Season 30: Episode 1 | Awakening to God’s Invitation to Surrender
Welcome to season 30! In this season, titled Journeying Through Stages of Faith in the Family of God, we will be exploring the stages of faith as a model for our own growth and our ability to support our communities in their growth. Looking through the lens of faith and human development, as well as biblical stories, Ruth will share four distinct stages of faith and provide listeners with support for themselves as well as thoughts on how leaders can more wisely resource individuals and communities as they navigate these different stages of the journey.
Ruth opens this season by introducing stages of faith. Drawing from her book Leading a Transforming Community and her own experience of “hitting a wall,” she argues that many churches fail to recognize or support the stage someone is in, which can leave people feeling “bad” or forced to leave to find what they need. She frames the spiritual journey as an increasing capacity for surrender rather than belief alone, names key models (Orthodox/classic stages, The Critical Journey, Fowler, and Exodus), and explains the classic movements of awakening, purgation, illumination, and union (including dark nights) as cyclical and often triggered by crisis or suffering. Using Exodus, she explores pre-awareness and awakening and invites listeners to notice where they may be waking up. We conclude with a prayer to “trust in the slow work of God.”
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Mentioned in this episode:
- Leading a Transforming Community by Ruth Haley Barton
- Invitation to a Journey by Robert Mulholland
Music Credit:
- Kingdom Come by Aaron Niequist
- Tender Moment from Music in Solitude
We’re on Substack! On the Journey with the Transforming Center is our home for “reflection, conversation, and connection with our transforming community.” It includes thoughtful reflections from Ruth Haley Barton and the Transforming Center team, as well as alumni and friends of the Transforming Center, occasional special video teachings and guided practices, and space to interact with our content and respond with how God is working in your life through the posts. This is also where you find all of our podcast patron content! There are free and paid tiers. We’d love for you to join us over on Substack.
Support the podcast! This season on Substack,we will do more work naming and describing each of the stages that we talk about, talking about what’s needed during those stages, and providing a couple of key questions that you can think about as a community, as it has to do with that particular stage of faith. Become a paid member of Substack today to receive these practices and so much more!
The Transforming Center board and staff have been prayerfully discerning significant questions about our ministry’s future. We have been asking what faithfulness requires in this season, whether our current organizational model is sustainable, and how the work of strengthening the souls of pastors and leaders and the congregations and organizations they serve might best be carried forward. If you’d like to know more about this pivotal season for the Transforming Center please visit our website https://transformingcenter.org/a-pivotal-moment/.
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The purpose of the Beyond Words blog is to offer helpful and hopeful content that strengthens the souls of leaders and the congregations and communities they serve. All comments are monitored and the TC reserves the right to delete those that are not consistent with this goal and purpose. Access our comments policy.
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