Introducing the Podcast - Part 2

In part 2 of the kick-off episode of Soul Sojourn podcast, host Jenn Pedersen continues her soul journey and shares about continued shifts in her faith and a major season of doubt and questioning which resulted in significant changes in her life and ultimately have led her to a place of increasing soul freedom and flourishing.  Jenn shares honestly about the disappointment, anger and grief she has faced along her journey.  

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. The life of our soul is a journey with many twists and turns. This journey has times of discovery, growth, disruption, examination, perplexity, and harmony. Soul Sojourn is a podcast that plans to explore this journey of the soul; considering the different segments of the journey, the different stops we make along the way, and the divergent paths that we can take as unique people with distinctive life experiences. Soul Sojourn hopes to provide room for diverse expressions of faith and welcomes questions and doubts about the journey of the soul. It recognizes that so often there is mystery in life and faith, questions that have no answers, and deep levels of uncertainty and precarity that are present in our lives. I look forward to what is to come, what future stops we’ll take along the journey together. I’ll see you at the next stop.

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Transcript

The Sojourn Stops Continue - Episode 2

Welcome to the 2nd episode of Soul Sojourn.  This is Jenn Pedersen.  I’m so honored that you have joined me for this podcast and hope you will be inspired and uplifted about the 2nd half of my story today, even though there are some difficult parts to share, there is also much beauty and growth and change that is woven into my story that has brought me to a good and hopeful place today.  Last time I share the beginning of my soul sojourn talking about the many life-giving things I learned in the conservative Christian setting I grew up and the amazing way that people modeled for me how to love and serve well.  I shared about the beginnings of my questions and soul rumblings as a teenager, rumblings that continued through my 20 and 30 as I married and become a mom.  And I shared about the beginning of my faith shift as I began to see with fresh eyes the message of Jesus and his heart for the least of these.

As I was experiencing major shifts in my faith perspective, the tone of the Christian national narrative was shifting as well.  I’ve learned from resources such as the book “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobez Du Mez,- a book I highly recommend -  that this narrative had been shifting for quite some time, but it was during my late 30s and early 40s that it came into my awareness more and more.  I began to see how little many leading and everyday Christians valued what Jesus valued.  So many conservative Christians began to elevate the power and strength found in the life and character of John Wayne above the model of Jesus - who lived a life of service and sacrifice and told us that loving others and God was more important than anything else.  The culture wars came into full focus for me - seeing the way that conservative Chrisitans became convinced that the”liberals” were out to take away their religious freedom and as a result these conservative Christians began to seek to take away religious freedom from anyone who didn’t believe exactly as they believed.  This initiative continues to this day and perhaps has only strengthened in recent years.  

The rumblings of my heart to have a career of my own began to surface and I began to question why my career aspirations were not just as valid as my husbands.  And I began to dream a little about what I wanted to do. So, in the midst of the parenting chaos of parenting 4 teenagers, I finally decided I had to do something to really pursue my own thing for the first time in almost 20 years and I set out to complete a Master of Arts in Theological Studies.  I was able to do this online and mostly kept up with my family obligations - studying while the kids were at school and continuing to serve in worship and women’s ministry at my church.  I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in vocational ministry and this, I thought was the next step.  I enjoyed digging into deep theological issues and learning about the history of Christianity - at the end of that course my takeaway was that it’s amazing the Church is still around at all, with the ways that people have screwed it up so badly over and over again.   

One year into my 2 year master’s program I received a call from a friend who was retiring from her position as the Worship Director at a local Methodist church, asking if I would consider applying for the position.  My initial thought was “absolutely not” as I was hardly holding my life together as it was, but I told my friend I would pray about it and talk to my family.  After telling my husband and our older 2 kids about the opportunity, they told me I had to take the job as it was a perfect fit for me - it was exactly what I thought I wanted to do once I finished my master’s.  The next year was a blur.  I did love my new job - crafting worship services, leading worship bands in contemporary worship, designing projection slides for the weekly services,  and directing a great choir in a church that embraced all styles of worship was wonderful.  There were many fantastic people who were a part of this community and it was a faith tradition that affirmed women in leadership in the church.  I was already wrestling with this issue - something I had always struggled to accept in the more conservative settings I had been in previously, and it was amazing to be in a space where women were welcome in all roles.  The pastor of this church affirmed my abilities and gave me my first opportunity to preach.  It was terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time.  I served at this church for 3 years and had a number of opportunities to preach and became more comfortable in the role of preacher along with growing in my abilities as a leader overseeing the worship ministry and later the family ministry of this church.

