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Rachael Clinton Chen (Part 1): Story, Suffering, and the God Who Meets Us
41 Plays6 days ago
Some people come into your life and quietly, powerfully change its trajectory. For Wendy, that person was Rachael Clinton Chen.
In this first half of a two-part conversation, we sit down with Rachael — a pastor, teacher, and co-host of the Allender Center Podcast — for a conversation that’s rich with honesty, clarity, and care. We talk about what it means to be truly seen, why minimizing suffering is so common (especially in Christian spaces), and the small but brave turns that can lead us toward freedom.
Rachael shares pieces of her own story — from growing up in a fundamentalist church, to experiencing spiritual abuse, to slowly finding her way back to a more spacious and embodied love of God. She reflects on the disorientation that comes when relationships, especially those rooted in spiritual authority, become harmful — and how reclaiming our voice and agency is part of the healing journey. Along the way, we talk about power, trust, and the kind of theology that either binds us or sets us free.
This episode is full of honesty, warmth, and fierce kindness. It’s for anyone who’s ever wondered if they were too much, too broken, or too far gone to be met by God — and needed to hear, gently but clearly: you’re not.
Content note: This conversation includes references to trauma and non-graphic mentions of suicidal thoughts. Please listen with care.
Connect with Rachael:
@rachaelclintonchen
theallendercenter.org
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Rachel Clinton Chen
00:00:00
Speaker
So today are in for a very special treat. Rachel Clinton Chen is on the podcast for two episodes in a row, and she is undoubtedly one of my favorite mentors.
00:00:16
Speaker
She has been such a a gift to you. I know you've spoken of it. If you had to use like three words just to capture... Who she's been to you, what she um what she embodies or represents to you, what would you choose?
00:00:29
Speaker
Well, the first one's a phrase, fiercely kind. Okay. She is the one who taught me that kindness has teeth. Ooh, like that. it allows us to fight on behalf of someone and to use force when needed.
00:00:46
Speaker
Yes, yes. And I love how she gets into the story or you all, when you tell the story... I would also call her deeply pastoral. Okay. And I would call her a warrior for people who are looking to heal.
00:00:59
Speaker
Some of you may be familiar with Rachel. ah She is one of the co-hosts along with Dr. Dan Allender of the Allender Center's podcast. She and Dan co-host that. They've had all kinds of great guests on there.
00:01:11
Speaker
And she also was one of the founders of the Allender Center, housed out of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, which is ah a big influence in our lives and a place where we've we've received a lot of care and training and are grateful for.
00:01:24
Speaker
And i also want to throw in that last year, Sojourners Magazine chose her as one of nine women that they charge with being the women who have shaped the church in 2024.
Rachel's Influence and Mentorship
00:01:40
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:41
Speaker
So she is a leader in her own right. Nine women in the whole country. What's the impact or effect that you've seen or experienced when when people get to hear Rachel and she's teaching or sharing out her story?
00:01:54
Speaker
Well, I will say, and I've told Rachel this, she is the reason that I am here today doing the work I'm doing. She met me in the pain of my story and with a hope of God's goodness to come in a way that no one had ever engaged me.
00:02:12
Speaker
That was a big, big part of your journey towards getting licensed to to be therapist. Going back to school, right? Yeah. yeah I know my experience of her is has been more in kind of a teaching context. She's a lead instructor at the Seattle School, so she's kind helped shape the content and deliver the content of narrative-focused trauma care.
00:02:32
Speaker
Which is is pretty amazing and is a transformative experience for people. But how would you say people feel seen and cared for? and You know, your experience, but what else would you add to that? you know, when when you get to hear Rachel speak, what can you expect?
00:02:45
Speaker
I would say Rachel bleeds on behalf of the goodness in other people. I have seen her rise to the occasion to challenge when that is needed.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I have seen her bring wisdom to narrate a person's story in language that allows them to get their head around what they're living.
00:03:11
Speaker
She has an uncanny ability to both be tender, And very, very firm. Even in the history of the organization of the Allender Center, she has been a pivotal force of trying to bring unity and healing and growth.
00:03:30
Speaker
We're like super excited. We can't even believe we got to have this conversation with her. It was a real blessing to us. We hope it'll be a blessing to you. Also, i want to mention that this episode includes brief, non-graphic mentions of past suicidal thoughts as part of Rachel's healing journey.
