Episode 53: Revisiting Spiritual Formation: A Journey of Trust
The primary focus of this podcast episode is the exploration of the dichotomy between the old and new paradigms of spiritual formation, particularly as they relate to concepts of grace and legalism. We engage in a profound examination of the implications of embracing one's brokenness in the context of faith, emphasizing that genuine transformation necessitates trust rather than mere effort. As we navigate this discourse, we draw attention to the necessity of creating spaces where individuals who feel marginalized or disillusioned can openly discuss the complexities of their spiritual journeys. Through this dialogue, we aspire to foster an environment conducive to healing and understanding, wherein the essence of grace is not merely acknowledged but deeply integrated into the fabric of our lives. Thus, we invite our listeners to consider how they might traverse the chasm between the restrictive confines of the old country and the liberating promises of the new.
In this insightful episode, Dr. Ray Mitsch articulates a compelling narrative centered around the themes of spiritual formation and the contrasting paradigms of grace and legalism. He elaborates on the metaphor of the old country and the new country, where the former represents a life governed by strictures and expectations, while the latter embodies a liberated existence grounded in the principles of grace, empathy, and authentic relationships. Dr. Mitsch's discourse encourages listeners to examine their own spiritual practices and the often-unrecognized influences of societal and cultural expectations that shape their understanding of faith.
Throughout the dialogue, Dr. Mitsch shares personal anecdotes and reflections drawn from recent experiences within a church setting, where he encountered a sermon that prompted him to reconsider the prevailing notions of spiritual formation. He critiques the popular inclination towards self-improvement frameworks that prioritize performance over genuine spiritual growth, advocating for a shift towards a more grace-filled approach that emphasizes vulnerability, trust, and the acceptance of one's inherent brokenness. This critical examination of the relationship between effort and transformation challenges listeners to rethink their approaches to spiritual development and to embrace a more holistic understanding of grace.
As the episode progresses, Dr. Mitsch reinforces the mission of the Outpost podcast as a space for fostering discussions that bridge faith, authenticity, and the complexities of human experience. He highlights the importance of creating safe environments where individuals can openly confront their struggles and doubts without fear of judgment. This episode serves not only as an exploration of theological concepts but also as an invitation for listeners to engage in their own journeys of healing and growth, emphasizing that true spiritual formation is a collaborative journey that necessitates both personal introspection and community support.
Takeaways:
- Dr. Ray Mitsch expresses his intent to release monthly episodes of the podcast, transitioning to a weekly schedule during the school year, thus maintaining audience engagement.
- The Outpost podcast serves as a platform for discussing and exploring themes of faith, authenticity, grace, and the complexities of spiritual formation.
- Dr. Mitsch emphasizes the importance of creating a safe space for individuals grappling with doubts and personal struggles to openly engage in meaningful discussions.
- The concept of grace is presented as a transformative force in spiritual formation, contrasting with legalistic approaches that often emphasize self-sufficiency and effort over trust.
- A key distinction is made between relationships formed on contracts, which objectify individuals, and those formed on covenants, which value the inherent worth of the person.
- Mistakes are viewed differently in the journey of spiritual formation; acceptance and responsibility in the new country contrast sharply with the shame and regret prevalent in the old country.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Well, I guess there's one way to get your attention.
Speaker A:Welcome to the outpost podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Dr.
Speaker A:Ray Mitch, your host.
Speaker A:And yes, I am finally back behind the microphone here at the Outpost, and I am delighted to take some time to be with you all.
Speaker A:The number of people that are still checking back about what is going on and what is important to know about Stained Glass International and the Outpost podcast and all things related to that.
Speaker A:And so here we are, and we are starting back up again.
Speaker A:My intent is to release a episode per month until we get to the school year again, and then I will crank it back up and we will get back on a weekly schedule.
Speaker A:And my hope is that some.
Speaker A:We will make some subtle, maybe not so subtle, format changes in order to continue to encourage people that are a part of what we're doing.
Speaker A:And that's the one thing I want to talk about so that I can refresh everybody's memory about what we're doing.
Speaker A:The Outpost podcast is kind of the voice of creating a place where we can build bridges back to faith or to strengthen faith that the bridges of faith that have been built on already.
Speaker A:And it really is exploring and talking about authenticity and grace and trust and what does intimacy really look like?