As I was finishing my master’s and serving in this new role, with freedom as a woman to lead as I’d never experienced before, I really began exploring the issue of women’s leadership in the church theologically and learned that there is a large segment of the Christian world that affirms women in leadership and can back it up theologically.  I was relieved and excited and felt that pastoring was what I was really “called” to, what I had been “called” to for my whole life but never knew that was really an option for me as a woman.  After about 3 years in my first paid ministry role at the Methodist church, my husband got a new job and we decided to make a move to a town 45 minutes away.  Initially I planned on continuing in my role and commuting, but then was offered a pastorate of a small church in the community I was moving to.  This seemed to be the right path for me - I thought I wanted to be a pastor and here, once again, an opportunity was laid before me.  So I took this new position and dove head first into learning to be a lead pastor and began working toward opening a community coffeehouse as an outreach as part of the ministry of that church, along with preaching and leading worship and caring for the congregation and bookkeeping and property care and and and - I was doing it all with little support and it was a lot.  I was in over my head.

As these big changes were taking place - leaving one ministry position and taking another and moving my family to a new community, our country was in turmoil.  It was the summer of 2020 - we were fully engulfed in the Covid pandemic, there was social turmoil in our country following the killing of George Floyd, and the politics of our country were completely dumbfounding to me.  Donald Trump was president and so many of my conservative Christian friends and family were supporting him as president.  They, along with 80% of American Evangelicals voted for him in the 2016 election and they were supporting his run for a second term.  I had been completely bewildered when he was elected in 2016.  Trump was the complete opposite of everything I’d been brought up to believe that we should be as Christians.  I’d been told to be loving, kind, caring, to lay down my life for the lives of others, to commit to marriage and be faithful in my marriage relationship, to exhibit the fruits of the spirit in my life, - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.  And Trump was none of this - Trump was the strong man - the John Wayne figure that American Christianity had been elevating for decades.  It all broke my heart and has fractured relationships with family and friends.

My position as a lead pastor lasted 15 months before I decided that it was just too much for me to carry.  Unfortunately through a series of events, I found myself in a situation where I was responsible for way too much and did not have enough support and help to accomplish it all.  I kept going several months longer than I probably should have, because I just didn’t want to give up in what seemed like such a short period of time.  But finally I admitted that I just couldn’t go on.  After pushing hard for so many years, walking through the early years of parenting special needs kids, welcoming more children into our home through fostering, all while serving in lay ministry in my church on a part-time basis; then pursuing my master’s and starting to work in vocational ministry, facing the heartbreak of our disrupted adoption along with some other significant challenging life events that had touched our family in the 2 years leading up to me becoming a lead pastor, I burned out.  I just couldn’t keep going, I couldn’t keep doing it all.  My mental and physical health were in shambles and I needed a break.   

During this season of burnout I dealt with a lot of feelings - I felt exhausted and struggled to get out of bed for weeks; I struggled to accomplish much of anything in my day to day.  I struggled with shame over leaving my pastorate, shame over letting my congregation down,  shame over letting other female pastors down because I couldn’t continue on in my role as pastor, shame over having the freedom and privilege to take this break, knowing that many people just have to keep going even when they are in as difficult spots as I was in.  My counselor helped me reframe that shame, encouraging me to acknowledge that it was okay to take a break and seek healing and rest, something that it would be beneficial for all people to have who were struggling as I was.   I had been engaged in regular counseling for several years prior to this season of burnout as I walked through our adoption disruption and all the emotions that surrounded that.   I’m a big believer in counseling and I wish everyone had the opportunity to engage in counseling on a regular basis.  

