My Approach

I created this online space to help initiate growth in those who want to move forward in faith but are unsure or stuck because of past experiences or unhealthy beliefs. I envision a future in which people can live at peace with the past, confident in their ability to face whatever life brings, and open to a revived spirituality that continues to evolve as life changes. To get there, I offer a three-step process of working through beliefs that have become essential for my everyday spiritual life. With compassion for the past, curiosity for the present, and courage for the future, we can learn from one another how to move forward in faith.

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The Work

Past beliefs persist within us long after we’ve stopped “believing” them because they are so intertwined with our personal histories.

The Process

A three-step process of self-reflection that leads toward spiritual healing.

About Me

As a faith formation pastor at a progressive church, I cared for many people who grew up with messages of judgment and hatred in their childhood church. Their stories led me to write my Doctor of Ministry thesis: “Traumatizing Theology and the Healing Church: Sharing Stories, Recovering Agency, and Finding Fellow Pilgrims on the Journey.” Traumatizing theology describes God as one who threatens to shame, banish, and condemn.

Since I started my research in 2019, the topic of church hurt has exploded in the public square. Writers like Carol Howard Merritt, Serene Jones, and Shelly Rambo help people know they are not alone in their religious wounds. Giving up church may be the next right step for some, but leaving religion is not the only way to heal from unhealthy beliefs or church conflict. When someone has experienced abuse in an intimate relationship, healing is not just about giving up all forms of intimacy. Healing looks, over time, like growing toward a place where you can begin to date again. Healing religious hurts leads people to move bravely through naming what they don’t believe into claiming what they do believe.

Once I started having conversations with people about traumatizing theology, I found how easily our conversations would get stuck in going round and round about how bad the church could be. For those hungry to move forward spiritually, I realized that we’ve got to find a process to get us unstuck.

While I didn’t consider myself a child of traumatizing theology, I found myself getting stuck in similar patterns once my life changed a few years ago. After 15 years in congregational ministry, I stepped away from my job to focus on my research, conducting interviews with people beyond my congregation. As I navigated the shift out of paid congregational ministry, I felt spiritually stuck because of how much my beliefs had been attached to a specific life stage. I reflected on how well-intentioned beliefs can turn unhealthy when life circumstances shift. I have been on my growth journey, which has led me to build the process I share here.

Having a simple process of working through beliefs has become essential for my everyday life. I practice this process regularly, getting curious about beliefs that no longer fit and rethinking the beliefs that fit within a particular season of life. I’m eager to learn together what it means to move forward in faith.

Let’s Talk.

The best conversations leave us with one more question, one more story, one more connection.

FAQs

  • Yes, I’m a Baptist, but not the kind you may think. I grew up very active in church at a time when the church was navigating its way through a messy and complicated split from the Southern Baptist Convention. Somehow amidst the debate over whether God calls women to the gospel ministry, God was busy crafting my vocational call to blossom while the adults discerned the existence of such a thing.

    I served in congregational ministry for 15 years but I’m now living out my vocational call as an ordained Baptist pastor independent from the church to explore how people heal from unhealthy beliefs and hurtful church experiences. I am most curious about how traumatizing theology affects the Body of Christ in ways that harm survivors and the church's long-term health.

  • Traumatizing theology is the image of a God who threatens to shame, banish, or condemn. This image of God blends divine love with warnings of punishment to dissuade one from specific actions identified as wrong by the preacher, denominational leader, or parental figure.

    People who grow up with traumatizing theology can struggle with feelings of helplessness, dualistic thinking, anxiety, and oscillating feelings towards the church.

    Healing can come as we strengthen the theological agency of survivors, offer witness to the pain, and repent from our participation in perpetuating such theology.

  • When I became an associate pastor of spiritual formation, I visited the church’s adult Bible studies so that I could get to know their history and experience.

    When meeting with all seventeen adult Bible Studies, I noticed that each class named safety as a defining marker of their time together, usually within the first few minutes.

    Were they suggesting that safety in a Bible study is not something assumed or guaranteed but cultivated and intentionally protected? What kind of danger still lurks? I began to wonder if there existed something akin to trauma that was affecting our faith formation in ways that we did not yet understand.

    I dedicated my Doctor of Ministry thesis to exploring traumatizing theology and its effects upon individuals and the local church.