Episode 4: Real Talk For The Church

In this conversation, Jo Hobbis and Christie Penner Worden discuss the profound effects of social status on personal identity and the challenges faced when a family experiences a significant loss. They reflect on how maintaining appearances can mask underlying struggles, illustrating the disconnect between outward appearances and internal realities. This is a deep dive into The Me I Was Made To Be: Helping Christian Parents Navigate The Identity Conversation by Christie Penner Worden.

Transcript

Jo Hobbis (00:00)
Oh hey Christie it's great to see you again. I'm very excited again to be here.

Christie Penner Worden (00:06)
Happy International Cardigan Day, or at least for us. Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (00:08)
For us

and slightly clashing but at least I'm going with the strawberries sort of. We'll be fine. So I'd really like to start this episode by taking you on a bit of a journey if that's okay. So in my village we have a church which is ancient enough to make your Canadian heart leap I think. So it dates back to the 1400s.

Christie Penner Worden (00:13)
Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

you

Jo Hobbis (00:36)
and it was renovated by the Victorians, so even that was a long time ago. Consequently, the churchyard is full of ancient gravestones. And I went for a little walk through it this morning, and I was struck by how every monument tells a story of the identity of the person or people that it represents, not just their name and how they lived, but hints to what defined their story and their identity.

I saw one for a man who died aged only 39 and his wife who lived to be 83, which made me think on how she'd spent half her life defined by society as a widow and what that might have looked like for her. And I was really interested in the tomb of a man who died in 1889. The first thing under his name was his job title, Solicitor, which made me think that

That was the thing that he or his family felt defined him while his wife just got "His Wife" under her name. Right. Well, I think it tells us something about the society they lived in, perhaps more, you know, maybe more than their relationship, hopefully. But I guess what I became aware of is the vast intricacies of our identity stories and how they're shaped not only by our own lived experiences.

Christie Penner Worden (01:37)
⁓ no.

Yes.

Yes.

Jo Hobbis (02:00)
but by those of the generations before us, especially during our childhood. And so today, what I'd really love to do is hear something of your own identity story. So in chapter 14, you touch on your childhood experience of recession. Can you tell me about that? How did the church come alongside you, whether in good ways or less good ways? And what impact would you say that that had on you?

Christie Penner Worden (02:26)
you

Yeah, the recession had hit. My dad had lost his company through just the cascade of impact of the recession. And at that time, well, my whole life up until the age of 14, 15, we were, I would say upper middle class. That would have been our social stratus, if you will.

And we were dressed to the nines. We had beautiful cars. We had a lovely home. And something really weird happens when your family loses everything, but that's where your family falls from. And one of the weirdest things  that happened was I didn't all of a sudden start wearing shabby clothes. So for instance, I would still wear my name brand clothes and pull myself together and dress quite nicely the way I always had.

And nobody believed that my family was in crisis because I was wearing fancy clothes. Well, they don't turn to rags the minute your family loses everything. And in fact, what it meant was I wore those clothes a lot longer and for more years than I would have in the past because I wasn't getting new clothes. But there was one particular time that my mom was on the phone with the pastor's wife and

She was crying and not crying as in being comforted. it didn't, it didn't seem like the conversation was particularly tender or compassionate. And after she got off the phone with the pastor's wife, I asked what happened, what was wrong. And she said, the pastor's wife just said to me that we'll be fine if we stay under the spout where the glory comes out.

And she just said, I think that's the most unhelpful thing anyone has said yet. And I mean, I'm picturing a bathtub at that moment, you know, like, are we getting our heads under this? Are we drinking from it? Like, what is the expectation of that euphemism? What is it supposing or  what sort of imagery am I to glean from that? Because I can't think scripturally of what that even

implies other than prosperity gospel, which clearly if prosperity gospel were the gospel, we must have done something horribly wrong to have lost everything, to lose our house, to lose our cars, to lose everything to bankruptcy. That version of the gospel would imply that it was somehow our fault.

and that our identity, our social stratus, who we are and our standing in community had also fallen with our financial status. And

I think where that played out was how my parents lost friends through that time where we just couldn't keep up with the Joneses, so to speak anymore. We couldn't keep up with them.  And we had less and less until we actually ended up  homeless and being taken in by a man who had lost his family.  He was from a different church and had heard about our story and the rejection we had experienced.

