Becoming Church

Whether you’re a worship leader or you make a joyful noise with your praise, award winning songwriter and producer KJ Scriven says there’s a place for your voice. In this episode, KJ and Kristin scrutinize the ego of worship leaders, discuss how much lyrics matter and whether or not you should keep singing songs from churches that have gone through scandal. BONUS: This interview took place on June...

With her appeal and humor spanning the range of middle school to middle age, everyone will feel seen in this episode with Jami Nato. She pulls no punches and covers it all from perimenopause to spooning with Jesus to her relationship with the fundamental church. You will laugh, you will cry and you might leave with emotional whiplash, but you will certainly not be bored. As you listen, think about...

Pick a recent news headline and the chances are, you have feelings about it. There’s someone in your life that you’re struggling to love through disagreement. You’re about ready to quit on social media altogether because every post feels like a landmine. Ashlee Eiland recognizes all of the tension and complexity that’s wrapped around politics, theology and current events of today’s world. But when...

People can change, even the difficult ones. This is a fundamental belief of Shannan Martin, mostly because of the changes she’s seen in her own life. She went from a teen with the burden to “save the poor” to a candidate for City Council, actively creating change for her own neighbors to enrich the community she lives in. Author of Start with Hello and The Ministry of Ordinary Spaces , Shannan Mar...

Humor and loss can coexist and Molly Stillman’s life shows us how in her memoir If I Don’t Laugh, I’ll Cry. After losing her mother, then squandering the quarter of a million dollar inheritance, life continued to bring experiences that made her both laugh and cry. This episode explores how to have joy in the midst of grief, what God’s sense of humor is like, how to navigate complicated family rela...

There are easy conversations. Then there are conversations you never thought you could have due to a lack of knowledge, information or understanding. Bri Strensrud is a human dignity advocate who helps Christians detangle immigration and refugee issues from politically partisan, dehumanizing narratives.   If you have a heart to help marginalized people but don’t know where to start in actively mak...

Diversity leads to disagreement, which leads to division. This is why it’s so much easier to go through life with people who look like, think like, vote like and believe like you do. But Pastor and author Rich Villodas challenges us to lean in to discomfort instead of letting fear keep us isolated. Whether your conversations of tension happen in your family or your church, whether your conflict re...

Grief often brings up heavy feelings of sadness and pain but this conversation is filled with hope and restoration. If you are living with grief or you aren’t sure how to best support other people in your life who have experienced loss, you will find both practicals and permission to feel in this episode. In a surprise story of unexpected loss and grief, Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young had her faith put...

“Let Your Husband Love You” may have been the first words that drew attention to Kristen LaValley’s work, but she wants it to be known that her frontal lobe has fully closed since then. And she has new things to say. In “Even if He Doesn’t,” Kristen wrote the lightest book on suffering there is. If you’re not sure if you’re angry at God or His people, if you believe God is real but you’re not sure...

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. If we lean in to it instead of running away in fear of where it could lead, it can actually be a gift that leads us to a more meaningful faith than we ever imagined. Alexandra Hoover, author of Eyes Up and Without Wavering, has experienced a lot of resistance in her spiritual life. Through unexpected loss of close family members and church hurt on the side of voc...

“Once upon a time you had it all beautifully sorted out. Then you didn’t.” If these words of Sarah Bessey’s resonate at all, this episode is my gift to you. As a leading voice in the conversation around deconstruction, Sarah has years of experience navigating doubt, wrestling with questions and challenging The Church to become the best and truest version of itself. Through her books like Jesus Fem...

Don’t you wish you had access to a little voice that always knew the right thing to say? Maybe an encouragement to motivate you, to help you stay persistent in the painful times and remind you why it’s important to keep going even when it’s hard? Nick Connolly can be that voice for you in this episode of Becoming Church. Nick and Kristin both share some vulnerable stories of times they wanted to q...

Theologian, author and basketball enthusiast Joel Muddamalle knows a lot about the Bible but he shares his knowledge in a humble, approachable way like he often does in his Humble Theology newsletter and social media posts. In this conversation, you’ll hear Joel talk about his own struggle with pride and peace as well what he’s learned by being surrounded by women as one of the only men on staff a...

