How to Be Authentic and Whole

Come on a journey with us, in which our heroes grow up together in a safe but restrictive community, begin to question that community, fall down a slippery slope, crash their Jenga tower, lose everything, find their authentic selves - including their anger, gain everything, discover a new kind of joy, and then create a sanctuary where all are truly, deeply welcome. Turns out it was the sanctuary that they needed all along. 

This successful heroes’ journey is a story that we hope will give you joy and hope for your own complicated journey.  We all fall down (or get kicked out), but our guests this week are here to remind us what’s on the other side.  This is the third episode in our bounce-back series and we hope you’ll get a lot of value from it.

Our guests this week are Kate and Colby Martin, co pastors of Sojourn Grace Collective, a progressive Christian church in San Diego, California.  Their church is a fully inclusive, open and affirming community that welcomes all and works for justice. How they got there is not easy. 

Kate and Colby have known each other since childhood, growing up in the same conservative evangelical church.  Colby became a successful youth pastor in a megachurch, but he and Kate both began to question what they had been brought up to believe.  After years of soul-searching and growth, the two left (were thrown out, really)  the safety of that harbor for the uncharted seas.  I’m happy to report that, while their journey was difficult and painful, they have landed on a beautiful shore and gone on to build their own kind of paradise together with their 4 sons and their community in San Diego. 

At first glance, Kelly and I are not the obvious guides for Kate and Colby’s story. Neither of us grew up in a church and I, at least, am pretty skeptical about divinity and an afterlife. That said, this episode turned into a meeting of the minds and hearts. Our “outsider” status and questions actually helped the Martins unlock some old meaning. Their grounded, but inclusive faith gave us a path back toward our spiritual selves. 

Prepare thyself for a gorgeous deep dive into the nature of God, dogma, imperfection, depression, and authenticity, on this fabulous double date episode.  We did have a snafu at the beginning of the session and lost a chunk of the recording, so there might be a couple of references that seem untethered, but what we did get was fucking fantastic, if I do say so, myself. To compensate for the loss of part of the conversation, we include, in this recording, the mid-roll banter that we usually cut out. We want you all to have as much Kate and Colby as possible. 

Key Takeaways: 

• There are lots of different kinds and sources of depression/authenticity -  circumstantial, spiritual, etc.  
• We grow and mature by adding and accessing all the parts of ourselves not by repressing them
• Childhood wounds are often caused by people trying to “fix” us back then, so revisiting them isn’t necessarily the way to heal.  Just bring the littles along.
• Childhood wounds are often caused by people trying to “fix” us back then, so revisiting them isn’t necessarily the way to heal.  Just bring the littles along.

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Quotes:

• “I apologize for being fabulous” - KR
• “We need to have a better conversation about depression” - KM

References:

• Sojourn Grace Collective - Kate and Colby’s Church
• Cobly Martin’s Website
• The Kate and Colby Show Podcast
• Umhair Haque on existential depression

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Resources: 

• The Shift at Indie Bound
• The Forgotten Tradition of Sin - Colby's TEDx Talk

Music Credits: “All Our Life” mixkit.co