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How do you preach in a way that is mindful to those who have experienced trauma?
The Distillery podcast explores what motivates the work of Christian scholars and why it matters for theology and ministry.
Dayle Rounds:
What does it look like to preach in a way that is mindful of those who have experienced trauma? In this episode, you will hear from Joni Sancken an assistant professor of homiletics at United Theological Seminary. She talks with Sushama Austin-Connor about how the church can become a place that welcomes the expression of trauma and where people can experience love, care, and healing.
You’re listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
All right, so I wanted to start first of all, with what seems like a very interesting series itself, the artistry of preaching series. Can you just give us some context for the series and what it's about?
Joni Sancken:
It is extremely eclectic. I mean, I think my sense of understanding. So when I proposed the book, I had no idea it was going to be part of this series. They came back to me and said, Oh, we would like it to be part of this series. And I've heard other authors had a similar experience where they had just sort of proposed it as a book. And then they're like, Oh, we can put it in this series. So I think essentially what it is is it's elements kind of around the sermon that may be operating in the preaching, but it's not like kind of the nuts and bolts when you think about sermon design. So it's a, it's the other things that help to really, make sermons live and breathe and grow. So there've been, there've been ones on having to do with, poetry. There've been ones that have to do with images. There've been ones that have to do with the sermon. It's kind of an educational function. Mine definitely tips over more toward kind of that pastoral care zone a bit, how you use your language, how you shape your language. Like some of those are some of the topics in the series. One of the things that was kind of a gift with the series is that my, my doctoral supervisor, Paul Scott Wilson, was the editor of the series. And so it was kind of an amazing experience. It had been just a little over 10 years since I had finished my Ph.D. and to have him editing my work again, like it was just, it was a gift, like to be able to work with him in a different space in my life and kind of like a more, I don't know, mature scholar space and to have him as a, such a trusted conversation partner as part of that, was just a super gift. And I know not everybody is going to have that experience. So I, I loved that. It really, it made it special to be a part of the series.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
That's really nice. So in saying that, what were some things that you in 10 years' time span have learned about yourself as a preacher?
Joni Sancken :
I mean, I think just as a teacher and a preacher, you move from space to space. I think, the students that I work with, the pastors that I work with have changed me. Life changes. You, you mellow out some, like you just kind of get more confident in your own skin as a scholar. I think for me, my early work was on the cross and resurrection, like that's what my dissertation on that was my first book was on. And you can see it still is really an important part of this book. Like those same theological impulses are there. Like I have continuity in who I am, but I think engaging with, survivors of trauma and trauma itself, that has it's changed me in a profound way. And I, I wouldn't, I would love for the traumatic events that happened to our family to not have happened. I mean that I would never want that, but I also welcome the strange gift of perspective that it has given me. I feel like I am much more comfortable with human experience and with human responses to life experience. I don't feel like I have to be, the Orthodoxy police. I don't feel like I have to defend God in quite some of the same ways that I think I felt like I had to do as a younger scholar. And I think I feel much more free in terms of what, what can be done in the sermon. I don't feel like I have to like argue for saving the sermon or argue for like carving out what my particular angle is on it. And that I can sort of just be in that space a bit more, if that makes sense.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
It makes total sense. And you mentioned family trauma and you start the book off talking about, family trauma and your sister-in-law, would you share some more about the specific story and what led you to even involve your family and the story in the book?
