Honoring the Journey

In this episode of Honoring The Journey, Leslie interviews Dylan Naber-Cruz — a former U.S. Marine, cowboy, writer, and co-host of the God Squad Pod — about his journey through and out of fundamentalist Christianity. Dylan chats about his childhood shaped by competing denominations (Church of Christ and Southern Baptist), being baptized twice before age 14, enduring rapture anxiety well into his 30s, and living through the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. He traces the cracks in his faith to a college history class where he first encountered critical thinking, a debate assignment that exposed his inability to defend his beliefs with evidence, and reading Bart Ehrman and Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ. The conversation also explores his religious trauma, undiagnosed PTSD from childhood abuse and a Marine Corps accident, the ways evangelicalism pathologized mental health, and the anger phase of deconstruction — before turning to how that anger can be channeled into community building, political action, self-care, and what Dylan calls "radical grace," drawing on permaculture principles and the example of Jesus as a template for envisioning a more just and compassionate world.

Find out more about Dillon: https://tattooed-theologian.com/

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie speaks with Jared Snyder, who spent 21 years as a "worker" — an itinerant, homeless minister — in the Two by Two church, a little-known fundamentalist sect founded in Ireland in 1897 that holds meetings in homes, sends preachers out in pairs with no permanent residence, and teaches it is God's one true way. Jared walks Leslie through the church's structure and culture, from Sunday meetings and "fundie voice" testimonies to the fear-based conformity and suppressed critical thinking that defined his upbringing, and shares how a reckless college period born of wanting to disqualify himself from the ministry paradoxically led to his submission to it. The conversation turns to his eventual departure in 2023, triggered by an overseas sex-abuse scandal and cover-up that cracked open years of quiet doubts, launching a rapid deconstruction that took him through anger, nihilism, and ultimately a liberating re-engagement with life on his own terms — a journey he now channels into writing a Substack and working as a certified non-religious spiritual director.

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie revisits a conversation with author and former pastor Colby Martin after a technical issue ruined their first recording at the Wild Goose Festival. Colby shares his personal journey from being raised in a Baptist family and sensing a call to ministry as a teenager, to pastoring at an evangelical megachurch in Arizona—where a single Facebook post celebrating the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" triggered a confrontation that ultimately led to his termination. He describes how studying the Bible's so-called "clobber passages" using rigorous evangelical scholarship led him to become fully affirming of LGBTQ inclusion, and how that conviction put him at odds with his church's leadership. The discussion also explores his evolving understanding of God—moving from a separate, personal being to a grounding presence of love—and his critique of how Christianity has reduced faith to intellectual belief rather than embodied action. Colby also introduces his forthcoming book, But What About?: The Most-Asked Questions on Faith, the Bible, and LGBTQ Inclusion, a follow-up to his earlier work Unclobbered, which addresses the common follow-up questions people still have after engaging the biblical texts on homosexuality.

Pick up your copy of Unclobbered HERE!

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In this episode of Honoring the Journey, host Leslie Nease sits down with Keith Giles — author, publisher, and co-owner of Quoir Publishing — for a wide-ranging conversation about the art of storytelling and the launch of his new science fiction imprint, Pink Beam Press. Keith shares free, practical advice for writers on crafting compelling stories, drawing on a memorable creative writing exercise that taught him the power of economy in prose: condense a four-page scene to two, then to one, and discover what your story actually needs. He explains how fiction can communicate big ideas "under the radar" without becoming preachy, why putting your most provocative points in the mouth of a villain character disarms readers and invites them to think, and how the novella format forces writers to cut the padding and get to the meat. Along the way, Keith tells the wild true story behind the Pink Beam name — a mystical experience had by science fiction legend Philip K. Dick — and makes the case that novels are "empathy boxes," connecting us to authors and to each other in ways that nonfiction simply can't.

Find out more about Quoir and Pink Beam Publishing at https://www.quoir.com

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today we welcome Jason Becker, host of the podcast “What the Hell Do I Know? with JB,” for a powerful conversation about faith, doubt, deconstruction, and spirituality. Jason shares growing up Southern Baptist, being taught fear-based salvation and repeatedly praying the salvation prayer into his 30s, and how that coercion fueled later questions about hell, control in the American church, and conflicting doctrines. He describes moving into ministry, challenging treatment of LGBTQ+ people, planting an inclusive church in an LGBTQ+ theater in Atlanta, and later shifting to online conversations amid political and religious polarization. Together we discuss letting go of certainty, prioritizing the teachings of Jesus and present-day “bringing heaven here,” women’s roles in church, interpreting scripture through the lens of Jesus, and making space for empathy, accountability, and inclusion.

