Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to Becoming Church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming Christians, but about becoming the church. I'm your host, Kristin Mockler Young, and today, as a little peek behind the scenes, I want to fill you in on this fact that I get a lot of books in the mail, many of which you hear here in different conversations. But I have to be honest with you, I don't read most of them in their entirety when I prep for episodes. I do research on my guests across a variety of different platforms, which definitely includes skimming and reading through parts of their manuscripts. But if you think I have time to read all of these books in their entirety, your perception of my life is probably a little bit distorted.
This one, however, I did read completely, which is evidenced by the underlines and the dog ears and the tear stains all throughout. It's called Braving the Truth by Rachel Held Evans, who is one of, if not the most influential voice in my own evolving faith. While she sadly left this life Too soon in 2019, her unpublished words have been compiled by someone else who has been just as influential in helping me become the reflection of Jesus that I am so proud of, and that is Ms. Sarah Besse. I'm honored and delighted to welcome her back to Becoming Church as the editor to this compilation of works on reimagining faith.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Becoming Church podcast.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: I am so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Thrilled to have you. Last time I was remembering, I think there had been like some kind of update on the platform we were using and you put your hands up. Do you remember this? You put your hands up or something and like set off fireworks in the background.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: It's one of my favorite moments. It's actually a gift I have that's.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: We'll wait for it today. We'll see what happens. What is going to be the key, the key moment?
[00:02:08] Speaker A: I'll save it. I'll keep it in my back pocket for a real, real emphasis.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Perfect.
Well, you are here today, actually, to talk about braving the truth, which I have right here in my hands. I did not expect this to be as thick as it is, and I was very delighted to realize, oh, gosh, content was in here.
So this is a compilation of essays from Rachel Held Evans. And so I would love to, before we dive right into the book, for people maybe that don't know, and I know it is tender, but will you tell us kind of about Rachel, how you met her and then how your Partnership with Evolving Faith kind of came to be sure.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So Rachel, Rachel Held Evans was a writer and she was someone who was incredibly loved, not only for her work on the Internet, but, you know, she wrote best selling books and she was a very beloved speaker. She was a good friend to a lot of us who came up during that same era of online writing.
All of us who kind of made the jump from the early days of the Internet to traditional publishing.
And Rachel died at 37 in 2019 from an illness. It was very sudden. And in the aftermath of that, all of us who loved her, you know, have done a lot of work around her books, things that she had in progress. She had, you know, started some children's books that Matthew Paul Turner has finished and.
Oh, I know they're just like my favorite things to give.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: I give them for baby gifts, for baby dedications. That's our like go to gift.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Oh, they're phenomenal. And so. And then Jeff Chu finished Wholehearted Faith, which was a manuscript she had almost 60% finished.
And one of the things that we had kind of quietly talked about with Dan, who's her widower, was what would her online writing sort of look like?
Especially because the Internet has changed so much.
The way that we receive content, the way that we interact with one another, how we build community has shifted so much. And so over the years, we've heard from people in the last seven years or so, just not only how much her work meant to them in that space, but also what now, you know, what does it look like for the next generation kind of coming up after us?
And so that's where kind of the idea for this was born. Dan and the family came to me and said, you know, you were here in real time, you know, for all of it. And.
And so this was the work that I got to pick up and carry for the last couple of years, was compiling and pulling together all of her online writing into something that would live not only just as like a keepsake or a, a record for all of us who were there, but also as a way of kind of gifting this moment in time to the generations that are coming up after us to understand not only where we are now, but how we got here. And Rachel's a great person to do that work alongside of people, even now.
So that's kind of where that came in.
Um, Rachel and I, you know, we were friends for a lot of years. We met online, I think most great relationships right now.
And it was early days, you know, I started blogging and oversharing on the Internet in 2004, if you can believe it. So, I mean, that's a long time ago now.
And that was, of course, before social media was a big aspect of it. So blogging was kind of how we found each other.
We would have connected. I think it was in 08 or 09, and I was one of many people who were writing in these lanes.
You know, I think at the time I was going through what may have been an early experience of deconstruction, but we didn't have language like that then.
And so in a lot of ways, we all kind of found each other and we kind of created this little community and this way of writing alongside of each other and commenting. But that grew for Rachel and I into an actual friendship.
And we ended up, you know, working together, writing in similar lanes, you know, caring about similar, you know, topics and issues and things that we kind of. We had this kind of eldest daughter earnestness that just kind of like met and multiplied.
That would have been a great moment for the fireworks coming out when I just did that.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: But it's coming, it's coming.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Alas, apparently the anointing has left. And so in 2017, her and I just started talking about what it would look like to put together kind of our own conference. Her and I were both traveling and speaking and doing quite a lot of that work at the time. I had four kids.
She had just had her first. And both of us were kind of looking for a way to do that work in a way that felt sustainable and even friendly to us as mothers.
And so we were like, well, let's do kind of our own thing on a weekend. And, you know, we started working with Jim Chaffee, built out kind of our first evolving faith weekend, thinking it would be a one off thing.
And then that weekend, I mean, I'd always known that this season of wilderness or going through the experience of having an evolving faith, is profoundly unshephered and it is deeply unaccompanied, you know, for a lot of people, I think, especially in those years.
