Interview with Theologian, Writer and Influencer Brian Recker
Summary:
In this episode of the Ministry Forum Podcast, guest host Rachel Kennedy-Proctor sits down with Brian Recker and Rev. John Borthwick to discuss faith, deconstruction, and what it means to follow Jesus outside of traditional evangelical spaces. Brian shares his journey from being a pastor to rethinking his beliefs, navigating shifts in theology, and building a platform that fosters inclusive conversations about faith. Together, they explore the challenges of evolving spiritually, the future of the church, and the importance of authenticity in ministry. Whether you're questioning, reconstructing, or simply curious, this conversation offers thought-provoking insights and encouragement for your own faith journey.
Quotables:
“But the cool thing is, and what I always tell people, yeah, you'll lose, you'll lose relationships, but anybody who doesn't stick with you as you evolve wasn't really there for you.” - Brian Recker
“And it took some time for me to be public about it, but after some time of just like kind of sitting with that change and processing it with people in my circle to include queer friends that I was making, I decided that if I had been a public Evangelical, I had been publicly a part of, even though it was not like I preached against queer people every week, I was still a part of an institution that was opposed to queer people and their inclusion. So, it felt important for me to be public about the other thing, right?” - Brian Recker
“I try to steward my platform by platforming as many marginalized voices as I can. But I think even in that, there's something that's a little bit healing for folks to see somebody change publicly, to see somebody who maybe used to be a voice speaking for a white supremacist system now critiquing that system and a system that did give me a position of power that I lost, and now I'm critiquing it” - Brian Recker
“And I do, I am, self-aware about that, that for some people, they didn't take inclusion seriously until they heard a straight white guy talk about it. And I think that that's a bummer, that being said, I can't help but be a straight white guy, and I think that straight white guys should be talking about it.” - Brian Recker
“I no longer believe that you have to be a Christian in order to have a relationship with God, or a connection to God, or even that you have to believe in God in order to be someone who is walking in integrity and in this world. And so, I don't, I don't put that on people, but for me, my spiritual pathway is still in the way of Jesus” - Brian Recker
“So I think that's maybe resonating with folks as well, is that positive vision for what it could still look like for us to follow Jesus in a way that's not exclusionary, that is inclusive and also liberative, that is fighting for collective liberation and the beloved community, which is what Jesus was all About. Jesus was not all about saving disembodied souls from hell. He was about building the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven” - Brian Recker
“I think as people who are in the world of professional ministry, we get scared about numbers like that. And I wonder if I just don't know if it's always a bad thing. I wonder if some things need to die. I wonder if some of these institutions that were more about institutional power and conversion and really colonization, these institutions that were built on Christian supremacy and white supremacy, if it's not true, that maybe we need new wineskins. And I think the reason that's so scary for us is that we're trying to build careers in those old wineskins.” - Brian Recker
About Brian Recker
Brian Recker is a public theologian, speaker and writer for people
seeking Christian spirituality without the exclusionary dogma. The son of a Baptist preacher and an alum of the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, he spent eight years as an evangelical pastor before deconstructing his faith to find a more inclusive spirituality. He now speaks about following Jesus without fear of hell on his popular Instagram account and his Substack, Beloved. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has four children and a rescue pup named Maev.
Additional Resources:
Sacred Counsel with Meg Holiday and Brian Recker - Podcast
Ecstatic Dance as an embodied practice
Brian's book Hell Bent comes out in October 2025
Who Will Be A Witness (suggested reading)
Follow us on Social:
Transcript
[John Borthwick]
Welcome. Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel.
I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So, thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen. Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.
Well, today on ministry Forum Podcast, we have a couple of special guests. First, it's a ministry forum intern takeover with one of our interns. Rachel Kennedy-Proctor, welcome, Rachel. We're very excited to have you as the lead in our episode today. And earlier this year, I asked our interns if you could interview anyone on the ministry Forum Podcast, who would that be? And almost immediately, Rachel said the name of today's extra special guest to which our other interns, Sarah and Lauren, our creative and logistics lead at ministry forum, collectively cheered. I'm going to admit, with no offense intended to our guest, I said, who's that? And so, I did go on a bit of a dive over the last few months, just sort of checking out their social feeds. And what I've gleaned, I think, is that they are an evangelist for mullets and tattooing, especially hands and you will be in for a treat, because also they're amazing in the things that they're talking about, so much more to them.
So, I'm really looking forward to this conversation, just to get to know them better and get up to speed with someone who already is a significant fan club among the ministry forum team. And I'm hoping and guaranteeing that many of you will become fans at the end of this conversation, Rachel's going to host the conversation today, and I might add a little something here and there, of course. So, Rachel over to you. Let's welcome our special guest today.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Well, thanks John, and thank you, Brian for joining us today. It's really great to have you this morning. Just on a personal note, in my own deconstructing journey, I had just come out of a Pentecostal evangelical world as I was heading into seminary, and I was really trying to look for people who were talking about the things that I believed but didn't have language to put to, and then your Instagram, your channel, popped up on my foryou page, and so that's kind of how I found you. And it's just been really great to hear all of the things that you have to say about inclusivity, spirituality, following Jesus in this, in this new way that I that I believed, and I wanted to do, but just didn't have language to verbalize that. So, thank you for the platform that you have and the voice that you use on it. it's been wonderful, but I think maybe a good place to start would just be to ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself for our listeners to get to know you a little bit better. So, yeah, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you've fallen into the role that you have now?
[Brian Recker]
Yeah, so I'd like to think that I'm an evangelist, not just for mullets and hand tattoos, but also for just really being your full, authentic self, whatever that looks like. And for me, that's what it looks like. And I think that's been, you know, I talk about Jesus, I talk about a lot of different things, but maybe that's even the core of it, is learning to listen to yourself at the end of the day, something that I was not taught to do in my evangelical upbringing, so I hard to know where to start.
I was an evangelical pastor for eight and a half years, and before I began a deconstruction journey that included resigning from that pastoral position. But prior to that, I was not actually raised in evangelicalism. I was raised in fundamentalism. I'm the son of an independent fundamental Baptist pastor, and so actually, when I left fundamentalism, it became an evangelical that was like a big progressive shift for me at the time, because I was raised in a tradition King James Bible, no pants on women, no rock and roll music of any kind, like Chris Tomlin and Steven Curtis Chapman were considered too liberal for our church type of thing. You know, electric guitars and drum sets were worldly. And I went to Bob Jones University. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's a fundamentalist University. I had, you know, hair off my ears, no frayed pants. Had to make my bed every day you get demerits. I got 50 demerits one time for dancing; I did the sprinkler. so that kind of a deal.