Joni Sancken:
Yes, Absolutely. I had, I had already been thinking about preaching and trauma before our family had a traumatic event happen. My students, I, we have a lot of these intensive preaching classes at United where I teach. And for a while it felt like something horrible happened like days before the students would show up. So there was the Orlando nightclub shooting and that happened. And then the next day the students showed up and they were just reeling from this experience or the Mother Bethel, AME shooting like that happened. And then like the next, just days later, they were in Ohio, like at the seminary and the sermons that they'd been working on these weeks before coming no longer felt like they were the sermons that they wanted to preach. So they were having to search for words at the last minute, they were struggling with how to speak into traumatic experience and with processing their own trauma. So I had already had that as something that I was working on, I was shopping around a book proposal, and then my own sister-in-law died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. She didn't have any other health issues. She was a young mom in her thirties, very, very young children. And, I felt our family experienced some of the things that I had been reading about with trauma. Just the sense of disconnection sense of isolation, that a sense of some people pulling away from you almost if whatever terrible thing happened to you, that it might be catching somehow, which was a really painful experience. And so we got to see what it was like firsthand. How does the church relate to someone when something unspeakable has happened in your life? And I think for me, I felt very strongly that the spirit, like I didn't, when something traumatic happens to you, like you want to be able to do something like you, you feel so powerless and regaining agency is such a part of that. And I just remember such a profound sense of the Spirit saying well, this is something you can do. And immediately after that, I got a book contract and they were really generous with how they, gave me space and time to work on it. I got a sabbatical from my school to work on it and just a lot of support to pursue the process. And so for me, working on the book was, has definitely been part of my processing of the experience. I don't see it as much in the pages, but I remember there were times when I would be writing and I would just be like crying as I was writing, but it doesn't, it doesn't really come through in the book. Like when I read it now, I'm not like, Oh yeah, like, it's not like tears are dripping out of this page. But it was definitely part of my own experience with it and getting my family's permission to, to say, can I share our story here? And I feel like it really connects with, especially my mother and father-in-law with how they have, journeyed toward healing. I feel like they had, especially my father-in-law had a very difficult time in terms of squaring his faith and his relationship with God with what happened, because it just felt so cruel, for Twila to just be ripped away from our lives and from her family. And that was, there was such a need for her to still be alive, but she wasn't. And so I think for his own journey, too have moved to a place where I felt like they now are able to kind of give back, they reach out to other families that experienced trauma. Like they're part of broader networks that, that work on that. And I feel like their faith is strong in a way that, allows them to, has allowed them to move forward into other things that are very difficult. I mean, a couple of years ago, my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. It's like a slow-growing cancer. And I was so concerned. I thought, Oh, is this going to completely unmoor their faith? When I feel like they've just kind of gotten re-rooted, but it's not like God has seen them through everything as what their posture is now. If God saw us through this, like God can see us through this. And they have such a wonderful faith community. My in-laws are Mennonite and they were Amish like one generation back. Like my father-in-law grew up Amish and that community is so thick. I don't feel like there's like a good, a good corollary for it. And the outside world, like it's such a thick community. And so we're so grateful that they have had that community around them, both my brother-in-law and, and my, all my in-laws really have had that community.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah, and you are a Mennonite-
Joni Sancken:
I am an ordained Mennonite pastor in Mennonite, church USA. I'm kind of a, a Mennonite a little bit in exile these days. My husband is a PCUSA pastor and I'm teaching at a United Methodist seminary. And so I work with, with all the ecumenical folk but yes, I'm still proud Mennonite.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
I'm going to get a little bit into the book now, too. So I'm actually, you know, I was thinking as I was reading and thinking about some of your book, I also a couple of months ago reading, in my grandmother's hands by Resmaa Menakem, have you read it to some of the, I saw some parallels or things that made me think about your book in similar ways about kind of racial healing and racial trauma and, so, and even some of the ways in which your book is extremely practical, it's very theological, but then there's also practical ways in ways to practice this. I found it that matched some of the, the, some of his work. And so I, I was really interested in your language around soul wounds and what that, what that is.
Joni Sancken:
Yeah. I had not read his book when I wrote mine, but I have read it now. I've used it in my classes and I love his book actually.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
I do too. Yeah, I do too.
Joni Sancken:
And it's a bigger part of my, my next project is incorporating more of that. But yeah, when I read his book, I saw he also used some of that soul injury type language. With dovetails. I mean, for me, that language arose from conversations with editors actually early on in the process. I think there was a sense that it would be less freighted for some readers than using the word trauma. And it also might free me up a little bit, to not have that kind of technical term, even though trauma is very much a part of the, of the book. It would allow people who wouldn't identify as being traumatized, but would recognize themselves as having this kind of lingering pain that they're from experiences that have happened in their lives. So I think it, it broadens it. And I, I think I have found that it does resonate more with some pastors when I work with them, that they're able to kind of acknowledge a soul wound where they would never say I, I had a traumatic injury, like they will use that kind of technical language. One of the things that I do like about it is it gets at that kind of hidden nature of those lingering permeating wounds, that can last after, a experience of trauma in your life so that hiddenness like, people don't see it. It's not a wound that's on your arm, it's buried inside you. One of the challenges I have feel with the language, although this hasn't really been a problem with the book, but one of my colleagues had pointed out that I go to a lot of effort to show that trauma is like, it's so comprehensive, right? It’s your relationships, it's your spirituality, it's physical, it's mental, it's emotional and soul - I think sometimes people hear soul and they think only spirit, or they think only like your inner self and that it's not also affecting kind of your social being. But, I think at its best, it does communicate that, that permeability.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah. And, and for me, it also opens up because I do think of soul is like sort of inner and spiritual but also kind of opens it up for like all of your traumas. Like all of them, all of them are involved in like that. It's kind of like soul care to all of it is involved in, in that kind of care. Have you found that pastors, you said that they, it might be easier to talk about soul wounds rather than trauma, but what, what other ways have pastors resonated with that language? I mean, and are they preaching and saying soul wounds are, are what's the language? How is the language being used?