And so it felt like a chance to be alongside of each other in a really meaningful way. I remember, like Rachel and I kind of looking at each other a lot backstage, like, what have we done?
Because it was just like just the energy, yes. And the longing and the community that was emerging. And so it just, you know, we came home from that and we were like, okay, I guess it wasn't a one off thing. We built this whole five year plan about, you know, not just conference, but, like, community and what it might look like and even a podcast and all those sorts of things.
And even after she died, that really helped serve as kind of the guide for Evolving Faith was the thing that we had kind of put together. And I didn't transition out of leadership until I felt like we'd accomplished those original plans. And in some ways, it felt like, okay, I had my leg of the baton with Evolving Faith, and now I.
Everything that we dreamed of has happened, and I feel really open to what the spirit might do next with that space. And so I am really excited about what's happening with Evolving Faith now.
You know, new leadership has so many incredible things they're putting together. I think everything that lies ahead for Evolving Faith makes me really excited, and I'm really proud of that work that we did together. Yeah.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: And is Jeff Chu the one that's heading that up now?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: No, actually, it's being kind of connected with a church in North Carolina called Crossroads, and so it's being led by a team kind of nestled within that community. Okay.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not far. I remember, I think you were here last year, maybe at that church. You guys were doing something up here.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: And I was out of town, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I
[00:09:41] Speaker A: could have gotten up so close. So close.
I know I'm always making a nuisance of myself. I'm like, at some point, you know, years from now, I'll be like the little granny sitting in the corner knitting, and they'll be like, who's that? And we're like, we don't know an origin story. Who knows?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Well, I want to talk about Sarah. The difference, like, you mentioned, you know, blogging and, like, 20 years ago and how different it was, and even in the book you talk about, that felt like a way to, like, get past the gatekeepers. For the people who, you know, wanted to silence or ignore other voices, it office all of a sudden gave you an opportunity to speak.
And I feel like right now it's so different because everyone has a hot take and everyone wants to or tries to be like a quote unquote prophetic voice. Right.
With an opinion. And so I would say for people that are looking for maybe, like, the Rachels of our time, how would you encourage them to seek those people out in the. In all of the voices that are out there?
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Hmm.
That's a really good question, because you're right. In a lot of ways, the moment when Rachel and I were kind of coming into this work There was this sense of, like, oh, you think that too?
You feel that too, And I'm not totally alone or completely out to lunch or sinful or wrong or broken or bad. The way that so many voices, oftentimes within our context, were kind of, you know, echoing or saying to us.
And so there was this sense of, like, community and camaraderie and a lack of loneliness that emerged.
And. And so I think, like, when I look at the moment that we're in now, and this idea of, like, if someone's looking for a Rachel for right now, I think Rachel would probably be the very first person who would say, we need to look beyond her.
She was absolutely a prophet. I don't think I always used that word for her when we were doing this work at the time, but now looking back on it 10, 15 years later, I'm like, oh, holy hell. She was really prophetic.
Like, wow. And so she did this incredible work. But a huge aspect of her passion was to step out of the spotlight and redirect the light and the attention, even the privilege that was being given to her as, like, this white Southern millennial woman with a big platform.
A lot of her quieter passion that not a lot of people knew about was trying to redirect that attention onto voices that were marginalized or underrepresented or under listened to. And so when I think about what it would look like to look for a Rachel right now, I think in a lot of ways, like, even what we're seeing right now at this moment in time, there's a lot more voices in our local contexts, you know, in our communities.
So many more voices that are speaking and leading out than we ever could have imagined. It's become incredibly decentralized as a movement, which is really exciting for me as someone who's kind of more of a low church, you know, sort of person. Like, I look at what's happening in Minneapolis right now, right for. For instance, right where neighbors are being trained in this nonviolent resistance, and there's coming alongside their communities in these very grassroots sort of ways. And that's the kind of thing that gives you a lot of hope. And so to my way of looking, there are Rachels that are bold and winsome and wise and troubling to the establishment, that are funny and complicated and prophetic women. And those. Those voices are at work in almost all of our communities. And it's quite funny to me now, as someone who's, you know, in my late 40s and has been doing this work for a Long time. Because it used to be that Rachel and I were like the young women in the space, and now I am way more likely to hear from young women who are like, my mom loves you. You know, you meant a lot to my granny, which is fantastic. But it's like there's a whole new group of women, but then there's also this whole group elders, you know, and people like me and you, who are maybe more that big sister kind of like, voice or, you know, well, that's probably being generous in my case. But, you know, there's this sense of like, oh, look at. We've got generations now that have been discipled in freedom. We've got generations that have been speaking out about this for decades. And Rachel and I were always standing on other people's shoulders. Right.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's. That's the thing, too, is like, I think we. And I do feel like social media maybe is getting past, like, the platform where numbers used to be the thing. Right. If you didn't have the numbers, then people wouldn't listen to you. And I do feel like I will give social media this one, this one credit for right now. It's like, I feel like some of that has shifted where people with smaller platforms are actually being listened to and people with, quote, unquote, you know, not the audience or the influence, people are listening more, I guess, to the content as opposed to, like, the data, which I think is moving us in the right direction.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Right. I think there's something really compelling that we learned in that era, which is like, there's a lot, I think, going back even to what you were saying about the gatekeepers. Like, there was a time when the only people in the bookstore were either mega church pastors or high, well known, you know, folks at seminary, academics, people who are connected to those people.
