Unchurchable with Clare Heath-McIvor

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Unchurchable - the Podcast

After years of wanting to do it, and after a full year of talking about it, I finally did a thing: I finally started the podcast. And I thought I’d better pop a note up on here to make sure no-one missed the memo. Unchurchable, the podcast is now live on Spotify and iTunes. Sorry I couldn’t get it on Google Podcasts. At this point in time, Australia is apparently a bit too far in the backblocks to enable! The links are there: go follow them and subscribe.

So why start a podcast and why call it “unchurchable”?

The first bit is an easy answer: I like talking to people. I used to be legitimately terrified of phone conversations and audio interviews (I mean why have a meeting when you can send an email, right?) but I’ve spent the last five years interviewing people who are way smarter than me for work. I mean neuroscientists, functional neurologists and doctors of chiropractic among other things. I’ve done a lot of it on camera and I’ve learned in this time that I can do it. And that I love it. Giving a platform to people who are smarter than me, or who have walked a different path and have something important to say has become a real love of mine.

The second bit cuts a bit closer to home. I started this blog nearly 18 months ago out of a desire to explore my own faith the best way I knew how – through writing. I’d gone through an incredible time of personal upheaval and had to start deconstructing my faith. I hoped I could hold onto my belief in God (Spoiler: I did), but I was absolutely sure my expression of faith would take a drastically different shape to what it used to.

Spoiler: it did.

But the beautiful thing that has come out of this that I’ve connected with incredible people from all over the whole who seem to echo similar sentiments: they believe in Jesus, but they find church difficult.

Hypocritical.

Too small a box to fit in.

Too judgemental.

Some of them have self-excluded and others have been excluded (even given a behavioral ultimatum or asked not to return).

These scars run deep. For some it takes a long time to recover from religious trauma. For some it takes a lifetime. But the thing I’ve realised is that if one person can give voice to the idea that you don’t need anyones permission to practice your faith the way you want, that you can find a tribe that welcomes you as you are (questions and all), and that you don’t need to put yourself through hell in order to go to Heaven, then isn’t that worth it?

I call myself “unchurchable” because I don’t know whether I will always be able to walk into church. I don’t know whether I will be able to commit to the “every Sunday, rain hail or shine” ethos I used to live by. My relationship with church might be tidal, or the tide might go out and stay out. I will always find people who think like me and connect with them, and in doing so keep myself from “foresaking the gathering together of the saints”. I will never let anyone else control my expression of faith or my walk with God though. Because that is mine and mine alone.

Unchurchable is for people with questions. Its for people who have been unjustly excluded. It is for people who have excluded themselves because it was just too darned hard. Church might not be for you, but that doesn’t mean that faith, spirituality or indeed Jesus is off the cards.

I love asking hard questions. I love talking to people who make me think, and even make me uncomfortable. I love making other people think. So this is unchurchable. Friend, we can talk about anything here.

Enjoy.
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K thanks bye
Kit K