The Church Built a Stage Instead of a Table

Wells of Unraveling

[Recording/Video Disclosure: There are moments of echoing in the audio which also disrupt the subtitles in the video from necessarily always being correct. I’m still learning how to be a better Podcaster! Thank you for your grace! And my apologies!!] There are moments in life when the stories we’ve inherited no longer seem to fit the lives we are living. Sometimes it is an unexpected diagnosis. Sometimes it is the trauma grief or injury. Sometimes it is exclusion by the very communities that taught us what we thought belonging should look like. Sometimes it is watching institutions we once trusted struggle under the weight of certainty, power, and performance. Whatever the catalyst, many of us eventually arrive at a place where our faith feels less like something we possess and more like something that is quietly unraveling within… and/or around us. For generations, we’ve often been taught to fear that unraveling. Angela Reitsma Bick [https://substack.com/profile/255525356-angela-reitsma-bick] invites us to see it differently. In Blessed Are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada, she and co-author Peter Schuurman offer a profoundly hopeful vision of what happens when certainty gives way to honesty. Rather than treating deconstruction as failure, Angela describes it simply as “faith undone.” It is not necessarily the end of belief, but perhaps the beginning of a more truthful one. As she says in our conversation: “Deconstruction is normative... it’s actually needed.” Those words stayed with me long after we finished recording. In retrospect following our talk I realized even more deeply that for those of us in the disabled community, being “undone” is rarely just a metaphor. It is often the reality of living in systems that were never designed with us in mind. It is learning to navigate exclusion while still longing for belonging. It is carrying grief and hope together. It is discovering that dependence is not weakness but part of what it means to be human. It is a life of sacred unravelling. Perhaps that is why Angela’s work resonated with me so deeply. Throughout this conversation, we explore what it means to become undone without losing ourselves. We wrestle with the church’s fear of deconstruction, the relationship between disability and spiritual formation, prophetic imagination, reconciliation, justice, and the quiet ways God continues to meet people whose lives no longer resemble the stories they once believed. One of my favourite moments comes when I ask Angela whether undoneness is a form of grace rather than failure. Her response is one I hope lingers with you also: “We deliberately paired undone with the hopeful word blessed. Even though the process of being undone is painful, it is still a chance to experience blessing... the kind of blessing Jesus offers in the Sermon on the Mount.” That distinction matters. Not a prosperity gospel blessing. Not a polished, Instagram-ready faith. But a blessing that forms humility, compassion, and deeper dependence upon God and one another. Later in our conversation, Angela reflects on Isaiah’s declaration, “Woe is me, I am undone,” reminding us that Scripture consistently portrays people who encounter God not through triumph but through disruption. Jacob leaves his encounter with God limping. Israel learns to rebuild while living in exile. Again and again, blessing emerges not despite brokenness but within it. I found myself wondering whether that pattern also names something essential about the disabled experience. Perhaps disability does not simply expose our vulnerability. Perhaps it reveals something true about all humanity. Not that we are all somehow dis/abled by definition. And not that interdependence is a defect to overcome. But that dis/ability is part of God’s design for creation and reconciled through a story of unravelling to who we are to become in this world and the next. That is a vision of the Gospel our churches desperately need to experience, live, and embody. One of the convictions I carried away from this conversation is that the Church needs more stories from disabled voices—not because our experiences are separate from everyone else’s, but because they illuminate the Gospel in ways many have never been invited to see. Our stories are not peripheral to the Christian imagination; they help enlarge it. If you have ever felt yourself questioning... If your faith has become quieter than it once was... If certainty has given way to curiosity... If you have lived in the tension between exclusion and belonging... Or if you simply long to discover a faith spacious enough to hold both lament and hope... ...then I think you’ll find yourself somewhere in this conversation. Perhaps becoming undone is not the opposite of faith. Perhaps it is one of the ways Christ gently remakes us. I hope you’ll join Angela Reitsma Bick and me as we dwell together at the bottom of the well. Chapters: 01:08 Beginning an Adventure 10:01 Undoneness & Sacred Unravelling 19:49 Deconstruction & Places of Exile 22:56 Suffering & Sufferers 25:04 Healing, Erasure, & Learning from Dis/abled Bodies 32:45 Practices of Community & a Culture of Belonging 37:46 Inclusion or Belonging? 41:51 Jesus as the Shepherd of the Undone 45:26 Contemplation Within Activism 48:54 Who’s Responsibility is it for Shaping the Dis/abled Spiritual Life? 52:47 Intersections with the Indigenous & Reconciliation Story 57:44 Jesus Therapy 1:00:52 Undone & the Myth of the “Normal Body” 1:04:32 Hope That Creates vs. Hope That Destroys 1:14:10 New Adventures Unravelling on the Horizons Resources: Get full access to At The Bottom Of The Well at www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe [https://www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Justice Wears a Human Face