Now in between the time of actually having to move out of our house because  the bank had  claimed our house back  because of the mortgage and moving into this other house, there was something strange that started happening. Hampers of food would be left on our front porch  without a note.  Some hand-me-downs would be found there for either me or my younger brother at the time.

 there were  home-baked goods or a doorbell ring and someone would bring coffee and say, I just thought you might like a coffee. What was most surprising about that behavior, which is in fact what you would imagine fellow Christians and churchgoers to do, like that felt very Jesus-y, like I could see that these were Jesus people doing these things, but they weren't the people that were our friends. They were

One family lived in a trailer park, which of course that's a different social stratus. And so how, I mean, we just really didn't socialize with them. The other was a family that was just a bit odd and we had never really hung out with them, but they understood what it's like to be in need.  When it came to Christmas that year, there were giant baskets of gifts for everyone in our family because my mom's

staff, she had gone back to teaching after years of  not working and being at home with us as kids. She had gone back to teaching and she was new to this staff, new to this school, and they had asked for our Christmas lists so that we would have the same Christmas. We wouldn't understand a Christmas any differently than all the Christmases we had had before. And so they just bought everything on the Christmas lists and brought it to

my parents to wrap and label in their own handwriting so that we would never know that it was them, but rather it looked like it came from our parents still, like the humility and generosity of that. And I think the,

Jo Hobbis (07:58)
amazing.

But none of

those were church people, right? None of those.

Christie Penner Worden (08:13)
None of those were church people. Certainly if they were church people, one, they didn't go to our church, or two, they weren't part of our friend group. And in fact, the ones that were part of our friend group or part of my parents' small group  used an equally distasteful euphemism. They said we had got our comeuppance, that perhaps we had become too proud or weren't humble enough with the prosperity that we had

experienced and so God was humbling us through this process. And so there was some measure of judgment that certainly we had fallen away or it was a slippery slope. All these phrases that we hear that if such a thing were to happen to you and you believe in the prosperity gospel then you are in a place of sin and you need to come back into right relationship with Jesus otherwise why would these things happen?

Jo Hobbis (08:46)
⁓

Mm.

Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (09:12)
Well, you and I both know that these things happen because recession is real and the economy isn't stable and people make decisions in business that make life hard sometimes. And whether my family had made bad decisions or the businesses with which we interacted had made bad decisions, we were in a place of financial destitution. And I am not exaggerating when I say that.

But it was not those who had plenty that came to our aid. It was those who either understood what it was like to have little or those who cared enough to say, I will stand in the gap for you. But those were not our friends of the church. And those were not people we were in relationship with, but they were definitely the most Jesusy people we encountered during that season and that time.

Jo Hobbis (10:11)
They were the Samaritans, I guess. They were the Samaritans in that... To go back to our last episode chat.

Christie Penner Worden (10:11)
And I think it's hard to, sorry.

⁓ there it is. Right.

Well, indeed, they were exactly the definition of a Good Samaritan. And really nails the fact that to be a Good Samaritan, you have to actually be one of the rejected ones. A Samaritan knew what it was like to be rejected. A Samaritan knew what it was like to  go without.

Jo Hobbis (10:35)
Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (10:43)
Samaritan knew what it meant to have to build their own temple because they weren't welcome for worship in Jerusalem. We were no longer welcome anywhere that we had called home previously. We were no longer welcome. And those who came to our aid were either those who had felt that same tension of lack of welcome in the church or those who did not ascribe themselves to a church because they had walked away for reasons that just felt this isn't

This isn't godly, this isn't loving, this isn't kind. And they were people who simply understood how to be kind, how to be present and how to be generous, which is exactly what the Samaritan did in that story of the man at the ditch. And exactly what the other  Jewish folks in the story chose not to do out of fear of being what?  Ceremonially unclean.

And to some extent, I think that our other friends who were also, you know, upper class or upper middle class to be found among us, there was something of a stain that I think they were avoiding by rejecting us. There was something of a, we don't, we just don't want that to happen to us. And we're not sure why it happened to you. So we're going to leave you to wrestle that out with God.

Jo Hobbis (12:06)
Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (12:07)
and we're not gonna come to your aid and we're gonna let God take care of you. Well, the truth is God created people to take care of one another. Even down to the second person created, he gave Adam a partner so that we would not be alone and walk through this life alone. So leaving it up to God, like that whole let go and let God thing, well, letting God means...

Jo Hobbis (12:24)
Yeah.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (12:32)
inviting God's people to act on his behalf in a way that Jesus would ask us to. And that was not our experience of the church. It was not long after that either, to reference another story in the book and in another chapter of my life that was not long after that experience, probably eight or nine months later, I was expelled or kicked out of the church for being a young woman asking either too many or the wrong questions.

Jo Hobbis (12:35)
Mm. Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (13:01)
So this idea that the church is to behave a certain way, and if you ascribe yourself to it, you are to fall in line. You are to behave accordingly. I think that message has been received broadly, not just by those who attend, but also by those who have left and by those who have watched from the sidelines. And I think that's why this idea of having this conversation with real talk

for the church is so important because I don't believe it was anyone's intention for us to walk away from the church. And my family did in fact walk away for years and years.  It's a miracle to my mind that I still know and love Jesus and that there was redemption even for the likes of me and that I would want to give my life wholeheartedly in service to Jesus by way of the Holy Spirit.

Jo Hobbis (13:41)
Mm.


Christie Penner Worden (14:00)
regardless or in spite of or despite the way the church had been represented to me. The church I knew as a child and the church I was raised in, I don't believe that's the only way to be a church. And I think that's a great indication. That's okay.