What the Hell Do I Know with JB Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@Whatthehelldoiknowjb

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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What happens in our bodies when the beliefs we grew up with begin to unravel? In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie talks with Dr. Shaleen Kendrick, author of Your Three Brains, about her experience growing up as a megachurch pastor’s daughter and how understanding the brain and nervous system helped her make sense of religious trauma. We explore fear, curiosity, and what it can look like to find wholeness as we make room for a new story.

Find out more about Shaleen and her work on her website.

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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On today's Honoring the Journey, Leslie sits down with Kallie Klug a somatic practitioner, yoga instructor, and author of Tired of Being Good, to explore the concept of "fawning" as a biological stress response rooted in people-pleasing. They discuss how growing up in religious environments can wire the nervous system for chronic fawning by coupling goodness with salvation and stigmatizing anger as sinful. Kallie breaks down the physiology behind the fawn response and how it layers freeze and appeasement on top of suppressed boundary expression, leading to physical ailments like jaw tension, neck pain, thyroid issues and more physical symptoms. They share personal stories of religious deconstruction, the guilt of leaving faith, and the liberating realization that the body's signals—including anger—carry intelligence rather than sin. Kallie guides listeners through a somatic practice to notice what fawning feels like in the body, offers practical tools for coming out of freeze by inviting small amounts of mobility and self-orientation, and reflects on her own journey of un-shaming her inner experience and embracing the fullness of being human.

Grab Kallie's new book HERE!

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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This conversation with Vernique Esther went so many places, and I loved every minute of it! Vernique grew up in a beautiful and sometimes chaotic mix of denominations, cultures, and ideas about God, shaped by her Haitian and West African roots. Her journey eventually led her into a legalistic campus ministry that she now describes as “culty,” an early marriage that ended in devastating infidelity and divorce, and the political upheaval of 2016 that caused the cracks in her faith to break wide open. We talked about purity culture, patriarchal church systems, and the impossible burden so many women were taught to carry—the idea that we were somehow the “moral vessels” responsible for holding everything together. We were expected to suffer well, forgive endlessly, stay faithful, remain quiet, and somehow keep everyone else from falling apart, even when we were the ones being deeply harmed.

Today, Vernique describes her faith as a Jesus-centered, non-religious spirituality. We had such an honest conversation about separating the character of Jesus from some of the violent and troubling portrayals of God we encounter elsewhere in Scripture, and what it looks like to keep following Jesus after so much of the religious framework around him has fallen away.

Vernique also shared her powerful concept of “trauma languages”—the patterns our pain can create in relationships, including control and rejection sensitivity—and opened up about who holds space for her while she continues doing her own healing.

Find out more about Vernique here: https://www.verniqueesther.com

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today, Leslie has a conversation with Rob Zahn, a Lutheran pastor and author of LSD to Galilee. The episode weaves together Rob's unconventional path into ministry, the story of discovering his estranged father on his deathbed and uncovering his father's ties to a 1960s drug-smuggling countercultural movement (the Brotherhood of Eternal Love), and a deeply theological conversation about certainty, deconstruction, and where the divine can be found — including surprising historical and academic parallels between psychedelics and early Christian/religious practice. Together they explore themes of doubt, humility, religious trauma, freedom in faith, and staying curious rather than certain.

Get Rob's book LSD to Galilee here!

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In this episode of Honoring the Journey, we hear from the lovely Promise Backlund (Eve Was Framed), a former worship leader in Charismatic Churches, to discuss her deconstruction from an evangelical upbringing to eventual atheism. We explore themes like the fear of hell and losing salvation, the loss and rebuilding of authentic friendships, navigating family relationships after leaving the faith, and the difference between dogmatic belief and lived kindness — all tied to her new book, The Gospel of Lies: Surviving and Resisting Evangelical Extremism.

Follow Promise:

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

YouTube

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie sits down with writer, artist, playwright, and speaker Rob Bell—someone whose work had a tremendous impact on her own deconstruction journey. If you’ve spent any time questioning or reexamining the faith you inherited, chances are you’ve come across Rob’s work. His groundbreaking book Love Wins famously landed him in hot water within evangelical circles for challenging long-held beliefs about hell, salvation, and the character of God.