There is a kind of justice that can be discussed endlessly in committee meetings, debated in political arenas, and analyzed in theological classrooms. It can be measured, quantified, legislated, and systematized. Yet there is another kind of justice—one that cannot be understood from a distance because it must first be encountered in a person. In this episode of The Well Dwellers Podcast, I sit down with Fr. Joash P. Thomas [https://substack.com/profile/110998392-fr-joash-p-thomas] to discuss his book ‘The Justice of Jesus’. What unfolds is not merely a conversation about social ethics or church activism. It is a deeper exploration of what happens when justice is rooted not in ideology, but in the person of Christ. As Joash writes: “My hope is that on completing this book, you’ll walk away with practices and ideas to help your faith community prioritize justice work that flows from your hope in Jesus.” That distinction matters. Too often, justice becomes detached from discipleship. It becomes another project, another program, another cause to support. But Joash reminds us that Christian justice begins with proximity. It begins by learning to see Christ where society least expects Him to be found. As he says during our conversation: “Justice is at its core deeply relational. Just like the gospel. It’s deeply communal and deeply relational.” Together we wrestle with questions that sit close to the heart of this podcast: * What happens when the church views disabled people primarily as problems to be solved rather than teachers to be heard? * What if accessibility is not first a policy issue but a relationship issue? * What if healing is not the only lens through which we understand the work of Jesus? * And what if the margins are not simply places where ministry happens, but places where Jesus is already present, waiting for the church to arrive? One of the most powerful moments in our conversation comes when Joash reflects on Christ’s encounters with disabled people throughout the Gospels: “Every time he walks up to someone who’s disabled, Jesus almost always asks, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ He’s acknowledging that agency when society often takes it away.” That observation opens a larger question. How often has the church spoken about disabled people without listening to disabled people? How often have we assumed what flourishing should look like for others rather than learning from their experience? Throughout our conversation, we explore how disabled communities challenge the church’s addiction to certainty, productivity, and hierarchy. We reflect on the ways vulnerability can become a site of revelation rather than deficiency. We discuss why justice requires more than compassion—it requires solidarity. Joash offers a vision of the church that echoes the heart of the Gospel itself: “We need each other’s eyes to see Jesus.” Those words linger. Because perhaps the greatest barrier facing the church is not a lack of theology, resources, or programs. Perhaps it is a failure of imagination. A failure to believe that Christ might be speaking through voices we have not yet learned to hear. As we conclude the conversation, I offer this reflection: “Justice is not a slogan. It is not a policy document. It is not a performance of virtue. Justice is a body—a wounded body, a disabled body, a crucified body, a resurrected body. And the church is called not to admire it, but to become it.” My hope is that this conversation does more than inform. I hope it unsettles us. I hope it invites us deeper. And I hope it helps us cultivate the eyes to see Jesus where He has always been—among those the world has overlooked. Arm in arm, may we continue to seek justice and find it in the margins where we are told not to look. Chapters: 00:26 Meeting Joash Thomas 06:05 Justice As A System; Justice As A Person 13:35 A Church’s Posture To The Marginalized 24:39 Cultivating Eyes To See Jesus 44:20 Take Up Your Cross… Arm In Arm 46:52 Would You Do Anything Differently? 49:26 Closing Words Resources: Get full access to At The Bottom Of The Well at www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe [https://www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Dancing Between the Sunlight and the Shadows

There are some conversations that feel less like interviews and more like sitting beside someone at the edge of a deep well, lowering buckets into places you do not usually allow yourself to look. My conversation with Dr. Richard Beck was one of those encounters. I first met Richard years ago while completing my Master’s degree under the guidance of my professor and friend Dr. Mark Love. Even then, Richard carried a way of speaking that refused easy answers. His work has always lingered around the edges of fear, mortality, desire, shame, joy, and the strange human habit of hiding from our own vulnerability. His books — The Slavery of Death, Unclean, The Shape of Joy, and now The Book of Love — have consistently challenged me to reconsider what it means to be human in a culture obsessed with control, success, and certainty. This conversation felt especially personal. As