And so then along comes this crop of people writing on the Internet, and it's like, well, it turns out a lot of us have stories we're listening to. Yeah. And we came from such different corners and such different areas and stories that hadn't really been acknowledged or told. But the reason why traditional publishing even made that shift towards people like Rachel, who didn't have a seminary degree, who didn't pastor a church, who didn't meet a lot of those criteria that normally would have been part of Christian publishing, it was that people were listening and there was a story worth hearing there. Right. And I think that that's. That's a thing that has proven true in the evolution of social media, in the evolution of storytelling and even community building.
And we've seen that.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: I think it's not even just that the story's worth listening to, but there's stories that represent so many more people out there. Like, it's relatable where, you know, for a while it was like, this is the story. And if you don't fit this story, either lie and pretend you fit this story, or, like, there's something wrong with you. And so now we're able to see, I mean, even in the Christian voices, you know, how God does move and speak in the stories. But maybe we were told, like, hey, this is not theology, or these are not voices to be trusted. And now I think people are waking up to, oh, God actually is speaking through these people as well. And I'm going to miss something if I choose to, like, keep a narrow, you know, limitation on it.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: That's really well said. Yes. Thank you.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: I remember reading somewhere, maybe in one of Rachel's books or about a story of her, like, spilling coffee on her computer and being paralyzed with them like that. Like, she had thought she had lost a manuscript. And so I thought about that when I was going through this book. How did you find all of these gems and how did you decide which ones you wanted to use?
[00:17:24] Speaker A: That. That is the reason why this project took two years.
So almost all of these pieces were things that Rachel wrote online.
Rachel started her blog in December of 2007, and she created it in service of what was kind of being told to a lot of us at the time. Rachel had always wanted to be a writer. Being a writer was always her. Her goal. I think that that was one of the things that really united us very early, was real. Like, neither one of us really felt called to ministry as much as we were. Like, we're writers. Like, even no matter what was. Would kind of be going on. And that was definitely her. Her passion.
And so she had this beginning of a manuscript that would become Evolving in Monkey Town.
It's been retitled as Faith Un Now.
I still like the original title myself. Evolving in Monkey Town is very evocative. But anyway, she had kind of, like, the beginnings of that, but needed to kind of build a bit of a platform and was like, didn't really know if this was for her. She was like, unless I can treat this with the same degree of seriousness and intention that I would treat writing for a magazine or newspaper. She'd had a humor column in a local paper in Chattanooga.
Unless I can do that, that and treat readers with a lot of respect. I don't really know if I want to do it. Dan kind of talked her into it, set up the blog. He was always kind of the force behind a lot of that. That sort of thing. And so a lot of the essays that are in there was. Were ones that showed up in the blog.
And so Rachel was this really phenomenal writer and speaker, but honestly, she was an equally impressive blogger.
And that is really kind of where we cut our teeth. Right? It's where we learned in real time how to connect with people, how to tell a story, how to argue a point, you know, all that kind of stuff. She responded to feedback exactly right. It was very much happening in real time. Like, if you said something stupid, someone would show up and let you know. Right.
And so I think that that was part of even what I wanted to bring to the book was also this sense of understanding this moment in time in the church. Church that it wasn't just, here's this slab of content from Rachel.
I think she would not enjoy that.
I. There was this sense of how do we make this more communal? How do we contextualize even these moments in time and have people understand that, like, we knew our readers by name and comment sections would swell to hundreds of comments, and we'd all be interacting, and it would kind of be this almost like this Village Square sort of thing. So I knew that we needed to include her most VI pieces, of course, but I also really wanted to include all the ones that I knew that she just loved, even if maybe they didn't get, like, those clicks or the controversy.
I wanted to include the ones that she labored over with a lot of love and care, like, whether it was, like a representative, one of her deep dives into gender roles right. In the New Testament, which was almost like this crash course in what this looks like, looks like and what, you know, developing a hermeneutic around gender and sexuality looks like. I wanted to include ones that represented, like, a major turning point in her own story. Because in a lot of ways, one of the things that Rachel's blog did was give people permission to evolve in public and to change.
And so having, you know, pieces like, you know, some people would ask me, like, well, why did you include this stuff about world vision? You know, it was such a specific controversy and such a specific thing that happened at a moment in time. And the reason why is because Rachel profoundly shifted in the aftermath of that and her relationship with the evangelical church. It has to be there. And so. But then there were ones that were really dear to her readers.
Like, there's this one called I don't always tell you, that was just characteristic Rachel, right? It was incredibly honest about her doubts and her struggles. And there was a refusal to tie it up with a bow.
There was this refusal to kind of be like, but Jesus, you know, and kind of hand it to you on a platter for you to eat. You know, like, it just.
There was this honesty to what she was doing that meant a lot to people.
