A Resource for Reconstructing Your Faith

(And for those who minister to them)

It’s been two and a half years since I shared my story of deconstruction and reconstruction on The Gospel Coalition. I still often receive questions asking for resources for reconstructing faith. Sadly, there aren’t really that many. I’ve been working on putting one together, and I think it’s ready for a soft launch. I still consider this a draft, but the great thing about the format is that it’s easy to change over time.

I have put together a Spotify playlist with over 100 hours of content. The content includes sermons, podcasts, and music that I believe will helpfully contribute to the journey of reconstructing your faith. In a way, I’ve tried to piece together many of the elements that factored into my own reconstruction over the course of 10+ years.

It’s not perfect. It’s not exhaustive or comprehensive. But I do believe it’s robust and covers a lot of ground.

That said, there are many notes that I want to make about it:

1. As I said above, this is almost a reconstruction of my own reconstruction. So you might look at this and think “Wow, there’s a lot of John Mark Comer in here.” Yes, there is. He was instrumental to my reconstruction. So he is included a lot. I didn’t attempt to spread out content among different people just for the sake of it. I tried to find the best of what I was looking for that I knew of.

2. Along the same lines as above, it’s obviously not unbiased. It can’t be. It’s coming at things from a perspective. Every piece of content included does not agree on everything with every other piece of content that is included. I don’t even agree with every nook and cranny of every piece of content that I included. In some places, I’ve tried to intentionally include more than one perspective on a topic that is still within the bounds of historic orthodoxy.

3. 100+ hours of content is a lot. And that’s on purpose. If someone is going to leave Christianity, I would hope that they would give it plenty of thought and make sure to have the best understanding of something before they decide they don’t believe and leave. Truth be told, you will never get the best of anything from a podcast, no matter how good it is. We need books and teachers. But I hope that this resource provides enough food for thought to continue in the faith and dig deeper instead of leaving.

4. The inclusion of music is intentional. We are not strictly rational creatures, and art accesses parts of us that reason never could. I believe hearing some of these truths sung is just as important as hearing them expounded upon.

5. The playlist is ordered in a way that is intentional and I hope leads someone through a journey of putting things back together in a way that I think might make for a sturdier faith. That said, it could work as a choose your own adventure for particular topics that need more strengthening than others.

6. For pastors and church leaders, I want this to be a resource for you, not replace you. The last thing we need is people listening to podcasts while they leave the church. My hope is that people listen to this in community, and as you minister to people who are wanting to reconstruct their faith, this serves as a resource library and a conversation starter, not a replacement for your relationship.

I’m sure there’s more to say, but I want to give you a general overview of what is included.

Content Overview

1. Stories of Doubt and Faith

2. Making Sense of God

3. Who Is God? (The Trinity)

4. A Vision for Following Jesus (Be With Jesus, Become Like Jesus, Do What Jesus Did)

5. What is the Bible? How did we get it? How can I read it?

6. The Apostle’s Creed (and intro to the Nicene Creed)

7. Union with Christ and Abiding in Christ

8. Spiritual Formation

9. Sin (The World, The Flesh, and the Devil)

10. The Story of Scripture

11. A Vision for the Church

12. Heaven and Hell

13. Christian Political Engagement and Cultural Commentary

14. A Christian Vision of Sexuality

15. Mission for a Reconstructed Faith

How You Can Help

Since I don’t believe this is finished, but I’m sending it out as a draft anyways, I’m asking for your help.

I don’t expect everyone to rip right through all 100+ hours of content, but I do think there are ways you can help.

1. Take a look at the content and see if anything seems missing. Do you know of any content that could fill the slot?

2. Suggest a song or an artist for a particular part of the playlist.

3. Listen to a particular part that interests you and let me know if you think there is a better resource to take its place.

4. Pass along to someone who might benefit from it (as a whole or a particular part) and let me know how it goes.

I genuinely hope this becomes a helpful resource for people who are struggling in their faith but want to hold on. If you think this is terrible, let me know. If you think this is incredibly helpful, let me know. If you hear that it has benefitted someone, let me know. I want to continue to refine it, add to it, and make it the best possible resource it can be.

This is a Spotify playlist. It’s not a magnum opus. It’s nothing groundbreaking. It will always be free. But I pray that God can use this meager compilation of content to help someone know and love him more.