Joni Sancken:
They're not, they're not saying soul wounds necessarily in their, in their sermons. I've had the, the gift. Now a couple of times of being able to work with pastors around this material and then having them generate sermons that are trauma aware and have grown out of their engagement with the material. And I don't think any of them necessarily use that term soul wound, but, they do talk about the, the pain that people experience in their lives in frank and honest ways. And I think that's a real mark of, of trauma aware preaching to be able to do that, to name the situation and also to be, to be timely when you need to be, I mean, we have come through sadly now a couple of weeks again, where we've had mass shootings. And I mean, this is a situation where often like pastors are ready to go with a sermon. And especially these days where some churches are recording their sermons days ahead, to have to decide, okay, now that that no longer fits, I need to redo what I was planning to do in light of the event that just unfolded, the, the shootings that we've had more recently have happened earlier in the week. But, I, in recent memory, I can think of some that happened not so early, in Dayton, Ohio, we had a mass shooting a couple of summers ago and that happened on a Saturday night. And I think people woke up Sunday morning and it was on their phone that this had happened in their own city. And so to try to decide, what to do in that, in that moment, I sadly have a pastor friend. I know some pastors have like a set funeral sermon that they kind of have available, that they can adapt if, a congregant passes away. He has a mass shooting sermon. This pastor does, and he just updates it. So that it’s ready to go. And I'm like, that's wise, but it's so sad that you have that.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
It’s so sad, yeah. It's so sad. I mean, and at this point we were having them, it was almost daily for about a week and a half. If they were like five to 10 or more people, but nearly daily. So there's a lot, there's a lot happening
Joni Sancken:
And from working with pastors, I realized too that it's awfully freighted. How you talk about these things. We had like a continuing ed event, right after that shooting that happened in, in Dayton. And some of the pastors talked about how, like they wanted to talk about what had happened because it is scary. And it is like it happened in an area where a lot of people go. It was like a very kind of a downtown, an area that had been built up and restored, tons of restaurants, shopping area where people go that the city was kind of proud of. And that's where the shooting had happened. And, but they were afraid to talk about it or they got pushback from their congregation because the issue of gun control is also a political issue and that inflames people. So you can't talk about gun violence as a traumatic injury without also turning off some of your listeners instantly because of the politics involved. So it's really hard. I mean, preachers have to be multitasking in their mind is they think about how to address this, like how to address the wound that that's happened in such a way that people can hear and receive it as care and not like anger or inflame half of your congregation instantly. It's really, it's challenging times.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
It is very challenging. One word that always, kind of sticks with me both because I try to figure out what it's actually about. So trigger. So when I think of trauma and then I think of like the, the naming trigger and then I can't really like, well, how come we're not actually naming things for what they are, or if people are triggered and we're not talking about it, then we're having trauma and not naming it. So I wonder, yeah. What do you think?