During this time I also struggled with grief - grief over the loss of this dream I was convinced I wanted, but that just didn’t work out.  And I was struggling with more shifts in my faith perspective and doubts - doubts that ran deep and shook me to my core.

For 9 months I didn’t attend church - this was the longest period of time I had gone without being engaged in a church community in my entire life.  And as I took this break from church attendance and involvement I had a chance to breathe and reflect on all the harm that church had done to my soul.  I started reading about religious trauma and learned about how that affects so many of us from conservative, what I now call fundamentalist backgrounds.  

• I started to face the anger that I carried about being seen as less than because I was a woman, not being encouraged in my gifts and abilities because there was no point - my pre-determinied role and use in the world had been set - wife, mom, and homemaker.  I began to see more clearly the messages of the power dynamics of the patriarchy that were firmly entrenched in the faith communities I had been involved in.  I was angry at the ways that women and children were being harmed and abused by men who took cover as “good Christian men”, feeling empowered by the message of the church that men are to be the leaders and women are to be submissive and the ways that I saw firsthand how leaders in  churches helped to coverup and reinforce abusive behavior, perhaps because they were too naive to believe the truth of what happens in homes, perhaps because they just didn’t want to deal with the messy stuff, perhaps for more malicious reasons.  I was angry with all the ways the Church Universal had worked to coverup abuse, as story after story after story was revealed in various settings and denominational backgrounds.    
• I began to recognize the damaging effects that purity culture had had on my life, my teen years, my marriage and the intimacy in my marriage and realized the ways I passed that message along to my own kids, who were now in their 20s and facing the impact of the messages that sex is bad - and that we should feel shame about our desires and the natural development of our bodies. I was angered by the message that it was responsibility of girls to maintain purity by wearing modest clothes and holding the line in relationships and by the message often spoken in hushed tones or implied that boys will be boys and just can’t help themselves so the weight of this high value of the church of purity is left to the women - to essentially be the leaders in purity when they had very little leadership power given to them in any other way.  It’s a very mixed and confusing message for people both young and old.
• I began to face the feelings of being used in many of the churches I served in - seen as a commodity - a worship leader and teacher who was good at what she did, but also a person with a lot of challenges and losses in her life - challenges that people often don’t know how to deal with so they just steer clear.  I had a handful of good friends from the churches I served in - at that point 6 churches I’d served in in pretty significant ways in both lay and vocational positions, a handful of people who were not afraid to engage with me and still mean a lot to me  But I also had experiences that left great sorrow, grief, and anger - such as the time a pastor’s wife said to me, upon finding out that my family was leaving the church her husband was serving, “I’m really sorry to see your family leave the church, you guys did so much for the church.” My husband and I had poured our life into that church for 10 years - leading the worship ministry for much of that time, my husband had been an elder, I had led a community mom’s group there along with women’s Bible studies and VBS.  But the thing that this woman was worried about wasn’t why we were leaving the church, she didn’t say - “we’ll miss you and your family so much”. -, she was concerned about all the things that would need done by others because we were not going to be there anymore. That interaction has stayed with me and still stings to this day.
• I continued to reject the hyper-neo-calvinist perspective of utter depravity that says people are essentially worms with no goodness within them - the toxic theology that says God creates people with the full knowledge and intention of sending them to hell.  The message that we cannot trust ourselves because of our utter depravity, that we must look outside ourselves to others for absolute truth - church fathers and theologians and church leaders to find truth - but  how did these people overcome their own utter depravity?  My time on staff at the Methodist church had introduced me to the beauty of Wesleyan theology which is not calvinist, but instead armenian.  The Wesleyan/Armenian perspective believes in the innate goodness of people who are created in the image of God with the belief that God desires relationship with all people and offers us all the opportunity to that relationship.  Within this understanding for me I found a path toward learning to listen to the goodness within me.  
• I started to face the anger I felt surrounding the issue of LGTBQ exclusion - and the hateful messages that are being expressed toward people who don’t conform to a cisgender heteronormative orientation.  I saw first hand these messages being expressed and I saw the damage they caused and I grieved for a community of people who are told they are not really welcome in the church, unless they change - unless they deny an aspect of themselves.  I struggled with frustration about the ways that the conservative culture at large, in social and legislative ways is seeking to make life much more difficult for these people in the queer community and how they are ultimately trying to silence them completely, losing sight of the real people with real lives they are destroying.  
• And I started to more fully realize and grieve the huge chasm in perspective about faith that was growing between myself and most of my extended family and many long-time friends.  My perspective had been shifting for a long time and I no longer held to a literalist view of scripture.  I had rejected the neo-Calvinist perspective and believed in a more optimistic view of humanity and I affirmed women’s leadership in ministry and during this season of burnout I moved to an affirming perspective on LGTBQ inclusion.  I began talking with other faith leaders and reading and saw that as with the women in leadership issue in the church there are also people who are affirming of LGTBQ people and view the scriptures differently on this issue, believing that God welcomes and loves all people and doesn’t ask them to forsake their identity as queer. 