Sensitive Topics and Support Resources
00:03:50
Speaker
If this is a tender topic for you, we ask you to please listen with care. If you're in crisis or in need of support, please reach out to your counselor, your pastor, or use the 988 hotline.
00:04:06
Speaker
This is a private 24 hours a day, seven days a week hotline where you can talk, you can use the chat function, or you can text. It's also helpful if you are a person walking with someone who appears suicidal.
00:04:23
Speaker
So 988 is a great resource. And with that introduction, we hope you enjoy this part one of two and enjoy it now. Music
00:04:38
Speaker
Welcome back. Today we are here with one very dear woman, Rachel Clinton-Chin, who is the co-host of the Allender Center podcast with Dan.
00:04:50
Speaker
And Rachel, you have also been in charge of curriculum. Now you're a lead instructor. You've been with the Allender Center from the beginning, right? I have.
Rachel's Journey with Allender Center
00:05:00
Speaker
that's Well, yes. And actually I was doing the math the other day and you know, that's, we're getting on in years now with that. So yeah, I'm embracing my middle age arrival when I start counting down the years. Welcome to the club.
00:05:14
Speaker
Welcome. Exactly. We're wiser. but We are maybe closer to the wise women, but you know, that's a little hard. It's beautiful and it's hard, right? I've been having to think about what's my own theology around aging.
00:05:29
Speaker
you know Yeah, absolutely. you know How do I age well as a woman in the world I live in? right Embrace my wisdom and embrace my aging body.
00:05:41
Speaker
Okay, so the other thing that I know to be true about you is you are not only a pastor who holds an MDiv from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, But you are a very pastoral presence.
00:05:53
Speaker
And I have said often that you are the reason in many ways that I sit here today and i have a private practice in Charlotte caring for people.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that is because 2017, on a whim, I made my way to a story workshop. And i was put in your small group. I don't know if you remember this story, but that was the year and that the riot happened Charlottesville.
00:06:24
Speaker
And when I called, they had two spots left in the story workshop. And the person who was going to come and apprentice, i don't even know who that person is to this day, but someone was coming to apprentice and basically watch you lead the group.
00:06:41
Speaker
And they had pulled out because they lived in Charlottesville and said, I can't leave my community at a time like this. Wow. So the people who answered the phone and took my name, I guess, had said, oh, just stick around Rachel's group. There's an opening in there now.
00:06:55
Speaker
And little did I know what that weekend would mean for me. And can you speak to that? What yeah did that weekend mean for you? then want to get Rachel to speak to it as well, to the experience recollection. Oh, yeah. I love speaking to it. So I came as a lifer Christian, but one who never could internalize that God actually loved me.
00:07:18
Speaker
and I had begged for it. I had behaved for it as much as I could. i had tried to be in communities that would bring that about. And I never could really move the needle.
00:07:31
Speaker
And so at that point, what I was doing was minimizing a lot of the pain I had suffered because I learned, one, that I didn't have a safe attachment to God.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so to bring him all the pain, i didn't really feel fruitful, even though I was told to. But I would do it and then feel nothing. And so I was like, well, maybe that's wrong with me too.
00:07:55
Speaker
then I had somehow gathered, and I have you know thoughts on this, but I had gathered that my suffering also isolated me in community because people didn't want to be that close to a lot of suffering because it highlights we're powerless.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so the conclusion i drew was my level of suffering is somehow my fault. Either God's really trying to redeem me
Early Faith and Spiritual Challenges
00:08:20
Speaker
or people don't want to get too close because it might rub off or it doesn't show God is victorious.
00:08:26
Speaker
That's right. And so I came making a story that now I see as very profound in my formation, really small. And I remember you stood up and you said, i will stand between you and the evil that has come against you.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I wield my sword. And, you know, i know as well as you know, you can't truly stop the forces of evil. No. I had never been advocated for that way.
00:08:58
Speaker
And so to have your body positioned literally in front of me and to say, this is what I see. And you knew some really, at the time, probably felt extreme to my little minimizing heart, but it was so true language.
00:09:16
Speaker
that really captured the story's core. yeah And so I don't know if you have any memory of that, but I shed tears for the first time over that story, even though I had told it.
00:09:31
Speaker
It actually penetrated my heart that day. So yeah, tell me if you remember what that is like even to hear me say. yeah well, it just it actually does bring tears to my eyes. And i do remember...