Joni Sancken:
That's been one of the most controversial elements as I've dealt with it later, in this book, I, I'm mostly a guest preacher these days. And so for me actually using a trigger warning has been helpful, because I am somewhat trauma aware. Obviously I'm not a trauma expert. I've had a little training and done a lot of reading. For me, if there was anything in the sermon that I think could potentially harm someone. And when I use the word trigger, I'm thinking of it more in its clinical sense. That's for someone who is a survivor of trauma, that it could initiate kind of a, a physical chain reaction where they are again, experiencing physical sensations that are connected to that traumatic event. And that it may kind of set them back on their own, healing journey, inadvertently in that church safe space where they shouldn't, it's hard enough for them to be there because triggers are all around. If there's anything I can do to, to alert them and to give them agency like, then I'd say what it is like this sermon mentions racial violence or whatever the trigger is, then they can decide, do I want to stay or do I want to go? And it gives them that power. So for me, like, it's been a useful tool. Now. I have had some conversation with fellow friends in the academy of homiletics that when preaching about certain things. It should be beneficial. It, you shouldn't just use a trigger warning to give people an out if they feel uncomfortable. One of the things that Resmaa Menaem talks about is the clean pain and the dirty pain. And I think that's something that is really beneficial to think of here, but, but you still have to get people to buy in. Right. For example, I, a couple years ago, I heard a sermon where the preacher spoke extremely graphically about racialized violence. She was describing lynching in extremely visceral ways and it was physically nauseating to hear it, but I'm, I'm a white person and like she should not have to modify her pain, in order to make me feel comfortable. And, and I should feel uncomfortable, right? Like as part of that, that working through now, there may be some who would hear that sermon who had experienced some kind of physical violence where the language that was used could have triggered a traumatic response in them, but it's so hard to know kind of where all your listeners are on that journey. So the trigger warning has been, yeah, it's something that comes up almost every time. I, I talk about this, but my students have experimented with it. And for the most part, it has, has worked, has worked well for them. I mean, you never know who's going to be in your, in your church on, on a Sunday morning. And if you say what the trigger is about, it's about racialized violence, then your listener has a chance. Am I going to buy in, am I going to stick through this? Maybe I need to experience this clean pain, but if it's going to be something that really sets them back on a healing journey, then they can choose to step out. If you work ahead, you can even let people know, well, in advance, if you're going to be talking about something that might be triggering for people. So, I mean, if you know that there's something that might trigger someone who has a history of sexual assault, you can let them know ahead of time, or you can reach out to them personally, if they've shared that experience with you as their pastor, you can say, this may come up on Sunday, or this is in the text on Sunday. I just wanted to let you know, so that you can take care of yourself and make a decision around, what would be most beneficial for you? Because I don't think God doesn't want us to harm our listeners as we're seeking to proclaim the gospel.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
And I, I wanted to talk about words that heal. So some more about words that heal. How do you think pastors can do that kind of work while we're online? How can we do that? Well, like how can we have these experiences well, online?
Joni Sancken:
I feel like in some ways in this kind of online worship world, that the sermon has become even more important than it was before, because before we had our singing, the hymns, the congregational singing, the praise music, whatever we had in worship, we had sacraments that we were doing together in person. We had like the bodies next to us on the pews. We had like the environment that we were in that worship space. Maybe there were visuals, maybe there was other art forms that were part of that. Now what we have is this kind of two-dimensional experience. The sermon is probably the least changed element in preaching. It still is like a one-person offering a teaching on scripture, a sharing of the gospel, toward listeners, but the idea of the listener as much larger, number of pastors I've talked to are kind of, they realized that now anyone could be listening to their sermon. And so they're being a little bit more careful and intentional that they're not just preaching to this little group of folk that they would be used to seeing in front of them, that they could be preaching to anyone. Another thing that I have heard some pastors be concerned about is that people are not always staying for the whole time. Like they can track it on their, on their metrics later that people can tune out. Like if they didn't like the sermon that they were like checked out, like gave it a few minutes and then left, that's something that would be awkward to do if people were there and in the worship service. So I think that it puts a little more pressure on the preacher, but it also is a, is a greater opportunity. And I think, in terms of the, the tools that you can use, I would really encourage pastors. And I have, I did this with a group of pastors at the beginning of the pandemic to employ even more, opportunities for communication so that there are other ways besides just the sermon. So I've known some pastors have added a mid-week reflection, whether that's something that they record or whether it's something that is written that then that is, kind of additional to the sermon. And that listeners kind of collapsed the two and maybe on Sunday, you're attending to a biblical text and it's kind of more of a traditional sermon, but then your mid-week reflection may be just kind of a frank discussion of like what's happening in your community right now. Or wanting to really connect to a specific issue that you're facing. And it allows you to be a little bit more vulnerable. And for some they've made that midweek, just members of the church, like that's not something that is posted just only goes either on a private channel or it goes via email, something like that. So that's a little bit more protected and more directed because you know, what the needs are in your own community. So I think encouraging more communication rather than less, and really encouraging preachers to just to talk about what's going on in our world to take it as an opportunity, rather than, than something that is threatening or scary as an opportunity to speak God's presence into those events. I mean, the, our theology it's part of our Christian identity is all wrapped in our theological language and who Christ is and who God is for us. This is how we make sense of our world processing is so important to trauma, like trying to make sense of it. I mean, a number of, researchers put that as a step, like a necessary step that you have to like, make sense of what happened. And for Christians, we have like rich language that can help us make sense. I mean, the fact that we have we've just come through good Friday and Easter, we have a God
Sushama Austin-Connor:
that's right. That's right.