Jo Hobbis (14:04)
Mm.

So how then has, sorry, how then has

that experience informed or impacted your real talk for the church, your research into families and your, you know, how do we do things differently?

Christie Penner Worden (14:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think for those of us who were raised in the church, we have some sort of false belief often, not everyone, but we often just assume that everybody had a chance when they were a child to know Jesus. Like everybody grew up in the church. I know that for me, I always found it a bit odd when I had friends that didn't go to church on Sunday. That was strange to me. And I had

Jo Hobbis (15:00)
Hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (15:02)
a very close Muslim friend and well, that was some sort of spiritual something. So I knew they went somewhere and it wasn't Sunday, but they had a belief system. And I had another friend that was Jewish. And of course they went to their synagogue on Saturday. And so I seem to be able to relate to those who had some sort of faith journey, but really couldn't relate to those who didn't have any sort of church background. And right. I mean, how old were you when you first

Jo Hobbis (15:27)
that's me.

Christie Penner Worden (15:32)
came to church and came to knowledge of Jesus.

Jo Hobbis (15:35)
15.

Christie Penner Worden (15:36)
So the year of my life I was being kicked out, you were being injured. Right? I mean, and isn't that the way it is? So the reason I bring up not all of us, like first thing to recognize, if you're a church person and you were raised in the church, not everybody gets the chance to know Jesus as a child, which means that those who come to the church as a teenager or as a young adult or as a middle-aged adult or as a senior,

Jo Hobbis (15:41)
Yeah, I was joining!

Christie Penner Worden (16:07)
has not necessarily rejected Jesus once and is coming back to fix the problem. The first time someone walks through the door of your church might be the first time they've walked through the door of any church. And so if that's true, our preconceived notions of the way they ought to behave or the way things should be or all the unspoken rules that they have no knowledge of.

Jo Hobbis (16:33)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (16:34)
have to be set aside so that they can even get three steps through the door. And there are moments, this happened to me a couple of times at university, when you're looking at your schedule, it's the first week of classes and universities can have so many buildings on their campuses and you're trying to figure out which building you're supposed to be in and now you have to figure out which room.

Jo Hobbis (16:38)
Mm-hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (16:57)
and the class is a code that doesn't actually match up with the name of the class, and you walk into the class and sit down and quickly realize they're speaking  Spanish and you hadn't signed up for a Spanish class, walking through the doors of a church can feel like that, that, this isn't what I thought it would be, or I think I'm in the wrong place. In this day and age, you can absolutely assume

Jo Hobbis (17:08)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (17:23)
that if someone's walking through your doors for the first time, they have Googled you, they have read your About page, they have flipped through to see what sort of programs you participate in, especially for  millennials and Gen Z, they're looking towards which humanitarian causes you affix yourself to, or what work are you doing toward climate change? How are you helping the unhomed population? What are you doing for hungry people? They are so activist minded that they want you to be very clear about that.

or else they'll just move on on Google. They're not necessarily going to even come through your doors if they can't find something with which they can relate online. And so that first walk through the door, there's an anticipation that I meant to be here. I chose to be here because I Googled you and this is what I found. And they will either be met with what they expected to find based on the  image you have projected or

Jo Hobbis (17:55)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (18:21)
they will feel quite confused by what they found online versus the hospitality they were welcomed with or not. Kind of like that woman whose gravestone says, His Wife that may be exactly what she would have wanted to say because she was a  devout wife who had given her life

Jo Hobbis (18:30)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Christie Penner Worden (18:45)
to serving him and her family so that he could do the job, the very demanding job that he did. It sounds gross to me to have that as the way I'm known.

Jo Hobbis (18:54)
Yeah, I'm feeling guilty now. I'm feeling guilty now as

you say that I think I might have misread her She might have that might have been her calling. I'm Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Christie Penner Worden (19:00)
Well, isn't that what we do? I mean, we were

misunderstood when we no longer attended the church as somehow having got our comeuppance and fallen away. My parents were faithful, faithful people, and they never once thought it was God's fault that we lost our business. They also never necessarily thought that God would abandon them because of what we had been through. That was actually the opposite. My parents became

Jo Hobbis (19:15)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (19:30)
fervent in prayer when their world was collapsing and they never expected to be abandoned in that place. That wasn't what they thought the church would do. And so I think what we project as the church and how we behave as the church, they need to resonate with one another or else we are causing deep woundedness. We are causing hurt and we are misrepresenting what

Peter says in 1 Peter 2 when he says, you are a living stone, like we've talked about before, meant to build a house of worship. That stone wall crumbles very quickly. I'm going to make a cultural reference, which only applies if you've seen the Barbie movie and probably only if you've seen it as many times as I have. But at one point, Chad, the unknown male of the Kens, this Chad is pointing off to the construction workers that says,

