Bad Religion, Good News: Surviving Church Disappointment | Scott Bessenecker

What do you do when the church — the very community that's supposed to reflect the love of God — becomes a source of real pain? Host Dan Johnson sits down with Scott Bessenecker, author of Bad Religion, Good News: An Honest Guide to Spiritual Disappointment, for an unflinching conversation about church hurt, institutional failure, and the long road toward healing.

Drawing on four decades of campus ministry with InterVarsity, Scott shares about being both a victim and participant in the church's sins, the role of self-examination in avoiding the spiral into deconstruction, and why honesty about the church's failures doesn't have to mean abandoning Christian community altogether. He also reflects on his own experience with disappointment with God — including his recovery from a stroke — and what it means to discover that God's presence in grief may be more powerful than miraculous rescue.

Whether you've been wounded by a leader, disillusioned by an institution, or are simply trying to maintain an honest and hopeful faith, this conversation offers both clarity and compassion for the journey.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What prompted Scott to write Bad Religion, Good News
• Being both a victim and a participant in the sins of the church
• Why self-examination is essential to navigating disappointment without becoming toxic
• The difference between deconstruction and honest disappointment
• How to talk openly about the church's failures without dismissing its good
• The hard work of forgiving an institution that may never apologize
• Scott's personal experience with a stroke and finding God in grief rather than rescue
• When it's time to leave a church community — and how to do it well
• Signs of spiritual hunger in the current generation of young adults
• What a healthier American church might look like in a decade

GUEST
Scott Bessenecker is a longtime ministry leader and author who spent four decades with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. His new book, Bad Religion, Good News: An Honest Guide to Spiritual Disappointment, invites readers into honest conversations about the church's failures — and how to find deeper faith on the other side.

