Introduction!

In this introductory episode, we wanted to take some time to tell you who we are, where we've come from, and why we felt compelled to start this podcast. You'll hear a little about our backgrounds, our experiences in church, the questions that led us to reevaluate some things we once accepted without challenge, and ultimately what inspired the creation of Jaded Truth.

Our goal is simple: to have honest conversations about faith, Scripture, church culture, history, family, and the things many Christians struggle to talk about openly. We believe there are a lot of people who love God but have been hurt, confused, disappointed, or simply left with unanswered questions. If that's you, you're not alone—and this podcast is for you.

This first episode is a little different from what you'll hear going forward. We've chosen to script portions of this introduction so we can clearly communicate our story, our purpose, and our vision without forgetting important details. Future episodes will be much more conversational, with the two of us sitting down and discussing topics naturally as they come.

Whether you're strong in your faith, questioning things you've been taught, recovering from a difficult church experience, or simply looking for thoughtful biblical discussion, we hope you'll pull up a chair and join us.

Thank you for being here at the beginning. We're excited to start this journey with you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Jada Truth podcast. We're getting together so we can have little studies and do a few things. We have tried to do this many times, and this is like the 12th time we've tried to do this introduction. And uh we're trying not to be so stiff with this. Uh as we go on, we're probably going to read a little bit of script so that we don't forget anything. And so if it sounds a little uh monotone or maybe scripted, it is scripted. So this part is this is not gonna be the intention for the rest of the podcasts, but this is kind of help us out. Hopefully, we get better as we do this. Um sorry, but we're gonna do good. So, anyways, um I think us explaining who we are and why we're doing this, I think this will help kind of explain where our podcast is going, what we intend, who maybe our audience might be, and stuff like that. So I'm gonna go ahead and let Vicki go first, and then I'll go first. I'll go second. So, anyways, just bear with us as we uh learn to do this and get better. All right, Vicki.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah, so as you said, I'm Vicky. I'm a wife, I'm a mom of three, um, just weeks away from becoming a mom of four, as we get ready to welcome our last baby. And life is kind of crazy right now. And everything is full full house, full heart, full mind, everything. Um, as far as my background goes, I didn't just grow up in church. I grew up in church and ministry. My family has always been heavily involved. My dad is a preacher and a Bible college professor. So church was not just the place we went to on Sundays, it was our life. We practically lived at church. We were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Friday night prayer meetings, sometimes even more than that. You know, if we had practice, church, choir practice, band practice, whatever. Um, it was our lives were centered around church. Um, I've served in so many different areas over the years. I've nursery, youth ministry, worship ministry. I've led worship for churches and different like revival meetings, whatever. I've worn a lot of hats and spent most of my life serving in one way or another with church. And if I'm being really honest, for a long tr for a long time, church became more than something I was a part of, it became my identity. I grew up um loving God and believing what I was taught, and I just accepted things because I thought that's what faith was supposed to look like. But as I got older, I walked through some real life heart um situations like heartbreak, hard relationships, um, disappointment, church hurt, and moments that really shook me to my core. And it made me start asking a lot of questions. Not because I was walking away from God, but because I wanted to know him more. I it felt like everything was very surface level, and I wanted to know where God ended and people began, if that makes sense. That makes total sense. And I started realizing that sometimes we inherit beliefs without ever slowing down enough to ask, wait, does this actually line up with scripture? You know, is this really the heart of God? Or is this something that we've just repeated for years because that's what we've heard our whole lives? And I know I'm not the only person who has um who has set their feeling that tension. I've had a lot of people talk to me personally about this stuff. Um they love God, but they're wrestling with things, they're wanting truth, but they also want room to ask questions. And that's really why I wanted to be a part of this podcast with Michael. We want to have real conversations about things people are often scared to talk about. You know, you got marriage, family, church hurt, abuse in the church, faith, and all the messy, complicated places in between. There's so many things that either aren't addressed in the church or they're addressed ignorantly. Um, so really that's my heart in all of this. I don't want this to be a place where people feel preached at or judged. I want it to feel like we're just sitting around the table, having honest conversations, opening scripture, asking hard questions, and pursuing truth together. More than anything, I hope people listening realize that they don't have to have everything figured out because we definitely don't. No, definitely not. No, we're st we're still learning. Like he's the smartest person I know, and he's still learning stuff. I also want to say this though, that we know that some of the conversations that we're going to have may be uncomfortable. Um, we know that there may be people who disagree with us, who misunderstand us, or maybe even walk away. Um more people than are than who already have walked away. And we've already experienced some loss and some hard things because of asking questions and because of challenging things that have been taught. And that's not our goal. We don't want to cause division, we don't want to cause um bitterness or anything. We're not here to offend people, divide people, or tear anything down. Our heart is simply to pursue truth even when it's uncomfortable, and even when it costs something, and even when it challenges us too, because we're challenged every day with all of this. And we're just two people, we just we love God, we love truth, and we aren't afraid to have conversations that sometimes make people a little uncomfortable. Um, Michael and I have had so many of these conversations ourselves, and I'm really excited for people to come along with us on our journey. But I've probably talked enough for now because I'm really, really good at that. So I'll let Michael tell his story. So I'll stop.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