Speaker A:And I heard an interesting author talk about empathy, and he called it the sin of empathy, which I had a real issue with, because the reality is sympathy is being the same as and going through the same thing as somebody else.
Speaker A:But empathy is actually offering them a leg up and being able to understand and enter into their experience enough to be with them as they climb out of whatever hole.
Speaker A:And so that's a whole nother track.
Speaker A:I don't want to get off track here, but what we're trying to do through Stained Glass is to create a space where the doubters and the wounded and the confused and beat up and beat down and the bent and bruised who feel like their lives are a disappointment to God, can find a place of safety, a place to talk about the real things of life.
Speaker A:And whether that's in a group setting on Zoom or whether that's a group setting in person, that certainly is our hope.
Speaker A:And experiencing something very different in a silent retreat where you allow God to speak into the dark places in your own heart.
Speaker A:And I will say that I have been on a journey of my own, and I will talk a little bit about that at a later point in time.
Speaker A:But here we are trying to get off the dime again for the summer and for the podcast and getting back into the swing and rhythm of summer and all that goes into it.
Speaker B:And so I feel some urge to give you a warning of what is about to come.
Speaker B:I am about ready to fly down a off ramp from the things that we were talking about.
Speaker B:And I'll get back to it, I promise.
Speaker B:It may be.
Speaker B:It may be a little rough going here for a while in terms of the off road where this ramp will take us.
Speaker B:But let me just tell you where I'm coming from here before I get into the old country and the new country and what we've been talking about as far as this particular series about accepting grace.
Speaker B:But this fits in obliquely, I suppose.
Speaker B:And let me tell you what my experience has been.
Speaker B:Today I went to church this morning.
Speaker B:I listened to a sermon that got my motor running fairly fast, partly for a couple different reasons.
Speaker B:One is, the question is, and the pastor in this case was talking about spiritual formation.
Speaker B:And I sat there thinking, does anybody really know what spiritual formation is?
Speaker B:I mean, it just describes something, but I'm not sure anybody really knows what exactly that is.
Speaker B:And he was charging on talking about it, and he did a reasonably good job at defining it in terms of having Jesus be formed in us to such a degree that our interior is very much like his interior, how he thinks, and everything else.
Speaker B:And I get all that.
Speaker B:The unfortunate part of this particular sermon was where it actually landed in terms of application, because ultimately, spiritual formation is.
Speaker B:Is a cooperative undertaking between me and God to begin to develop further and further in my relationship with Him.
Speaker B:And there's a lot of it that is by him and from Him.
Speaker B:And we get all that right.
Speaker B:But then where it landed was with an application that borrowed from, apparently a very popular kind of mental toughness, tactical approach to mental toughness called 75 hard.
Speaker B:And I get that.
Speaker B:I understand that the problem is building mental toughness is built on my effort to do so.
Speaker B:And ultimately it was replacing one level of legalism and one level of things that I can do to participate in this thing we call spiritual formation.
Speaker B:And that was when I flipped.
Speaker B:I just, quite honestly, I just flipped.
Speaker B:Because if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you have heard me talk about the difficulty with embracing our brokenness.
Speaker B:And this approach, while exceedingly popular and exceedingly structured and giving the person who engages in it a very clear road to follow.
Speaker B:Very, very little of it is required.
Speaker B:Very little of it requires any level of trust for anyone else.
Speaker B:Now, it can be structured.
Speaker B:It can be framed as a means of cooperating and a very intentional way of moving toward others.
Speaker B:And I get that.
Speaker B:And the pastor did an admirable job at moving people toward that end, and I understand all that.
Speaker B:But ultimately, we are always going to struggle with our capacity or.
Speaker B:Or our humility to accept our brokenness.
Speaker B:And it starts there, our brokenness.
Speaker B:And I've mentioned this in other podcasts, our brokenness can come in a lot of different forms.
Speaker B:There's a brokenness that comes as a result of damage, relational damage, trauma, other things that come and create this brokenness in us.
Speaker B:And that's bad.
Speaker B:It's just flatly bad.
Speaker B:I need to do something to find healing and recovery around those things.
Speaker B:On the other hand, there is an inherent brokenness to us, and it seems to me that many of our efforts in living life is to either cover it over or try to compensate for it in some way or.