And so actually, when I finished the book, like, the first draft of it was, like, three times longer than it is now. So when you mentioned, like, how thick it feels, I was like, you can imagine this, like, painful process of, like, calling and editing that kind of happened. But I'm really happy with the results because I feel like it shows the full spectrum of Rachel's writing. We included funny ones and irreverent ones and off the cuff ones, as well as deeply researched ones. And I think if nothing else, maybe it'll just inspire the people who are curious to kind of, like, visit the blog, which remains up, like, to this day. Dan has maintained the full blog, and you can read, you know, all the back catalogs, like, if you like, the one representative one we have about, you know, gender roles and a deep dive into scripture. Well, guess what? There's like five of them. You know, you get to go read all of them.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: There's even more.
Do you have a favorite when, as you were putting them together? Is there one that, like, just personally to you that either you loved or, I don't know, maybe you kind of go back to.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot, right? Like, a lot of us who were alongside of Rachel, both on the screen, but also in real life. You know, I remember particular pieces and what they meant to her and what they meant to me. I remember our text threads as a result of, you know, things that happened. So there's ones that I've loved then and then as I've gotten older and as the years have passed since we lost her, I've grown to love others more.
One thing I think that I find really interesting, that kind of led how I approached the book was to group things not chronologically, but, like, by theme. And so there's favorites for me in each one of those themes, right. Like, I have ones I love on, you know, the stuff on gender and sexuality, the ones on her essays about the Bible, because, like, nobody I knew loved the Bible and was more of a bigger Bible nerd than Rachel was.
The ones about American culture and the church and like, one speaking very clearly to those moments. But if I had to pick one, that, to me, feels really emblematic of Rachel's, like, posture in the world behind the scenes as well as publicly.
It's the one called what I Learned Turning My Hate Mail into Origami.
Because in. In that piece, Rachel writes about a lent practice that she had embraced at a time when she was a massive target of the evangelical church and of certain institutions and groups within.
And she was literally printing off her hate mail or taking the mean letters and comments, and she was learning how to fold them into origami shapes. And so she did this over, I want to say it was in, like, 2013, and we actually ended up putting, like, origami swans on the COVID just as kind of like this little nod to that essay in particular. But there's this part near the end of it where she talks about the experience and how it has transformed her. And she writes about how, like, she's just like this real human with, like, a very real life and this very real capacity to be, like, hurt and to be loved and to heal and to forgive and so are her enemies.
And she talked about how would we be more careful and gentle if we knew how long our words lived or lingered even in. In each other's lives. We imagined the things that we said to each other. We wrote to one another, whether it's on the Internet or in real life, sitting on someone's kitchen table like a little fox.
Right. And so there's something incredibly transformative about that to me, and redemptive, but also honest about the toll that the work takes at times.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I didn't even. I read that essay and I didn't even, like, put two and two together, that it was there on the COVID Similarly, one of my favorite ones that I, in a similar vein is the. The Cost, where she starts out talking like, quote, unquote to the other side. And she's like, you don't understand.
You know, it's costing me this, and it's costing. And I'm sitting there underlining and, like, feeling all self righteous. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And then she turns her tone in that essay, and then it's like it forces you to see the humanity of the people who disagree with you. And it made me so empathetic to the cost on their side as well. And that's what I felt like she was so good at, was like, helping people to see, yes, a different perspective. You know, we get so stuck even for Those of us who would like to think that we're right in things, you know, so stuck in, like, no, we're doing it the right way.
And she was so good at, like, getting you to be like, yeah, yeah, but what if.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: I know, but one of the things that I really loved about how Rachel kind of approached all of that was to say, like, I don't really believe my own height.
Right. And even, like, in. In line with that, there's another essay that's called, like, you don't hate me, you hate my brand.
Yeah. You know, and she talked about how, like, there's this version of her that exists in people's minds known as rig.
Right. Which is how a lot of people refer to her.
And then there's this rage. Right. And the truth is, is that there wasn't a whole lot of daylight between those two things. Like, she was very much so. When people would come to me in the aftermath of losing her and say, I felt like she was my friend and I felt like I knew her, and so I have grieved, like, I've lost a friend, I very genuinely could say, you kind of did. You kind of did know her. I mean, she swore a lot more in private than most people do. You wrote that in years.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: I was like, dang it, I love her even more. I didn't know I could.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: She could be like, petty and, oh, God, she was funny when she was petty, you know, like.
But ultimately she was kind of. She was the same person everywhere that she went and never really quite believed the hype or separated herself from her family and her community and her place where she belonged and. And the working those things out. So, you know, even to that point, like, there's this cost. And people would say things like, you know, well, you're doing this for popularity or because it's so easy to go along with the world. And it's like, well, if you only knew the. The toll that this has taken. Right, Right.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: So in the vein of, you know, talking about.
With the self righteousness. Right. Even in an era where it feels like maybe there is a clear right way to follow Jesus and a clear wrong way to follow Jesus, I did note that in her very first blog post, Rachel wrote the line, spiritual pride is always a temptation for the believer.
So what I want to know to you, Sarah, is how do you think that we can combat that spiritual pride?