So, you can imagine, when I discovered evangelicalism, where you could be a Christian and hold the most of these Christian beliefs, but not look like a total weirdo, like you could wear normal clothes to church. Pastors could have jeans, have an occasional tattoo, drink a beer. It felt very liberating for me at the time. And so that was, in some sense, my first, like, step of deconstruction. And I was quickly excited because, you know, as a pastor's kid, I was constantly being asked like, you want to be a pastor like your dad? And I always said no, because I simply couldn't see myself in that world. It was so confining, so constricting. I couldn't be myself in it at all. And so getting this glimpse of, Oh, I could be myself, in some ways, was really powerful for me, because it meant that I could have some of these external things without having to sort of rearrange the furniture on the doctrines that I had been raised with, which was a really scary thing to do, to think that some of those things might not be true.
I mean, my view of God was shaped by what was handed to me by my parents, which was very much a heaven and hell decision that here's what you have to believe God is holy, you're a sinner, you're born worthy of hell. You have to be forgiven of your sins, or else you're gonna go to hell. You do that through Jesus. And so all of those building blocks were in place for me, and I didn't have another way of seeing it. And so, it took me some time to kind of begin to question some of that stuff within evangelicalism, I would say. So, to fast forward a little bit, the sort of precipitating moment for me that began to shift well—so, first of all, I became a pastor pretty quickly after becoming an evangelical. I was in a church I rose to, you know, they were giving me all kinds of ministry opportunities. They knew that I wanted to be a pastor, and so I the multi-site evangelical church I was a part of, asked me if I would help launch a new campus. And that was when I was 25 years old, back in 2012 and I really enjoyed doing that for a few years, but in 2015 when Donald Trump began to be sort of popular as a Republican nominee for president, I remember that was the first time that I began to feel a major disconnect between where I was at and where the rest of evangelicalism seemed to be at because I was kind of like, oh, this is a joke, right? Like we're all going to dismiss this guy as a buffoon and also evil. And very quickly, I realized, oh no, not only do my fundamentalist parents really like him, but my Evangelical Church seems to really like him.
And most of evangelicalism, obviously in America, voted for Donald Trump, and so over the next few years, I tried to find my purpose in trying to shift people from this sort of Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic perspective to a more inclusive, welcoming, love of neighbor thing. You know, they're listening to Fox news every night, which for you Canadians, Fox News is, like, our it's basically the Christian right television channel. And a lot of the folks in my church were just, they were being discipled by Fox News, Tucker, Carlson, Sean Hannity, and then you're getting them for a half hour a week, but they're getting, you know, that fed at them every single day, for hours at a time. And so, I felt like it was a cool thing that I wasn't just preaching to the choir. I was trying to challenge these people to maybe think in a different way and how their Christianity does not fully align with Republican politics.
And so I did that for a few years, and it was really 2020 that was the pause that I needed to reevaluate what I was doing and what I was a part of, because up until that point, I found a lot of purpose again, in sort of pushing back against the tides of Christian nationalism. But I don't think I had been fully conscious of the ways that I was also silencing myself and preventing myself from listening to really my own conscience, because I knew that there were certain lines I could not cross within evangelicalism, or I would have to step down or lose my job. And in addition to losing my salary, it would mean losing my entire network and relationships and all the people that you know had built up my ministry and my future and all of that, it was like that was my whole world. And really the main one, I think, was LGBT inclusion to say there are certain things in evangelicalism that you can say, and you're kind of controversial and progressive, but you can still be an evangelical. For instance, when I would preach against white supremacy, some people did leave the church, some people were angry about that, but nobody said that I was a heretic. But I knew that if I preach that we should accept queer people, that would be, that would be like the straw that would break the camel's back. And I realized that I was not being fully honest with myself, and that, yeah, I think pastors, in some ways, are like, the least objective about at any piece of theology, because your salary and network of relationships are tied to holding to particular pieces of theology. And so even though, like, pastors have, like, often theology degrees, and they might seem the most qualified to assess a particular piece of theology if you're under that kind of institutional pressure, I don't know that you can see things clearly. And so, I resigned and very quickly shifted on a lot of things, which was a little bit embarrassing in some ways, that like, wow, those there were years there where I just wasn't really being honest about what my conscience was pointing me towards.
But also I'm proud of myself that I made those moves. And it took some time for me to be public about it, but after some time of just like kind of sitting with that change and processing it with people in my circle to include queer friends that I was making, I decided that if I had been a public Evangelical, I had been publicly a part of, even though it was not like I preached against queer people every week, I was still a part of an institution that was opposed to queer people and their inclusion. So, it felt important for me to be public about the other thing, right? And so, I kind of just did some videos online about it, not really planning on building an Instagram platform at all, but more like a bit of a public act of repentance. And also like wanting to be clear about where I was at now, since I had been clear about what I was a part of before, and I think because I didn't have any institution behind me, I felt a certain vulnerability that I could just say whatever the I don't know if I'm allowed to curse on this podcast, but I could say whatever I wanted to say, and so I'm quite explicit, and I felt a freedom that like I'm not reporting to anybody. I didn't I had already lost everything once. You know, my church knew about my LGBT inclusion. They took all my sermons down from their website. I knew that those people were no longer going to help me plant any future ministries like I had already lost all of that, so I didn't really have much to lose. And I think that place of vulnerability sharing from that was, yeah, it maybe was attractive to people. And, you know, an Instagram platform kind of came out of that, which was somewhat surprising. And so, I've been trying to figure out how to best steward that since then. So, there's my kind of long answer to your question.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
No, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing all that. I hear a lot of different things in that story. But one thing that I hear, that maybe relates to my own story, is the broken relationships that happen maybe when you deconstruct, especially from situations or places where if you deconstruct, or if you question or doubt, some of those beliefs shatter, and the fear is that you no longer are you know, are this good Christian. At least that was my experience. But yeah, thank you for sharing that. How was the response to your like, how you grew your platform with those previous relationships?