RESOURCES

https://heraldpress.com/9781513817644/bad-religion-good-news/

https://slbf.org/studio

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What if there isn't a redemptive outcome? Is that okay? Can you still press into a faith in God's love and power without a happy ending? How do you do that? That's the deep stuff. That's not the first three months of a new love relationship infatuation. That's the stuff of a 20-year marriage where you're like, we gotta go deeper here, because I am profoundly disappointed in your not rescuing me. And I think one of those conclusions or ways that I've experienced maturity is recognizing that God being with us in lament, with us in grief, may be more powerful than God rescuing us from tragedy.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the Academy, the Church, and the Marketplace. In this episode, Daniel Johnson sits down with author and longtime ministry leader Scott Bessenecker to discuss his new book, Bad Religion, Good News: An Honest Guide to Spiritual Disappointment. Drawing from four decades of ministry experience, Scott explores the tension between acknowledging the church's failures and remaining committed to Christian community. Together, they discuss church hurt, forgiveness, deconstruction, spiritual maturity, leadership failures, and why honest conversations about the church's shortcomings can ultimately deepen our faith rather than destroy it. Scott also reflects on his own experiences with disappointment, suffering, and healing, offering practical wisdom for those struggling to find their place in the church today. Whether you're wrestling with faith questions yourself or helping others navigate spiritual disappointment, this conversation offers a hopeful and deeply honest perspective on finding God's presence amid brokenness. Let's jump into the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Well, Scott, hey, welcome to the Upwards Podcast. We're so glad that you're here. Thanks, Dan. And thanks to Upper House for hosting my book launch next week. Yeah, we're super excited for that. And uh we're looking forward to having you here at Upper House and talking about your book. It's a great read, and we'll dive a bunch into that during our conversation here today, which is really fun. So the book title is Bad Religion, Good News, An Honest Guide for Spiritual Disappointment. Talk a little bit about the genesis of the book and maybe a little bit of the subtitle. You know, I think you framed some interesting vulnerability around it. Were there any like specific stories or things that was kind of a genesis for this book?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Well, I've worked pretty much my whole career with youth, with with college students. Uh one of my daughters is Gen Z, or she's zillenial, really, right in right in between. And we were at uh as a family, Frank Lloyd writes Tally Essen West in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I found the experience really moving. Like this guy sort of was in touch with the environment and thought really deeply about how architecture should be expressed within different contexts. And so as you're following along on your own phone and earbuds or whatever, different stations, Laura is researching all the dirt on Frank Lloyd Wright. Because there's this, I don't know, suspicion when you're just telling the good stories, when you're just talking about the great things, that raises some questions, like, wait a second. I think I heard something sometime back about Wright not being such a great guy. Why am I not hearing this story? Why am I being fed a cherry-picked highlights reel of this guy? And so she's researching on her phone as she's going through this. I'm getting swept up by it, but like she's suspicious of the story that's being told. And I think that can happen with the church. And I think this generation particularly has concern about institutionalism. What happens when a body becomes institutionalized? And what's the whole story? And so I kind of just wanted to tell the whole truth. And also, there's there's plenty of books about, you know, Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day and Corey Tenboom and others. Like, I kind of want to lean into the closet of Christianity. And it's not a deconstruction book or post-vangelical. I'm trying to tell a broader story about the church. And so just with carrying my own disappointments in, oh, another cringy thing is being passed around media about this pastor or high profile Christian leader who just is embarrassing. And so feeling those kinds of disappointments myself, thinking about this generation's desire for the whole truth, I just thought maybe talking a little bit about how we engage disappointment. Especially for people who are drawn to the faith but repelled by the church.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Ooh, that's a good that's a very good statement. I want to come back to that later. So in the book, you talk about being a victim and a participant in the sins of the church. It's a very interesting duality between the two of those. What are the sins of the church? And how have you participated in both of those?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Well, it's not hard to pick out the big ones, especially in the U.S. The original sin of our country, slavery, was really propped up by the church. You know, the ancient ones like the Crusades, participation in wars, you know, there's a whole variety. And then you think of celebrities, good people, like who probably, you know, did some really great things. Uh, you got Ravi Zacharias or uh a guy named Jean Vene who created these uh safe places for people with intellectual disabilities. Really beautiful folk who after their death things surface at like, okay, there was another side to this person, and they did real harm. And so, how do we acknowledge that? I don't want to just paper over real damage done by people of the faith with, oh yeah, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., you know, like how do we hold those disappointments in our heroes of the faith or in the church itself? And I think one of my discoveries, I don't know, that's too bold a word, epiphanies, I don't know, is like I think we need to look inward. Like it's very easy to throw stones at the greats who did terrible things or at the church, but there's this log speck relationship that Jesus talks about, and Jesus is like, the thing that's offending you is actually a speck, and it's a speck in somebody else's eye. There's something going on with your eye. You can't even see that offense very clearly because of the thing that's in you, and that invitation to self-examination after 40 years in the faith in this Christian organization. Oh man, I'm sure I've disappointed so many people as a risk-avoidant person. There are probably times that I should have helped people on my team to leave earlier. I'm always trying to make it work and make them stay, and I don't think that's healthy for them or for me. And then, of course, always wanting to say the thing I think people want to hear, that gets you into trouble. You end up hurting people when you're just trying to say the thing that they want to hear. I do that all the time. So those are the sorts of things that are these little paper cuts, and you just get enough of them, and pretty soon you find your hemorrhaging. I mean, I'm as much a producer of Christian disappointment as I am a critic of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

You spent 40 years in one organization, which is a huge achievement. Hopefully that you're gonna get a gold watch soon. But what's made you stay around, Scott? I mean, uh, most leaders nowadays aren't in an organization 40 years. Um, I think you have the same passion as I've known you over the last maybe 10 years or something like that. You you have the same passion as you did 10 years ago, and probably you had that early on as well. What makes you stay as a leader in an organization, Christian organization, trying to bring truth, trying to bring the gospel forward? What makes you stay?

