The Yours Truly Podcast

Can Beauty Save the Church?

Style ≠ Order. Modern worship may be confusing the two. In this conversation with Dr. Matthew Wilkinson — organist, Director of Music, and host of The Pursuit of Beauty — we explore why modern worship often confuses aesthetic preference with spiritual depth. What happens when worship becomes a stage? When transcendence is traded for emotional immediacy? When beauty is reduced to branding? Matthew’s journey from Pentecostal roots to Anglican liturgy opens a deeper question: Is beauty optional in Christian worship — or is it essential? We discuss: • The difference between style and order • Why liturgy shapes the soul • The limits of seeker-sensitive worship • Beauty as one of the names of God • Bach, chant, and the architecture of transcendence • Why most contemporary worship music feels thin • The role of confession, humility, and form • How churches might recover depth without abandoning creativity This is not an attack on contemporary worship. It is a call to aim higher. If the Church has inherited two thousand years of music, architecture, and liturgical wisdom — why are we so quick to flatten it? — About Dr. Matthew Wilkinson Matthew is Director of Music at St. Michael’s Anglican Church and host of The Pursuit of Beauty, a podcast exploring liturgy, aesthetics, and Christian formation. His album The Pursuit of Beauty is available wherever music is streamed. Website: https://matthewwilkinson.net/ [https://matthewwilkinson.net/] Podcast: The Pursuit of Beauty @matthewwilkinsonmusic — If you find these conversations meaningful: • Subscribe to the channel • Leave a review on your podcast platform • Follow Yours Truly on Substack • Consider becoming a YouTube Channel Member All links below. — Yours Truly is a place we go to think out loud Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join] follow me on X: https://twitter.com/chrbaxter_yt [https://twitter.com/chrbaxter_yt] https://substack.com/@christianbaxteryt [https://substack.com/@christianbaxteryt]

The Cross, the Psyche, and the Return of the Sacred

What happens when Christian language collapses but the experiences don’t stop? In this conversation with @treyhuntley we explore the fault line between the cross, the psyche, and the return of the sacred—where Jung, prayer, discernment, and lived experience refuse to stay in separate categories. Many people today aren’t losing faith—they’re losing language. This conversation with Trey Huntley sits at the intersection of Christianity, Jung, psychology, and the symbolic world, asking how the sacred returns through the psyche without collapsing into chaos or control. Can Christianity and Jung Speak Honestly to Each Other? This is a conversation for those who’ve had encounters they can’t unsee, but don’t want to lose their minds—or their faith—trying to understand them This conversation unfolds within a broader ecosystem shaped by thinkers and creators wrestling with meaning, symbolism, and faith in the modern world. @johnvervaeke ’s work on the meaning crisis, relevance realization, and the recovery of the sacred provides a conceptual backdrop for many of the questions explored here. @JonathanPageau ’s symbolic theology and attention to image, pattern, and tradition inform the way symbols, Scripture, and lived experience are approached—not as abstractions, but as participatory realities. @JordanBPeterson reintroduction of Jung, biblical symbolism, and archetypal reading into public discourse has helped reopen conversations many people were never given language for. And @PaulVanderKlay ’s long-form, patient conversational style—especially within “this little corner of the internet”—has modeled a way of thinking out loud that resists both ideological capture and premature certainty. This episode moves through questions many people are quietly carrying: • How do we speak honestly about prayer, visions, dreams, and the inner world without collapsing into chaos or control? • What does Carl Jung offer—and where does he fall short—when held alongside Christian faith? • Why do so many modern Christians feel haunted by experiences they were never given language for? • What does resurrection mean when it shows up inside a human life, not just a doctrine? This is not a debate about belief. It’s an attempt to recover language that can hold lived experience without losing truth, humility, or sanity. ⸻ 🧭 Topics explored in this conversation: • Carl Jung and the Christian imagination • Prayer, discernment, and symbolic experience • Psychology, therapy, and confession • The dangers of flattening spiritual experience • Resurrection as lived reality • Why the sacred keeps returning through the psyche • Finding sane language in a fractured age ⸻ 👤 About the guest: @treyhuntley works at the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and symbolic meaning. His work engages Jungian thought, the imaginal, discernment, and the lived realities many people experience outside tidy religious or secular categories. ⸻ 🕯 About Yours Truly: Yours Truly is a long-form conversation space for thinking out loud about faith, meaning, psychology, culture, and the slow work of truth-telling in a disenchanted world. Podcast link: I published my new episode The Yours Truly Podcast, please check it out. https://www.podbean.com/pi/pbblog-y77sn-117e7a0 [https://www.podbean.com/pi/pbblog-y77sn-117e7a0] ⸻ 🔔 Support the work: If you find value in these conversations: • Like & subscribe — it genuinely helps the reach • Consider becoming a channel member to support the project • Share with someone who’s asking similar questions Links below. Join this channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join] Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/christianbaxteryt/p/midwest-estuary-the-homecoming?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay [https://open.substack.com/pub/christianbaxteryt/p/midwest-estuary-the-homecoming?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay] X: https://x.com/chrbaxter_yt?s=21 [https://x.com/chrbaxter_yt?s=21] Trey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treyhuntley?igsh=MWxneXB6bHg2eXp5bA== [https://www.instagram.com/treyhuntley?igsh=MWxneXB6bHg2eXp5bA==] ⸻ 📍 Chapters: (Coming soon) ⸻ 🔍 TAGS @treyhuntley conversation with @PaulVanderKlay https://youtu.be/KDViTqb-zXQ?si=47bpVxbX8NOIFH0w [https://youtu.be/KDViTqb-zXQ?si=47bpVxbX8NOIFH0w] • Carl Jung • Jungian psychology • Christianity and psychology • Symbolic theology • Discernment • Prayer and therapy • Christian imagination • Meaning crisis • Sacred and secular • Resurrection • Depth psychology Jordan Peterson