[Brian Recker]
Pretty, pretty much crickets from a lot of folks. Like, I just haven't heard from people that I had been very close to, and I haven't heard anything from them. The church that I was a part of, like, I said, it was a multi-site church, so even though I led one location, there was a broader team that I was a part of, and somebody from the church. A little bit after I released my first series of videos about why Christians should affirm queer people, somebody from the church that was a friend emailed me and was like, Hey, I'm so sorry about like, how they're treating you. I don't like it. And I was like, what do you mean? And they had sent, like, a church white email about me, basically saying, like, hey, you know Brian, he was one of our pastors, and he's like, has these false beliefs now that we cannot endorse, and we're praying for him and that sort of thing. But I didn't actually hear from most people, and I was a little surprised when they took down my sermons, although not really surprised, and it hurt a little bit, but also, I guess I kind of saw it coming a little bit, and I had already counted that cost beforehand.
There are a couple folks from the church that still reach out that, like, kind of have a, you know, bit surface level of a friendship, like, you know, send memes back and forth type of thing. But it is tough. I've had to build new family and new networks and new friendships. But the cool thing is, and what I always tell people, yeah, you'll lose, you'll lose relationships, but anybody who doesn't stick with you as you evolve wasn't really there for you. I guess I would hope that if I'm if I'm friends with somebody, and I care about them deeply, and they change, they become a new kind of person. The posture that I would want to have towards them is, oh, this is a new you that I want to get to know like this. I've always loved and respected you. And if you have continued to evolve, then I'm sure this new version of you also has so much to love and respect that I would love to learn from and get to know, as opposed to like you've changed, and so I'm writing you off. And I think knowing that people would have that response makes people not change, not evolve in ways that they know that they probably should. Do we really want somebody to not change into who they know they're supposed to be in order to make us happy and comfortable? I would never want that for my children. I don't want that for anyone to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me and they can't be themselves because, you know, I'm so dogmatic and rigid in my beliefs that I can't possibly be around somebody who's evolving.
So I I've learned so much about going through this myself in terms of even my posture towards my own children, and how I treat people who have different beliefs from me, and so I've tried to keep my posture like hey. And not everybody can do this. If you're just deconstructing and you have a lot of church hurt. I'm not saying you have to keep that door of fellowship open to the people who maybe put church hurt on you. But for me, where I'm at, I try to have the posture like, Hey, I'm my hand of fellowship. To use this sort of Christianese expression is extended, and it's up to you whether you're going to grab that or not, and not that. I've, like, emailed every friend and said that, but I've tried to always respond cordially and kindly, and I call out evangelicalism as an institution, as a system. But I actually very intentionally don't criticize my old church, and the individuals within that church, for the most part, are incredibly lovely, well-meaning people that I think have some bad ideas, but I don't have anything personal against them. They're probably offended. I know for a fact that many of them are offended. Simply by the fact that I changed. And I think one of the hurtful things that that people feel when when somebody deconstructs and changes, is like, oh, like you change, which means that you think that I'm wrong and I'm there's something that I'm bad, you know? So, it's like, they take it personally. So, I think a lot of people took it very personally, like you're you think that I'm evil, or else you wouldn't have changed. And, yeah, it's hard to, like, separate all that out, you know. But with, Evangelicals, I try to love the sin or hate the sin. I guess that’s one of their expressions.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Yes, I know that one well. Well thanks, Brian, yeah. So this kind of relates to what, to what you've already been talking about. But would you like to share more just about what led you to this social media platform and how that impacts your ministry, like the one that you currently have through social media?
[Brian Recker]
So I'm divorced, my separation was about a year after we left the church and sort of connected, sort of not, you know, she was on her own deconstruction journey, and part of that was reevaluating our marriage. But my, my former wife, she used social media extensively for her business. She did some like kind of Instagram influencing. And so, I think I kind of learned it from her, to be honest, I just, I kind of was a part of that watching her do it. And so, I think I learned some of the just how to integrate stories and reels and that sort of thing. And so it seemed natural for me. It wasn't something that I did very intentionally. Honestly, it was like I literally, like I said, was trying to just be public about where I was at, and it seemed like because I'm no longer a pastor I don't have a preaching pulpit, but we all have, actually a public square available to us through social media. All of us have, in some sense, access to that, that public square.
And so, at the time, I only had, I think I had 800 followers when I first started posting, and I had no idea of what would happen. It was very surprising, but I had things to say, and I think I had been by the time I started posting, it had been over two years since I had been a pastor, and so I used to be preaching every Sunday morning, and all of a sudden, I wasn't preaching at all. And so, I think I had some bottled-up things to say them out loud whether anybody was listening or not. And then, you know, folks started listening.
And I have found that, you know, I've tried to, I'm sure there's all kinds of reasons for the growth of the platform, I think, you know, there's probably even this has been pointed out to me, that there's probably some white supremacy in there, the fact that there's, like, a white man speaking about these things that so many minorities and people of color and queer people have been speaking about for a long time, but they don't necessarily have the platform doesn't necessarily grow. I try to steward my platform by platforming as many marginalized voices as I can.
But I think even in that, there's something that's a little bit healing for folks to see somebody change publicly, to see somebody who maybe used to be a voice speaking for a white supremacist system now critiquing that system and a system that did give me a position of power that I lost, and now I'm critiquing it. I think is like a helpful thing for people when so many, unfortunately pastors, white, white, straight pastors, they're used to those voices just being voices of upholding the status quo and those systems of domination that keep people out. And so, I think that's a little bit refreshing for people. I would hope that we get beyond needing a white guy to say it, to take it seriously. I think that that's, like, really sad. And I do, I am, self-aware about that, that for some people, they didn't take inclusion seriously until they heard a straight white guy talk about it. And I think that that's a bummer, that being said, I can't help but be a straight white guy, and I think that straight white guys should be talking about it. What else am I supposed to do to talk about especially because for me, it is an act of repentance and reparation in some sense of the fact that I was a part of an institution for some years that that kept people out in that way.