SPEAKER_02 9:55

So I don't know if it's anything very noble. I'd like to think that it's a level of stability? I don't know. East High School here in Madison, Wisconsin, the graduating class that our eldest was part of invited the high school janitor to give the keynote, which I thought was a really beautiful move. And this janitor said to this graduating class, I've lived my entire life in one zip code. And my graduation challenge to you is to settle down into one little corner of this world and just love it. And I just thought, you know, every other high school's, oh, who's the most famous person that graduated? Let's get them to come and they go out there and experience the world, grab the world by the horns. And there's this humble janitor saying, nah, I think just live in one place your whole life and just love it. I think I've maybe have done that without meaning to, really. It's just that I've had good supervisors. Madison is actually a pretty cool community to be part of, and so the town, the city of Madison is a really great place to be. And I've just found in my organization a kind of broader theological um space than a lot of organizations that may come out of uh evangelical origin, a white evangelical origin. There's you know, it's not enough in the capital E sense, but enough in the small East sense that this white guy has found enough flexibility to do some things that I enjoy doing. Supervisors who are really good, give me a long leash, and a town that's pretty cool to live in. And high school graduation keynote address by a humble janitor saying there's something valuable about just sticking around.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Reminds me of faithful presence, right? I mean, and there's something about having faithful presence in uh our organization, uh a location, right? Uh for you, that's both of those. And thank you for for four decades of of leading well. We really appreciate it. It's a really, really great model for for others, young and old. So um, we really appreciate that. So you talk a lot about disappointment in the book. It's a slippery slope to go from kind of church disappointment into disillusionment into deconstruction, right? I mean, that the it can be a slippery slope into those things. Talk a little bit, I think, in the book around deconstruction, just a little bit, just naming it, you know, here or there. How do we stay, I guess, in the disappointed maybe area before moving into the deconstruction area, or is it just inevitable?

SPEAKER_02 13:01

I think, like I mentioned, the beginning point of self-examination is an important step. Otherwise, you end up othering. And that just, you know, yeah, I'm a Christian, but not like that Christian. And separating yourself so far from everybody else that it's feeding your narcissism or whatever. I think you need to stop and examine yourself. I certainly don't want to create space to excuse stuff that happens. I don't think we can give a pass to the church or to Christian leaders who do terrible things. That's part of the problem. Oh, let's just send him to a different parish. Now we've got to sit with the harm that was done here, but neither do I think canceling the church is helpful because I think we're designed to be on a journey together with others in a faith community. And like, well, I can sort of carve out my own faith in my own space. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I think we need one another. I think we need sometimes some jerks like me that we don't agree with always. Now, like I say, I don't think we can sweep people's misdeeds under the rug, but I don't think we can do without one another. And so self-examination, sticking with community, and then the really hard work of forgiving, especially when it comes to an institution or a body. There's not likely gonna be any reconciliation. That is, oh, we see now that we did this wrong. We're really sorry. Will you forgive us? Probably not gonna happen. And I can't control that anyway. What I can control is releasing my angst about this situation or this person. And so self-examination, journeying in community, and the hard work of forgiving to keep, I think, on track. Dan, I would say, like, for instance, in this realm, Christians I knew 30 years ago feels like so many of them have either left the church or become Christian nationalists. Are those the only two paths? Like, do I have to reject the whole thing or double down and retrench and get super dogmatic? Can I work through the injuries and the disappointment without completely jettisoning the Christian community, nor getting hyper-defensive and inflexible in my faith?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

So you talk about in the book about speaking openly about the church's sins. How do we appropriately do that? I mean, I think I think there's a lot of Twitter headlines, right? Uh, we saw some leaders, and this isn't just a Christian leader fall kind of question, I guess, but we often see Christian leaders fall. It becomes a new story, has a new cycle. In the mainstream cycle, it's very quick around Christian circles. It tends to have kind of more of a nuance to it, I would say. And then things die down, podcasts are created around Evolves falls. How do we openly talk about it in appropriate ways? Uh, I think even like a smaller like church community to even like a kind of a national, let's say US national kind of presence. How do we do that well?