Speaker B:Or control it in some other way.
Speaker B:And the one thing that's missing in all of that is an acceptance of it and an acceptance of it to the degree of saying, I need help.
Speaker B:I need God to walk alongside of me in the midst of this.
Speaker B:I need to learn how to trust in this way.
Speaker B:And I would suggest to you that the path of transformation always, always requires trust, not more effort.
Speaker B:Now, don't hear me wrong.
Speaker B:I'm not saying that effort's bad, I'm not.
Speaker B:And intentionality, I'm not.
Speaker B:But at the same time, there are a lot of these programs and things like this out there that have no trust in them at all.
Speaker B:They're all about self sufficiency and self power and self confidence and self, whatever self you want to add into it.
Speaker B:And while I understand that, but that should be a byproduct rather than a goal.
Speaker B:That should be something that, not we seek to build, but something that emanates from us rather than something that becomes part of an objective list of things that I need to do in order to.
Speaker B:And fill in the blank.
Speaker B:So this annoys me.
Speaker B:It really irritates me because I don't have to embrace anything when I take on a program like that.
Speaker B:And listen, I am not throwing stones.
Speaker B:I'm attracted.
Speaker B:I have been drawn to.
Speaker B:I've engaged in lots of these different programs over the many, many, too many years of my effort to try to make me a better person.
Speaker B:However, I want to see that.
Speaker B:And yet here I sit, I am still confronted with time and time again my flaws and my shortcomings.
Speaker B:And I don't say that to pile shame on or anything, that that is simply a statement of fact.
Speaker B:And so when we talk about accepting grace, and something that was stated even in the sermon today was that grace is not magic.
Speaker B:And yet when we make a statement like that, what are we really saying?
Speaker B:I mean, in a lot of cases, and I point this out a lot of times as I'm teaching, is that in a lot of cases when I make a positive assertion, and when I say positive, I don't mean a wonderfully happy, positive type of happiness.
Speaker B:I'm talking about a positive assertion.
Speaker B:In other words, grace is versus grace is not.
Speaker B:See, grace is not.
Speaker B:Is a negative assertion.
Speaker B:It's saying something that it isn't.
Speaker B:But then I don't even take the time then, if I do that to say, so what exactly is grace?
Speaker B:So if it's not magic, exactly what is it?
Speaker B:And grace always brings with it a humility that most people reject, fundamentally reject, ultimately.
Speaker B:And that's exactly where its power lies, because we reject it, because it points out our limitations, our finitude, fancy word for our finiteness.
Speaker B:And we don't like that.
Speaker B:We don't like being reminded of that.
Speaker B:That's exactly why when I'm talking and teaching about grief and loss, we don't like talking about that either.
Speaker B:You know why?
Speaker B:Because it puts a punctuation at the end of our life that we have to contend with, that there's death waiting for us, or that we're reminded that we're limited and we can't save everybody and we can't control a variety of things in our lives, namely people leaving us or people dying or other things like that.
Speaker B:So getting back to the subject at hand, when I talk about, and you got to understand, this podcast is quickly becoming a platform for me to spend some time talking about the contours of what spiritual formation looks like.
Speaker B:Not the next best 12 step program for accomplishing spiritual formation.
Speaker B:I'm trying to describe a landscape that we are walking through, through with Jesus, with each other, with ourselves, to understand what growth looks like, what development looks like, and how I can collaborate and cooperate.
Speaker B:I mean, scripture uses the word, doesn't technically use the word, but to co labor with Christ and to partner with God and what he's up to in the world around us.
Speaker B:But spiritual formation happens in a multitude of ways, not the least of which is obeying what I feel God is calling me to do.
Speaker B:There's nothing wrong with doing, but it's from what direction the doing occurs.
Speaker B:Does it occur as a byproduct of what I have cultivated in my heart, or do I do something in order to change what's in my heart.
Speaker B:And for most of us, we love the outside in approach rather than the inside out approach because it's quicker.
Speaker B:I mean, really, it's quicker.
Speaker B:If I tell you, hold your arm out at a 90 degree angle, you can do that.
Speaker B:You can do that.
Speaker B:It's not that hard.
Speaker B:I'm sitting in my office doing this podcast and I'm holding my arm out at a 90 degree angle.