So, yeah, I think the deconstruction world is a weird one. There are all kinds of different voices. I think another thing that is interesting about what I'm doing is that I am still a Christian, and I do still talk about Jesus, and I'm not only being critical of evangelicalism. I do believe that there is a better way to follow Jesus, and I don't, and I have so much respect for atheists, agnostics and people who can no longer identify as Christian. I no longer believe that you have to be a Christian in order to have a relationship with God, or a connection to God, or even that you have to believe in God in order to be someone who is walking in integrity and in this world. And so, I don't, I don't put that on people, but for me, my spiritual pathway is still in the way of Jesus. And I think for so many people who have deconstructed, they're trying to figure out, do I have to throw everything away? And maybe they do, maybe they have to, but sometimes they don't want to, and I don't think you do have to. Jesus offers us a beautiful spiritual pathway that is different from the toxic theology that wounded so many of us. And I try to not only critique evangelicalism, but also show how not only is this wrong, but it's actually not really representative of the way of Jesus. So I think that's maybe resonating with folks as well, is that positive vision for what it could still look like for us to follow Jesus in a way that's not exclusionary, that is inclusive and also liberative, that is fighting for collective liberation and the beloved community, which is what Jesus was all About. Jesus was not all about saving disembodied souls from hell. He was about building the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
[Rachel Kennedy]
Yes, amen. Amen. Yeah, no, absolutely, that personal spiritual journey that is so important, and to say that an individual's is wrong or not worthy of or because it doesn't match, you know what this institution says, then it's not valid. That's such a, such an anti-Jesus way of thinking about your relationship with God.
So, in Canada, we are seeing a really huge decline in church attendance across all denominations. I don't know what that plays out in America, but I'm going to assume that it's probably similar, and I think that kind of relates to a number of reasons. But is there something that you are experiencing in your area of ministry, in your context that you believe contributes to such a huge decline, and how do you view the future of the church or things around that nature?
[Brian Recker]
I think as people who are in the world of professional ministry, we get scared about numbers like that. And I wonder if I just don't know if it's always a bad thing. I wonder if some things need to die. I wonder if some of these institutions that were more about institutional power and conversion and really colonization, these institutions that were built on Christian supremacy and white supremacy, if it's not true, that maybe we need new wineskins. And I think the reason that's so scary for us is that we're trying to build careers in those old wineskins. And so when we see those numbers going down, what we're seeing is like, how am I going to have a salary? How am I going to feed my kids? Which is real, like, that's so real for somebody who's a professional ministerial person, we're worried about that. But I think that's a totally separate question from the spiritual health of a country.
America, we currently have stronger religious institutions, probably, in the sense that we still have, like, a lot of mega churches. The mega churches are growing, but that doesn't mean they're spiritually healthy. That doesn't mean they're leading people to be more connected to God, themselves and their neighbor in real ways. How are they building? How are they where are those tithes coming from? Where's that money coming from? It's coming from pulling levers of guilt manipulation. When they're when they're counting numbers. What are they counting? They're counting people that they've convinced that they need to be saved from a wrathful God in order to avoid going to hell, they've scared people into a conversion, and they count that number, and we count that as spiritual success. But is that spiritual success? I don't think so.
I do think there are real questions to be asked about, like, what does it mean for us who want to pursue vocational ministry? What does that look like in a world where church is declining. I don't know. I'm wrestling with that myself. I have 170,000 followers on Instagram. He must be, like, really flush with cash. Instagram does not pay me for followers. My videos are not even monetized, because almost every time I post a reel, I get a notification from Instagram that says this, real does not qualify for monetization. It doesn't meet our monetization policies, because it's about religion or politics And so I and I don't really get brand deals, because brands don't really want to be associated with somebody that's talking about religion and politics, right? So, I don't think being a social media influencer is the answer. In other words.
I think that there is a hunger for spiritual community that is a human thing, that will always be a human thing. I'm not sure. I don't know that vocational ministry will look the same. I think we're gonna see a lot more by vocational ministers. I think part of the problem is we built a whole system that requires very expensive and very long ministry degrees that was with the assumption that you were going to get these flush ministry appointments in these large churches that have the cash to pay for pastors that have big, expensive degrees. And it's just that system is going away slowly, but it's going away. And I know I'm talking to a seminar and now in seminary students. You know, there will be online things. I know of virtual churches that are gathering and doing pretty well. So in America right now, you know, it's interesting. I've been seeing a lot of despair in the wake of a second Trump election. But one of the things that I'm seeing, even in the secular world, people saying, like, on Twitter and on threads and yeah, I'll still call x Twitter forever. But they're saying, like, wow, how are we going to survive the next four years? What we need is community. We can't rely on this thing, this big thing, to take care of us. We got to find our people. You got to find your people. And then the other thing we need to do, since the national political scene is failing us, we need to organize locally. We need community organization, and we need to get back to local community organization, and we need local community and they're not even talking about the church. But you know what I'm thinking about is, oh, my God, that's the church man like if ever we needed.
But do churches think of themselves as hubs for community organization, mutual aid for the most vulnerable? Not typically, when we look at Acts, it's like, All right, we're a vulnerable, marginalized population. Let's pool our resources. Let's care for the needy. And from that place, there was growth, because people are hungry for a spiritual community that cares for one another. So, I think pastors probably need to shift to become more like community organizers, we can learn from those doing justice work and community organizing. And I think churches should feel more like mutual aid societies than conversion factories. And totally I think that could be the future of a healthy church, but I don't know how that fits with our seminaries.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
No, it's so true. I yeah, I get a lot of people asking me, like, okay, so what are you gonna do after after this step? Like, what's where are you headed? And you know, what congregation do you wish to be part of? And I don't have an answer for that question. I didn't just come to seminary with the goal of being, you know, this congregational minister. Of course, I felt called in that way, but it was also for my own spiritual growth as well. But yeah, I don't think it's going to look like anything we've ever experienced before. I think it's going to be completely different. And like you were saying, Brian, there can't be resurrection without death. Some things need to die so that we can get on board with what God's doing and lament those things. Because I do know that there's people who feel as though the things that are dying as part of their identity, and what felt like church for them for a number of years is not feeling like that in the same way. And so I do think we need to lament that, but then we also have to have space to have immense hope for the new thing that's coming through.
[Brian Recker]
Yeah, and a lot of people who are deconstructing are not landing in progressive churches. They're deconstructing and they don't want to return to church. I go to a church still, I'm gonna, I'm in a Methodist Church, affirming church. And I try to let people, a lot of people, don't even know about affirming progressive churches. Their view of Christianity is that Christianity is that it's that anti-gay religion, basically right.