someone living with disability, I often find myself navigating the tension between suffering and meaning, endurance and hope, frustration and joy. Richard’s work gave language to realities I had felt for years but struggled to articulate — especially the ways fear quietly shapes both our theology and our social imagination. At one point Richard says: “We become radically inhospitable to bodies or lives or experiences that bring finitude into view.” Thanks for reading & watching At The Bottom Of The Well! This post is public so feel free to share it. That sentence stayed with me. Because disability often functions as precisely that kind of interruption. It exposes the illusion that independence is ultimate. It unsettles the modern obsession with optimization, productivity, and bodily perfection. It reveals how deeply both church and society are discipled by fear — fear of weakness, fear of limitation, fear of dependence, fear of death itself. And yet, this conversation is not merely about critique. It is about what becomes possible when we stop running. Throughout our dialogue, Richard reflects on the “unholy trinity” of Satan, sin, and death — not primarily as abstract doctrines, but as forces shaping everyday human existence through anxiety, scarcity, self-protection, and accusation. We explored how ableism often emerges not through overt cruelty, but through hidden assumptions embedded in systems, architecture, theology, and culture. In one of the most striking moments of our conversation, Richard described ableism as a kind of invisible accusation: “The invisible assumptions rank bodies in a hierarchy of worth or consideration.” That naming felt painfully true. But there were also moments of profound beauty. As we discussed suffering, resurrection, and the disabled experience of endurance, Richard offered words I have not stopped thinking about since: “How do I dance between the sunlight and the shadows of that mixed experience?” That may be one of the most honest descriptions of disability, grief, and even human existence I have ever heard. Not triumphalism.Not despair.But dancing between sunlight and shadow. We also explored the church’s failures — especially its tendency to rush too quickly toward healing narratives, resurrection fantasies, or inspirational clichés that bypass the lived reality of disabled people. Richard gently but honestly challenged this instinct: “People quickly reach for heaven… without sitting with ambiguity, pain, and suffering.” And perhaps that is where this conversation ultimately lands: not in certainty, but in wonder. What if joy is not the absence of suffering, but a posture toward reality?What if healing is larger than cure?What if disabled lives are not problems to solve, but prophetic witnesses calling the church toward a deeper humanity?What if the good news is not escape from finitude, but discovering that love can still flourish within it? Toward the end of our conversation, Richard reflected on the church as both broken and beautiful — often inhospitable, often fearful, yet still capable of becoming something holy when people make room for one another in honesty and love. He said: “The disabled community functions to point us toward that horizon that we’re all trying to chase.” I think he is right. And perhaps that horizon is not perfection, normalcy, or independence. Perhaps it is communion. Perhaps it is learning how to belong to one another inside fragility rather than beyond it. Perhaps it is discovering that even here — in weakness, ambiguity, grief, and unfinished stories — joy still takes shape. I hope this conversation encourages you as deeply as it encouraged me. Welcome back to the well. At The Bottom Of The Well is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Chapters: 00:27 Meeting Dr. Richard Beck 06:06 The Anti-Trinity & The Fear of Death 13:50 Hospitality For Finitude 17:59 Ableism Incarnated As The Accuser 25:12 Sin & The Conditions of Entrapment 33:01 The Myth of the Quick Fix & The Endurance of Time 44:07 Transcendent Joy & Hero Games 54:51 Looking For The Good News In Disabled Discipleship 01:01:41 Closing With Outward Hope Resources: Saunders Centre For Joy & Human Flourishing: https://acu.edu/library/saunders-center/ [https://acu.edu/library/saunders-center/] Get full access to At The Bottom Of The Well at www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe [https://www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Church Built a Stage Instead of a Table

On this episode of the Well Dwellers Podcast, I sit down with my former professor, longtime friend, and missional theologian Dr. Mark Love for a conversation that moves through disability, discernment, grief, belonging, and the future of the church. What unfolds is not simply a discussion about accessibility or inclusion, but a deeper interrogation of the church’s imagination. Together, we explore how the church often frames disabled people as recipients of care rather than as bearers of wisdom, presence, and theological insight. Mark reflects candidly on the failures of the missional movement to fully embody its theology and challenges churches to move beyond cosmetic welcome toward genuine participation and shared life. “The whole Bible is literature from and to people at the margins.” — Dr. Mark Love Drawing from Acts 15 and his book It Seems Good to the Holy Spirit and to Us, Mark describes discernment not as a strategy for church growth, but as a communal practice of listening — one