00:09:45
Speaker
very clearly remember you in that group, your story. And in some ways, yeah, like you that memory does bring back into stark contrast for me. Why do I do this work? How did I get into this work? How did I get here? Because yeah, I did not set out to, i didn't even know who Dan Allender was. And I certainly, as you had asked me 25 years ago, have to say 25 years now, because I used to be 20 years ago and I'm like, no, we got to start moving it back.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. i would't I would, I would, like if you had said trauma, abuse, I would have just been so confused or yeah other people. Those were not on your 15 year old, your vision board when you were 15. There was nothing about, i will be a caregiver to people who are dealing with intense stories of harm.
00:10:28
Speaker
ah No, and i had a call to ministry. I was in the Southern Baptist denomination. So that was still very narrow and as to what that could be. But i you know it's I think I am like most people, and I want to get back to you, Wendy. I just think I am one of those people that just kept saying yes to Jesus at the small turns that probably, thankfully, weren't as revelatory as what that would they would lead to. Because I would have been like, no!
00:10:51
Speaker
Yes! You know, stop the corner. Right. If you know, like a small example, like I started out in nursing and undergrad because I was, I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to help people that I could be a missionary and go around the world and share the love of Jesus in tangible ways.
00:11:08
Speaker
Learned really quickly. I'm not good with bodies. So switch to biblical studies. It was like one of those kind of, you know, I really needed to be over here in this realm, but no one in my world was saying you should study biblical studies as a young woman. That would be wise. You know, my professors were saying you should do this. So like little turns like that, going to the Seattle school instead of another seminary was actually coming out of working with teenagers and realizing all this knowledge I had wasn't meeting their deep needs of care and that there were skills and tools I needed. So I was looking for a
Mystical Experiences and God's Love
00:11:40
Speaker
seminary that had a strong counseling program because I was like, well, those people know how to take care of people. So that'll probably rub off on the MDF program, right? and And those other people need it was also like, you know, this will give me pool for them. You're not thinking, I would love to have that too. You had no cat. now No. And so very quickly into my studies at the Seattle school, that got blipped on its head, which was probably similar to what you experienced, Wendy. And I think.
00:12:04
Speaker
Like in the group, right? Like when we, when our stories are normal, they're never, we're never, this has been true for me, working with people with just the most explicit, profound stories of abuse you could ever imagine.
00:12:16
Speaker
There's still something in us trying to hold on to our care providers. There's still something in us needing to minimize the horror yeah because we need to feel some volition in the midst of it. So yeah.
00:12:27
Speaker
That's not an abnormal instinct, but I remember it's not always that someone comes into your midst who's just ready to do the work and is hungry. And all they need is a slight, you know, the way I would talk about it as a caster is like a hermeneutical shift. Like they just need a slight shift of the interpretive frame.
00:12:46
Speaker
Like that, that just like slight shift that brings like the lenses into focus. yeah To be able to say, oh, this truth I know in my body. And I experience this a lot with women coming out of the church or coming, you know, from within the church. And I love the church. So I'm not someone who like anti-church. I see this a lot with women raised in Christianity, especially coming from the South or coming from contexts where part of the socialization is.
00:13:14
Speaker
you put on a story for everyone else to see and there's a lot going on underneath. Just that sensu by words to like, almost like I don't have permission to suffer.
00:13:24
Speaker
And so I don't know how to make sense of my suffering and I'm cut off and I'm isolated and I'm exhausted. And for me, As someone who would say, I'm a pastor by orientation, what I saw in you was a deep longing for God.
00:13:38
Speaker
And I felt that sense of, wow, the God you've been given is really small and really distant. And so and that's just true for so many of us. We're coming out of more rigid theological systems or dogmatic systems, or maybe the ways in which God has been imagined to us really is coming through like our primary care providers. So again, we kind of tolerate that.
00:14:01
Speaker
the Because they want to hold on to God. So we like tolerate these things that actually don't feel and any way life-giving or loving or comforting or connecting. And so I just remember really feeling the Holy Spirit say, don't be shy with this one. Like some people you do feel like, yeah, I need to tread very gently. The hermeneutical ships we might make might only be a millimeter and that's good, honoring, lovely work. And I take that really seriously that We have to honor people's personhood and their capacities and what they're saying they want. And we see this with Jesus. Jesus asks a lot, like, do you want to be healed? Yes.