In this rich and vulnerable conversation, Rob reflects on what it was like to experience rejection from the evangelical world he had once been such a prominent part of, and shares some beautiful wisdom for anyone currently navigating a season of questioning, uncertainty, or deconstruction. He also catches us up on life now—what he’s creating, what he’s discovering, and what midlife is teaching him about growth, identity, and becoming. This conversation is thoughtful, funny, tender, and full of the kind of wisdom that makes you want to grab a notebook. You won’t want to miss this one!

Want to listen to the series Jesus H. Christ that Leslie & Rob spoke about?HERE is a link to the first episode!

Find out more about Rob's work and where you can find him online on his website: https://robbell.com/

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie welcomes back Britt Hartley from No-nonsense Spirituality for a wide-ranging conversation about navigating relationships with family members who are still religious after leaving the faith. The two cover the emotional dynamics of deconstruction, including the desperate need for validation, the defensive reactions of loved ones, and why leading with vulnerability rather than debate tends to be far more effective for maintaining connection. They explore how differing core values (truth-seeking vs. loyalty) can explain why people have such vastly different experiences within the same religion, discuss the ethics of sharing one's evolving worldview publicly without destabilizing others, and reflect on what it means to follow Jesus outside of institutional religion. The conversation also touches on existential crisis, the psychological benefits of releasing the need for ultimate truth, and the meaningful distinction between religious deconstruction coaching and spiritual direction — all woven together with warmth, humor, and a shared sense that human-to-human connection ultimately transcends theological differences.

Find Britt online!

Her Website

Instagram

TikTok

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Helpful links we discuss on the pod:

Page on homosexuality and Christianity - http://www.kexc.us/

"You Should Know" song (topic of homosexuality and Christianity) - https://youtu.be/UNqMMsoVDZU?si=s3tkxcnypuSU8yAy

INEVITABLE (dance, trance, electropop music) - http://www.inevitablemusic.org/

Kurplunk (various styles, all funny songs) - http://www.kurplunk.lol/

Kurt's career search handbook, Here Today Hired Tomorrow - http://www.kurtkirton.com/ and https://www.amazon.com/Here-Today-Hired-Tomorrow-Practical/dp/1941558062/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What happens when someone wakes up and starts to question their entire life? He was MAGA, happily patriarchal and deep in evangelicalism, but one day he began to question it all. In this episode of Honoring the Journey, Leslie chats with Steven Francisi, founder of Healing Roots On Up and author of From A-Hole to All Right.

Steven shares a raw and wide-ranging story that begins with a difficult childhood in New York marked by inconsistent parenting, feeling like an outsider in his own Italian family due to his red hair and fair skin, and early trauma that led to a suicide attempt at 16. He joined the Navy at 17 partly to earn his father's approval, later got drawn into evangelical Christianity through an Amway meeting, and spent years in high-control religious environments that deepened his shame while masking his unresolved trauma. After a serious motorcycle accident in 2015 that left him with a traumatic brain injury, a subsequent marriage breakdown, and a second suicidal crisis, Steven finally entered trauma-informed therapy through the VA, where he experienced a breakthrough moment of grief that unlocked decades of suppressed emotion.

Through therapy, a close friendship with a younger, non-Christian man, and reading works like The Power of Myth, Steven began deconstructing not just his faith but also his patriarchal worldview and far-right political identity, including walking away from the MAGA movement. The conversation is an honest, compassionate exploration of shame, healing, masculinity, religious trauma, and what it means to become a whole person.

Get his book, From A-Hole to Alright HERE.

Follow Steven on all social media outlets at Healing Roots On Up!

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie interviews Marla Taviano — a former evangelical Christian author who wrote books for conservative Christian wives and later went through a very public deconstruction.

Marla shares her journey from being deeply embedded in evangelical Christianity (as a missionary, author, Christian school teacher, and camp counselor) to leaving the faith altogether, driven by growing questions about salvation-focused theology, racism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and the pro-life movement.

The conversation covers the role books like Love Wins by Rob Bell and Rachel Held Evans's work played in her shift, how humor and poetry became her tools for processing and communicating her deconstruction, the personal cost of losing her sister and other relationships, and her belief that true love — not religious obligation — is the guiding principle worth living by.

Marla's Website: www.MarlaTaviano.com

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In today’s episode, Leslie talks with theologian and activist Lisa Sharon Harper about her faith deconstruction. Lisa traces her family's centuries-deep American roots, from enslaved ancestors to Indigenous heritage and describes how a 2003 pilgrimage retracing the Trail of Tears forced her to reimagine the evangelical gospel through her great-great-great-grandmother's eyes, sparking a year of depression and ultimately a full "decolonization" of her faith. The conversation weaves through the suppressed history of the Alamo, the "tyranny of certainty" in evangelical culture, marriage equality, and the isolating dynamics of tightly-bound church communities, arriving at the hopeful conviction that humility, pilgrimage, and genuine listening are the path back to shalom, which is the radical relational wholeness at the heart of Jesus's message.