rooted in bodies, tables, grief, and relationship. We wrestle with difficult questions surrounding cure theology, accessibility, advocacy, and why so many churches continue asking why disabled people are absent instead of asking what has made belonging impossible. One of the most striking moments comes as Mark reflects on the church’s responsibility in public life: “The church would bear responsibility at several levels. The first is at the advocacy level… not speaking for disabled people, but giving them an opportunity to speak and to be heard.” He continues: “It is ethically and morally a part of the gospel to vote that way… not for our own comfort and well-being, but for the widow, the orphan, the disabled.” This conversation is deeply personal, theological, and at times uncomfortable — but in the best possible way. It is an invitation to reimagine what it means to belong to one another as the body of Christ. We also somehow manage to talk about Bob Dylan, Gary Clark Jr., vinyl records, discernment practices, and why the church might need fewer stages and longer tables. If you’ve ever wondered whether the church has overlooked disabled voices — or what the Spirit might be saying through those at the margins — this conversation is meant for you. Chapters: 00:31 Meeting Mark 06:07 Hard Truths For The Missional Church 16:43 Looking Towards An Evolving Missional Movement 24:14 From Stages To Tables 25:57 It Seems Good To Us & The Holy Spirit 33:11 Who Bears The Burden? 38:02 Dis/abled & Missional Ears For Dwelling In The Word 46:02 Reframing Social Justice For The Local Church — Advocate, Vote, & Empower 55:56 Introducing The 1582 Collaborative 1:04:23 Bob Dylan & Some Fun Before We Go Resources: Get full access to At The Bottom Of The Well at www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe [https://www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Between Empire & The Rebellion

There’s something about stories—especially the ones that stay with us long after the credits roll. In this episode of the Well Dwellers Podcast, Erik Freiburger sits down once again with Dr. Ty Ragan for a conversation that moves through galaxies far, far away… and lands squarely in the heart of our own spiritual lives. Together, they explore Star Wars not just as entertainment, but as theology in motion—a living parable of good and evil, fear and love, belonging and redemption. As Erik reflects early in the conversation, “stories shape us long before doctrines do.” And perhaps that’s exactly why stories like these matter so much. What unfolds is a deeply imaginative and provocative dialogue around APEST—the apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, shepherding, and teaching gifts of the church—and how these missional expressions might already be hiding in the characters and narratives we know so well. At The Bottom Of The Well is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. “What if the characters and worlds of Star Wars help us imagine what APEST looks like in real life?” From Luke Skywalker’s journey through the gray spaces of identity, to Leia’s apostolic leadership, to the shepherding presence of unlikely characters like Chewbacca and the Mandalorian, this episode invites listeners to see the gospel not as static doctrine—but as a dynamic, unfolding story. Ty brings psychological depth to the conversation, drawing on thinkers like Jung and Campbell, reminding us that: “You are the main character of your own story, while at the same time you’re playing a supporting cast member to other stories.” And perhaps that’s where this episode really begins to press in—on the tension between empire and rebellion, between control and community, between rigid religious systems and the wild, relational movement of the Spirit. There are moments here that challenge the church directly: “Are we here to serve the empire of the church… or is there something dynamically different?” And others that reimagine what spiritual formation could look like if we dared to take story seriously: “What if you treated a film like you would a piece of scripture… and let it speak to the community as they are gathered?” This is a conversation about imagination—about reclaiming it, trusting it, and allowing it to reawaken something within us that doctrine alone sometimes cannot reach. It’s about disability, belonging, and the prophetic call to reshape our communities. It’s about the dark side within us—and the hope that redemption is never entirely out of reach. And maybe most of all, it’s about learning to see again. So whether you’re a lifelong Star Wars fan, a theologian, a skeptic, or someone simply searching for meaning in the middle of your own story—this episode invites you to step into the myth… and discover what it might be saying about your life, your faith, and the world we’re all trying to build together. Thanks for listening to the Well Dwellers Podcast! This post is public so feel free to share it. Chapters: 00:32 Opening Scenes 04:20 The Truth In Sci Fi 12:41 Roles Star Wars Plays In Shaping Good & Evil 19:25 The Story Of A Rebellious Movement 25:37 The Force & The Gifts Of APEST 34:08 Apostolic 46:29 Prophetic 54:03 Evangelism 1:05:04 Shepherding 1:11:27 Teaching 1:14:00 Psychology Of The Dark Side 1:20:10 Closing Scenes Resources: Get full access to At The Bottom Of The Well at www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe [https://www.atthebottomofthewell.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]