Speaker B:It's not that hard.
Speaker B:On the other hand, if I were to say, how do I cultivate a need for you to behave differently, whether that's holding your arm out or whatever that is, which is a ridiculous example, I get that.
Speaker B:But be that as it may, what do I do to cultivate the motivation within me to move in a different direction?
Speaker B:Now, the initial direction doesn't look like much.
Speaker B:It really doesn't.
Speaker B:I mean, sometimes the initial direction of change looks identical to the old things that I was doing, but over time and small accumulated changes in choices that come from within me changes me in the long term.
Speaker B:And that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker B:And that's what this podcast is all about.
Speaker A:You may have.
Speaker B:You just walked into a firestorm.
Speaker B:I understand.
Speaker B:And, you know, I mentioned who I was, and then I just launched into this tirade about approaching spiritual formation in a legalistic way.
Speaker B:In other words, in a stepwise way, in a things to do way, rather than a cultivation of trust way.
Speaker B:And so there you go, and there you are.
Speaker B:That's where we are, and that's where I am.
Speaker B:And that's the backdrop to everything that I talk about in the podcast.
Speaker B:And so this podcast is about spiritual formation.
Speaker B:I talk about a lot of different topics.
Speaker B:Some of them I get hijacked by, like today.
Speaker B:Some of them I'm trying to be purposeful about, which is part of what this series has been about, pursuing integration.
Speaker B:And what does it look like to accept grace?
Speaker B:And so what?
Speaker B:And let me, let me get back on track here.
Speaker B:I'll get back on the highway that we were on previously and that's off ramp is now ended.
Speaker B:I'll probably come back to it because it will roll around in my head for a while.
Speaker B:And when that does that, it gets a little dangerous as to what comes out of it all.
Speaker B:Anyway, so where we were and where we left off was that I was using a metaphor between the old country and the new and the path that we beat between the old country and the new.
Speaker B:The new country is living in a new way that is based on grace and freedom.
Speaker B:And Truth and all of those sorts of values versus the old country, which is built on shame and legalism and demand and a couple of other things that I want to mention tonight.
Speaker B:So where we've come from in terms of the old country in the new island is we've walked through a number of them, how that the old country is familiar and comfortable, which we deem as good, and the new country is foreign and uncomfortable, which we say is bad.
Speaker B:And then we spent some time talking about expectations that are rigid in the old country and flexible in the new, and black and white thinking versus embracing the entire continuum of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we do.
Speaker B:And we looked at the rules of relating and objective reality and big T and little T, truth.
Speaker B:All of those was really where we have come from.
Speaker B:And we left off with using others to avoid myself versus embracing myself, and out of that, serving others.
Speaker B:And so the next two I want to talk about, the first one is in the old country because it's built on.
Speaker B:On legalism, on law, and being ruled by the roles that I'm supposed to play.
Speaker B:And basically, when it comes to relationships in the old country, we relate to one another, built on trades and contracts.
Speaker B:And so what does that mean?
Speaker B:It means that if I'm in a relationship, then I say, what have you done for me lately?
Speaker B:I mean, that would be the blunt.
Speaker A:Way to put it.
Speaker B:We never put it that way.
Speaker B:Usually it shows up when we start crossing blades with the other person.
Speaker B:It's like, what good are you anyway?
Speaker B:I was in this to do something and to get something back in return.
Speaker B:That's the trade.
Speaker B:And the thing is, is that even in the Christian church, we talk about covenant, but we.
Speaker B:We talk about covenant, but we live contracts.
Speaker B:And contracts are always limited, and they're always focused on that which I get in relationship to that which you get.
Speaker B:And so our effort in a contract is always to keep the balances, even what I get, what you get.
Speaker B:And as long as that balance can be kept even, we're good, everything's fine, everything's going okay.
Speaker B:But the problem is the moment it starts getting uneven, I'm giving more and you're getting more.
Speaker B:And I'm saying, hold on a second here, partner.
Speaker B:We need to balance this out a little bit.
Speaker B:And this comes out of us everywhere.
Speaker B:I mean, this is really embedded in a lot of our ways of thinking.
Speaker B:And even if we're in the new country, which I'll talk about in a second, even when we're in the new country, we're still tempted by this.