[00:28:34] Speaker A: And right now especially, yeah, that's, again, it's. It's quite prescient. Right. Like, I think in my very first blog post, I wrote, I wonder how honest you can be on the Internet. And it turns out pretty honest, you know.
You know, it's kind of funny to go back and look at these moments, right? But I think in a lot of ways, she gave us actually a pretty good roadmap for that. Because if I.
If I remember, like, in the same piece, she also expressed kind of this hope that her blog would feel more like a traveler's forum, right. That it would be a place to kind of share, like, here's the tips and here's the ideas, and, you know, here's the things I've learned, and here's something that was really great for me. It may not work for you, you know, and so she did approach the space, but also her writing as a whole and her leadership as a whole that way. And so when I see what that may look like, to me, it looks really staying teachable, and it looks like listening well to others, you know, including those with whom we disagree.
I think it's being embedded in real relationships with people who are not just, you know, wanting to call you out, but call you in. Yeah. Right. And so one thing that I think that Rachel modeled really well, that would serve well at this moment in time, especially as to your point, there is this sense of, like, it feels like there's been this fork in the road, and we're not talking about disagreeing about things like what carpet to put in the sanctuary and whether we should have infant baptism or adult baptism. Those things feel ridiculous at this point in time. It's more this sense of, like, what do you do when you've realized you've messed up and that you're wrong and you're on the wrong team or the thing that you have defended and stood alongside it your whole life. Life actually has turned out to be rotten fruit, you know, to. To use an analogy from Jesus. And so what Rachel kind of tried to do even prior to starting the blog, but then to. To show even within that space, well, here's what it looks like to repent or change.
Right? Here's. You know, it's not too often we get a chance to witness people struggling to admit when they've done something wrong.
I think right now we kind of act like it's almost like this weakness or this character flaw to admit that you've changed your mind in light of new information or new experiences. And how tragic is that? Right. So Rachel kind of demonstrates the courage of doing that work in public, which I think serves us really well right now. Where she could Speak to people who were maybe in camps or in political ideology or in groups where they'd never questioned it. And all of a sudden they're questioning it, and here's what it looks like and what comes next.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Does that make sense?
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that totally makes sense. That was the first thing that I thought of was she modeled the idea of, like, I could be wrong, you know.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: I could be wrong. And I think one of her, like, most quoted lines is, you know, the idea about, like, Jesus is the one thing that I'm willing to still be wrong about.
That was her right? Or was that you?
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that was her. Yeah, that was her sometimes.
That was one of the few excerpts from one of the books that we included because it came up so often. Yeah, it was. I think it's an inspired.
The actual story, like, is actually in the book inspired. But we included that excerpt because of that very concept of, like, Jesus is still the thing I'm willing to risk being wrong about.
And that.
That, to me, kind of opened up the door, you know, for a lot of us to say. Well, even another one of my favorite things she used to say all the time. And she would say it when she would be preaching.
She'd say it in, you know, I'd see her do it in conferences and crowds and in her books, but also in regular conversation where she'd say something really beautiful and redemptive and good that you long for. And then she'd say, well, on the days I believe this. Yes. And then she would kind of keep going into it and just even that little bit of hospitality to offer to all of us who are like, I don't always believe it.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Or it's a struggle for me to believe that. And I think right now, a lot of us are learning what it looks like to live out of what you are hoping is true instead of what you are certain is. And even in a lot of ways, there's so much fear that is taking root in us and around us. And so being able to say, here's this beautiful vision, here's this beautiful thing that I hope is true with all my heart.
And on the days when I believe this, here's how it shapes how I move through my life.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm so glad you brought that up, because that is one of the key moments that I remember when I, like, very first found Rachel's words was that section of, like, on the days that I believe, because there are days that I don't. It just gave me so much freedom to Go. I don't want to let go of this.
But to be able to acknowledge, like, there are days where I'm like, are we all idiots? Like, what are we doing?
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Like, what? What? What? Wait, what?
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Because if you can't admit to ever having. I'm going to make a big, broad statement here, but I think if you can't ever admit to having those thoughts or those moments of, like, what if none of this is true? I really wonder if you actually have, like, a personal faith or if you're just holding on to something that someone told you. Like, here, hold this. Believe this.
But you just really hold it at, like, a shallow level. I think if in order to actually, like, own it, you have to have doubts, you have to, like, have the questions and the wondering.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: One thing that Rachel said that electrified people was when people tell me that they've never had a question or a doubt about the Bible, I have to conclude they've never read it was this sense of, like, if you read the Bible, if you were. If you do, at any point, is there not a moment, like. And even in one of the early reviews we got, I think it was the one from Book List. They were like, any.
Any writer, any prophet writing in these spaces who is willing to admit that they would have failed Abraham's test and demands that you face up to the fact that you probably would, too, is someone worth listening to. And I think it's that same sort of troubling, right? It's that thing of, like, just, we have got to wrestle with this and we've got to be honest about it if it's going to actually be lived out in any meaningful way.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the thing. It's honest. It's honest. I think that's what people are looking for right now. Not, like a performative faith. Just, like, tell me what's real.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
Oh, well.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: In this thick book that I'm so. I'm still so happy that there's so many pages.