Joni Sancken:
Who has a traumatic death that, that happens in the life of God? Like Jesus dies a traumatic death. And that is part of, of who God is going forward. And we know this because the resurrected Christ still had those wounds. Like that's not the completeness of who Jesus is, but nor is it erased. Like it's still there. It's part of the life of God. And that allows us to see like ongoing experiences of suffering are, are part of, of Christ's crucifixion allows us to see that, kind of wrapped up in, in who our God is. So I think, I mean, I think it's vital that, that preachers continue, continue to use that, that kind of language.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Absolutely. And I think what you were saying earlier about, how now in this space, the sermon, I mean, I know at the churches, at the church I go to and then I've been able to visit a lot of churches now that we're online. It's I feel like, at least at a couple of churches and my church, the sermon is it's always central, but it really is central. Now. It's like where there's less music. You know, when it's communion Sunday, you have the community element when you have maybe one hymn, but really it's the sermon. So we actually do a hymn, we pray then do a, hymn then you go right into the sermon. So whereas it may have been a half-hour or so before the sermon now it's like within 15 minutes, the sermon has started.
Joni Sancken:
Yeah. Yeah. It's the main event. I know churches have had to be creative churches that are used to having, kind of more of a dialogical experience of the sermon. Have had to be creative about that either with chat going on along the side, or with having one of my students created like a talk-back hour after worship were people could come back and they could offer their comments, their questions, their feedback, like their support, whatever they wanted to offer after the sermon was done.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
That’s great. Early in the text, you, you make a distinction between healing and curing. I want to hear more about that and how you think it should influence trauma-informed preaching.
Joni Sancken:
So this was, a distinction between healing and curing that was lifted up to me by one of my colleagues at the seminary where I teach. And, he had talked about how curing is this kind of miraculous, mysterious, instantaneous, resolution of whatever the, the trouble is. And that we do experience this in our world, but that most of the time, this is something that's eschatological. We don't experience it this side of the realm of God, but that people take that idea of curing and they apply it when they hear the word healing and that he said, instead that our healing, we need to have a bigger sense of imagination for what healing is that healing is really rooted in the gifts of salvation and sanctification. And that these are offered to, to everyone. Like it's not something that only some people get and that it's so mysterious. Like this is something that God generously pours out upon us. And when we experience it, any taste of it, it's really a fruit of the resurrection that we get to taste now and healing can be social. It can be personal, it can be bodily, it can be relational, it can be structural, it can be ecological, like all these facets to how healing can unfold. And so when we're preaching, we need to not be afraid to name healing, and to look for healing and to lift up these kinds of evidence of healing in our world, because we're afraid of that, of that sense of curing. I mean, I think, I've experienced in a lot of churches that I've been a part of a reticence on the part of pastors to even ask for healing sometimes because they're afraid that, we'll be disappointed and they want to kind of protect God's reputation is what it feels like. Like they don't want people to somehow think that God isn't out there, that God didn't receive the prayer because we didn't experience the cure that was asked for. But we can always ask for healing. And I think part of what that asking does, and we can even ask that God would make us more aware of, of healing. God, bring healing to the situation and make us aware of the healing that you are bringing, to this situation and to our world. Because I, I really do think that one of the ways that sin and brokenness function in our world is to blind us to the ways that God is active and part of our work as preachers. And I think especially important as trauma-informed preachers is to be looking for those places where God is bringing healing and hope and is active in our world because hope it's not so much of a feeling as it is an action and a muscle that we can grow. Like it's a practice that you have to do in order to experience the benefits from it. So hope is something that you can practice. You can build your hope muscle, and if your congregation is lacking in hope, you can build their hope muscles by, providing them, evidence of where we see God in our world and examples and stories and lifting those things up for them to see it. And then they begin to also see evidence of healing in their own lives. It really is life-changing as a preacher for you to have that kind of posture toward the world, knowing that you want to lift it up in your sermon and it's, it's contagious. I think it spreads. It's a good virus that can spread your congregation.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
That's right. That's right. I like the flexing the hope muscle. Yeah. I liked that image cause I like that it. It's something I don't know if I've thought of practicing hope. Yep. Practicing the ability to be hopeful. I really liked that.
Joni Sancken:
For example, if you think about healing like structural healing. So we have a lot of spaces in our world that are not accessible to people who have various forms of disability. One of the gifts of the pandemic actually has been that church is suddenly super accessible to some of those folks who might not have been able to get into the building and in a good way. I mean, something that brings healing is to adapt our buildings so that everyone can come into them, like putting an elevator in a building that didn't have one is healing, building a ramp up to a platform. So that a person who is in a wheelchair can help lead worship like that is healing. Like that's a form of structural healing. I mean, that's something that we might not always think of as, a fruit of the resurrection, but, but you can name it as such.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah. And as you're speaking about healing and then also curing, I'm thinking of like wherein the moment of trying to heal and to, to talk about healing where we make room for grief. And I've been thinking about like grief this year, like kind of communal grief, the grief of this year, the grief for church leaders in, you know, not being able to touch and, you know, pass the peace with congregants for congregations, not to be able to, it feels like there's some communal grief happening as well.