Speaker B:Now, the other thing I want to mention about this in terms of relating to one another, built on trades and contracts is contracts by their very nature objectifies the two parties.
Speaker B:In other words, it's not a person to relate to, it's an object to use.
Speaker B:And so contracts are by their very nature limiting.
Speaker B:They're about limitations.
Speaker B:What I will and what I won't do, what you will do and what you won't do.
Speaker B:There is no level of going above and beyond.
Speaker B:You know, when I was growing up in high school, I worked on a railroad.
Speaker B:And yes, I worked on the railroad.
Speaker B:And I was on something that was referred to if you've ever heard the phrase chain gang.
Speaker B:Well, in my case, I was on a tie gang.
Speaker B:And basically we went around and we changed the ties out on the railroad.
Speaker B:And everybody had a job.
Speaker B:Everybody had a very specific job.
Speaker B:There were guys that would work the cranes that would pull the ties out from under the rails.
Speaker B:And there were those of us that once the ties were in place, we would put the spikes in place and the plates in place.
Speaker B:And there were those of us that were in charge of hammering the spikes into the rails themselves.
Speaker B:Everybody had a job to do, and that was part of the contract.
Speaker B:And so it's something that I vividly, vividly remember when the foreman of our group said to one of the other guys that basically worked the crane that moved the ties off of a railroad car and put them in, under the, under the rails.
Speaker B:And he asked him to get down and help put the spikes in that hold the rails in place.
Speaker B:And this is, you know, there's a lot about our society that is, you know, high tech and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:But railroads are still pretty old school.
Speaker B:I mean, they're still held in place by wood that is coated with something that lives on in my memory for the rest of my life.
Speaker B:And that's called creosote.
Speaker B:Helps the wood from deteriorating.
Speaker B:And they're held in place by steel plates with spikes, railroad spikes that hold them against the ties.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, my foreman asked, we lovingly referred to him as Gordo.
Speaker A:You can figure out the rest if.
Speaker B:You know anything about Spanish.
Speaker B:And he asked this guy to get down and help us because we were trying to put in a cross plate, crossroads plate.
Speaker B:And so it was where two sets of rails cross each other and you can't put ties in there.
Speaker B:So it's one big, huge piece of steel.
Speaker B:And he said, sorry, it's not my job, I don't get paid for it.
Speaker B:I'm not told by the.
Speaker B:My.
Speaker B:By my union to do it.
Speaker B:I ain't doing it.
Speaker B:And see, that's exactly how trades and contracts work.
Speaker B:They limit people based on what they have signed up for doing.
Speaker B:And the other thing I mentioned just a minute ago is how they tend to objectify us because we see the other person's value in terms of what they can do for us rather than who they are.
Speaker B:Now, what about the new country?
Speaker B:The new country is living by a covenant or a commitment to relationships.
Speaker B:Now, covenant is an interesting word.
Speaker B:Everybody seems to know everything about it.
Speaker B:They assume a lot of times that when you say covenant, we're talking about a contract.
Speaker B:And covenant has a very specific definition.
Speaker B:And that is, it is a unilateral thing that the other person grows into to reciprocate that covenant bilaterally.
Speaker B:And to give you the best example of this is when a kid is born, a baby is born, and the parent literally binds themselves, powerful people binds themselves to the welfare of that little one.
Speaker B:The little one doesn't come out with a pad of paper in hand and say, what are you gonna do for me?
Speaker B:Now, the parent covenants and binds themselves to that little one to take care of them.
Speaker B:And you hear lots of parents, myself included, saying to my kids when they were born, I will do everything in my power to protect you and care for you for the rest of your life.
Speaker A:Can they reciprocate?
Speaker B:No, of course not.
Speaker B:They can't reciprocate.
Speaker B:When they grow older they might, but that's entirely up to them.
Speaker B:They are free to choose.
Speaker B:But a covenant is the binding of one person to another with no guarantee that the other will reciprocate.
Speaker B:Which means that if we're talking about a marriage covenant, this is not a 50, 50 deal.
Speaker B:This is a hundred percent, 100% deal that I bind myself to another and I choose to do that of my free will, and the other person does that back to me.
Speaker B:And in the new country, that is our covenantal calling, to live with one another that way.
Speaker B:Not easy.
Speaker B:There's a lot of other things that has to go along with that in terms of how we relate to one another with our relationships and all of that.