SPEAKER_02 17:00

I after each chapter have individual questions for your journaling, but also uh a few discussion questions. Like get in a small group, the chapter on the history of missions, you know, exploring the church being wooed into the project of colonizing others and the cultural genocide. You know, every chapter has a story or two of a person that I know that, you know, Lakota Sioux guy, friend of mine, who's like, yeah, my grandparents went to the missionary boarding schools where they were the Indian was beaten out of them because they couldn't be a Christian and an Indian. And so his own story and journey. But then at the end, I think to be even-handed, both in the reflection journaling and in the discussion, are there missionaries that you know who've had to make real sacrifices and who are doing good things? Talk about that. Let's talk about both. There is a tendency to there's a trope of the holier than thou Christian character who's mean-spirited and just has this incredible self-righteousness. Well, that trope, even though it's exaggerated, is based in truth. It's not that it's untrue, it's that it's a partial truth. So this is coming from somewhere. Let's talk about this. There's another side. Like how have we experienced, and I've got a chapter on Christian involvement in violence or wars. There may be some I'm sh there are Christian military, even though I'm a pacifist, there are Christian military folk for whom protecting the vulnerable from the strong is their holy sacred motivation to wear the uniform. I want to acknowledge that and nod to that beauty and value of that, though I take a different perspective. Let's talk about Christian military that you've known who've done some really good things and ways that you've heard about the church's participation in various wars or the propaganda of rah-rah, we've got to support this cause. Turns out there's some real questions about this cause is really about the national interest, not about the well-being of people made God's image or all of creation or that sort of thing. And like, let's talk about the idea of redemptive violence. Is that is that good? Is there such a thing as violence that's redemptive? Let's look at the teachings of Jesus and question this a little bit without completely dismissing altruism that may exist with people who feel like no, the right thing to do is to use force to prevent these people from doing these things. So having that sort of even-handed discussion in a small group is one way to try to guard against the downward spiral of just chuck it all.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

If you're enjoying today's conversation, we'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend. Every share helps introduce more people to thoughtful conversations that engage life's biggest questions with curiosity, wisdom, and hope. Now let's return to Daniel Johnson's conversation with Scott Bessenecker.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah, I want to move this to some conversation around healing and a path forward. I think you do a really good job of that in the book, talking through how do we move forward, right? I mean, there is a sense of brokenness, but there's redemption on the other side of that. And I think part of that is a Christian culture that we've created. We've created kind of this false, um, which is not always false, kind of Christian culture around us that kind of sometimes breathes into that. For those that have been who have experienced pain, what are the first steps on a path forward for healing?

SPEAKER_02 21:36

What about any of your disappointments or injuries being in Christian spaces for a long time? How have you found healing or the ability to move on from a really grave disappointment or even an outright injury that you were delivered by a Christian leader, what are some of the things that that you've experienced, Dan, or that have helped you?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah. I mean, I think there's just I think our Christian walk, there is a nature probably around forgiveness, right? There's just like a natural process around that. I think part of that is kind of recognizing that, whether that's a confession type of dynamic or conversation with friends or a spouse or peers or or whatnot. I mean, I do think that there is a point where you have to just, you know, forgive, even if it's not accepted by the other person. You know, I think also I think healthy boundaries sometimes are good. That means that you might have to leave the community that you're a part of to go to a different community for your thr faith to thrive in any given season. So I think those would be some ones that I would name. I think those are good answers.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

When you pull the mask off of anger, you find grief underneath. And allowing yourself to grieve the injury and just be sad about that. It's okay. And there are some maybe traumas that you're going to need a professional for a while to help you walk through and dig through, you know, what's at the root of this. So I can't claim, you know, that the book is a great resource for those who are experiencing real church trauma. It's a real thing. You need a professional help or someone who's really experienced in this journey. But I do think that formula of self-examination, walking with the community and learning to forgive is part of that process. But one of my chapters, I deal with disappointment with God. I think the Psalms. I think it's okay to express disappointment with God. I think the Psalms do that. And my conclusion in talking to people who have experienced real disappointment with God, and my own, I had a stroke a couple years ago, and I've experienced some loss as a result of that stroke, physical loss. And when you see as a spiritual person, oh, God intervened in that situation with those folk. Like, I really believe that something supernatural happened and they didn't experience the kind of loss that I did. How do I handle God's? I think you rescued this person, but you didn't rescue me. And working through that disappointment has led me to recognize not all tragedies seem to have a redemptive outcome. Because of this, I'm now better at that. What if there isn't a redemptive outcome? Is that okay? Can you still press into a faith in God's love and power without a happy ending? How do you do that? Oh, that's the deep stuff. That's not the first three months of a new love relationship infatuation. That's stuff of a 20-year marriage where you're like, we gotta go deeper here, because I am profoundly disappointed in your not rescuing me. And I think one of those conclusions or ways that I've experienced maturity is recognizing that God being with us in lament, with us in grief, may be more powerful than God rescuing us from tragedy. That is, God being with us in tragedy, that means something. That counts. And so the value of that beyond, like, oh, I see these happy outcomes or these stronger outcomes because of this. Well, no, I think I experienced a kind of intimacy with God that I couldn't have experienced when life is comfortable and all is going well. And I'm gonna take that as like, I don't know that I can count that as a redemptive outcome, but it's the presence of God in sadness that is meaningful and maybe more meaningful than the miraculous intervention and rescue.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Scott, when is a time? So if somebody is disappointed in their community, they've had an instance that's happened in their community. When is a time to leave a community? And then when is a time to take a break from a community and then rejoin that same community?