Christianity in the Digital Age: Triage vs Formation (with Bob the Baptist)

In this conversation, I’m joined again by Bob the Baptist to talk about Christianity in the digital age—and the growing gap between discourse and formation. Online Christian conversations can generate urgency, clarity, and conviction. But they also move faster than people can be formed, stabilized, or responsibly led. Throughout this discussion, we return to a central tension: some people need immediate pastoral triage, while others need long-term structural and liturgical formation—and the internet is optimized for neither. Bob presses on questions of responsibility, containment, and landing people somewhere real. I press on the limits of online systems, the dangers of premature closure, and the need for slow, embodied reconstruction. We’re not arguing past each other so much as operating on different time horizons. This episode isn’t a debate. It’s an attempt to name the limits of Christian discourse, the burden placed on leaders in digital spaces, and why one conversation, platform, or “update” can’t do both jobs at once. Topics include: – Triage vs formation – Online discourse and pastoral responsibility – Why systems shape belief before theology does – The limits of scale, speed, and visibility – Why stability can’t be demanded from unstable systems If you’re trying to think seriously about faith, leadership, and formation after the internet, this conversation is for you.

Why Christianity Can’t Survive as Idea-Talk Alone

In this conversation, Christian Baxter sits down with Daniel of @O.G.Rose.Michelle.and.Daniel to explore what happens when Christianity is reduced to ideas, arguments, or online content—and why belief alone is no longer enough to sustain faith in a fragmented, post-institutional age. The discussion moves through art, beauty, political economy, apologetics, and local community, tracing how modern life has hollowed out shared practices while multiplying opinions. Together, they ask a quietly unsettling question: if Christianity becomes something you mainly consume or debate, what is actually left to participate in? Rather than offering a program or a culture-war posture, this episode circles a deeper claim: Christianity survives as a lived reality—formed through beauty, ritual, time, and embodied community—not as a set of propositions optimized for the internet. Beauty draws before arguments persuade. Formation precedes explanation. Church is not an information service, but a place you enter and are shaped by. This conversation will resonate with anyone wrestling with the limits of online discourse, the exhaustion of ideological Christianity, or the longing for something real enough to inhabit. It’s an exploration of why faith must eventually move from the screen into shared life, shared time, and shared ground. 00:00 Introduction & framing the conversation 04:30 Art, faith, and incarnational thinking 11:45 Culture after the “end of history” 19:30 Institutional breakdown and loss of trust 28:10 Politics, economics, and spiritual vacuum 37:20 Christianity reduced to ideas and arguments 46:40 Why apologetics isn’t enough anymore 56:15 Formation vs belief in modern Christianity 1:06:30 The internet, abstraction, and disembodied faith 1:17:00 Beauty as attraction, not decoration 1:28:10 Liturgy, ritual, and lived participation 1:39:30 Why people ask “why bother with church?” 1:50:00 Local community, place, and imagination 2:01:45 Small towns, scale, and human formation 2:13:30 Christianity as a way of life, not content 2:26:00 Closing reflections on reality and participation Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join] follow me on X: https://twitter.com/chrbaxter_yt [https://twitter.com/chrbaxter_yt] My Substack related: https://open.substack.com/pub/christianbaxteryt/p/what-is-real-christianity?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay [https://open.substack.com/pub/christianbaxteryt/p/what-is-real-christianity?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay]

Map ≠ Territory | A GenZ Rando on Meaning, Formation, and Ground

In this episode, I sit down with a fellow seeker who has been navigating Christianity, coherence, and personal responsibility in the midst of the modern “meaning crisis.” Our conversation explores the difference between understanding ideas conceptually and learning how truth is embodied over time—between having a map and actually walking the territory. We talk about evangelical Christianity, propositional belief, the role of church and tradition, and the challenges of forming a stable life while participating in online conversations about faith and meaning. Rather than aiming for conclusions or quick resolutions, this episode stays with the tension: how coherence is shaped slowly through practice, discipline, community, and lived participation—not just insight or explanation. This conversation will resonate with anyone wrestling honestly with belief, belonging, formation, and the question of what it means to live faithfully without rushing arrival Join this channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU5SNBfTo4umhjYz6M0Jsmg/join] Sign up for the podcast: I published my new episode The Yours Truly Podcast, please check it out. https://www.podbean.com/pi/pbblog-y77sn-117e7a0 [https://www.podbean.com/pi/pbblog-y77sn-117e7a0] Follow Christian on X & Substack https://x.com/chrbaxter_yt?s=21 [https://x.com/chrbaxter_yt?s=21] https://substack.com/@christianbaxteryt?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile [https://substack.com/@christianbaxteryt?r=433pnb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile] ⁠Ian’s podcast - @insight.incorporated