All right. So I guess the biggest question is why am I doing this in the first place? I was saved when I was 16 years old, and pretty quickly my faith became a major part of my life. I was involved in the FCA youth rallies, community Bible studies, Christian concerts, really anything centered around faith and learning more about Christianity. Over the years, I moved around quite a bit, and eventually I was introduced to more charismatic and Pentecostal style churches. Um coming from Baptist background, that's a little eye-opening. Uh, one of the major influences early on was New Life Bible Church in Cleveland, Tennessee, who was connected or started by Norval Hayes. Later on, after moving to Missouri, I found another church home. Uh that was also a little bit charismatic in influence. But as time went on, I started questioning certain teachings and doctrines, not because I wanted to rebel, but because I genuinely wanted to understand what was biblical and what was just tradition and what actually held up under scripture. And honestly, I didn't really feel like those questions were welcomed. So eventually, I without getting too deep into all the details right now, I walked away. Not just from that church, but from church entirely for about 12 years. Then in 2022, I met my wife, Vicky. Uh, she was very faithful to her church, and at the time I was living about an hour and a half away. So every Sunday that I could, I'd make that drive to spend time with her and go to church with her. And somewhere along the line, that interest in faith started waking up back again in me. At the time I was working on farms, spending a lot of hours alone and on tractors and equipment, so I had a lot of time to listen and think. I started listening to Bible studies, sermons, debates, and teachings from some really solid pastors and apologists. Then I started reading scripture consistently and again and again. Then more books, then deeper studies. At first, a lot of it was centered around just learning how to become a godly husband and do better for you. But over time I realized I was studying in a much broader way than that. I kept saying for years I felt like God has a purpose for all this studying, but I don't know what it is yet. Eventually it clicked. What really fascinated me was apologetics. So defending the Christian faith, understanding doctrine, answering difficult questions, studying church history, tracing where traditions and denominational beliefs come from, learning how theology developed over time. The deeper and deeper I studied, the more I realized how interconnected all of it is. Honestly, it feels endless sometimes, in a good way. Then one day my mom mentioned that I ought to do a podcast or teach some some studies publicly. I like that idea, but I also know myself pretty well. I can be very analytical and sometimes come across colder than I intend to. But then I started paying attention to how Vicky and I naturally interacted while we're doing our conversations and studies, and it hit me. She balances me. That's for sure. Where I tend to get very logical driven and analytical, she brings warmth and positive positive perspective, emotions, and completely different way of communicating. And together it just works better than either of us doing it alone. So here we are. So anyways, so the next thing I want to do is I want to explain why we chose the name jaded truth. I think the best way to do this is uh to exp well explain what the word jaded usually means. It usually has a negative meaning, it makes people think of bitterness, cynicism, uh, somebody who's just become cold towards everything. But that's not always what being jaded actually is. Sometimes people become jaded because they've seen contradictions, sometimes because they've watched people abuse authority, sometimes because they were told not to ask questions, and sometimes because they discovered parts of what they were taught just simply didn't hold up under deep study. But becoming jaded doesn't mean someone hates truth. A lot of times it means they care about truth enough to question things that make sense. And honestly, I think there are a lot of people like that right now. People who still believe in God, people still care about faith, people who still want truth, but they've become cautious, more observant, more skeptical, uh, more skeptical of manipulation, shallow answers, and personality-driven Christianity. That's really where the name jaded truth comes from. Not truth filtered through tradition, not truth filtered through denominational loyalty, not truth filtered through personalities or emotional pressure, just a genuine pursuit of faith, even if we have to work through difficult questions to get there. And maybe being a little jaded is what pushes some people to finally start searching honestly.

unknown 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

So that's what this podcast is about. Learning, questioning, studying, thinking deeply, having honest conversations, and hopefully helping people build a faith that's grounded in truth rather than just assumption or tradition. So maybe as time goes on, as we get better and better at doing this, uh the audience can interact with us more and more. We can talk about things, we can answer the hard questions, we can help them walk through some things that they may need some help with.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Um and hopefully we we can just keep growing this into something where you know, instead of people, you know, deconstructing and walking away from faith, um we can just help guide them to uh detangle all all the stuff that gets quite confusing sometimes. Absolutely. So again, welcome to the Jade Truth.