00:14:40
Speaker
So not imposing on people something that maybe they're not even really asking for, but you were asking for like deep connection. There was a sense of there's a deep well in here that is needing another deep well, like a deep calls out to deep kind of moment. And yeah, I do. I remember...
Passion for Spiritual Liberation
00:15:00
Speaker
feeling in my body the horror and terror of your story, but seeing that you did not, that the way that you were told to survive in your story was to just make it about you because nobody else really was responsible. It was nobody else's shame.
00:15:18
Speaker
And so that that piece felt very clear. And then that the reality that as Christians, I do think sadly, especially in the United States, and I think it's part of what we see now playing out on the national scale,
00:15:31
Speaker
When there's a refusal to engage suffering with honesty, when there's a refusal to be truth tellers about where we perpetrated harm. yeah We have to construct a God made in our own image.
00:15:43
Speaker
We have to construct a God who needs us to be okay. Even though we have this like long biblical witness of one, kind of truth telling that um a lot of times I'm like, does this have to be in this text? This is like really...
00:15:57
Speaker
toxic, terrifying story. that I don't want to be a part of our story. I don't want people to know that people who follow God were capable of this. yeah yeah Or lament. like you know If you look at the percentage of the songs and psalms and kind of the worship poetry of the Bible, like huge portions of it are lament, are crying out to God in the midst of our suffering.
00:16:23
Speaker
You know, like they're very rarely like, everything's cool and great. And if I'm suffering, it's my fault. And actually the one text that takes that on, Job, makes it very clear. yeah That's not the redemptive element. That's bad theology, Job's friends. That's really bad theology. So i just have a deep passion, i think because of my own experience of getting to...
00:16:44
Speaker
reconnect with a more true God in the midst, like coming out of profound suffering. I just have a deep passion to help people connect to a truer God, the kind of contend with the shadows and the Yeah, the bad theology that, i you know again, i can make sense of and I understand logically how we get there. yeah can you say a little bit more about your journey? like kind of How did that happen for you then? Because you started a little bit, you're going, thinking you're going to be a nurse, and then you shifted to biblical studies. You're still trying to have impact on the world.
00:17:18
Speaker
Where did that shift happen for you? Or can you say little more about it in terms of your internal world and your experience and those things sort of being stirred up to mold you into how you show up as a healer now.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, i would say I'm one of those people like from a very young age was drawn to helping people, was deeply moved by compassion to people like loved. I mean, as much as I can say, there was a lot of harmful stuff that came.
00:17:49
Speaker
through my experience being Southern Baptist, also where I encountered Jesus. It's also where I got rich deposits of the biblical text. Like, um you know, like I have these stories, like when I was four, you know, telling my little best friend in the car who was throwing fit, children, ah obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. You know, like but not a helpful sermon, so you know, like, Kind of a little preacher.
00:18:10
Speaker
But also as I got older, you know, when my parents would tell me that I would be like, yeah, and fathers do not exasperate your children. You're like really getting in there wrestling with it. And I would say that I had a very
Theological Education and Spiritual Advocacy
00:18:20
Speaker
i think what's the more I look at my story, had a very had a good enough spiritual formation in my earliest years.
00:18:29
Speaker
There was a lot going on in my home. you know that would later lead me when I got to seminary. Like other people need help. Other people have pain. I had to do some of that work, but it wasn't until my adolescent years that we kind of found ourselves in a very extreme fundamentalism style of church that...
00:18:48
Speaker
so deeply distorted my sense of God, my sense of self. It was during that time that I was set up in a relationship with one of my youth leaders as a teenager. Oh, yeah. was very dogmatic. There were very strict gender roles.
00:19:01
Speaker
Kind of this wielding and weaponizing of power and control to manipulate. Yeah. Exploiting fear, you know, like a very like You know, those people out there scapegoating, leveraging shame, lots of even domestic violence type behaviors from the male leadership towards anyone who questioned or i know was defiant against something that, you know, something like, why aren't the kids wearing seat belts in the van on this trip, they're getting berated in front of everyone. yeah And all while they're holding it up as we've got the corner of the market on truth.
00:19:38
Speaker
We've got the way that is right. We place God and better than other people subtly. Yeah, absolutely. Things like I was so I was student council president of 2,500 person high school.