Speaker B:I get all that.
Speaker B:But a covenant is fundamentally different.
Speaker B:It is built on the value of the person rather than the person as an object, which is part of the traits and contracts piece.
Speaker B:The second one I want to mention, and I'm quickly running out of time, but I'll try to get this one in.
Speaker B:The next biggest thing that we notice in the old country versus the new country is how we handle mistakes.
Speaker B:And the funny thing about it is it would appear to me at least, that we expect mistakes.
Speaker B:And yet you would think that most of us think that mistakes are the worst thing that could ever happen to us.
Speaker B:Why do I say that?
Speaker B:Look at the end of your pencil.
Speaker B:What's at the end of a pencil?
Speaker B:An eraser.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:Because we expect to make mistakes.
Speaker B:So in the old country, when mistakes occur, remorse and regret occur, built in shame.
Speaker B:So not only have I done something bad, I am bad, which results in little to no change.
Speaker B:I can feel remorse and regret over the mistakes I make.
Speaker B:But that ends up being a show and I just look sad.
Speaker B:I'm sorry that I did it.
Speaker B:And I make this ridiculous promise, well, I'll never do that again, which is just fundamentally ridiculous because it probably will.
Speaker B:So why in the world do we ever say anything like that in the first place?
Speaker B:In the new country, mistakes are handled very differently.
Speaker B:Now, you can just imagine somebody coming from the old country going to the new, where mistakes happen and they are accepted and they are understood to be part of our human condition.
Speaker B:And the people there accept and own responsibility for the mistakes that they make with no conditions, not.
Speaker B:Well, you know, if you only knew how bad I was feeling today, or you only knew what kind of day I had.
Speaker B:And you know, all this other crap that we seem to pull out of our butts half the time about why we make the mistakes that we do, there are always going to be reasons.
Speaker B:There are always going to be reasons.
Speaker B:Some of them will be acceptable and reasonable, but we cannot offer them in balance to the mistake that we made.
Speaker B:What is so difficult, and I know the answer to this because I do it myself, is what's so difficult for owning responsibility and say, I made a mistake, I blew it.
Speaker B:I will do everything I can to do it differently next time or try to make some changes along the way.
Speaker B:But I am not going to make promises I can't keep.
Speaker B:All I can say is I accept the fact that I blew it and I'll do what I can to make some changes.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:That's all I can do.
Speaker B:Now.
Speaker B:A lot of times we have been so conditioned in our relationships with one another that when somebody says that, we say, well, that's not good enough.
Speaker B:I mean, the least you could do is give me a promise that you're not going to do it again.
Speaker B:Wink, wink, nod, nod.
Speaker B:We all know that that's not going to happen.
Speaker B:Give me a break.
Speaker B:So living in the new country is living in reality.
Speaker B:And that reality means being flawed, making mistakes, having enough grace to learn from our mistakes and do it a little differently next time.
Speaker B:Now, that may not be the literal next time, but it may be over time I may do it differently.
Speaker B:And that's what the effort is pointed toward.
Speaker B:So there are a couple other things here that are part of the old country and new.
Speaker B:One is how we handle relationships, whether it's by trades or contracts versus covenants and commitments or how we handle mistakes.
Speaker B:Remorse, regret, not a whole lot of change.
Speaker B:That's usually just the sacrifice we give in trade.
Speaker B:Here's another trade in trade for the mistake that we make.
Speaker B:Or we accept it, we own responsibility for it.
Speaker B:We accept the fact that we're human and we make mistakes and we will do what we can to make changes next time because we don't want to continue hurting the people we care about.
Speaker B:And that's a fundamental piece of the new country and living in the new country.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So those are two other aspects to it and a short rant for good measure for you for this evening's episode.
Speaker A:Well, thanks for joining me.
Speaker A:I appreciate the time to talk about the new country and the old and how often we scurry back and forth between these two countries in our world and how we understand it.
Speaker A:And that is and one way to think about it.
Speaker A:It's not the only way, but it is a way to think about it in terms of our relationships and in terms of where we feel the most comfortable and oftentimes our opportunities that we take to return to the old country because it's just more comfortable and it's more predictable.
