348: Sara Billups and Moving Toward Community

Sara Billups is a Seattle-based writer and cultural commentator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Ekstasis, and others. Sara writes Bitter Scroll, a monthly Substack letter. She is completing her Doctor of Ministry in the Sacred Art of Writing at the Peterson Center for the Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary. Today, Sara shares about her 90’s youth group kid upbringing, moving to Seattle and finding a devastated church, and the dark season when she compartmentalized her faith. Sara’s story reminds us that while the spiritual desert is isolating, community is the best way through.

Listen to Sara’s story in your favorite podcast app now!

Stories Sara shared:

• Growing up in a house where her father converted to Christianity from Judaism
• Her parent’s relationship and her father’s conversion
• Celebrating Jewish holidays and how that shaped her
• How growing up in 80s Christianity influenced her
• Exploring a Christian counterculture and finding her people
• Reading creative people in high school
• Moving to Seattle to start an intentional community
• The cultural impact of the Mars Hill implosion
• The season of disillusionment she faced
• Realizing that her husband was carrying her
• Writing for believers who feel like they are orphaned by the Church
• Her church experience as she processed
• Practices that help when you feel alienated

Great quotes from Sara

If I actually believed the Christian story, I needed to make a change.

There are seasons when the people who love us carry us.

It doesn’t do any good to burn things down but I do think we need to talk about this stuff.

Being faithful to a congregation through many waves, throughout decades is a really interesting place to sit and I’m grateful that I can.

Resources we mentioned:

• Sara’s website
• Orphaned Believers: How a Generation of Christian Exiles Can Find the Way Home by Sara Billups
• This Cultural Moment
• The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
• The Case Against Sermon Centric Sundays by Skye Jethani

Related episodes:

• Brian Zahnd and the Beauty of Christ
• Brandon Andress and the Controversy of Love
• Becky Castle Miller and Trusting Your Emotions

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