So I think letting people know that there are these safe, spiritual communities, I try to talk about it a lot, and I'm surprised by how often people are surprised that churches like that exist. Because for me, I've been kind of a part of one for so long, and I'm like, yeah, there are so many churches like this. In fact, the majority of the Protestant denominations are that. But most churches in America are not mainline, denominational churches, a lot, most of them are either Baptist or Southern Baptist or non-denominational, which is, and you know, our evangelical churches outside of the main line. That's what's that's most people's perception of what Christianity is.
But I don't know even then. Like, I think that when we so attach our identities to our role as professional ministers, then we can be disappointed in people for not finding a church in their deconstruction. Like, we'll just find a better church. Just go to a better church. And I like, why do we want that for people? I want that for someone if that will feed their spiritual journey. But not everybody's going to need that. Some people will people will find the community that they need in the spiritual nourishment that they need, and they don't need to go to church to do it. And Jesus was never only found in the church. God was never only found inside of our churches. And I don't know, I think that we got away from that a little bit, and now we're kind of reaping what we stone a little bit, you know?
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Yeah, yeah, definitely. We're kind of maybe floundering a little bit trying to find, where our next footing should be.
[Brian Recker]
Yeah, I go to occasionally, so I have my kids 50% of the time, and I usually have them on Thursdays. But when I don't have them on Thursday, I like to visit there's an ecstatic dance group that meets nearby me, which, if you haven't heard of that most communities, most cities, have, at least you have have a static dance community. It's basically a group of people that get together. Somebody in the community puts a set list together, and they just silently. You're not allowed to talk, but you just dance for like, an hour to the set list, and everybody does their own thing. Everybody's dancing their own dance. I'm not a dancer. Some people are professional dancers that are there, but it also some people are just, like, whatever, right? Like, they're just flailing on the floor and having a good time. I'm doing my thing. And then afterwards, you sit in a circle, and you talk about, like, what you processed, what you felt in your body, what emotions you experienced, what you worked through. And the first time I went, I was shocked by how so this community we met, we danced for an hour, and then we sat in a circle, and people talked about how during that time, they forgave people that they needed to forgive. They felt love. They felt Beloved. They experienced that feeling of connection to the divine. They felt like we were all a part of one another, and they felt like they were, you know, able to really enter into that feeling of solidarity with their brothers and sisters.
In other words, deeply spiritual things. There wasn't an ounce of dogma taught. Like, this group does not have a statement of faith, but it has leadership. And you know what? They don't get paid very much. I think they just, they get a little bit to, like, sustain the community, and they have day jobs, but that is a spiritual community. They wouldn't call it a church, but it is this healthy spiritual community with without heavy handed leadership, you know, with leadership that helps the communication the community organize. They do potlucks, you know. And I was just thinking like, man, maybe the church should be a little bit more like this, like we take ourselves so seriously. And yeah, that was just something I took away from that community, that there's other ways, we're just not going to make as much money doing Yeah, I think, are we okay with that? Yeah,
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Right, yeah, that's the question I think maybe we need to answer. How vulnerable that must be to dance freely in front of every is it like headphones you know? Or is that a different thing?
[Brian Recker]
That's a silent disco. And yeah, very vulnerable. It was really good. It was it's a good embodiment practice. You have to kind of lose that sense of like, who am I performing for? And recognize that, like, I'm just gonna bring my best and full of self into this expression. And what I found in that is it gets me in touch with my body. And as I bring my fullest self into that, I'm also able to best connect to the greater thing. It feels like a metaphor for the whole big, connected thing to me. Me that, like each of us should be, the more in touch you are with who you really are, the more you're able to bring that and love others out of that space. Is what I found.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
did absolutely, yeah, oh, that is so cool. We I know in our preaching classes, we talk a lot about embodying what you're preaching about. Sometimes I find I don't know what that means. I don't know what you mean…. you want me to run around the pulpit preaching, or what like, how? What does it mean to embody what we preach, like the mind body connection? That's a really cool maybe I need to start dancing for an hour a week.
[John Borthwick]
Rachel, yeah, the just two things that come to mind. I I immediately started researching where ecstatic dance is in my own community. So, thank you for that. But I also started thinking of the Sufi tradition around whirling dervish, kind of the Whirling Dervishes, where, as a part of a practice, a spiritual practice, is this sort of whirling dance as a part of connecting that embodied practice. I wondered about that. And then I also, every so often, tune into the Riverside Church in New York City. They've got some amazing preachers there and their senior pastor starts every sermon with an embodied practice. And I can just tell that as she was introducing it, I can tell that as a as a person who stood in the pulpit and hung out with a congregation, that she was getting a lot of feedback, but was pushing through the feedback and kind of saying, Okay, so here's here we go, because we are bodies, and before I start my sermon, we are going to do this thing. Could you breathe with me? Could you touch, touch your hands to your chest, or whatever that is. That's how she starts her sermons. And I'm like, Huh? Way to go embody practice, because we are bodies, yeah, having an experience as much as we are spirits and minds, carry on you two.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
In all of your years of ministry, what would you say is one thing you found most challenging, and how did you overcome it or move through that?
[Brian Recker]
I mean, I, I loved being a pastor, and I hate to just skip to the end, because there was a lot of beauty in my pastoral ministry. I do believe that even though, overall, I think the system that I was a part of was harmful, I don't think that we did was harmful. I, you know, I think that we, yeah, many of our sermons did lead people to Jesus. Didn't just attacked their sexuality, and people's marriages were restored and all that good stuff. But ultimately, I think the hardest thing was quitting. I think the hardest thing was letting it go. The hardest thing was recognizing that even though it was all I'd known, it wasn't who I really was, and it wasn't, I don't think an accurate representation of who Jesus really was. And that was a tough thing, because I yeah, I always thought so I was a site pastor, like I said. And I always thought that I would probably plant a church, and I assumed that I would plant a church through the network of churches that I was a part of. We were a non-denominational church, a part of a non-denominational network of churches. I went to conferences. I'd spoken a little bit at some of those conferences. I knew other pastors in our network. I knew that if I launched a church, I would have that network of support from those pastors. But this was a non-affirming, complementarian network of churches, and I no longer believed those things.
And coming to that place where I knew that leaving that would mean that I would lose all of that. I'd have to start from scratch, and I didn't even know where to start. It was like, well, do I join the episcopals, the Methodists? I don't know any of those people. I've never met. I don't know any of them, right? But I know that I don't feel here anymore, and so that that was the hardest thing. And I don't know it's easy to just move forward with what we're a part of without really being introspective about it. Sunday's always coming too.
