I’m an ex-Mormon. I spent the better part of a decade taking my faith apart before I ended up, to my considerable surprise, a Lutheran pastor.
If you’ve been through something like that, you know what a disruption it can be. The theological questions are hard, but there are books about that. What’s harder to find is a place you can go as you sort through the implications a change like this has on your life, with people who aren’t going to panic, or argue, or try to fix you, or quietly start praying that you’ll come back.
I was blessed to have friends and family who loved me, but I didn’t have that kind of dedicated space to talk and listen and share. It was one of the loneliest stretches of my life.
So last year I started running a group called All That Remains: Reclaiming Faith after Spiritual Wounds. It’s the thing I would have loved to have when I was going through it. I want to tell you how it works.
Ten weeks, one evening a week. Each week we watch a short video, and then we talk. That’s the whole format. The topics are the ones that came up for me, and for most of the people I’ve talked to since: who am I, now that I’m not who they told me I was. Family, belief, and boundaries. What to do with the Bible. What to do with anger. Purity culture and the body. Grace, shame, and worthiness. What about Jesus. What healing might look like, if you take the long view.
We meet on Zoom, so you can come from anywhere. Last spring people came from all over. The group is totally free to join.
Now, the part you might be wondering about. I’m a pastor. If I’d seen “support group for people healing from high-control religion, facilitated by a pastor” back when I was in the thick of it, I would have assumed it was a funnel. That’s a fair thing to assume. Plenty of them are.
This one isn’t. It’s not a theology class, a debate forum, or a place where anyone is going to try to get you back to church. My own reconstruction brought me to Christianity, but there’s no pressure to believe or join anything as a result of showing up. If all you want to do is sit and listen for ten weeks, that’s okay, too.
If that’s you, or someone you know, the details are at katielangston.com/all-that-remains. The next round begins in January. You can leave your email there and I’ll write to you when registration opens.
Feel free to pass this along to someone who might need it.