Joni Sancken:
It has to happen. Yeah. The book that I'm working on now actually is looking at communal trauma, and processing that. And one of the practices that I'm looking at in that book is the practice of lament. And I think it's, it's an extremely rich practice. It has aspects of grief, but it also has aspects of protest that are, that are enabled against it. And it's a very kind of vulnerable and living dynamic in terms of relating to a God who, who can receive this experience of lament, but every single person has experienced loss this year. Not all of our losses have been equal, which has been one of the pains of this year as well. Like some have experienced so much more loss than others, but, everyone has lost something. I mean, even like the littlest kids in your, in your church, like they didn't have preschool like their preschool was canceled or they weren't able to have their birthday party or they couldn't hug their grandparents. I mean, this is huge. Just last week, my children were able to hug my parents for the first time in more than a year. And like, I know that's huge. And it was like, it was emotional for my parents and for my kids, like it was kind of a big deal. So I mean, that's, that is a loss. And like, I mean, it continues to be a loss, like you think in my mind, wow. Like, can we make up for this year? Like humans don't live that like human life is finite a lot. Like my son just turned five a year is a lot for him. Right? So, I mean, that's huge. And everyone has to have that. I mean, I think at the 2020 graduates who didn't have like their typical graduation, they didn't have like their proms. They didn't have like, whatever else they were supposed to have. Like sports teams were canceled. Those poor kids that graduated in 2020, then they started college. A lot of them in a weird, weird environments. Like, it's horrible. How can they, you can't get that back. And we have to have a way of, of, of somehow naming that and acknowledging it. And for congregations, I mean, many have lost members, not necessarily even from COVID, but members have passed away and we haven't been able to be together or to have a funeral or to acknowledge it. Like there needs to be definitely opportunities for communal lament and it can happen in a variety of ways. It can happen visually. It can happen through song. It can happen through spoken word. Pastors can be encouraging this now. I mean, sermons can be part of it too. Like you can name that experience. I mean, even just naming, like we have all lost something. If you're feeling sad, it's really normal. Like if you're feeling like disoriented, it's really normal, like to normalize those kinds of experiences that your members are having. Because a lot of times, I think especially American culture really tries to gloss over that. Like everyone's supposed to put on their big boy or big girl pants and get on with it, right? Like you're not supposed to wallow or to sit back or to acknowledge your vulnerability or that something has been hard for you. But I think that that stuffing down, it, it catches up with you eventually cause unprocessed trauma, it doesn't go away. It just lingers. And it comes out in different ways. Some of the material, if you've read Menakem, like, I mean, he talks about how this generational passing on what we don't deal with today. Our grandchildren may be dealing with in terms of kind of mass trauma, like cultural trauma, like large experience of, of societal trauma that we've had. So we really, I think we owe it to the future to try to process these things now. And I think church ideally should be a place where we can do that, where we can be honest and vulnerable and experience love and care and healing.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
That's right. Yeah. And with the racialized trauma too, what was really amazing to me is how the idea about the science and the DNA aspect of it that you don't even have to talk about it it's in you, was quite extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, trauma in you just in who you are in your bones and your DNA
Joni Sancken:
and the physical aspects of needing to express. I mean, one of the things since this book has come out, one of the areas when I'm working with groups that I try to push on beyond what I wrote is just the need. Like it's important to focus on the sermon, but trauma really is something that lives in your body and you have to find ways to work at this physically. And so even if you're the sermon is really important to you and that's kind of the center of your, your Protestant worship, especially to provide ways for your listeners to move their bodies, whether that's having a stress ball there in the, in the Pew that they can squeeze or like inviting them to move their bodies, like as part of worship, to get out that kind of, the tension that's part of holding that, that stress-related trauma response in their, in their bodies and in their systems, and working with, with communities of color as well. One of the challenges that I have is the sense of John Henry-ism, where, some folks are, working so hard all the time to succeed in a system that's completely stacked against them and that the toll that, that takes on their body over time and they're successful, but like their body just has no way of processing the racialized trauma that they experience constantly. Like we have to find ways to work at that and to do better with it and to acknowledge it and to name it. And this is something I think of specifically working with clergy because so many of our clergy are the successful folk who are like leading at such a high level and are doing like everything in their, in their lives and in their communities and in their families. And like, and it's so much, and you think, okay, like how much can your body take? Like, how do you take care of your, of your body here? I mean, one of the best ways that preachers can be trauma aware is to be aware of their own, woundedness and their own need, in the face of trauma. I mean, pastors have had the same stressors as everyone else this year, but they don't have some, they don’t all have someone who's like caring for them or looking out for them.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like pastors, we had a few check-ins throughout the year. And I feel like pastors are holding onto to even more from what, just from exactly what you just mentioned. Like yes, you have to pastor to people who are suffering in this time, but then you are suffering and having nowhere to lay your burdens down. Yeah. So to speak, right.