You've got a bunch of Rachel's essays, but then you also have woven through, like, a compilation of letters and, I guess, little mini essays from other people.
How did you choose, like, the voices of who got to be part of this tribute to her?
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Oh, painfully.
It was so hard to do. You know, Rachel was so committed to, like, including and amplifying other voices. It was really clear to both Dan and I really early on in this, that in order to fully represent Rachel, like, we had to feature other voices in the midst of her work. Right. And so she was always offering, you know, like, book reviews and shout outs and guest posts and features and kind of pointing and being like, go over there. You know, like the Sunday superlatives, which we talk about in the book. Right.
And so I turned towards a lot of people I knew Rachel trusted. You know, she knew most of these folks, not all of them. Okay. And had a relationship with them in some way.
I think much like the original book was, like, three times longer.
My original list of contributors was three times longer. There's a lot of people that I would have loved to have included who just aren't writing, you know, very much anymore.
But for me, they weren't just there because we wanted to feature them in their work, which I definitely do.
There was also this sense of, like, can you help contextualize this for new readers? It can be hard for people to understand now where the church was at, the challenges that we were facing, the absolute courage that it. It took for certain moments to happen. And so having other voices to come alongside and say, here's why this mattered.
You know, like Jen Hatmaker talks about, like, if you have ever benefited from my leadership, it is because Rachel was in my. My life first. Right. And so I think, you know, you can. You can look at, you know, any number of the. The essays that show up in there. These are all people worth listening to, worth following, worth paying attention to.
I'm so incredibly grateful because I feel like they. They deepened the. The understanding of the work.
Yeah. That Rachel. And they even demonstrate, you know, in a very embodied sort of way, the truth that Rachel wasn't writing in a vacuum, especially not online.
Right. She was very much part of a very vibrant community, and most of these people were there alongside of it in some way or another.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: And I was going through, and I was like, oh, I love this person. I love this person. I love this person. I love.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Right.
So it's really fun.
Feels like I hit the jackpot.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: I know.
And then there were the very few names that I did not know. I was like, oh, I need to look them up and follow immediately. So to your point, like, I do think that this is going to help bring more people into the conversation and help kind of take this message, you know, of Rachel's, of yours, of ours collectively, hopefully, out into the people who are not yet somehow aware of it, are not part of the conversation yet.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Right, very true.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: Well, you. You just mentioned the church about, you know, and. And you wrote in the book, too, how, like, really it was a snapshot of an artifact of, like, one moment of the church, and that was, what, 20 years ago or whatever. How do you see the church, you know, the big Sea Church as a whole? How has it changed since Rachel was writing?
And let me actually give you a part two.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, please.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Because we talked about her being like, you know, a prophet. And I think the more you read these words and underline them because they're applicable still today, I would also add on, like, have you seen anything that she predicted come true?
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Yes.
That's an easy one.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: You know, I'm thinking of a piece that she published before Trump was elected the first time. Okay. And she called it, I think, Donald Trump and the Tale of Two Gospels, and she identified his gospel as one that was kind of like, you stick with me, like, saying this to the evangelical church at the time, you'll be a winner. Right. You stick with me. I'll give me. Give you all this power. I'm going to give you all this prestige. I'm going to protect you. And she identified, years before we were here, that that was the very thing that Satan promised to Jesus when he was tempted in the desert. And she named that the church was going to fall and fall hard in this generation because they could not resist the allure of power and privilege, even if it meant baptizing as anointed, you know, a candidate whose rhetoric and actions, you know, contradicted any. Any sane understanding of what Christianity is about. And that's actually like a quote.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: But there are. Are things in the book that show, like, a similar wisdom and understanding of the times.
There's this other one I'm thinking of that was like, how to. How to win a culture war and lose a generation, which, hi, here we are, right? And we look at where we have been in the last 10, 15 years, where we have got a whole generation of people who are looking at the, you know, the evangelical church in particular, and saying, well, you've lost me.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and. And now, right. The question is, like, what do we do? We need Rachel, give us some more essays. What do we do?
[00:40:44] Speaker A: How do we.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: How do we bring them back?
What do you think? She'd say, like, how do we. How do we win back the people that we, quote, unquote, seem to be lost right now because of the damaging rhetoric that's been out there?
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's an interesting question. When I actually get a lot from people, especially when I'm out and talking to folks, and it's hard for me to say because I think that what would Rachel do or what would she say? What would she be writing right now?
It's a hard one. I don't know.
And we can't know.
I think we can take a lot of what Rachel modeled and demonstrated in her, you know, too brief life and say, well, I know the response to it, because I think that's where you see kind of those larger themes around bravery and connection and community and speaking up and wholeheartedness and even riskiness, you know, kind of helping to lead and guide. Because at the end of the day, I think a lot of what Rachel was.
Was showing us in real time is that for generations that were discipled in a version of faith that was like a very small lane with an if this, then that sort of apologetic. And you don't know what to think about all these hot button issues or culture wars or, like, things in this. Here's a cheat sheet. Here's a voter guide. Here's how you do all of these things. Here's seven steps to anything from prosperity to, you know, digestion. You didn't. You name it. And there was someone there wanting to tell you how to live your life.
