About

Our lives become disordered when our God-image is malformed. This is often a result of what we were taught about God, and how we experienced attachment with our parents and our family system.

In our community, we make space for questions like, “What is God like?”, “How does God feel about me?”, and “What does God require of me?” These questions can reveal a deeper source of the patterns of behavior and relationships that have negatively affected our lives.

We believe God the Father is like Jesus, and that Jesus was the living Word of God. Therefore, Jesus’ life and his example is our loving authority and the lens through which we read the Bible, ourselves, and the world.

As we come to understand the Father as the unconditional love expressed through Christ, made known to us by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, we can be re-parented and begin to experience the secure attachment that re-orders our lives.

When we act or speak with the intention of persuading people to demonstrate love towards us we are performing in a toxic way. We believe this is a learned codependent survival strategy to be loved and to feel loveable.

Children learn to perform for their self-worth, security, and purpose in the absence of love, attunement to their needs, and bonding with parents. These elements create secure attachment. Without them, children will instinctively perform to keep the relationship with their parents and their place in the family system intact.

Leaders who had to perform for love and belonging as children are susceptible to relating to God and the church in the same way they did their parents and their family system. Oftentimes, pursuing their ministry dream, calling, or vision becomes a re-enactment of their pursuit of love as a child.

In our community, we believe love is a Gift to be received, and that God does not require us to perform to stay connected to his love. We endeavor to dismantle the narcissistic theology and codependent relational dynamics that demand toxic performing.

Rooted in the love of God, we can learn to perform as we were created to do; to use our gifts and talents in ways we truly enjoy and in service and communion with others.

When performing becomes the automatic and seemingly uncontrollable reaction to the fear of being unloved or unloveable we consider it compulsive. We understand compulsive performing to be a trauma response, and an innate attempt to regulate the nervous system.

Over time, and under the already tremendous demands of ministry, compulsive performing only serves to reinforce fear and its effects on the nervous system until the leader reaches a point of crisis.

In our community, we believe God does not drive us with fear, but he motivates us with love. We educate ourselves in theology, psychology, and neuroscience. We practice passive spiritual disciplines and implement a practical "rhythm of life" to help us arrest the compulsivity to perform.

We discover that we are free in God’s love to choose to honor our own humanity as we love and serve others.

Children are neurobiologically wired by God to need the love of their parents to form their sense of self. Children lack the cognitive functioning to reason that their parents may be unable to form secure attachment. Instead, when children experience the pain of being unloved they assume it is because they are unlovable.

If the pain persists over time it can be traumatic. The nervous system adapts by triggering the child to respond in ways that protect him or herself from experiencing that pain again. A nervous system wired in this way can get stuck in a hyper or hypo state of arousal. Thus, shutting down the parts of the brain that enable the child to experience connection with God, self, and others.

Leaders that have had to adapt in this way as children often express that they struggle to “feel” connected to God, self, and others, and/or inconsistent moments of connection cause them confusion, distress, and disconnection in relationships with others.

They can feel helpless and trapped in a role that forces them to perform on their platform of leadership by pretending to have it all figured out when they are suffering a great deal in secret. This can be retraumatizing for leaders with a background of childhood trauma; especially if the ministry resembles the relational dynamics of their family of origin. Overtime, this can lead to feelings of total despair.

These leaders may engage in numbing or avoidant behaviors to ease their emotional pain, and to cope with the demands of their leadership role. Deep down, they may feel they are in control of their circumstances, and that they can “perform away the pain”, but these behaviors inevitably lead to spiritual, emotional, and relational crisis.

Our community is a place for leaders to come for refuge, recovery, and reconnection.. Our teaching and experiences are trauma-informed, 12-step informed, and somatic by design. We practice modalities like hiking in nature, passive spiritual disciplines (silence, solitude, stillness), liturgy, Christian yoga, contemplation, and storytelling to establish the mind-body connection so we can arrest the compulsivity to perform and become open to receiving God’s love.

Children who experience the trauma of being unloved by their parents learn to protect themselves by hiding their more vulnerable parts behind their performer persona. The performer part steps up to fill the role of the parent/s and attempts to earn the self-worth, security, and purpose they need to survive.

Until the childhood trauma is addressed and resolved, the parentified performer part of the self remains the dominant part of the personality. The brain dissociates from the wounded childhood self in order to cope with everyday life. Meanwhile, the disintegration of the wounded childhood self causes toxic stress that has devastating effects on the mind, body, and soul.

In our community, leaders find a place where all parts of themselves are invited to the table. In a trauma and 12–step informed environment, the vulnerable parts of the self can emerge from hiding to experience the love and belonging their childhood self needs to heal and develop into a fully integrated part of the authentic self. Alleviated from parental expectations that only God can meet, the performer part of the self can begin to perform on their platform of leadership as designed; with joy, freedom, and unique self-expression.