Uncensored Wizard

The last year has been a season of disintegration and reintegration and a lot has changed since the last podcast episode. It has been a time of rethinking my calling and discerning what I feel called to now. In this episode, I discuss how my motivations for spirituality as a minister affected my personal identity, church hurt, the way I think my church failed to live up to its promises of offering true freedom from sin and shame, and what I intend to do about all that with and in my own life. I will also share how these changes in perspective affect the future of the content I produce for the Uncensored Wizard Podcast.

Finally, I am going there. Remember that time God told Moses that men without penises couldn't enter God's house, and then a few centuries later God told Isaiah that men without penises could enter God's house, and that they would be honored there? The Bible is a complex book, and how we read it affects how we interpret it, and interpretation matters.

Jack Kornfield's "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry" book asks the question, "What happens when the Christian mystic goes shopping?" In this episode I argue for a Christian spirituality that embraces the rhythms of our religious practices- beginning with the season of Lent.

All about the Asbury Revival, Sam Smith's devilish Grammy performance, Christian outrage and cynicism, inclusion of LGBTQ Christians in the church, my first sermon, mystical experiences, and a trip to Church of God prayer conference. I offer my suggestions for a way forward post deconstruction and post post-modernism. This is a FULL episode.

I share how I am healthier when I follow Jesus and worship and confess regularly that God loves me and has my best interest at heart. I also share passages and reflections from Brad Jersak's book "Out of the Embers: Life After the Great Deconstruction." Finally, I talk about how we need to find ways to engage with others that is more like a table and less like a pulpit.

An ancient genre of literature has been trying for generations to convey the seasons of our existence and the cycles of power and empire that dominate our imagination. Apocalyptic literature uses symbols to show us that the end of the world as we know will most likely come in our lifetimes. Modern writers like Brueggemann, Hedges, Girard, Strauss, and Howe have prepared the way by illuminating the cycles we seem to be caught in and how they climax in painful and revelatory times. This episode nerds out on all things apocalypse. There is enough woo-woo here for all the wizards in the room.

Back in April of this year Pete Enns tweeted, “In my experience people do not so much deconstruct from Christianity but from certain forms of Christianity that claim to be the only Christianity.” In this episode I reflect on being raised in a church that claimed to be the only Christianity and how that played a role in the unraveling of my faith. I share my thoughts on backsliding, wilderness experiences, and why scripture and church doctrine/tradition are not my priorities when forming personal beliefs and practices.

In this episode I push back against the idea that being sad, depressed, or anxious is bad. Often in church we are led to believe that God wants something better for us, and that we should be happy and joyous. But what if what we feel is important to our growth, even when what we feel doesn't feel so great?

I like horror movies, trick-or-treating, and haunted houses. In fact, Halloween is my favorite holiday. In this episode I explore the history of Halloween as Christian holiday and try to answer the questions, "Why do we commemorate death, tragedy, and the presence of evil?" and "Why do people like watching Jeffrey Dahmer shows on Netflix?" It's the ultimate Holy-Ween episode for anyone who ever got lost in the great debates about Halloween and scary movies in church.

In this episode I talk about how my religious upbringing created a cycle of shame, fear, and anxiety that kept me from being myself and from having talks that were long overdue. I share the work I put in to heal those religious wounds and how that process led to me having the hardest talk of them all.

The Uncensored Wizard community has been discussing what it is like to tell your religious friends and family that you no longer believe like they do. In this episode, I begin sharing how I experienced having this talk with the people who mattered by describing my personality and how two beliefs I was taught as a child created the most pain in this process of sharing.

We are living in apocalyptic times. As the curtains fall and the wizardry behind them is found lacking, we experience trauma and grief. I think we are all experiencing that together in some way— as apocalypse leads to corporate lament. In this episode I reflect on what that might mean and how we can be more honest about what is happening with us.

In this episode I reflect on how personal development material helped me find spirituality outside of church. Finding spirit "outside of the gates" confirmed for me one of my biggest issues with church: it's lack of honesty. Not everything the church does or believes deserves our cynicism, I just wish it could be more honest about what it is they are doing and what it is they are believing. First truth: it doesn't have a monopoly on spirit. Perhaps by being honest instead of defensive the church can be a true conduit of spirit in the world. A great wizard also makes his his first appearance on the podcast; he'll step out from behind the curtain shortly. Magic is afoot.

I begin telling my story of the unraveling of my faith by sharing experiences from my first pastorate and how they exposed some bare threads in the tapestry of my “worldview.”

This week Jessica Chastain won Academy Award for best actress in a leading role for her portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye movie that came out in theaters on September 17, 2021. The film, based on a 2000 documentary by the same name, follows the controversial and scandalous lives of Tammy Faye Bakker and her husband Jim, through the rise and fall of their wildly successful TV ministry based out of Charlotte, NC. A couple of friends and I, including one who played as an extra in the film, went and saw it the night it came out. In this bonus episode you'll hear from guests Jimmy Humphrey (of Jimmy's Table podcast), Derek Henson, and me-- three friends, from Pentecostal backgrounds, sit down to discuss our thoughts and reflections on the movie, the greater impact of the Bakker's PTL ministry, and what their story might mean to the modern Evangelical church in America. *Audio is from recorded video chat; live and unedited. *

Every day, we interact with other people in various environments. It's inevitable that we will share energy and experiences with others. This episode explores the power we have over our own energy, and how we might wisely discern how to use it.

In this episode I explain what Uncensored Wizard means and why it is the mission of this podcast to live up to its title. If you've followed me over the years, you're probably scratching your head over my departure from the church and my seemingly sudden fascination with all things wizard. You may have even watched this podcast false start a couple of times. In this episode I want to clear the air about my transition out of church ministry and into this wizardry.