We've only got as much time as it will take for them to figure out they have to build sideways, not just up. And their wall that they're building is just brick on top of brick. And you can imagine building such a wall with Lego or any sort of building block where if you just place one on top of the other, it will easily be knocked down. But there is an artistry to building side by side and then building over the cracks where the mortar goes. There's a need for both

Jo Hobbis (20:40)
Mm-hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (20:56)
bricks to be  placed unevenly, and there's a job for mortar. But it felt like the church, the living stones in the house of worship that we had been attending had just been knocked over. And it was easily knocked over because we hadn't given much thought to my mind of how we intersect so that we can't fall, so that we will not fall, so that we will be a house on a hill

Jo Hobbis (21:04)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (21:27)
filled with life, life and light that can be recognized by others that are drawn to it so that when they need light, they too may enter and we will not have been blown down. We don't build on sand. We don't build one on top of the other. And it's just such a funny moment when Chad says we have just enough time for them to realize that they have to build sideways and we won't be able to get out.

And isn't that interesting that the whole point of that scene was, if we want to be able to get out, we go now. And it really felt like there was a time to leave. There was also a time for me to come back, obviously. There was a time in my life to come back. And that very much was linked with my motherhood journey. But I think as the church, we need to sit humbly enough

Jo Hobbis (22:16)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (22:23)
to take account of who we have not welcomed well, who we hope will not turn up, or who we hope will change based on what we say so that we don't have to have difficult conversations. Like one of the things I hear often, especially when it comes to the LGBTQIA plus community and the 2S community, what I hear is, well, you're welcome to attend. You just can't lead.

Jo Hobbis (22:38)
Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (22:53)
or you just can't speak, or you just can't  work with kids, or you just can't fill in the blank, that there is a posture or an attire or a way of showing up quietly and neatly wrapped with a bow, that at that point we might be able to invite you to more. But as long as you

Jo Hobbis (22:53)
Mm.

Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (23:20)
are going to say that this is who you are, you're welcome to come and be the audience. You're welcome to come and applaud our efforts. You're welcome to come and learn from us who know the way. But somehow we would like the Holy Spirit to deal with you in a way that we're comfortable with so that then we can invite you into full participation. And that

Jo Hobbis (23:34)
Yeah.

But that's

not belonging, is it? That isn't belonging.

Christie Penner Worden (23:48)
But

it's not only not belonging, it's not biblical. I can't find a place where that might be the way we are meant to treat those who are different than us. And I'll take you back to the point that I made about not everybody knows Jesus and chooses to reject him.

Jo Hobbis (23:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Christie Penner Worden (24:11)
to be very frank and very blunt, what does your welcome look like to a transgender adult who has been through the full transition, whether surgically or otherwise, and is experiencing depression or anxiety or just has experienced something spiritual that they'd like to unpack with someone. so in their decision making, they come to a place of saying,

perhaps the church can help. And so they show up as a transgendered middle-aged person or a middle-aged transgender person, not necessarily  heteronormative by any  description of those of us who sit in cisgender heteronormative camps, where we think that that is the only way that people ought to show up to church. God help us.

Jo Hobbis (24:42)
Yeah.

Christie Penner Worden (25:08)
But our assumption is that this person is so far away that the things we are uncomfortable with about their identity need to be changed and fixed before we can offer them the presence of the Holy Spirit or invite them into relationship with Jesus. That is extraordinarily damaging. It's also extraordinarily difficult. And I think the difficulty is mostly footed in ignorance.

Jo Hobbis (25:32)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (25:33)
that because we have decided that you should have had a chance to meet Jesus sooner than this, or you should have known, like you had to know if you were gonna go down that path, that this place wouldn't be for you. And I know I'm making it sound quite hyperbolic, but the experience for a lot of people who identify differently than the average church attender experiences it as hyperbolic. Back when the church was,

Jo Hobbis (25:38)
Yeah.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (26:02)
separated, especially let's say in North America or in the deep south for example, there was a church for white people and there was a church for black people and never the twain shall meet. Like you just knew that you weren't welcome there. Well I think we pat ourselves a bit on the back when we can see a multicultural or multi-ethnic or a diverse church family, but there are aspects of diversity that we

Jo Hobbis (26:14)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (26:30)
kind of cross our fingers and hope we won't have to tackle because it's tricky and it's not as clear as we would like it to be in scripture. It's not as black and white, both literally and figuratively as it once was. And rather than sit in the gray with the Holy Spirit and with one another, we paint black and white places for people to land.

Jo Hobbis (26:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (26:58)
and we choose a side.

Jo Hobbis (27:00)
Yeah.

So one of the questions you ask in chapter 15 is, can you imagine a family entering your doors that has never met Jesus? And do you know how to welcome them when they're not like you? And so I kind of feel like we'd all like to jump up and shout yes to that. Yeah, of course, yeah, we're so welcoming. But if we dig down a bit, we become aware of how messy that could potentially look. And I feel like

Christie Penner Worden (27:14)
right.

Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (27:32)
we might be able to meet people with kindness, but that that's not the same as full acceptance. So how do we truly make people feel that they belong? I'm thinking of, we've had, when you talking about not everyone's had the chance to hear the gospel as a child, we have a number of families who've come to our church recently who have come because their children have wanted to come to church, but actually,

The parents have got no experience of church. The children have perhaps heard the vicar speak in school because they've gone in to do something on religious studies. And thank you for the translation. I love that. So, yeah, so it's, mean, it's really exciting for us, but we're getting whole families who need discipleship now.

Christie Penner Worden (28:10)
The vicar is a pastor. Those who don't know.

Yeah.

Jo Hobbis (28:28)
and are starting from scratch. But it's not just that, it? Families don't necessarily look like we expect them to look.

Christie Penner Worden (28:30)
Yeah.

No. And I think to your point, like, we need to be really, really intentional about whether we're using the word multi-generational discipleship or intergenerational discipleship. So the difference is multi-generational is the generations are all maybe in the same building worshiping, but they might be worshiping with their own generation. Like we have worship for every generation, for every age group.

Jo Hobbis (28:50)
okay, what's the difference?

Christie Penner Worden (29:04)
So  someone did this gesture when I was talking to them the other day. So I'll describe it for those of you listening, where you hold up both of your hands side by side. And so all your fingers and your thumbs are lined up together and we get to be in the same place together. Intergenerational worship is where you crisscross your fingers together and the generations are worshiping among each other. And so what I'm not saying, again, don't hear what I'm not saying.

The point of that isn't that you have to upend your Sunday morning service and have everybody in the same room when I doubt there's a single person that's graduated from seminary with any idea how to do that. That isn't generally how we've taught how to do church. And that's generally not how church happens almost anywhere in the Western world that I can think of. I can think of lots of places where that happens, not in the Western world, but

our culture is more multi-generational than intergenerational. Children are loud, disruptive,  they're too curious, they have too many questions, they want to talk in a normal voice, not a whisper voice,  and so that would be more multi-generational where you've put the different generations in different spaces. So there's something for everyone, they're just doing it with their own age groups. Now when you think about a family being welcomed,

A parent is willing to come with their child because they're not sure what you're going to teach their kid and they don't know if they agree with you. So what they're actually hoping for is what they get in one room looks something like or sounds something like what the kids are getting in a different room. And it's really hard for them to judge that or come to any conclusion about that if there isn't a moment of crossover. So what it does is put a lot of pressure on pickup time for kids ministry leaders where

Jo Hobbis (30:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (30:58)
 Parents might have questions or leaders, volunteers might have questions about some behavior they're noticing in the child or is your child more comfortable with this? Would you like to attend with your child? There's lots of ways to make that intergenerational connection happen. But I promise you that it is easy to be kind  the first time a family that looks different than the average shows up.

Jo Hobbis (31:20)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (31:23)
Absolutely, we celebrate that. We had new people, we had guests, you know, we get really jazz-handsy about  having new families show up. And our hope is what? That they stay.

Eventually, and I'm not sure why or how, but somehow that hope can transition to, I hope they change. And that's where the problem begins. So we're really happy to welcome people that look like anything. We're just so happy to have new people and to learn why they showed up and to learn from them about their kids and to learn from them about their experience, maybe they have or have not been to church before.

Jo Hobbis (31:46)
Mmm.

Christie Penner Worden (32:07)
And I'll tell you just a little anecdote of how this struck me the first time I realized what it meant to actually welcome, like that phrase, everyone's welcome, nobody's perfect. For a long time, those banners would fly outside of churches and we didn't really know.

Jo Hobbis (32:24)
I don't know that they

made those, they made it to the UK actually. Maybe we don't mean that. okay.

Christie Penner Worden (32:27)
I'm

⁓ I don't think we actually mean it. I don't think we realize

to your point how messy that actually is. So for example, you're really happy to welcome a family that  might have some  neurodivergence or maybe has a transgender child and  you feel like physiologically you're looking at a boy, but they've asked you to call him Lisa or in better language to call her

Lisa, and you've got a measure of tolerance for that particular situation. You've got a measure of acceptance for that situation. But then when the lead pastor in staff meeting that week following that Sunday is quite upset and quite perturbed that there was a little girl in the men's bathroom and how does that make the men of the church look? You have to realize

that it's not so simple as a healthy, happy, kind welcome. It is messy. That child may not yet know which bathroom they belong in. They might have been told so many times, you're not a girl and so you can't go to the girl's bathroom. And so they use the men's bathroom or the male bathroom because that's where they've been told to go, but they're dressed like a female. And so now the adult men are uncomfortable.