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Speaker A:And that's the mantra of podcast and our ability to reach more people, to understand actually the love of Christ and what living in grace is really all about and what's so different about it in comparison to the shame that we just take for granted.
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Speaker A:So all one word, all lowercase.
Speaker A:And that's where you can find us.
Speaker A:So whatever platform you use for podcasts, you can find us there.
Speaker A:And if you're interested in partnering with us to continue to grow the reach and the ability for Stained Glass International to minister to the needs, to respond to the needs of people that have felt very ostracized and left out from the church, this is the place to help us accomplish that.
Speaker A:And so you can find a variety of things on the website.
Speaker A:My two books, Grieving the loss of someone you love in the seasons of our grief.
Speaker A:And so if you want to and you are so inclined to partner with us, we'd be ever so grateful.
Speaker A:You can make your checks out to Stained Glass International, send it to P.O.
Speaker A: , Eastlake, CO: Speaker A:Now for the big announcement and this one I'm pretty excited about.
Speaker A:The announcement is this is that I have been working for the last two years on putting together an E course that will be hosted on sgi-net.org that is entitled the Journey from Shame to grace.
Speaker A:It is 21 sessions, the cost is $400 and it is a look inside of a classroom.
Speaker A:You will join me in classroom as I teach my students about shame and grace.
Speaker A:And you will find out even more about the stained glass self there that I have often referred to in the podcast.
Speaker A:I can't get into the kind of depth that I do in the class and you have an opportunity to listen in to that.
Speaker A:And so if you're interested, you can go to the E course on the website under Resources and Paid Resources and that will support and partner with us in terms of the mission of Stained Glass International and providing retreats and providing safe places for people to meet to talk about life as it really is, not as it should be, and the.
Speaker B:Questions and the challenges that they face.
Speaker A:In having a relationship with Jesus or building a bridge back to faith and in Christ.
Speaker A:So that's the big news and I will continue to say something about it on a regular basis, whether it's on the social media channels with Instagram and Facebook or whatever.
Speaker A:But it please tell people if you're interested.
Speaker A:If you want to participate in it, I encourage you to do so.
Speaker A:We will be in short order or we I will be releasing in short order a discussion guide and journaling guide for the course as well.
Speaker A:That's taking me a little bit more time, but it will be done probably within the month of July so you can watch the videos, take your own notes, and then we will have a discussion guide.
Speaker A:And if you're interested enough and you like it enough and you think, hey, I've got a group that, that I'm involved with that would.
Speaker A:That could really use watching this, then the discussion guide will be something that you can download and use even as a group for group discussion and things of that sort.
Speaker A:So be sure to go and check it out and get an opportunity just to see what it's like.
Speaker A:And then you can choose to partner with us and participate in that course and learn something more about shame than you probably have ever heard.
Speaker A:And certainly the power and our understanding of grace and how what that actually means in real life with my relationship with God and with myself and with others.
Speaker A:So that's the big announcement for this point in time.
Speaker A:It will go live, if you're wondering.
Speaker A:It will go live on July 1st.
Speaker A:And if you know anybody and know anyone that might be interested, tell them about it.
Speaker A:I realize the cost being what it is, but there is significant costs in the production costs and time spent in putting it together and giving people an opportunity to hear some of the content from a course.
Speaker A:It's a college course and you will see me in a very.
Speaker A:In a role.
Speaker A:It's not very different from my students and what they see me there.
Speaker A:But if you've only heard me speak in other settings, then this will be a very different role.
Speaker A:But you'll get to hear and think about and be challenged by a look at how we live in, how we live in shame and talk about grace and what that actually looks like.
Speaker A:So take a look at it, see what you think and buy in.
Speaker A:Like I said, that will support the mission of stained glass and make some more ministries possible.
Speaker A:And my hope would be in terms of the people that might be interested in doing what they call in technology, early adoption to make it possible for us to bring that price down.
Speaker A:It just feels very steep to me.
Speaker A:But you know, it's the reality of putting something like that together and supporting a ministry like this that is attempting to reach out into a group of people that aren't necessarily giving a lot of money, but they are in desperately need of having a place that they can talk and maybe get a new understanding of what a relationship with Jesus looks like and what a relationship with real people.
Speaker A:People looks like.
Speaker A:So that's it for tonight.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me, and until next time, love you later.
Speaker B:Bye, Sam.