Like, for me, COVID was really a helpful time to actually pause and be like, what am I doing? And to get real with myself. So, getting real with myself, I think, was the hardest thing. Then being quiet for like, two years was also really hard, just like, sitting with myself and figuring out, and I still don't have it figured out, right? It wasn't like after two years, like, all right, now I've got to figure it out and I can speak again. But I think I did. I think I was wise to give it some time and to just study. I was, I was in school during that time, so when I did start to speak, I think I had a more clear sense of who I was, and at least, you know, I don't think I'm not who I'll always be. I know now that I'll always be changing. I'll always be evolving. I have an openness about that. I've even come to terms with the fact that like and if. Someday the label Christian doesn't fit me. I'm okay with that. I'm not I'm not set on my spiritual path always looking like it what it looks like right now, and that's okay. I have an openness to that. But I think I came to a place of settled like, okay, I don't need I think I know how to listen to myself now, and I know that I can accept those changes as they come.
And yeah, getting to that place was difficult because I was indoctrinated by a system that said, don't listen to your heart. Your heart's deceitfully wicked. It's going to lead you astray. You can't listen to really your conscience. You have to accept this inherent word, which is really our interpretation of that inherent word, and learning how to kind of tune out some of the voices that had been so formative for me. Like to disagree with John Piper was a really big deal for me. Like that was like Yoda for me, you know, like, can I really say that I know better than that guy? Like that felt so arrogant. But at this point, it's not that I know better than him. I just disagree with him, and I don't think that his interpretation is automatically better than mine, or that I have to listen to him just because he's older and has more book deals like, that's not how it works, you know?
And, yeah, so I think that that was hard killing your darlings. And actually, yeah, kind of recognizing that some of these people you've looked up to for so long, Tim Keller, was a big deal for me. He was, like, my favorite pastor for a long time. You're probably familiar with him, and when he died, I had very complicated emotions, because, on the one hand, yeah, I had listened probably to more Tim Keller sermons than any other preacher. I'd listen to his sermons. I was very familiar with his catalog. My preaching was probably very influenced by his I was kind of like hipster Tim Keller, basically, when I was preaching, I would say a lot of my sermons would come across that way.
But I shifted on some things, and I was very I became very disappointed with him, because I was like, You're so smart and so culturally engaged, and I don't think I'm smarter than you. How did you not see that you didn't have to condemn queer people? And you know how much it would have meant to the community if you would have before you died, come out and said, like we should really accept these people as our brothers and sisters. That would have been so amazing. Why didn't you do that? Instead, you spent all your time making a bad thing sound like a good thing, putting lipstick on a pig, trying to dress up evangelicalism to make it sound more nuanced and intellectual than it actually is. Why did you do that? You could have actually brought nuance and intellectualism to a better idea, right? And so, I was angry about that, and it was tough for me to kind of just process that without feeling like I needed to hate him or hate the version of me that thought he was great. I'm learning to how to have grace for my past self and my past heroes, while also moving forward, recognizing that, like life is going to continue changing. So, all of that has been, I think, some of the hardest stuff that I've done, and maybe that's just because that's the season that I'm in right now
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
For sure. Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, Tim Keller was pretty influential for me as well when I was in, well, in the Pentecostal world, but in when I was in the Pentecostal world, I grew up Presbyterian, and when I was in my evangelical days, they were a lot of the circle that I was a part of. Was so glad that I was now Evangelical, because the Presbyterians aren't really Christian, but that Tim Keller guy, he's okay. So that was kind of my circle of influence there as well. So, but yeah, I completely agree.
[John Borthwick]
Yeah, I just want to dive in. I just want to say this line again that you just said, Brian, I am not who I will always be. One of the themes that that I've heard through the ministry Forum Podcast, as we've been talking to people, is this, especially around discernment, a kind of conversation around discernment. People who go into seminary, they're not 100% sure where they're going to land, and then where do they end up? My story is a bit a bit like that. You know, I never knew I'd come back to my seminary and start working in that space, but I so I just wanted to honor that, that that line of I'm not who I will always be. And connected to that I remember doing like conflict mediation, sort of facilitation, kind of training, and there was this, this amazing sort of facilitator who talked about what I know right now was, was always the answer he would give to things. So, when people would ask him, you know, what do you think about this? He'd be like, well, what I know for now, or what I know right now. And he, and he really blew open this kind of notion of, you know, we don't have to hold things so tightly that this is the only way to know things. What if we could hold it as what I know right now or I'm not who I will always be? Thanks for that, Brian, I really appreciate that's a powerful phrase.
[Brian Recker]
I like that. You know, it's so interesting how we like shame politicians as flip floppers when they evolve or changing their views. And. Yeah, sure, sometimes they change for bad reasons, like somebody pays them off or whatever, but like, for the most part, I think evolution, we got to embrace it and embrace it in others, which is maybe almost even harder than embracing it in ourselves, is celebrating and other people, because we see it as weakness. Oh, like, because to change is very vulnerable. It says that I was wrong when you change, or at least that I'm, yeah, yeah, I'm not who I was, which is a vulnerable thing to do, but so that's it's courageous in that sense.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
I another job that I have. I'm a youth leader as well. So I work with a few youth at the church that I that I currently work at, and we talk a lot about identity and change, and a lot of them are applying to university, and a lot of them are so fearful of locking themselves into a program or a major or a school or even the decision to go on to post-secondary school, because they feel as though Now I have to be this, this one person forever, and so we've had many conversations, I'm sure we'll continue to have that conversation that our identities are allowed to change, and we're allowed to change what we think about or what we believe, and to have grace for yourself to do that, I think is challenging. Well, is there anything else that you'd hope we talk about today, but didn't something you're working on, something you'd like to share with us.
[Brian Recker]
Well, we could talk about, hell…
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
let's do it!
[Brian Recker]
So, I wrote a book that doesn't come out till October 2025, but it's basically so one of the main things that kicked off my deconstruction in earnest, theologically, was taking apart the doctrine of hell. It had always bothered me ever since I was a kid, didn't like it, didn't feel like it fit with the character of God that was being explained to me. And as a pastor, it was my least favorite part of being a pastor was having to believe that that the people that we thought were wrong, that had the wrong doctrine, that weren't Christians, were going to go to hell. But I thought I had to believe it.