00:19:50
Speaker
And that was seen as giving into secular ways. So it was like, I kind of got asked to step out youth group leadership. Like I just had to choose, you know, choose being like the, you know, something of this youth leadership or whatever. So I coming into college one, I was still in that relationship. And so even the move to biblical studies was actually really, it was like, he did not want me doing that. Nursing fit really well with his youth ministry role.
00:20:18
Speaker
also like biblical studies, like anytime I had a sense of self in this. So I could say my story very much was one of, I mean, I was not in my senior here most likely to become a motivational speaker. i mean, it's like things like all along the way,
00:20:34
Speaker
People were like, yeah you know, they were saying without being able to say you're so pastoral, like you're such a motivator, you're a motivator. You have a voice. You have a voice. we hear You have a voice. You're a healer, you know, outside of the church, then inside of the church. Yeah, we want your gifts, but also you're not allowed to do this. You're not allowed to do this. You're not this. You're not this.
00:20:54
Speaker
And no one, not until I was in seminary as like a 27 year old, did someone first say, think you're really a pastor. And that's when I was going to try to switch to the counseling program because I was like, well, I think I can make more money.
00:21:07
Speaker
I think I'm going to do that because I'm good enough at it. And so I think that experience, so part of what led to My own like redemptive experience with God was by the time I got out of that relationship, I had decided I'm done with God.
00:21:22
Speaker
Because so much of it was so like religious trauma, I would say spiritually abusive in the sense that this youth leader was using like God wants us to be together. So it wasn't that if I got out of it, i was going to lose this relationship or maybe even, right? I was going to lose this community that was very
Embodiment in Healing
00:21:40
Speaker
important to me. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
It was I was going to lose God. But by the time I got to that I was like, well, if this is if God wants me to basically be an empty shell of a person suffering to the point that I wanted to kill myself because I was so miserable. Yeah, it was like I had this moment of like this is what God wants.
00:21:58
Speaker
I don't want God. I think I'd rather go it alone. Right. Like I have enough in me that I could still have a good life. I would at least live. And that feels more important right now than whatever this is. And there was something about that defiance of this really abusive system in yeah many ways, like an abusive God that opened up.
00:22:23
Speaker
This kind of honestly, as cheesy as it sounds, nine month period in my life on college, like I said, yes to biblical studies. And a granted, I want to say God was bringing people like I had a nursing professor, you know, who was like, you seem really depressed. Can you tell me what's going on?
00:22:38
Speaker
I start telling her dynamics of this relationship I'm in. And she was like. I don't like you're not you need to know you're in an abusive relationship. Yeah. And you need to get out. So there were yeah these moments of grace that came along the way at every turn.
00:22:53
Speaker
And so I had this nine month period of just very intense. Like when I read like Julian of Norwich or, you know, these kind of desert mothers and fathers. Yeah. I had a very mystical experience of God.
00:23:06
Speaker
I look at it now and say, oh it was like I got to be back in, I got to be born again. got to go back the womb of God. yeah Have those, you know, those new attachments, basically like the severed attachments redeveloped. Yes. And so much of it was this emphasis on, I am a God of love.
00:23:23
Speaker
And that love really being nuanced. So, you know, like powerful, death defying, you know, not... you know, docile, not permissive, but just things like I'd be like, oh, God would say, you know, I'd feel the spirit say read this verse, wake up and read this verse and tell were this verse.
00:23:43
Speaker
And then later in the day, I'd have a conversation with someone and that verse would come up. You know, it was like right cheesy things that for me were like, God is really with us. And that's just in this kind of out here, inaccessible way, but like in a deeply yeah relational like deeply embodied way. So, you know, one example, I felt the spirit say, and I was a Southern Baptist and I was a good Southern Baptist. So like the spirit talking to you about things like this and it happened to me. Yeah. That's how I felt called to ministry, but they were rare and they weren't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Right. You just knew the word of God.
00:24:17
Speaker
but Go sit on this bench. And I'd be like, okay, just going to do it. And a person sat down and I had never seen this person on my campus before. And it was a small school. And I just was like, how are you? Are you okay? And they said, honestly, I've been thinking about killing myself, but felt like I just threw out a hell mercy to God. And God said, you know, walk this way. So it was just like these elements that I could honestly say I have not had similar experiences since then, like that intense. sure But ah God was so gracious to
00:24:51
Speaker
Goop me up and be like, I'm going to show you again who I am. Now, I would love to tell you that just like drastically reordered all of my neural pathways
Future Directions in Spiritual Healing
00:25:00
Speaker
and filled my trauma. what that it wasn't where i had It wasn't your Damascus moment or your Aldersgate moment where all was changed. No, but but what you're saying, Rachel, what resonates, and I've heard you talk some about this story in different workshops, but...