Joni Sancken:
Pastors are parents with their kids doing their homework and trying to film their worship service out of their living rooms. Right. While their spouse is working.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Right. I want to make sure, cause I wanted to talk a lot about the, some of the practical aspects of the trauma-informed preaching. Can you just talk to us about what kinds of questions a trauma-informed preacher would ask? What are signs that your pastor is trauma-informed? What, how do they, how would you approach the text as a trauma informed pastor? Yeah.
Joni Sancken:
This is something that I look at quite a bit in the book and I think, part of, part of coming to the scripture with awareness of trauma is also awareness of where there is already trauma in that text. it's a, there's a book by David Carr called Holy Resilience, which is just amazing. And it looks at the traumatic origins of, Christian scripture. And he holds that, that there was a lot of ancient, sacred texts and that a lot of those texts were very kind of triumphant in their tone and that those texts have not survived. And he would say that well, in addition, obviously to kind of the sustaining activity of the spirit that we experienced through scripture, the living nature of our scripture, there's also a sense in which the fact that it deals with, traumatic experience. So, openly has, has been part of how it has survived. Like there's a sense of resilience and who God's people are that you can trace through the text. I think part of what a trauma-informed preacher brings is his awareness of how trauma may have and how it may have influenced the writing of, of the scripture itself. I mean, it was just, it was a revelation to me to learn, like, to be reminded that most of our Old Testament was written down during the exile that these experiences in texts that existed before that experiences that they had that existed orally were written down when they were at fear of, of losing themselves completely, that they were living in a, in a context where they felt under threat and much had been taken away. And so that experience, it colors some of how we see God interacting with Israel in the Old Testament. Well, and to learn that part of the processing and making sense that survivors often experience is that sense of, of blaming, that that's a big part of it. Like who, who did this, like as a stage in the processing of trauma that often there's a need to assign blame, whether that was a doctor's fault or it was my own fault. Like, and it's often as a stage, but we see that in scripture, like we see Israel blaming itself, we see Israel blaming God for things happening. for me, it was especially helpful to look at some of the crucifixion narratives in the New Testament where, Jewish writers of scripture, blame Jewish people for the death of Jesus. When we know that Rome killed Jesus, Jesus died on a Roman cross. The Jews did not kill Jesus, but they assign blame to themselves. And that perhaps that's a trauma response, a self-blame response to the trauma that they experienced and Jesus's violent death. So I mean to know all of that, to work into name that potentially in a sermon to say like, this is a trauma response, it allows people to say, okay, it happened there. I see it in my own world. Another thing I think that is really helpful in terms of looking at scripture is to look at those places that, that rub the raw places in our own world. Like where are these sense of connectedness, and woundedness that the text highlights or, bumps against that might create pain in our listeners? Like how do we work with that? How do we name that? How do we not, cause harm. I work quite a bit in the second chapter with, Genesis 22 and the near-sacrifice of Isaac. And this is, this is such a rich text. It's a text that has been used throughout Christian history to help us understand something of our atonement theology, but it's a text that a lot of pastors are afraid of because there's so much going on in it because we have a parent who without questioning is prepared to kill his child for God. It's really disturbing. It's so disturbing to acknowledge that, to name it, to look at kind of the richness of what can be done with a text like that. I think is extremely powerful. I'll never forget it. A number of years ago before I was even working on this trauma material. I had a student who had trauma in her background and she preached this text like Isaac, as a survivor in this text, she preached Abraham as not a good person. Like she cited evidence of all the places where he had failed God, had lied had harmed people. Wow. All along, I mean, she preached against the Christian tradition here basically, and then name lifted Isaac up as a survivor and it was a powerful, powerful sermon. so I mean, it's possible to do something like that when the texts like this, I think with, with trauma awareness.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah. And to kind of see it put a new lens on it, to see it in a, in a, in a very new way.