I remember in 2011 when Rob Bell's Love Wins came out, and John Piper tweeted farewell Rob Bell, and at the time, I again saw Piper as a bit of a Yoda figure, and so that warned me, oh, that's heresy. Not supposed to read that. Not supposed to go down that road or farewell Rob Bell could very easily become farewell Brian Brecker.
Instead of reading Love Wins by Rob Bell, I read the response to it by Francis Chan and Preston sprinkle a racing hell, which was written to refute love wins, and I actually found it quite unconvincing. In fact, it began to open my eyes to how nuanced the biblical data on hell was. And then, very interestingly, I started listening to Preston sprinkles podcast after I read that book, and Preston sprinkle, who defended eternal conscious torment in his book, erasing hell as a response to love wins over the next few years after he wrote and published his book about endorsing eternal consciousness torment, he changed his mind over the next few years and became an annihilationist. And I listened to that unfold on his podcast as he went deeper and realized, yeah, I was actually missing it on these various issues. That, like really blew my mind, it gave me permission to change, gave me permission to believe something different than I'd always believed. He was like the evangelical scholar that basically the evangelical industrial complex tapped to do the scholarship to refute Rob Bell's book, right? And he changed his mind after going deeper into the data, which made me dive deeper.
So, I did, like a very in depth study on hell for myself, reading everything I could find while I was a pastor. And I tentatively did become an annihilationist at first, but only really, because, again, universalism was one of those issues sort of like LGBT inclusion, where, if I became a Universalist, it would be one of those, like, yeah, you're you can't be here anymore. Like annihilationism was like, as far as I knew, that I could go without being wholly rejected. And so that did kind of shape my study in a little bit,
But so this is a fascination for me. Once I stepped down from being a pastor, as I continued to deconstruct other things, I very quickly became a Universalist. And not only that, as I like reexamined my theology, universalism has become very central to my theology. That I actually think at the heart of the message of Jesus is this universal welcome, that God is for everybody. God is not for one kind of people or one religion or one spiritual path, that God is the inheritance of us all, because God is love, and love is the inheritance of us all. And so, for me, expanding on a Christian spirituality that is Universalist has been really central for me, still holding on to Christianity.
And this has been like something I've had to wrestle with a lot because. As I talk about how the biblical data on hell has a lot of weaknesses, one of the questions that I'm constantly getting from people is, well, if there's no Hell, then what's the point of Jesus, if there's no hell, why did Jesus even live? Why did Jesus even die? What's the point of being a Christian? Why does anybody need to be a Christian? Why not just be a Muslim or even an atheist? If there's no hell, why does that even matter? And what that revealed to me very, very profoundly, is how, for so many of us, Christianity itself at the very heart of Christian spirituality was punishment, avoidance. Our spirituality, the main storyline that we received from the very beginning was, again, you need to be, I mentioned this already. You need to come into a relationship with God, OR ELSE, of what will happen if you don't and so that was really the impetus behind connection with God.
It wasn't connection for connection’s sake. It was not love for love's sake. It was connection for the sake of punishment, avoidance and salvation really was defined by when, when I say there's no Hell, they're like, well, Jesus is a savior, so of course there's a hell, because otherwise, what does he save us from? And so, the salvation that we learned was primarily in terms of negative terms. Is about what we're saved from. And I recognize that for so many of us, we did not learn a Christianity with a positive spirituality for this world. We learned a Christianity about punishment avoidance in the next world.
So basically, I started writing about this deconstructing, the spirituality that we learned. Because ultimately, I think believing in hell does make it impossible to truly connect with God. If you think that who God is ultimately is someone who's going to punish you if you're wrong, it disconnects you from yourself, because you're born into this original sin, into this place of who you are deserves to be punished. You're this vessel of wrath, right? It also disconnects you from other people that you think. You have to save them, you have to change them, you have to convert them. You cannot accept them for who they are. In fact, if your neighbor is not a Christian or is queer, it's actually an unloving thing to accept them for who they are, because who they are is going to have them damned to hell. What you actually have to do is change them in order to truly love them.
So, it really, it mutates our idea of what it means to love God, love ourselves and love our neighbor. And so, I write, I wrote a book about deconstructing a spirituality of hell and deconstructing what the Bible says about hell and then, like from there, What? Why did Jesus live? Why did Jesus die, if not to save us from hell? What does it mean? Why become a Christian at all? If it's not about saving us from hell, like, why do we need to become Christians? If God loves everybody for who they are, then why not just be a Muslim or an atheist? Is it important to convert? What can Christian spirituality mean for us, if we believe this thing is actually about this world, not the next world.
And so that's, that's what I'm I've been wrestling with. And so that book comes out next October. It's called Hell Bent, how fear of hell holds back from the spirituality of love. So, we can talk more about that if you want, in the next 10 you want. But that's kind of the pitch for the book, and those are the questions that I've been wrestling with deeply over the last couple of years.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
I absolutely love that. Yeah, I am very excited to read that book. Thank you for sharing that with us. Well, maybe one question about hell. I have a lot of friends who, you know, we're in a religious circle, or Christian world, and now have, like, fallen out of it, but still, maybe have these beliefs. And one of them mentioned to me, I'll never not be convinced that what we're living right now is hell, and that something that we're, you know, the next life, the life after this will actually be, be paradise or heaven, or whatever. Did that influence any, any of your thinking or thinking deconstructing hell?
[Brian Recker]
Yeah, I think when I think about hell in the Bible, hell is in the Bible, hell is a metaphor. And I believe in hell, hell is real. A metaphor is real when, when it represents a truth. And the metaphor of hell that Jesus used, the primary one was Gehenna, and this was not original to Jesus. Jesus borrowed this metaphor from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah said that if Jerusalem did not repent of their violence, of their neglect, for the orphans, for the widows, and turn to God, then they would be destroyed by Babylon and be thrown into Gehenna.