It was a lot of anger, sorrow and grief.  It was a lot to wrestle with and there were a lot of questions and doubts to face.  During this time I read “Faith after Doubt” by Brian McLaren and I could only make it through the 1st half of the book - which talks about the developmental journey of faith from simplicity to complexity to perplexity and finally to harmony.  The last half of the book talks about communities of harmony and how we can build those and the great need for more of these types of communities in our world.  But 6 months into my season of burnout, I didn’t even want to think about joining any type of faith community, so I closed the book, halfway through (something that is quite rare for me) and put it on the shelf, not sure I would every pick it up again, not sure I ever wanted to be part of church again.  

This time was very unsettling for me - feeling like a boat unmoored from its dock or anchor and being battered by the waves in the open sea.  Church had been a central part of my life for my entire life and just a few years prior to this time, I had felt called to be a pastor.  I felt overwhelmed and hopeless and sad; and it was also nice to have a break - to not be committing 15-50 hours to ministry every week as I had done for 25 years.  And even though I hadn’t always felt completely welcome in the church, it was where I had found my friends and was the center of our social life for 25 plus years.  My husband and I questioned how people made friends if they were not involved in a church.   And I was new to the community we were living in - after living in one place for 24 years and raising our kids in that community, we had moved to a new community and were just a little over a year into living there, having moved in the middle of the Covid pandemic.  So I was longing for local friends and then disconnected from the main source of community I had known my whole life.  

During this season I did have a few wonderful people who were so supportive, who walked through this valley with me.  My husband was his normal dependable self and picked up the slack around the house when I was unable to function and managed the finances of us losing my income and sat and listened when I wanted to talk and process what I was going through.  I had made one new local good friend, who was such a gift to me during this hard time.  She was not a part of the church I was pastoring, but she had been a champion of mine as I began my pastorate and started the coffeehouse, frequently stopping in with her kids for coffee after picking them up from school.  As I entered this season of burnout which included a dark depression for me, she continued to reach out and would text and offer to come over for coffee at my house if I wasn’t up to getting out - which I wasn’t for about 6 weeks.  She was so faithful to check in on me and see how I was doing and didn’t try to fix me - but just let me process and talk.  As I felt better we met for walks and lunches and coffee.  She is a person who is so committed to her friendships and she gave me hope that there are good people in the world. 

This friend shared a bit of what was going on with another new acquaintance who had also frequented the coffeehouse, and this acquaintance reached out and wanted to connect.  Both of these wonderful ladies are named Amy and I count it a privilege to call them both good friends now.  The 2nd Amy is a health coach and was training in the IFS (Internal Family Systems) approach - a therapeutic approach that addresses the different “parts” of ourselves and how they interact and the impact they have on our lives.  She said she would like to walk through this season with me if I was interested and we began meeting weekly. Just a few days before we met for the first time I had been reading “The Body Keeps the Score” by  Bessel van der Kolk which talks about IFS, and I thought sure - why not give this a try.  Thus started a journey toward a significant healing season in my life,  with the “parts” work of IFS and EMDR with my regular, longtime counselor beginning around the same time.  EMDR is an approach that addresses underlying trauma and long held negative scripts that we carry.  Both of these approaches offer much self compassion as a part of the treatment and helped me to process so much. I don’t believe I would be where I’m at today without the help of these women in my life and these therapeutic approaches. I am very thankful for all of them. 