We don't want to make the adult men of our church community feel uncomfortable. God forbid there be discomfort in welcoming people to our church building that don't look or act or sound like us. And I say that not to chastise the pastor who was raising the point, but to say it's a really good point because if we aren't ready for the mess, we aren't ready for the welcome. And it's not just that's not to pick on transgender kids or families with

Jo Hobbis (34:21)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (34:27)
children that are  somewhere on the spectrum other than cisgender or other than heterosexual. And to be clear, their sexuality is really unknown until  puberty sets in and sex hormones begin to speak to the body about who they are. I'm also not saying we need to have conversations about sexuality and gender with children. I don't think that's necessarily the right age.

for perfect strangers in a lot of cases, meaning the workers in children's ministry, to have that conversation. It's also not a place for a child to be judged. The fact that you get to welcome a child and talk about Jesus is a glorious gift from God, and we need to embrace that gift and leave the rest up to the Holy Spirit, who maybe has yet to speak into the situation.

Jo Hobbis (35:02)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (35:16)
And our job in that moment isn't to take the parents aside after two or three Sundays and say, you know, I'm really struggling with this. If you're struggling with it, imagine the struggle that that family is having. Just because they might be fully acceptant as a family, just because they might not see a need to change or a need  to dress that child any differently for your comfort, it doesn't mean that the journey they're on

with their child is easy or lighthearted. The amount of mental health complications that are often found in partnership with gender dysphoria or transgender experiences for a child and for the family is innumerable. There are many, many other difficulties that a family faces besides the fact that you feel uncomfortable with them showing up on a Sunday.

You can assume if a child is going through any sort of identity crisis or any sort of identity shift that is not normative, that family is struggling.

Jo Hobbis (36:28)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (36:29)
They may be working very hard to accept that journey of their child. They may be fully on board with their child. That doesn't mean they're having an easy go of it.

Jo Hobbis (36:38)
I think that applies to all kinds of identity issues with kids that parents are walking through. you're going through a diagnosis of autism or ADHD and it's a journey, isn't it? It's a journey and it's a decision whether you share that as a family with other people as well. you know, there's so much going on.

Christie Penner Worden (36:45)
Right.

Right.

right.

It is.

Right.

I'm really glad you brought up, you know, neurodivergence as well. Or let's say a child has been in an accident and now has a physical disability and that child is no longer able to participate the way they used to participate. There are shifts that happen in the lives of our families and  any journey that can't be wrapped up neat and tidy with a bow, which you're all now thinking,

Jo Hobbis (37:17)
Mm-hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (37:35)
don't think anybody's journey can be wrapped up neatly and tidy with a bow. You're right. Some journeys are easier to hide than others. And what I'm inviting us to do is not require people to hide. Inviting people to find safety in the church, but that isn't typical. That isn't the place people typically find safety or acceptance first. And then we...

Jo Hobbis (37:38)
Right.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (37:59)
grow frustrated as the church that, maybe they've found safety and community somewhere else and they've stopped coming to church. Well, what about their salvation? Well, that's a great question. That's a great question. What about their salvation? What about their walk with Jesus? Were you available to them for that? Did you ask the right questions to allow that child with an autism diagnosis or that child with an OCD diagnosis?

Jo Hobbis (38:09)
Yeah.

Christie Penner Worden (38:28)
or  even anxiety with an anxiety disorder who really has a panic attack every time they show up and there's a long process of things we have to do each and every week before that child will enter the room. How are you going to walk with that family or are you just going to grow weary of how much energy it takes to welcome that child or to make the other children  feel safe or to...

allow the room to proceed as per normal while we isolate this other child who clearly isn't falling in line. I think we really need to get past the idea of a kind and warm welcome because what happens if the family stays?

Jo Hobbis (39:13)
yeah

Christie Penner Worden (39:14)
We really need to just decide now together that it's going to be messy because people are messy and not every mess is easily disguised as typical. Not every mess can be held in for an hour of church. Sometimes we have kids who hold it all together just because their parents have said you're going and you're going to be good and

Jo Hobbis (39:43)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (39:44)
You can do this for one hour and you know, they've got a reward chart at home that somehow they get a sticker for if they don't get a bad report from the Sunday school worker that week. I mean, imagine these.

Jo Hobbis (39:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I

don't need to imagine. I've been there.

Christie Penner Worden (40:01)
Right,

right. And I think the idea of challenging one another to sit in the mess together before we take on the mess or say we're equipped for the mess is really important. So what training, what conversations are you offering your hospitality teams, your children's ministry teams, your youth workers, whether it's trauma informed leadership.

Whether it's neurodivergence, knowledge, and just equipping for what these words even mean, what these diagnoses even mean, and how they don't mean the same thing for everybody. This identity conversation where we have kids that don't just fall in line is about embracing that tiny piece in the kaleidoscope that each image bearer represents in this vastly complex image of God.

And what these conversations with our teams actually require is a holy curiosity instead of a lurid curiosity.

Jo Hobbis (41:09)
explain the difference.