Continuous Improver, Tara Bremer, knows a thing or two about how to declutter and organize your home. If you’re looking for a way to clean out your physical space or reduce your mental load, this episode has tips to bring you peace in the new year. As the founder of House Peace, Tara is the perfect person to lead us in our efforts. Tara and Kristin also take the theme of decluttering from our live...

Seriously what’s up with the Bible? Why are there so many translations? Is it literal? Is it metaphor? Did God write it or is he more of a co-author? In this episode with Marty Solomon - and our special co-host Naeem Fazal - we take a look at the Bible from the Hebrew perspective, maybe as God intended it. Marty explains how scripture is supposed to be read, the mistakes we often face in our quiet...

Get ready to laugh as you listen because Toni Collier brings humor and hope to a conversation on darkness and pain. But, as Toni says “We’re going in every time” and that’s what happens in this honest conversation on owning our own brokenness. This is an episode for victims of church hurt, people who are stuck going back to unhealthy familiar patters, people who are feeling forgotten by God and th...

Are we allowed to admit when life is hard? When there are so many other heavy things happening, when other people are experiencing widespread devastation, when our lives on paper are pretty privileged…are we allowed to say we aren’t exactly finding the joy of the Lord as our strength? In this interview, Amanda Held Evans talks about the emotional prosperity gospel: the belief that if we have enoug...

After leaving Pastoral ministry, David Docusen found himself once again leading an accidental home church that brought him back to pastoring. (The lucky people of Winston Salem, NC can attest to this being the right choice.) Through his years of expertise as a pastor, author, professor and community advocate, David realized that ministry and evangelism really is simpler and more accessible than we...

The word “power” brings a lot to mind. It’s often associated with other words like male, patriarchy, privilege or structure. It often overlooks the marginalized, minorities and people who don’t belong to majority culture. In this episode, Kristin talks with Cheryl Nembhard about how to recognize healthy and unhealthy systems of power in order to disrupt systems in the name of hope and restoration....

Go ahead and save this episode now because it’s one you’re going to come back to. What started as a conversation on baggage and how to heal past wounds turned into free therapy for all of us. If you find yourself getting cynical or bitter from being disappointed by people - or you tend to sit in shame of your own disappointment - this episode will help you remember what’s true, and what’s in your...

In anticipation of Hispanic Heritage month, Eli Bonilla, author of Mixed: Embracing Complexity by Uncovering Your God-led Identity, talks about how our identities are always comprised of a combination of things. He shares candidly about being both Mexican and Black, living as an African in descent but Latino in ethnicity, and how he struggled to know who he was or what people group to belong to…un...

Kayla Craig has a way with words that brings freedom and peace into even the most traumatic situations. Maybe it’s her journalism background, maybe it’s that she’s a real life mom to four kids of her own, maybe it’s the inspiration that comes from living in an old convent. Regardless, Kayla’s gift of language will give you words to borrow when you can’t find any that fit. This episode is for paren...

If you're an introvert who loves people, an immigrant trying to blend cultures or you're parenting tweens and teens, this converstaion with Kristel Acevedo is for you. Kristel explains the 3 Big Questions our kids are asking around their identity, belonging and purpose with resources to help as you guide them through these formative years. We have additional resources linked up below because these...

Is the world really divided? Is the church? Or are we becoming more and more integrated without even realizing it? Markus Lloyd has stepped off the TV set - at least momentarily - to focus on promoting unity and showing us how connected we really are. In this conversation, Markus and Kristin talk about what churches can do to stop fighting against other churches, how church is making God boring an...

You may know Derwin Gray as a pastor, author or NFL player but do you know him as a TikTok dancer? Do you know what almost kept him from becoming the teacher and speaker that he is today? In this episode of Becoming Church, Pastor Derwin of Transformation Church talks about his favorite title, explains why he doesn’t use tips or formulas in his preaching and reveals the magic behind his famous cat...