The Allender Center Podcast

Continuing a conversation about what it means to live out the character of God in the context of the kingdom of God, Dan, Cathy, and Rachael engage the archetypes of stranger and prophet. You’ll hear more about what it means to be a stranger who, in the redemptive process, can begin to use their sense of alienation and isolation on behalf of the kingdom as a prophet. As Dan notes, in our world today we desperately need to listen to prophets who tell the truth, and open the door to imagination and redemptive hope.

Direct download: TAC307-PriestProphetKing3-v2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00pm PDT

“Stories are what change the human heart.”

- Cathy Loerzel

 

This week, Dan, Rachael, and Cathy take a deep dive into and further reflect on the archetype of priest. What is required for a priest to grow in their ability to do what priests are meant to do? In this episode, you’ll hear our hosts and Cathy talk about the importance of archetypal thinking, how the archetype of an “orphan” relates to the calling of a priest archetype, and the process by which an orphan is transformed.

Direct download: TAC306-PriestProphetKing2-v_2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

In this episode of the podcast, Dan and Rachael are joined by Cathy Loerzel, Executive Vice President of The Allender Center, to begin a conversation about a particular aspect of The Allender Theory: prophet, priest, and king/queen. During the conversation, they invite you into each of these three categories and to consider what it means to have been given a kingdom in which you are a priest, prophet, and king/queen.

Direct download: TAC305-PriestProphetKing1-v2.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

Since it has been a few weeks since Rachael and Dan hosted together on the podcast, they decided to sit down and check-in both with each other and the state of the world before launching into more of our regularly scheduled fall content. It’s been a hard season and a hard year. Feeling scattered, fragmented, numb, and isolated are normal. Yet, at the same time, we must also continue to ask ourselves the question: Who do we want to become, how do we want to live in this crazy period?

Resources:

Read a blog post by Rebekah Vickery entitled “Honoring Our Embodied Trauma in the Midst of a Pandemic”

Direct download: TAC304-StateOfTheUnion-v5.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

“We all have something to offer and we all have something to learn from each other in all of our various stages of life and relationships.”

-Beau Denton

 

As the month of conversations about marriage draws to a close, Dan and Becky invite Beau Denton and Ashley Wright on the podcast to talk about how single people and married people can relate better together. Beau was a former Content Creator for The Seattle School and played an integral role in synthesizing podcast episodes, and Ashley serves as the Director of Marketing and Communications for The Seattle School, overseeing the production and planning of The Allender Center podcast. In a couple-oriented world, single people can often feel excluded, or feel they do not have a lot to say about marriage as they are not in a marriage relationship. Beau and Ashley provide deep wisdom and perspective for how single people can, in truth and trust, engage married couples, and invite those who are married to do the same for single people.

 

Resources:

Read an article by Abby Wong-Heffter entitled “Post Traumatic Single Disorder.”

Direct download: TAC330-HelpingCouplesGrowMarriage-v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

Dan and Becky Allender invite Paul and Sara Steinke into a conversation about creating and living rituals in marriage, particularly in this era of COVID-19. Paul is the Vice President of Students and Alumni at The Seattle School and Sara is a private practitioner, yoga instructor, and poet. Throughout the episode, they talk about the presence of ritual in their relationships, the specific kinds of rituals they practice to enhance and grow their marriage, and the difference between creating a ritual and a habit. 

Resources:

Listen to a podcast series about the Marriage Quadrants, a system of sorting and classifying patterns and structures that are highly intricate and complex.

Direct download: TAC302-RitualsToRedeemMarriage-v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

This week on the podcast, Dan and Becky Allender talk about triggers in marriage with their good friends Dr. Steve and Lisa Call. You may recognize Steve and Lisa from the new Marriage Online Course.What follows is both a humorous and deeply insightful conversation. Triggers can undermine a marriage relationship as a couple often does not have language or context to understand what provoked their partner, or how to engage one another after someone is triggered. 

Resources:

Listen to a podcast episode about “Dissociation in Marriage”

Direct download: TAC301-TriggersInMarriage-v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:07am PDT

“Can you be faithful with the small?” 

-Dr. Dan Allender

 

As we enter a fall that is full of complexity, we’re going to be having conversations over the next few weeks on the topic of marriage. Before we dive in, however, we want to emphasize that this is a series for everyone—whether you are single, about to be married, just married, or have been married for a long time. Today, you’ll hear Dr. Dan Allender and his wife, Becky Allender, talk about the elements of disruption they have been experiencing in their own lives and marriage, what spending more time together exposes in their relationship, and what they continue to learn about one another during this season of deep change and growth. 

 

Resources:

Read the blog post “Dance with Me” by Robyn Whitaker

Direct download: TAC299-CovidRealityAndMarriage-v3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

Today we’re revisiting a conversation that Dr. Dan Allender had a few years ago with Dr. Chelle Stearns, Associate Professor of Theology at The Seattle School, exploring her ongoing work of developing a theology of abuse. She believes that as a theologian, an artist, and a witness of other artists, she is called—and we are called—to hold together immense sorrow and stunning beauty. Ultimately, Chelle invites us to wrestle with how we address trauma in view of the embodied life of Christ, and how this might change the way we tend to the stories of harm in our own lives and communities. 

Resources:

Read “Let the Lament Come” by Heather Stringer

Direct download: TAC298-ChelleReshare-v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT

This week, we’re re-sharing the second half of a series Rachael Clinton Chen and Dr. Dan Allender recorded last year on the particulars of spiritual abuse. Throughout their conversation, you’ll hear them discuss the effects that spiritual abuse has on our bodies, including dissociation and shame. Because spiritually abusive leaders rarely stop with mind control, they work to create a system in which they can control every aspect—including the bodies—of the people under their authority. Rachael and Dan also explore the long, slow movement of healing in the wake of abuse and the work of tending to small areas of growth, trusting that God is contending for us in the big areas.

No matter how long it takes, how can we begin reclaiming our minds and moving back into our bodies? What are the small steps we can take on the long road to healing? As we attune to that which is beautiful and true, and to that which honors the dignity in who we were created to be, we may begin living into the hope that trauma, death, and spiritual abuse do not have to have the last word.

Resources

Direct download: TAC297-SpiritualAbuseReshare2-v1_01.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am PDT