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah. What are the indicators? Because obviously every situation's different. I think, and and this may be on the community or maybe on you. I have shut down spiritually. Like I can't grow. And that could be me. I've been bothered by these things, and they're just hammering me every time I'm in this body. It's sort of like the person who's decided that they've become emotionally divorced from their friend or their spouse. And it's like, yeah, I'm not sure there's a once you've shut down and can't really receive from that community. I think I'd be careful about throwing stones, and you might, you know, oh, I've met with the leaders, and I've met with these people who have who are doing this thing that are, you know, really troubling me. Probably it's okay to meet with one of the leaders and say, I've made this decision. I'm not asking you to talk me out of it, but I just want to know, I want you to know, here's some things that this family has really contributed to me, and I'm very grateful for. And I think I'm at an impasse here with some of the things, and you know them because I've talked to you about them. I'd love to be blessed and sent out and leave on good terms. And I do appreciate these things, but I I can't abide these things anymore. And I found that it's really affected my growth and my relationship with Jesus. I'm gonna leave. I'm going to the church three blocks down, and you're gonna see me around here. I don't want it to be awkward. I think that's just where it is.

unknown 28:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

And so having that kind of conversation, you know, when depressed through, I think you need to begin with those conversations as de-escalated as you can make it in listening to maybe another opinion. And I don't think that using the term family is helpful in a church that that makes it really hard. I feel like you don't divorce your family. So, yeah, we're a collection of people who are journeying together, and I think my journey is different now. I actually think you guys' journey has shifted, but you know, I'm not gonna quibble about that. Like we're on different spiritual paths here, and I'm taking another path within another community, or I'm wanting to explore other communities, and this isn't like infidelity. This is just like a group of people who start who had a season together. So that sort of framework also takes a little bit of the pressure off. But I don't want to completely like these are important relationships. Like, you've got history with these people, and that's important. That counts. Don't too quickly dismiss that body of folk. And then I think, you know, as you grow up, you get married, maybe your spouse has a different set of needs and a different frame of mind around spiritual stuff, and your kids have different needs, and like it's not really being met here. I think I need to choose the spiritual health of my spouse or my family. Those are also okay times to take a different path with a different community.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Well, I want to just ask a couple questions about the your working campus ministry. What are you seeing in this generation's relationship to the church that encourages you? And then where are some maybe some flat sides that could be corrected?

