finding your voice – The Flatpickin' Pilgrim's Progress

Rachel-held-evans The passing of Rachel Held Evans unleashed a surprising wave of grief to some. But to readers in the Christian world, and young women in particular, she was a voice of welcoming honesty. In an October 2012 article in Christianity Today called, “50 Women You Should Know,” Katelyn Beaty said of Rachel Held Evans that her blog, which began in 2007, spoke out on many traditional evangelical issues in a fresh and fearless way. Evans, she quoted, wrote that young Christians “aren’t looking for a faith that provides all the answers. We’re looking for one in which we are free to ask the questions.”

It was intense questioning that led her to start writing in the first place. In 2012 alone, 1.2 million visitors went to her site to hear what she had to say. She was speaking for many others, giving voice to many who were needing one. To a church (in the largest sense) that is always, at least institutionally, last to respond to change, she pushed to make it look at its truth and heart and reassess what it was Jesus meant us to do. Continue reading Rachel Held Evans’ Questions

It’s become a cliche only because it is so powerful and pervasive. Your “voice,” I once heard songwriter Pat Terry say, is what makes people say, “That’s a Gary Furr song” or “that’s a (your name here) story.’ I have thought about this for thirty years, focused when I once, during a five day solitary retreat started to say a short prayer I had been using to center myself and blurted out, “Father, help me to be myself.”

If that sounds so very self-centered in our culture already so “you-can-be-whatever-you-want-to-be,” permit me to observe that despite our coaching of selves and self-focus I sure meet a lot of broken ones out there in life. People wounded and held back by a voice in their head: “you’ll never amount to anything,” and somettimes not even traumatic voices–just ones we imbibe from our world. “So many people are better than you. What do you have to offer? What’s the point?” Continue reading Finding Your Voice