Breadcrumbs Episode 11: Practicing Faith with a Feminine Lens

We Were Already Doing It

While writing this chapter, it dawned on me that my faith community had been living into a more feminine way of being church for years without ever naming it.

Since the book, the five of us in leadership have been working on language for what we actually are. Where we’ve landed, for now: a post-evangelical, post-patriarchal, Christ-centered faith community — a living sacrament embodying an alternative way of following Christ.

Two Frameworks

Dr. Lisa Miller, a neuroscientist who studies spirituality in the brain, describes spirituality as three-pronged: connection with yourself, with others, and with God. 

Joseph Myers, in The Search to Belong, offers social science on how belonging actually forms — four kinds of gathering, organized by size, each capable of different things. It’s useful because it tells you what can’t happen in a given space. 

The Honest Part

When I talk about my community, people say it sounds ideal. It is, in a lot of ways. It’s also messy — and choosing to intertwine our lives this deeply creates its own complexity.

Last summer, while writing this book, I was closing the Sunday gathering I’d co-led since 2019. That left a handful of us without a Sunday gathering for a full year.

This summer the five of us finally sat down and muddled through it. What came out: Prayer and Song on the first Sunday. Adults Only on the second — a space we’re still figuring out. Sunday Supper in two or three homes, with a liturgy for the table and a kid-friendly art activity. A program specifically centered on our kids. And on months with five Sundays, a scheduled rest week.

No single gathering carries all the weight. Belonging doesn’t depend on attending any one of them.

What One Night Actually Looks Like

For the Adults Only gathering a few weeks ago, I brought in what was weighing on me that week. I wrote a litany, naming the things we feel we can’t carry.

Potluck dinner first. Then into the living room, where everyone shared one word for how they were arriving. Then the litany, call and response, with space inside it for people to name what was personally weighing them down.

Which is to say: we shared prayer requests and prayed for each other. 

You Could Do This

I haven’t been to seminary. I don’t have special training. I have a decade of life in my neighborhood, some creativity, incredible co-conspirators, and real enthusiasm for planning gatherings.

You don’t need credentials. You don’t need permission. If you can’t find a church locally that embodies your values, make something. A living room. A park. A third space.

And if it’s too soon to be in a faith community, that’s okay too. Focus on your healing — and consider how that healing might be amplified alongside other people who are also healing.

This is the companion post to Episode 11 of Breadcrumbs, my behind-the-scenes video series for paid subscribers.

Faithfully Dissident Daughters is out now from Westminster John Knox Press. Order here.

The full Episode 11 of Breadcrumbs is available to paid subscribers below the paywall.