And having her demonstrate. Here's what it looks like to actually be spirit led. Here's what it looks like to have an actual way of living out these values and these things that you believe so deeply and hope are true.
And ultimately, you know, one of the things that. That came to my mind was an essay that I included in the book that we called the Risk of Birth.
And it was.
It was one that she wrote in the aftermath of giving birth to her eldest.
And she talked about how you don't get to wait around for the ideal circumstances or answers to create and to nurture and to plant and protest and work together to heal the world.
Right. And so, like this.
This prayer that she kind of had was, don't be afraid.
Right. And that's the thing that you end up kind of coming forward to is just this sense of like, well, if I had to think, what would Rachel want, you know, for this moment in time? I don't really know. I don't know what she would say to particular issues or things.
But I do know that the overwhelming, undergirding thing of it would be to love God, love one another, and don't be afraid.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, that's so beautiful.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: On the.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: On the flip side of the coin, talking about, you know, the church in the moment that we're in right now, do you think there's anything about the church or Christianity today. That would surprise her, not disappoint her, but, yeah, maybe surprise her.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: I don't know that Rachel would necessarily have been surprised.
I think she would have gained a tremendous amount of hope from what she's seeing on a very grassroots, very ordinary, very neighborly as a verb sort of way.
Because at the end of the day, one of the things that, you know, even guided a lot of what we were doing at evolving faith was this sense of what does it look like to not just be against things, but what does it mean to be for them, for something. Yes. Right. And so I think that that's the aspect of it that maybe surprises some people when they, you know, characterize Rachel as, like, this firebrand or this controversy or this person who, you know, just wanted to burn things down or whatever else. If you think that you profoundly misunderstand Rachel and her work and how she moved through the world because she was so for people and for this beautiful version of the gospel, for neighborliness, for community, for her community, for her, her family, for people that were complicated, and yet she remained alongside, you know, like, just.
So I think that in terms of what would surprise, I think there's a lot of heartbreak, and I think that there's a lot of moments where many of us have kind of looked back and being like, well, I knew these moments were coming. I just didn't expect them to have my savior's name in their mouth when they were doing it.
And so that. That idea of, like, okay, it's important to name what you're against.
It's important to call it out. Absolutely, it is. Don't stop there.
Keep pushing through until you can find what you want to be for, until you can find the thing you want to lean into with all of your heart and all of your strength and everything that you believe is true and hope is true.
What do you want to be for now?
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, I would encourage people listening to. To let that be what fuels them. I think especially right now in, like, a rage bait era, you know, people are getting fueled by what makes them so angry. And listen, there's a place for that, for sure.
But I think even still, all these years later, there are people that don't understand deconstruction or evolving faith or whatever you want to call it, and they're always going to narrow in on the against. Right? They're always going to be like, oh, well, you're just deconstructing so that you can fill in the blank, whatever it is.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: But we have to remember Like, I'm constantly telling people in my DMs who come to me with that. I'm like, okay, do you feel like you're closer to Jesus?
You understand more about God and who you are? Do you feel like you're living this out more? Like you're hearing from him more now or before?
And so I think that to your point, like, not just for the world to know, what are we for, but that's what's going to ground us. That's what's going to keep us rooted in the work or in our own personal faith is remembering, like, that. The goodness, the good things, like, what is it all about? It's not just for other people.
It's also for us, you know?
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Right.
No, absolutely. Absolutely. That's a good word.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Well, listen, before I ask you our last question here, I'm going to sneak in one second to last question, which is when Wholehearted Faith came out, I almost didn't want to read it because I was like, these are Rachel's last words. And they felt so precious. And I was like, when it's over, I'm just going to be so sad. And so then I got this one, and I was so thrilled. I have already read this entire book, ma'.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Am.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: I read it on the plane. I mean, I just.
My husband. We're sitting on the plane, and the flight attendant's like, here's your ginger ale.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: See you.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Crying and underlying frenzy.
Is there the potential for maybe something else in the future, do you think?
[00:47:53] Speaker A: My understanding is that this may be it.
There were a couple other children's books sketched out not quite to the same degree that the other two were. And both Dan and I have kind of looked at this as, like, this feels.
There's a finality to it.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Complete.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. It feels very complete to us. And one of the things that I've always known. I mean, Rachel had a tremendous amount of, like, snark for people who believed their own hype.
My dad tells this story about, like, them walking by this, you know, statue to, like, a football coach in Alabama, and she was like, you know, he's. He's still around. Give it some time, you know, like, you never know. And so all of us are pretty cautious about wanting to turn her into, like, a saint or an uncomplicated shrine.
I think it's very much the humanity and even the tragedy of losing her, the pain of it and letting that even sit and not needing to continually resolve that. So as far as I'm aware, this is Going to be it.
That may or may not change, you know, as things kind of, you know, progress. But right now this feels like a really good.
It was how she started among us. Yeah. Was here. And so it feels very fitting to kind of have this be almost like a bookend on everything that came between.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Well, it was, I can't say enough. It was so lovely and it was such a beautiful tribute. And I would just say to you and to Dan and to Amanda and to everyone else, like, her legacy gets to live on in the words of other people who have been transformed by her. You know, she felt big sister to me. And so I'm like, well, I hope that my words and my work being inspired by her, by you, you know, can continue her legacy.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: And I know that it will. It will. Absolutely. It will. I see the work that you do and the work that so many other, you know, women around us and other folks are doing around us.