00:25:15
Speaker
What's striking me now about the beauty of it is what a loving God who says, i am, I'm for you. You can trust your hearing from me and we're going to get the mediators out of it. And I'm a mediator by training, by the way i love mediation in general, but you had barrier people.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah. People who are saying, we will tell you what all of this means right and how dare you suggest otherwise. Right. And you're bad for doing that. That's right. And it's hard to get extricated from that because they also they also, like you said, they introduce you to scripture that you love. They brought you goodness. That's one the things we wrestle with as we talk about our stories of harm.
00:25:52
Speaker
The people who did the most profound harm that we now understand also brought some of the best goodness. And at times I want to say, yeah, I can't even see forget the goodness. I'm sitting here just right wailing and feeling the harm, but both are true. How do we reckon with that? But I love the tenderness of God and just finding you individually and showing you, yeah, you got a voice and yeah, you hear from me.
00:26:14
Speaker
Here we go. And inviting you on a new journey. Yeah. And in some ways reaffirming for me that a lot, i mean, There was a lot of tragedy that came out of that youth group I was in. I mean, I've lost several friends to A lot of, I would say, trauma induced death.
00:26:34
Speaker
A lot of young people that didn't make it. yeah And it's not, I don't think it's just like random. yeah You know, I think that these, when we get cut off from the source of life, because someone says you don't get to have access to God if you don't talk this way or think this way or look this way or live this way, it has huge ramifications. So I think that, yeah you know, in some ways that is why I've always had such a passion to help people and some ways, exactly you're saying. No one's ever put it that way, but to disarm the bad mediators in their internal world and external world. Yeah.
00:27:14
Speaker
And to give them permission and an opportunity to one, be the mediators of their own story. Yeah. And two, have a different relationship with God, a different possibility of connection. Yeah. That is really disruptive, right? Because it's not, you know, you have this awakening and then you just want to go back to the status quo or that you can't unsee what you now see. Yes.
00:27:42
Speaker
yeah You know, again My story took many turns after that, and they still involved being set up in very power differentiated relationships with men and Christian leadership. It a long time to get into my own story of understanding how to what's my trauma that I bear and also what's some of the trauma of the system that I've been a part of. Yeah.
00:28:04
Speaker
But one thing that was just so very clear to me in that moment is so many of the people that the church was calling outcasts, uninvited, exiled, were like the exact people that Jesus, if Jesus were here today, yeah would be pulling to the center yeah to disrupt the ways we do this thing. Dignifying.
00:28:26
Speaker
yeah Dignifying, expanding at every turn what we understand love to be and to mean. exposing our hypocrisy and not as a way to just shame us, but as a way to liberate, to say like, you live a very split world because you think you have to keep these things in the shadows.
00:28:47
Speaker
And it's not that we're supposed to indulge in our brokenness, but I'm just a huge fan, exactly what you said. I think true healing comes when we're able to move toward wholeness or integration and A lot of times we think healing looks like splitting off the parts of us that don't fit or yeah are not good or are not honoring or whatever. But We made all of these parts. They bear stories. they We didn't become this way in a vacuum. And I think we see this a lot. I mean, when that splitting gets to be the main way of relating, let's say in church leaders, that's why we're seeing such an explosion of church leaders just being exposed with these huge, you know, very dark, very evil ways of behaving that have like-
00:29:36
Speaker
Kinda had to come out sideways, but people have been able to kind of push it back in It's why, you know, what we see from the national stage being done in God's name that just really comes across as so hateful and small and fearful and is the end result of trying to construct a life that the way you get to be holy, the way you get to be loved, the way you get to belong is by a rigid contortion to a certain image.
00:30:04
Speaker
That actually is not what God has called us to amass us to be about. Well, and it's not liberation. I digress. But it's the opposite of liberation. So it's worth naming.