Christie Penner Worden (41:11)
So Holy Curiosity would start with a question like, where did you see God this week? And if they say, what does that mean? You clarify. What happened that was spectacular in your week this week? What awe and wonder, or what made you gasp with a big wow this week? What made you excited? What made you smile? What made you burst out laughing with joy? All of those questions can lead to where did you see God?

in your week because it is safe to assume every image bearer has the potential of meeting with God every single day. Lurid curiosity is

⁓ I see you've chosen to wear a dress today. That's an interesting choice. Or, ⁓ you've brought slime to church. Maybe we'll set that on a shelf. Or for the child that has an anxiety disorder, we have a place where we put our lovies so that they don't distract you during the lesson, when it may very well be that hugging that lovie is what prevents them from being distracted

Jo Hobbis (41:57)
Hahaha

Christie Penner Worden (42:21)
and actually allows them to focus. Lurid curiosity is  one that presumes an answer to a question you haven't even asked.

Jo Hobbis (42:24)
Mm-hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (42:35)
And I think we're really good at lurid curiosity in the church.

Jo Hobbis (42:39)
Mm.

Mm. Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (42:42)
It's a question  that I came up against when my dear little friend, his name was, is at the time, this is years ago, he's no longer nine years old. He's probably preparing for university or already there at this point. But my dear friend, I asked the question amongst a group of about 60 kids, how do you know if the Holy Spirit is with us? And his answer was, well, didn't you feel it?

And I very quickly wanted to say, of course I felt it. I know what the Holy Spirit feels like. But for those in the room who didn't feel it, how embarrassed they might be if I was like, yeah, we feel it. That's right. And everybody goes, yeah, what is he talking about? And instead, by the grace of God, I was able to ask him because my answer, of course I wanted to say, yes, I felt it. Good for you.

but instead the Holy Spirit deposited the words, didn't I feel what? What is it that you felt? I had the chance to say, yes, it can feel like this and it can feel like this and it can feel like this so that every child might maybe possibly have felt something. But instead I said, didn't I feel what? And his answer,

was so invitational and so inclusive in a way that I never could have answered. He said, didn't you feel the whoosh?

Jo Hobbis (44:16)
Hahaha!

Christie Penner Worden (44:19)
And all of a sudden there were lights that went on in the eyes of other children in the room. And one out loud said, is that what that was? And where the conversation went from there was a holy curiosity that they had for one another. Rather than a definitive answer I could have given that would have quashed the curiosity that had yet to be enlightened in these kids that didn't understand

Jo Hobbis (44:29)
So cool.

Mm.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (44:48)
what they were feeling. One little girl burst into tears. She was so relieved to know what that feeling was because it was kind of spooky and it was kind of weird. And I got the chance to say, yeah, it can feel a little spooky and it can feel a little weird, especially when you haven't felt it before. But guess what? It gets less spooky and less weird every time it happens. It gets exciting and it gets to the point where you wait for it because it's worth waiting.

Jo Hobbis (45:16)
haha

Christie Penner Worden (45:19)
That's really the difference between lurid curiosity and holy curiosity.

Jo Hobbis (45:24)
Amazing. I'm interested in the idea of how a better conversation about identity could serve families holistically. How do you see that playing out? Have you experienced it yourself and in your family when you discover who you are in Jesus?

Christie Penner Worden (45:44)
Hmm, certainly around my kitchen table, I have discovered that I'm not necessarily the best one to lead to the conversation. There are words and there is language that I'm not necessarily accustomed to or even familiar with.  So that's part of it, where my kids have led me through different conversations.  And they were quite annoyed by my lack of knowledge or lack of

inclusive language, which I didn't realize wasn't inclusive.  But finding identity in Christ can feel really tricky as a conversation because if we don't decide that the experience can be different for every person, we run the risk of excluding people by virtue of the way we have the conversation. So I think

The questions that I hope families are asking each other are more about what do you mean by that? Or how has that shown up for you? Or how long have you felt that way? Or what are you afraid to tell me? Are you afraid to tell me something?

Have I said something that makes you feel uncomfortable? I think if as adults we can own the discomfort with the conversation, we have the possibility of a deeply meaningful conversation with our own children, even if they're not sure yet what identity in Christ looks like, even if they're not there yet. well, right. And I think...

Jo Hobbis (47:26)
Are any of us there yet? I don't know if I'm there yet.

Christie Penner Worden (47:32)
embracing identity as something that not only evolves, but that the Holy Spirit would anticipate would evolve, that we would grow more and more like Jesus the more time we spend in communion with God. If we can embrace that kind of change for ourselves, can we leave enough width to the laneway for children to also evolve?