Gehenna was a metaphor of historical destruction that would come as a consequence of failing to live in the love of God. And I believe Jesus used the metaphor in really, essentially the exact same way. You have to remember that just 40 years after Jesus lived and died, Jerusalem was destroyed, not by the Babylonians, but by the Romans in 70 AD, and when Matthew wrote his gospel that was about 10 years after that had already happened. And so, Matthew wrote his gospel to a Jewish population reckoning with the destruction of their homeland and their temple. They were wondering, how did this happen? How could God allow this to happen? And Matthew, of the gospel writers, is the one who uses Gehenna language the most, and I believe this is ultimately a metaphor of Jesus talking about the fact that when we are exclusionary, when we are focused on not justice and mercy but these trivial matters of the law that are meant to keep people out rather than let people into the mercy of God, that actually we are those chickens will come home to roost, as has been said. And so, I believe that Gehenna is on earth. It's always on Earth. It's always the natural consequences of our failure to live in light of the love of God. And we see it happening right now. I mean, in 70 AD Gehenna was in Jerusalem, and in 2024, Gehenna is in Gaza. As continue, we continue to fail to live out the kingdom of God, the beloved community, and instead we turn to violence. And so, yeah, that's how I that's how I essentially view hell. So, I have a chapter called Hell on Earth kind of unpack all of that.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
That's awesome. That'll very interesting to read. Thank you for sharing.
[Brian Recker]
You know, that was never once explained to me that when Jesus talked about hell, first of all, the word hell is not in the Bible. It's various words are translated hell, and the primary one people say Jesus talked about hell more than anybody. No, he didn't. He talked about Gehenna more than anybody, and he wasn't the first person to use it. So, what does Gehenna actually refer to? And I do believe it is more of a message for this life and the next life. Yeah, and I ultimately would agree that I believe that God is a reconciler, that that in order for God to be all in all, I do believe that we will all return to love in some way. I don't know exactly what that looks like. I think the metaphors that we receive for heaven in the Bible are again, they're metaphors, and I don't know exactly what they mean, but I have hope that God is good and that we will return to love
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Totally. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
[Brian Recker]
Read the book!
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
we'll read the book. Yeah, we're buying all the copies.
[John Borthwick]
Brian, as we get close to wrapping up, for those who might just be engaging with you for the first time they would see on your maybe your socials, and certainly on your website, I sense that you have a bit of a tongue in cheek kind of way of describing things or saying things. So on your website, you have a you have some merch, just so people know, and one of your T shirts is, hell is not a real place, but if it were, it would be, it would definitely be for billionaires. So you have some thoughts in that area as well. We don't want to go on a deep dive.
[Brian Recker]
I think that they're creating hell on earth, not that I believe that God is going to send billionaires into fiery judgment for eternity, but that actually, when we look at the world and the vast inequalities that exist, and when you see that Elon Musk has $400 billion which I don't think anybody has even like the ability to comprehend how much money that is. But I saw recently that if somebody from the time of Jesus made $2,000 an hour since then, till now, they still wouldn't have close to the amount of wealth that Elon Musk has. That's crazy. This is not, in other words, money that you can earn from work. This is money that you get from exploitation, and it's greed, and I hate that we allow it. And so, yeah, I do have thoughts about that.
[John Borthwick]
Absolutely, yeah, well, and it's, it's often fascinating. You talk about that evolution piece of how people, if they're reading their Bibles, and if they're, they're, if they just stick with the Gospels and read the gospels regularly and take them in my perspective has often been, if you're actually reading these gospels, you'll find inconsistencies. You'll find sort of interesting things that just don't make sense all the time, or because they needed a good editor, like someone needed to take the four and just put them all together. And I think there's been some attempts. But the other thing is, you know, you often hear people talking about, well, I don't think my preacher should be political or speak about, you know, politics kind of things. But you look at some gospels and you think to yourself, well, how could you not read the Gospel of Luke with an eye of like, revolution, economic upheaval, all these kinds of things. You know, I don't know what book you're reading,
[Brian Recker]
But I agree about the Gospels. I love, I love diving into the Gospels, in fact, um, I'll let you know before, before we go the. That if you're looking to dive into some of my work now, I write weekly on substack, and what I've been doing for the most part is meditations through the life and ministry of Jesus, and just meditating on some of these stories from Jesus, the parables, the teachings, the life of Jesus, and basically showing again, like, yeah, this points us towards a spirituality of love, liberation and inclusivity, and you don't have to stretch the text to get there. You just have to read the text and meditate on it. And so, I've been really enjoying doing that for folks who are like, oh man, I'm just so hurt by my church. And you know, I don't know what spirituality looks like for me anymore. For some people, they need to ditch Christianity. I get it. But why learn a new language when the language that we have in the book, that we already have, like the love and liberation, is there the spirit. It's there within our spiritual tradition. And so, I've been enjoying mining it. And so, my subsack is called Beloved and where I'm kind of going into a spirituality of belovedness in the way of Jesus. So, if anybody wants to check that out brianrecker.substack.com.
[John Borthwick]
That's awesome, Brian. And we'll have in our show notes all sorts of different ways for folks to connect with you, if you'd like. Just for me personally, I've, really, really appreciated this conversation to learn more about your story and and hear the things that you're passionate about. I'll definitely be checking out the book in October 2025, I'll leave it for Rachel to have the last word as a part of saying bidding adieu to Brian. Thank you for your time, Brian. We really appreciate you.
[Rachel Kennedy-Proctor]
Yeah,well, again, Thanks, Brian. This is like a full circle moment for me. You know, watching you do all your deconstructing on online to now actually being able to talk to you, it's, really, really cool for me, and so thank you so much for sharing this hour with us and your thoughts and the new book coming out, we are really appreciative at ministry forum.
[Brian Recker]
Thanks so much, guys, great chatting with you.
[John Borthwick]
Thanks for joining us today on the ministry Forum Podcast. We hope today's episode resonated with you and sparked your curiosity. Remember, you're not alone in your ministry journey. We're at the other end of some form of technology, and our team is committed to working hard to support your ministry every step of the way.
If you enjoyed today's episode, tell your friends, your family, your colleagues. Tell Someone, please don't keep us a secret, and of course, please subscribe, rate and leave a review in the places you listen to podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach more ministry leaders just like you. And honestly, it reminds us that we're not alone either.
And don't forget to follow us on social media at ministry forum, on all of our channels. You can visit our website@ministryforum.ca for more resources keeping up with upcoming events and ways to connect with our growing community until next time.
May God's strength and courage be yours in all that you do. May you be fearless not reckless. May you be well in body, mind and spirit, and may you be at peace.