Lisa's Website

Lisa's Substack and podcast

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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In this episode, titled “Let’s Talk About Deconstruction”, Leslie interviews Phil Drysdale, a Scotland-based psychotherapist, researcher, and founder of Deconstruction Network, for a wide-ranging conversation about the psychology of deconstruction.

Phil shares his own journey from a fundamentalist upbringing through deconstruction while traveling the world as a speaker, and how that led him to spend nearly two decades coaching and now doing therapy with people leaving high-control religious systems.

The conversation explores the psychology behind deconstruction… why it happens, why it's terrifying, how values-based thinking can replace black-and-white morality, and why community is the single most important resource for people going through the process. They also touch on the neuroscience of change, the concept of "conditions of worth," the challenge of setting boundaries with people from your past, and Phil's observations on where the deconstruction movement may be headed, including a thought-provoking comparison to post-WWII Europe's mass departure from organized religion.

Find Phil on Instagram

Phil's Website

Deconstruction Network

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today, Leslie sits down with David Gushee, a Pastor and Professor of Christian Ethics who is also a writer of one of the most influential books of Leslie’s deconstruction process—Changing our Mind. Leslie invites David to share his journey with us all trough being a Southern Baptist convert to a progressive Christian Scholar. David openly shares about his gradual theological broadening from accepting women in ministry to ultimately affirming LGBTQ inclusion in 2014, which cost him his standing in the evangelical world. They talk about the problematic clobber passages that are used to alienate and judge the LGBTQ community and the brittle nature of fundamentalist biblical interpretation. You’ll want to take notes on this one, folks!

Also - if you are interested in being in the book study with Leslie for “Job in Exile: A Guide for Spiritual Refugees” by David Gushee in September, please send Leslie an email and let her know! leslienease@gmail.com.

To check out David's books and pre-order his new book about Job, click here.

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today, Leslie invites Melissa Green, a former member of the beloved Christian music group Avalon, for a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation about faith deconstruction, spiritual evolution, and the courage to question inherited beliefs.

Melissa traces her journey from growing up in the Southern Baptist church and becoming a member of Avalon, through the pivotal moment when founding member Michael Passons was quietly removed from the group after being outed as gay, to her gradual theological shifts sparked by travel, loss, relationships with LGBTQ friends, and her years at a progressive post-evangelical church.

The episode also celebrates the recent re-release of "Testify to Love" — a collaboration between Melissa, Michael, and Ty Herndon — which has unexpectedly become a queer anthem and a message of radical, boundless love.

Woven throughout is a tender, raw moment as Melissa shares the grief of walking alongside a beloved family member through the final stages of a terminal illness, reflecting on how joy and sorrow coexist, and how the divine shows up not in miraculous intervention but in the simple, profound act of people showing up for one another.

Follow Melissa on Social Media:

Instagram

TikTok

Substack

Watch the Testify to Love re-release on YouTube!

Honoring the Journey is hosted, produced and edited by Leslie Nease. To help her keep these stories coming and fund the podcast expenses, you can donate here.

Pick up Leslie's book, Honoring the Journey: The Deconstruction of Sister Christian here.

Interested in working with Leslie as your Spiritual Director or Life/Faith Transitions Coach? Check out her website and learn more about what she offers! https://www.leslieneasecoaching.com

If you'd like to be a part of the Honoring the Journey Team on Substack, click here! You can find her work and also support her financially if you desire.

Would you like to leave a voicemail for Leslie? Click here!

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Today on Honoring the Journey, Leslie chats with Luke Justin Roberts (LJR) — a recording artist she found on TikTok. Luke was a former worship leader who grew up deeply embedded in evangelical and homeschool culture. They talk about his winding spiritual path from devoted churchgoer to questioning, deconstructing and finding his true path to freedom and now making music that speaks to others who are questioning their inherited beliefs.

Luke shares candid stories about his childhood faith, the pressures and identity that came with growing up in ministry, and how he found his way to making music that meets people in their doubt and deconstruction.

The conversation is warm, honest, and wide-ranging, touching on TikTok fame, building unexpected friendships across belief systems, and the exciting road ahead for LJR as an independent artist.

Learn more about Luke (LJR) and his music on his website, www.lukejustinroberts.com.

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