00:30:17
Speaker
It's a slavery of a new type, really, yeah to a different kind of image or a different and way of being that, again, is being mandated by something other than the voice of Jesus.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah. you know Right. Right. And I think I want to use that as a segue to the last few years, lot of your work has come to be around this idea of spiritual injury, spiritual trauma, spiritual abuse.
00:30:44
Speaker
And as a woman... who loves Jesus, and speaking to you, who is a woman who loves Jesus, but has also seen how he may be, a has been, I'll just be clear, has been misrepresented by people who bear his name and are part of churches.
00:31:03
Speaker
i would just love to hear what has led to that passion. Some you've spoken to, but what tell us a little bit about what the work's about, what you hope to accomplish. Yeah. Yeah, honestly, so much a part of this probably i developed when I went to seminary.
00:31:19
Speaker
And yeah again, God has been so gracious to allow education to be a place to kind of reclaim my mind and to ask questions. And, you know, not everyone has that experience in academia. Some people move toward a kind of existential crisis that, you know, feels like they get lost in the sway. And I've just been really fortunate that it's actually been a very redemptive place. And you know coming Dealing with my story, my personal story, which involved elements of domestic violence, but being in a religious context that was confusing because the way we modeled love was after how we understood what happened on the cross.
00:31:57
Speaker
And so people in abusive dynamics being told, well, that's what love looks like. You know, you endure abuse because that's what love is. You're supposed suffer. Because suffering is how you share in the sufferings of Christ. The suffering is the redemption and not, yeah. So I had these big questions around and how we understand the saving work of God, which in theology we would talk about as atonement, has major implications for how we understand what it means to love.
00:32:23
Speaker
yeah I was at Seattle school, so they were like, write your main paper on your life's questions and your vocational hopes. And I was like, okay. And man, it was too much. But but I think I've been living into for 20 years now. I mean, what I tried to accomplish in 25 pages was not going to be it. But I was just playing. And think in some ways, that's where my first sense of, man, theologies can be abusive.
00:32:47
Speaker
And they can actually be umbrellas for perpetrating and perpetuating more abuse than How do we wrestle with the truth without dissolving it or saying there's no truth?
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah. So, yeah. So I think I actually titled my paper something like liberating God from the, you know, cycle of abuse and penal substitutionary. And something like that.
00:33:09
Speaker
and don't know. But, you know, I have this moment. write and i didn't do ah I get invited to be a part of the founding Allender Center team, which for me was like, what?
00:33:20
Speaker
I am an, I am a pastor. I'm going to probably try to get a job in a church. I'm not a counselor. I mean, i the amount of times I was like, I'm not a therapist because everyone that was a part of the founding team were therapists and clinicians.
00:33:31
Speaker
yeah And did they say, did they articulate why they wanted you? Was there a recognition of, Hey, we think you're bringing something because you're not a therapist. Yes. I mean, it was very much, we need a deeply theological frame to what we're doing. And we don't believe therapists are the only people who can do good story work.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yes. And we've seen you you, know, offer really good care to people with nuance, with curiosity, with humility. So, you know, it took a long time to accept, okay, I'm a part of the team. I mean, I had a lot of imposter syndromes.
00:34:03
Speaker
But getting to enter stories and I just, I've always been fierce. That's not, i don't think anyone who knows me would be like, oh yeah, Rachel, she's really gentle and calm. Like I i feel like she's kind of intense.
00:34:17
Speaker
But so I've always been a protector. I've always been like, you know, fiercely protective of the vulnerable. Again, the more story work I did, I got to turn that energy towards myself, which has been very precious.
00:34:30
Speaker
You've used the metaphor of Stormborn, haven't you? Yeah. I think I've heard you speak to that. Yeah, I would say, oh, like I'm a storm born sanctuary. You know, I like to offer storm born sanctuary. Like I grew up in Oklahoma. you learn how to read storms.
00:34:43
Speaker
There were a lot of storms in my home, you know, but what does it look like to create say like a safe enough place for people who bring a lot and are really complex to land? And so the more I started doing story work, I found that like where I came the most alive is with people like you, Wendy. Like when not all like When a story of harm that hasn't been contended with is holding someone hostage, but when their faith structure and faith system is actually like
00:35:16
Speaker
partnering with that kind of bondage to say, yeah, keep the that under lock. we don't tell those stories. You're wrong. You're being dramatic. Too much. You know, you think you're suffering. Think about these people over here or God's not emotional or God doesn't care or whatever. That's for me, as I started noticing in story work where I felt like all of my educational training, like all of my story training, right? Like the my life training to be who I am would just collide and connect in ways. And when Dan asked me in 2018, so the year after I worked with you, he said, Hey, I'm going to do this podcast series on like something, you know, I'm going to call it spiritual abuse, but like, i really just talking about, you didn't know, when our spiritual frameworks or spiritual leaders, you know, our,
00:36:03
Speaker
perpetuating harm or whatever. And I was like, that's a weird topic, but I'll join you. like waff's like I like, okay. Cause he had asked me if I talk with him about spiritual warfare. and He had asked me if I would talk with him.