After 3 or 4 months of dark depression in this season of burnout - which I also would call a season of wintering - a concept I read about in a book called “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” by   Katherine May, I started to emerge from the fog and began considering what I wanted life to look like.  I began teaching a few piano and voice lessons again and enjoyed reengaging in that vocation after taking a break from that for a few years, and I began volunteering with a local community farm.  My two Amy friends were both involved with the farm and invited me to get involved and I found there a place of beauty that was a balm for my battered soul.  I found beauty in nature on this 11 acre farm, which uses sustainable, organic practices to raise delicious food for people in our area, much of which is given to those in need. And I found beauty in the people - the volunteers who commit their time and effort to this place for this purpose.  And as part of the structure of the farm if you go out and volunteer for a 3 hour shift on harvest mornings you go home with a box of beautiful vegetables and fruit and nuts and berries and flowers.  This beautiful food that I brought home each Tuesday gave me inspiration to get back into my kitchen, back to cooking delicious food, an activity that brings joy to my life.  All this beauty was just what my broken heart and soul needed - especially as the enneagram 4 that I am - a personality type that desires to experience beauty and make the world a more beautiful place.

As the summer was nearing its end, I had a conversation with one of the volunteers from the farm.  Her name is also Jen and we started talking about what we do outside the farm.  When I shared that I had led worship for 25 years and recently been pastoring a small church, her eyes lit up and she shared that she was the interim worship band director for a church in our community, a church 5 blocks from my house, and that they were looking for someone just like me to come on staff and lead the music in the contemporary service.  My initial response was to say I wasn’t interested, having recently told a friend that I never wanted to go back into ministry.  But Jen is persuasive and asked if I would just meet with the lead pastor and talk about the job and church with him.  I had met this pastor at a community pastors gathering a few months earlier and had liked him, and I drove by this church almost everyday and knew it was a place that shared my values.  So I agreed to meet the pastor for lunch, and a few weeks later I started a new ministry position.  An old friend has said to me she doesn’t know anyone else who is so frequently offered jobs out of the blue - all 3 of my paid ministry positions have come to me without me seeking them out - it’s interesting. 

I started the new position with some trepidation, not sure how I would feel being back in a church setting, not sure if it would be triggering for me. Both my counselor and my husband expressed concerns about me going back into a ministry role.  I approached the role with caution and some suspicion and my husband and I agreed that if it was not a good fit, I would not stay.   But this was a very different setting than I’d ever experienced - a church that truly welcomes everyone just as they are, a church that is open to the doubts and questions you have about your faith, the Bible, and the history of the church; a church that doesn’t think they have figured out the “thee” one right way to interpret scripture but understand that interpreting the Bible is an extremely complicated and challenging process with many possible outcomes.  And in this church I have had more support and encouragement than I have had in any other ministry role I’ve ever served in, both lay and vocational - it has been amazing. 

About a month after I started the new position I went back to Brian McLaren’s book “Faith After Doubt” and read the second half about communities of harmony and the great need for them in our world today.  McLaren speaks of communities of harmony as places that focus on faith that expresses itself in love and seeking the common good. As I read the second half of this book, I realized that I had found one - a community of harmony.  The community I serve is not perfect, we have major areas of growth to consider, we have some of the same church battles going on that many churches do,  we have challenges like every community of people, but it is the closest thing to a community of harmony I have ever experienced.  I recently was leading David Crowder’s song “Come Just As You” during a worship service.  The lyrics say this:

