage, the losses she's carried, and the moments where God showed up in the most unexpected ways. This is a testimony episode, and it's a good one.

Topics Covered

• Growing up Lutheran in a military family and finding her own faith identity
• Why she was always drawn to church — even when her parents weren't
• Meeting her husband Chris in freshman English class and the long, winding road back to each other
• Losing a pregnancy while navigating a complicated family season
• Donating 63% of her liver to her brother — and what faith looked like in that hospital room
• Her resistance to structured programs and what "walk by faith" actually means to her
• Why community and people's stories are the heart of her faith life
• What she'd say to her younger self: "Patience, grasshopper."

Key Quotes

"God is where we are — whether it's in this book or getting my feet in the grass and just feeling His presence."

"If you want to live, then let's go. Let's go live."

"I don't need to know this. I just need to be the voice that the Lord needs heard. I just need to be the action He needs executed."

"One minute turns into one hour turns into one day turns into a lifetime."

"Walk by faith." (tattooed on her foot — she means it)

Scripture Reference

The story of the widow and the oil jars — 2 Kings 4:1–7. Sam connects this to her own life: showing up with what little you have and watching God overflow it into abundance.

Resources Mentioned

• Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) — a curriculum the church uses; Sam shares her honest take on it
• Alpha Course — a foundational course she and Chris took together early in their faith journey
• Living Water Church — where Sam and Chris have attended since Easter 2002 (approximately)

About Sam

Samantha Barnard is a wife to Fire Chief Chris Barnard, a mom, and a children's ministry coordinator at her local church. She also coordinates weddings and is deeply invested in building community. Her mother-in-law calls her Saint Sam. Her family just wishes she'd simmer down a little. She won't.

Connect

Find The Church We Dream Of on Substack for more episodes and reflections.

Have you ever felt like you're the only one keeping everything running — at home, at church, in your relationships — and you're exhausted but can't stop? This episode puts a name to that feeling: over-functioning. Kia unpacks it through a psychological, relational, and theological lens, tracing how it starts in childhood and ripples outward into every relationship we have — including our relationship with God and the church.

This episode draws on themes from three earlier conversations:

"Jesus Remembers" with Christine — developmental trauma, attachment theory, and how Jesus's own humanity changes our relationship with God.

"Returning to Eden" with Kia and her husband — Genesis's original design for marriage and how assuming we know our partner's needs leads to ongoing conflict.

"Church Size Matters" — Timothy Keller's framework on how church size shapes the relational experience of a congregation.

Kia defines over-functioning as a long-term pattern of thinking or being that requires more of your body, mind, and spirit — or of a relationship — than it can sustainably provide.

Drawing on the work introduced in "Jesus Remembers," Kia explains that humans have two core needs: attachment and authenticity. When childhood resources are limited, the body typically sacrifices authenticity to preserve attachment. One result is anxious attachment — doing more and more relational labor in hopes of staying connected and safe.

In Marriage — Assuming what a partner wants (rather than asking) is a small but telling example. Scaled up, it produces cycles of unmet expectations, quiet distance, and exhaustion. Kia also addresses the cultural myth that marriage should be a source of complete happiness — a "savior" dynamic that sets both partners up to constantly over-function and still feel like they're failing.

In Parenting — When parents over-function to shield children from all pain and disappointment, they unintentionally deprive their kids of the struggle needed to build resilience. Kia offers grace here too: every generation of parents will fail in some way, and the goal is to fail forward — making new mistakes rather than the same old ones.

With God — Over-functioning in faith often looks like a works-based theology, even when someone intellectually knows they're saved by grace. If your attachment wound is deep enough, it's hard to believe God loves you as you are. You'll either try to earn connection with Him or treat Him like a parent you have to perform for.

In the Church — Ministries often begin as small, organic gatherings and grow into systems that take on a life of their own. When the ministry becomes the identity of the church — rather than connection with God — a works-based culture can quietly take root. Serving becomes the currency of belonging, and over-functioning gets praised as generosity, patience, and faithfulness. The key question Kia offers: if you can't articulate what the church's identity and purpose is apart from its ministries, you may be over-functioning.

Kia points back to Genesis — specifically God's first words to Adam and Eve after they sinned: "Who told you?" She invites listeners to sit with that second question.

If the answer isn't God, then the voice driving the over-functioning deserves to be questioned.

She also reframes pain — not as something to avoid, but as a gift that surfaces unmet need and drives us toward God. Over-functioning keeps us too busy to feel that pain. Slowing down will be uncomfortable, possibly terrifying. But that discomfort is the doorway back to authentic connection — with ourselves, with each other, and with God.

"The church that I dream of steps out of over-functioning... so confident and secure and authentically ourselves in the presence of God and each other that we will return to Eden once again — naked and unashamed."