I think that that's one of the things that is remarkable to me is how many people who are now leading in a way that is so beautiful and transformative and clear, like yourself.
A lot of folks have no idea whose shoulders we all stand on. Right. Yeah. And so even there's this sense of like, well, your, your favorite writer or your favorite content creator or your favorite podcaster. There's a pretty good chance they've got a dog eared copy of Evolving in Monkey Town or Searching for Sunday on their Shelf that they still have some printed off blog posts from 2014, you know, that they got in trouble for reading from somebody, you know, so. And this is all part of, of how we found each other, and it's part of how we continue to enc one another and equip one another and come alongside one another. I think that's what's really beautiful about this moment in time is like you just feel a little bit less alone.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, on, on that note, my last question for you, Sarah, which is how I end all of my interviews, is because the podcast is called Becoming Church. How can the people listening become the church to the people around them?
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I love this question. Every time you, you ask this question, it always is like such a, a, a good answer. I wonder if there's like a book in there of like, everything coming alongside answering that question like this, this, you know, kind of collaborative work or whatever. But, you know, when you, when you mentioned. Well, I knew that this question was coming because of listening to the podcast, but there's this essay in the middle of the book.
Where Rachel is writing to the church.
She loved to write to the church and love to write about the church.
That, to me, answers that question, actually. And she. She called it let's build bigger banquet tables.
And she wrote that post, actually, as like, part of, like, a synchro blog, which might be like a different term that a lot of people may not know. But basically it was like someone would say, I'm going to host a synchro blog. Here's the topic, everybody go ahead and write your own stuff and then come back here and drop your links and we can all go and read each other's stuff and we can read each other's things. And the synchro blog that was happening was, can you write a letter to the North American church in the same spirit as, like, John's seven letters to the various churches in the book of Revelation?
And so this was her letter to the church as she understood it in 2010.
So, I mean, a long time ago now. Yeah, it feels longer at times decades in terms of time.
And yet the words really stand because one of the things she talked about was making this distinction between feeding people and eating with people, right? That one places the hungry at arm's length and that. And the other one means that you sit next to each other, that you're double dipping and you're spilling drinks and you're exchanging stories and. And like, it's this difference between, you know, elbows, length, charity, and actual relationship and friendship. And so she talked a lot about, like, what it looks like to make room and to share and to embrace misfits.
And that ended up becoming kind of the root of a lot of the work that she did around writing for the church and to the church right now, what it means to become the church.
And it led to this line that she wrote in Searching for Sunday that ended up deeply forming what we did with evolving faith Faith, which is that this is what God's kingdom is like. It's this bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry and because they said yes and there's always room for more.
And so I think that to me, when I think, like, how can people become the church to those around them? I think about that, that moment of like a banquet table instead of an auditorium, instead of an exchange, instead, like, it just what does it look like to have this kitchen table at the center of your faith that makes rooms for everyone who's hungry and everyone's who's just wanting to say yes to this.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And it doesn't matter how big your table is, and it doesn't matter how many empty chairs you have. If you only have one, bring someone in. There's always room for more.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: More.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Always room for more, huh? Well, Sarah, Bessie, I adore you. Thank you for coming on and talking with us again, for sharing about Rachel and just all of the lovely things in this book. We'll link this up as well as her children's books and all of the other things.
Thank you so much for being here.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Thank you so much. It's a real honor to get a chance to talk with you, but also to, I don't know, to begin to put this book that has been, you know, kind of in the center of my life for the last couple years and say, you know, in a lot of ways, it was a heavy lift. Yeah. You know, it was a hard one to do, and it's a hard one now to shepherd into the world. And so having people like you and all your listeners come alongside of it, it almost feels like I'm getting a chance to kind of place this thing that's been in my hands into everybody else's hands, and we get to kind of carry it together. So that's really lovely to me. Thank you.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Well, thank you for trusting us,
[00:55:09] Speaker A: Friends.
[00:55:10] Speaker B: There's always room. There's always room for more people at the table of Jesus, at the table of Christianity, at the table of the church. And if you've been told that there's not, my goodness, I am so glad that you're here so that you can hear the truth. Nothing that you've done, no version of you that you've ever been, nothing disqualifies you from that table. I want you to consider this your official invitation to sit with us, to learn with us, to double dip, like Sarah said, and to be part of the family of God.
Now, listen, there might be days that we fight like family, but no one is ever kicked out for disagreeing, messing up, or being gone a little too long. There's always a seat for you at the table, and no one can ever take it away.
I would love nothing more than for you to pull out a chair for someone else as well. Who do you know that feels like a misfit or a wanderer? Someone who is confused about what they believe or where they belong or maybe even has been outright told that they don't belong in a church?
Please send them a link to this episode or any of the conversations here that you think they need to hear. Don't overthink it. You never know who God wants to speak to through your obedience.
You are so loved, and I am so glad you're here. Thank you for listening. And until next time, keep becoming the church to the people around you.
