What is this community and how do people participate in it? The newest component of Evolving Faith is the online community. We want to grapple with what that means in the world. We are still centered around our endless fascination with Jesus. But we were clear: this is still our story. For folks who knew me and Rachel, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise. SB: Some of the feedback that first year was from people who were surprised by how Jesus-y we were. I don’t think any of us expected that-and honestly, I was a little frightened by the angry ex-evangelical crowd. But so did a lot of mainline folks, who loved the social justice component of their churches but were missing some Jesus, some Holy Spirit, some of the emotional and theological underpinnings behind the justice. Yes, people who grew up evangelical and no longer found themselves there gravitated toward the retreat. We realized Evolving Faith was something of an oasis-both for folks who were estranged from the church and for folks who were still in the church. Jeff Chu: One of the realizations that Rachel and Sarah and all of us speakers had that first year was the depth of hunger and thirst that we encountered in the audience. We came home from that first gathering, which Jeff spoke at, and began to dream about what Evolving Faith could be and has now become: the conference itself, a podcast, and the online community. This wilderness was an unshepherded space. We tend to use the metaphor of a wilderness.Īt that first Evolving Faith gathering in Montreat, North Carolina, we realized this was more than just a onetime event.

Sarah Bessey: When Rachel Held Evans and I began to talk about putting together a weekend retreat in 2016 or so, we were looking for something that we wished we had had during the season of life now called “deconstruction.” It goes by a lot of names. Read our latest issue or browse back issues.

Does jesus really love me jeff chu