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Yeah, it's hard. I'm not a statistician. So, you know, Barna and Pew are coming out with stats like, oh, there's growing interests. Well, maybe. I don't know how you measure these things. Uh next door to our church in Madison is a Ukrainian Orthodox church. And I'm pretty ecumenical in my interests. So I went to their orientation class. There were a dozen, it was a it's a tiny church, meets in a basement of a building. There are a dozen university students going through the orientation for Ukrainian Orthodox communion or catechism or whatever. And I talked to one of the young people there, and I said, Did you grow up in the Orthodox faith? And she's like, No, my parents were atheists, agnostic. So you just decided as a college student, you were going to start following Jesus in the Orthodox Church without any background. Yeah. I wanted a faith that had history and roots and that hadn't shifted lots from those ancient roots that were more or less practicing the things that they were practicing a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, because I feel like then I'm getting the more authentic experience of this family of believers. So here's a 19-year-old who's in our evangelical language converting by just deciding there's something to this faith, and I want to choose Ukrainian Orthodoxy because it feels rooted in a way that I really want to be rooted in this faith. So I think that's happening. I think that's happening more. I mean, not just people being interested in Ukrainian Orthodox, but like I'm hungry for something. And I think the real food is in this place and a readiness to embrace mysticism. And we have a mystical element to our faith. So spiritual hunger, positive. I do think that the socialization of this generation, and I'm using these sweeping terms. Yeah. Handfuls of people who are in the, you know, 18 to 30 age range, many of them have experienced real anxiety. I mean, when you grow up and you hear every night about another, or not every night, but regular about another school shooting, like that does something. I didn't have that experience. That anxiety over and over and over again, that has power to wire someone with some real concern and some cloud hanging over. So rise in anxiety, some socialization, like how to have a good conversation. First, you ask a good question, then you listen. Then you say something about what they just said. Like these things that seem really elementary to former generations. Well, this is a generation that had a different way of interacting with one another in junior high and high school. They had a pandemic in the middle of it. That affects how you learn about social engagement. And so having sort of the adulting conversations or, you know, had a generation of helicopter parents. Now Gen Z, they're they're said to have drone parents, like even more oversight. So those things affect. Are they flat sides? I don't know. Maybe. It's also a generation that has a great sense of mental health boundaries. And, you know, our generation, or you know, we may be in different generations here, but like our generations may be like, oh, this is the most medicated, mentally unstable. Well, no, they're just super aware. This is their superpower. They've got a great sense of what's not okay, and being not okay with that not okay, and saying so. Like a sensitivity to boundaries, mental health boundaries, interest in spiritual things, struggles with anxiety, struggles with social skills.

unknown 35:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Those are some of the things I see.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Is there anything that we didn't get to in our conversation, Scott? I have one more question for you to end our time, but I wanted to give you the floor just in case there was anything we didn't get to uh that you really wanted to discuss. Maybe one thing is watch the movie Conclave.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

I really feel like wrestling with the ills of the church and seeing them play out and seeing some altruism and some really good folk around narcissists and bad folk. This plays out in a Catholic context with cardinals electing the next pope, but I think it's present in most Christian spaces. And I think the other thing, Dan, is it's really about the pursuit of intimacy with the Creator in the company of others. I've lost sight of that from time to time, thinking, oh, it's about the mission of the church, it's about, you know, accomplishing these objectives. And I feel like I've been chided in the most helpful way by Jesus and saying, even my mission is rubbish in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing and loving and having a relationship. Pursue me, not my mission. And doing it in comp in the company of others, I think is how we're wired.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

So, I mean, you've put a really great piece of content out there. In the next, let's say a decade from now, if we really took, you know, kind of getting over our spiritual disappointment seriously as a big C church, what would you hope that in a decade the church would look like?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

I hope in my only context is the American church. I've traveled a lot. Maybe that's why I know what I don't know. I don't know as much the global church, though that's been my job for 40 years. I know the American church. If we got healthier, I think we would be kinder to one another. So the Christian hatred, you know, people won't use that term of other Christians, oh, I disagree with. No, you hate them. Like that's pretty toxic. And other people can feel it. The other thing that the church, particularly in America, and maybe not exclusively, really struggles with arrogance. We believe that we are subject matter experts on all things, spiritual, social, and political, and we have all the hills to die on. Like, no, that's an issue to go to war over verbally or whatever. That's not healthy. I think that breaks the heart of Jesus, who gave us really one command as a body. A new command I give to you. Love one another. That kind of affection for one another across differences, that kind of generosity to the world who may or may not follow Jesus or believe what we say. If we had a little more grace for one another in the world, I think we'd be in a better place in 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Well, Scott, thank you so much for being on the Upwards podcast. The book is Bad Religion, Good News, an honest guide for the spiritually disappointed. It's a great read. Uh, we're excited to have you in a couple weeks here at Upper House to have a conversation about the book and have a book of lunch here locally for you. So thank you for all your years of service at InterVarsity in our community here in Madison. We're super grateful for that. Yeah, thanks for having me, Dan. Peace.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Daniel's conversation with Scott Bessendecker reminds us that disappointment with the church doesn't have to be the end of faith. By honestly acknowledging the failures of Christian communities while remaining committed to self-examination, forgiveness, and authentic community, we may discover a deeper and more resilient faith on the other side of disappointment. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with someone who would benefit from the conversation. Find more episodes and our other podcast offerings at slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.