Come out of your sadness from wherever you've been

Come broken hearted let rescue begin

Come find your mercy beloved come kneel

Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't heal

So lay down your burdens lay down your shame

All who are broken lift up your face

Oh wanderer come home you're not too far

So lay down your hurt lay down your heart

Come as you are

There's hope for the hopeless and all those who've strayed

Come sit at the table come taste of the grace

There's rest for the weary rest that endures

Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't cure

So lay down your burdens lay down your shame

All who are broken lift up your face

Oh wanderer come home you're not too far

Lay down your hurt lay down your heart

Come as you are Fall in God’s arms

Come as you are

There's joy for the morning beloved be still

Earth has no sorrow that heaven can't heal

As I sang these words I began to get choked up, realizing that for the first time these words were actually true.  I had led this song at others churches - churches with good, loving people who were genuinely desiring to serve God and help people, but churches that required that you leave parts of yourself at the door in order to be included; churches that reinforced shame and how absolutely sinful and awful we are as humans without acknowledging the goodness within us all that is there because we are created in the image of God - imago Dei.  I had been wandering, looking for a place to come home, looking for hope and grace and rest and joy - and in my new role, in this new church, I had found a beautiful but imperfect community, I had found a place where I could come just as I am, where all people are welcome just as they are.  It makes me tear up again and again as I think about it. 

This is my journey, with many sojourns along the path so far, and I know that there will be many more, but right now I’m just so thankful to be in a place of peace and joy and flourishing and freedom like I have never experienced before in my life.  At my core, I am a pastor - a person who wants to help people, to show them love and build community and connect people to others in order to help everyone live a full and abundant life, even in the midst of the struggles and challenges that so often dot the path.  My passion is to build healthy communities that can lead to joy and freedom and flourishing for all no matter what.  This is what brings me to this podcast - to this project.  I come with a desire to share my story, to talk about the issues at hand - to explore the toxic theology that rules so much of our Christian narrative in this country.  But not just to rant and rave and rail against it - although sometimes that is needed and cathartic, but more importantly to help people see that there is another way.  A way that truly shares the love of God with the world in a winsome and engaging way, a way that explores the principles of the life of Jesus - who came to overturn the power structures and offer peace and love and healing, who came to rub shoulders with the outsiders, the marginalized and show them that they are worthy of love and acceptance; who came to lay down his life for the lives of others - this is a life I want to emulate - a way I want those who are searching to find. 

I am just as convinced as ever that there are hurting people in our world that need to be helped, need to be “saved”.  But perhaps they need to be saved from different things than I used to think they needed to be saved from.  Instead of reinforcing the narrative of our absolute sinfulness and depravity, I think people need to hear that there is goodness within them that is trying to find a way to be expressed in their lives, a goodness that is present in them because they are created in the image of God, a God that loves them and welcomes them no matter what.  Perhaps people need to saved from toxic communities of faith that have led to deep trauma for many and to be shown that there are communities of love and harmony that will welcome them and give them a safe place to explore their faith and spirituality.

So we begin.  We find ourselves on another stop along the journey, another soul sojourn.  I’m so thankful that you took the time to listen today and I hope you’ll join me again next time for another episode of Soul Sojourn.  Our next couple episodes will be ones of exploration - exploring more of the background of my story and defining some of the terms in greater detail.  From there we will hear some other stories of sojourn and talk about a couple books that have been key to my sojourn in recent years and hopefully, much much more.

As I close I’d like to share a blessing from one my favorite authors, Kate Bowler; 

this blessing is called “for when you’ve been hurt by the church” 

God, you saw me walk away.  I had to.

For what was supposed to have been a refuge, 

a community of hope, purpose, mutual encouragement,

Distorted all I understand you to be.

Oh God, lead me to the heart of love,
so I might find the healing I need, 
and protect the reverence I have for you.

For you do not consume, but rather feed.

You do not destroy, but build up.

You do not abandon your little ones,

but insist that they belong in your arms.

Enfolded here, I see you now,

the God who loves us to the end.

For though I walked away, you didn’t.

You found me.  And will lead me.

Let’s now find the others.

That final line “Let’s now find the others” is a core cry of my heart for this podcast.  I hope his podcast will find and embrace others who have had to leave the church, for a variety of reasons, but who still desire to explore the spiritual aspect of their lives and be a part of a live-giving community, because we all need this in our lives.  That is what Soul Sojourn is all about and I look forward to what is to come, what stops we’ll take along the journey together.  I’ll see you at the next stop.