Jo Hobbis (47:42)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (48:02)
I think with our fear that children won't come to know Jesus, we can get quite  matter of fact about how our child comes to know Jesus. Like my experience with my five year old and like, I should probably quit my job if my five year old can't understand who she is in Jesus yet. It's something that we, there's some sort of conclusion we can

raise within ourselves that's like if I can't get them there are they doomed? And I think if we can have grace for ourselves and grace for one another as parents surely we can have grace for our kids or vice versa. If you can offer your child grace and years and time to fully understand who they are

Jo Hobbis (48:33)
Hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (48:51)
in not just in their identity, but also who they are in Jesus, who they are as an image bearer. If you can hold space for that grace for your child and for other people's children, could you maybe hold it for yourself? Could you decide that you don't have to have all the answers? I mean, maybe you already know you don't have all the answers. So could you hold space to invite someone else in to walk with you? You have not failed as a 

Jo Hobbis (49:03)
Hmm.

Christie Penner Worden (49:19)
kid min worker or as a children's pastor or as you know a hospitality volunteer you have not failed if you're not sure how to answer certain questions because I don't know is a very very good answer when it is the honest answer. Giving each other the grace to say I don't know is one of the biggest gifts we can give in this conversation.

Jo Hobbis (49:36)
Bye-bye.

Yeah. And I think that has to apply to the whole church, actually. Like, there's definitely more that we can do. I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. But also I think we need to be kind to ourselves because otherwise, are you just creating more fear of, I'm afraid to invite these people in because I'm not going to treat them right. I'm not going to love them how they need to be loved. I'm going to get it wrong. I think we need to trust the Holy Spirit to use us anyway.

Christie Penner Worden (49:49)
Yes.

Right.

and even in our conversations, Jo, we've talked about the disappointing fact that the book doesn't land the conversation for people. My hope is that it's a tool to begin a different kind of conversation with one another. And so if you're having conversations around identity as a church family or as a small group or as a church staff even,

If the goal is to find answers to questions that maybe just need to be held as I don't know a little while longer, you may injure people inadvertently. If you can hold space in the middle, space at the edge of a conversation, space where you can cry out to God and Jesus just sits with you in your I don't knows, if you can leave enough room to not know,

Jo Hobbis (50:56)
Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (51:13)
you will surely make enough space for the Holy Spirit to fill in the gaps. And I don't think we trust the Holy Spirit in each other enough. I think in this space where we offer one another kindness and grace, we can also offer a charitable assumption that the Holy Spirit is at work in your life and is working on you differently than the Holy Spirit is working on me and might draw you to different

conclusions at a different time and in a different space. We may also be led to places where we disagree with one another. That doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit is at discord with the Spirit's self. It means that we are on a different journey. And if we can choose unity over agreement, even in these conversations, say, I will not quit my family. I will not lose relationship with you. I will choose

to stay present, that is the best we can offer in a place of uncertainty or disagreement.

Jo Hobbis (52:20)
Yeah, you've said that a lot, the thing about unity over agreement. I mean, it's a great sentence, but I feel like it's really hard to put into practice.

Christie Penner Worden (52:25)
Yeah.

It's probably.

It's really hard. I think that's why, I think that's why it bears repeating because the church is fractured. The church is fractured in my little village. It's fractured in the bigger town around us. It's fractured in North America. It's likely fractured in the UK where you're seeing dissonance rather than, 

rather than unity. And unity is one thing we're never let off the hook from. All throughout scripture, God is calling us to a place of unity. And by the New Testament, where Jesus is at the center, but if Jesus is at the center, we can read the Old Testament with a Jesus lens because of the work of the Holy Spirit and see that unity was the call of God's children all along. And

Jo Hobbis (53:23)
Mm.

Mm.

Christie Penner Worden (53:32)
when we decide that our disagreements are worth the dysfunction and the fracturing of a body, when we're willing to cut off a limb or cut off the nose to spite the face as the saying goes, that is not unity. And unity is hard. It can be confusing. And it is a long road. 

as what does Eugene Peterson say, a long obedience in the same direction. If we can at least point our bodies towards Jesus, you will recognize Jesus in someone else. Jesus is so magnificent that you know when you're looking at someone who looks like Jesus. And if they are oriented towards Jesus and want to be more like Jesus in order to more fully be who they were created to be, that is enough for unity. That is enough.

Jo Hobbis (54:19)
Yeah.

Christie Penner Worden (54:31)
Look for the orientation of their body towards Jesus, listen for the sound of the Holy Spirit in what they're saying, and choose unity in that recognition over the disagreement of the stuff we don't quite understand yet.

Jo Hobbis (54:53)
I think that's the perfect place to stop this episode, Christie. Thank you so much again for your insight and your wisdom and your honesty. Let's do it all again.

Christie Penner Worden (54:55)
you

Yeah,

and let me just say it isn't easy. This isn't easy what we're asking. It's quite difficult to do what I'm talking about, but it is simple. The gospel is simple. Hearing from looking to waiting on Jesus is a practice that when practiced daily becomes easier and easier. It doesn't mean that what we're called to do is easy.

but following him is not meant to be the hardest part.

Jo Hobbis (55:38)
Amen.

Christie Penner Worden (55:39)
Eyes fixed on the

back of his head. Eyes fixed on the back of his head. Follow him. We'll see you next time.