00:36:15
Speaker
This was before I was the cohost. So it was like, this was like, I was being invited on as a guest. He had asked me to talk about erotic transference in pastoral. And I was like, these are weird topics, but you know, what the heck? ah Like I'll talk about it. Spiritual abuse, you know,
00:36:30
Speaker
religious harm, church, church was like another, i was like, okay, I mean, sure. I could talk about that. What, as we were, I was like, well, yeah, cause I feel really compelled but work with people who have, i feel like God is I'm here and they just can't see it.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah. And then I started telling you some of the story I told you, and it was like one of those lightning moments, you know, where all of a sudden you realize that the reason you are so compelled towards these places of particular liberation is because it's your story. yeah And you it's not just a topic you know about, it's a topic you've lived. you've lived yes yeah oh my god I think for me that brought a lot into just clarity.
00:37:18
Speaker
So my memories of that first story group that I was in with Rachel still bring warmth to my heart today. What do you remember mainly about it?
00:37:31
Speaker
I remember the way that she, through naming the rigorous intentions of evil in my life, opened the door for me to see a much bigger God.
00:37:45
Speaker
And I realized that while I kept evil small, I didn't need God to be very big to contend with it. And it was almost like, I mean, as as somebody like in relationship with you, as you were experiencing that, there were so many aspects of story that you had some language for, you had some awareness of, you had processed, but there was something different about Both the truth telling that she gave in in using some strong but apt words to describe what you experienced, but then that that I'm still struck by that physicality of you need somebody to stand with you and for you.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, there, there is a tenderness in Rachel, along with a tenacity that has allowed me to engage, I believe, who is the true, real Jesus, who is far more than a match for any evil.
00:38:50
Speaker
And it's not like something that was contrary to or antagonistic to theology or thinking about theology or anything like that.
00:39:01
Speaker
But rather, i keep coming back to the word embodiment, which I would say that matches what I've experienced at the Islander Center, at Recovery Week, places like that, where there is just a physical manifestation of we see what challenges trauma, difficulty, evil,
00:39:23
Speaker
um a person has experienced and there's something powerful and healing in the physicality of joining together and being empowered to as ourselves or empowering somebody else to say no, no more to that evil.
00:39:38
Speaker
yeah um There's something that that just thinking about things on an academic kind of arcane level can't really accomplish. Right, right. And so we realized that you as a listener may have had something stirred in you as you heard this conversation, as you heard Rachel share her story.
00:39:59
Speaker
i I am fully aware that the global theology that many of us assent to can fall apart in the midst of our own suffering.
00:40:11
Speaker
And those are the places where we grapple with God and try to figure out who he is and what our faith is all about. And those are the conversations that I have hour by hour in my office where people come in and their hearts are broken and their hands are empty and they're trying to make sense of it all.
00:40:33
Speaker
And so that's where this next episode is going to go. We invite you to come back for it um because we'll be talking about and what do we do when the harm, when the hurt that a person has experienced really has has to some extent come you know in the context of church, in the context of how power sometimes is miswielded in church context. And and a lot of us have stories that point to that.
00:40:59
Speaker
The stories that Winnie and I hear in the nurture context point to that a lot. And yet what I really appreciate about Rachel is it's not a therefore reject all things spiritual, therefore flee from anything that looks or smells anything like that, but rather let's rightly name and identify where is power used rightly and well in Jesus' name on behalf of Jesus and where where are lines crossed sometimes, where have lines been crossed and people have been harmed?
00:41:27
Speaker
How can we hold fast to hope in Jesus nevertheless. the And so we're grateful that you guys got to spend this time listening to this episode. We invite you to come back for the next one because there's more good stuff there as well.
00:41:41
Speaker
We look forward to sitting with you there.