Joni Sancken:
I think, another thing, that that can be done, especially preaching from a Christian perspective. Is that putting the cross and resurrection in conversation with what we're preaching? I mean, arguably, I think that can be done every Sunday from the vantage point of every text because this event is so pivotal and it does, kind of encapsulate that sense of, of God experiencing, the worst of what it is to, to suffer as a, as a human being. because that's part of that and because the resurrection brings life to that situation allows that experience to not define who Jesus is ultimately. but doesn't erase that situation, that the complexity of that placing it in conversation with another text, can also bring that level of awareness and also allows our theology to do some of that heavy lifting for you as a preacher.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Yeah. And I'm thinking, and I'm looking at our time, which is crazy. I have two more questions, one's quick and one, well, both can be quick, but so the one is, I just, I know so much of the, of chapter three, especially, but the book talks about sexual abuse. I didn't want to not at least talk about it in, in terms of the reality of preaching about that kind of hurt where the church hurt people. So I wondered if you could just talk about that and then I'm going to end by asking you about kind of your hopes, your hopes for this type of trauma-informed preaching.
Joni Sancken:
That chapter, where I looked at, sexual abuse. Like I knew that I wanted to write about how the church has sometimes been a contributor to trauma has sometimes been a perpetrator has often actually been a perpetrator of trauma and in so many such an array of experiences, I mean, think of colonial experiences. We think of how the church has treated women, LGBTQ + folk. Like, I mean, there've been a lot of experiences of trauma at the hands of the church. I couldn't the book part of working in being part of the series was that it was like within a really specific word limit. The issue of sexual abuse was just crying out to me at that time. And so I use that as a lens, hopefully a way that congregations and pastors can work at other issues, other experiences where the church has harmed listeners. I think one of the things that came to me most with working on that chapter is just the need to, to be honest about what the Church has done and to not think that the something and that can be handled internally, that it needs to, there's a legal component of it. And that the leaders that betrayal that happens again, it doesn't go away just because that leader has been removed from power. That's something that has to be worked through with the congregation, like issues of trust, issues of brokenness. I think almost every congregation that my husband and I have been a part of has some kind of a breach of trust that has happened with a pastor sometime in their history around sexual abuse. Like every single congregation that we've been a part of has this somewhere in their past. And I think to, to not name it, to not deal with it really invalidates the experience of people who have experienced that in the church. So the church apologizing, I think is, is really key and not apologizing in a way that somehow lets the church off the hook for it like a real apology that acknowledges that pain was done. I mean, I think that's really important. And then obviously, I mean, you can, the perpetrators are also forgiven, but to realize that this side of the realm of God, that it's very hard to stand with both a perpetrator and a survivor. And so I think, one of the theological tools I used earlier in the book was this concept of Han that comes from my colleague Andrew Park. It's a, it's a Korean word and it means the sinned against. So this is, when we talk about sin, a lot of times we talk about active sin that someone is doing, but Han is sin that has done to you. Like you were a victim, like you had no say in the sin, you were the receiver of sin. And I think, especially liberation theology, traditions would say that God stands on the side of the one who has had that experience. Of course, obviously, God offers love and forgiveness to all sinners, but to the one who was on, who had Han like that's, God stands gives us specially devoted love to, to those who have had han perpetrated against them. And so I think for congregations to be aware of that and to protect survivors in their midst, is really important so that it can continue to be a safe space for them.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
What is your hope for this book? What is your hope for what it offers pastors, your hope for people who, clergy, who are going to try to do trauma-informed preaching?
Joni Sancken:
I really don't want pastors to be afraid to go there. Really central to the core of what this book was about is acknowledging. I mean, when I was in seminary and I do this with my students, if you encounter someone that has serious trauma and lingering effects, obviously they need to be under the care of a mental health professional. Like that is an absolute, like trauma is serious business and you don't want to harm someone by not having them under that care. But just because that's the case, they may have been referred to someone. They may be seeing a therapist and may be under the care of a physician, but they're still part of the body of Christ. Like there's still a member, like there's still a brother or sister and like, we need to be preaching to everyone and we need to be, empowering listeners so that we can interact with each other and ways that are helpful and healing and that are combating isolation and brokenness. And I think stigma that's so often attached to people who are survivors. So I think, looking at that person as a brother and sister first, not allowing that experience to completely define who they are. So I think what my hope is is that by reading this book, that pastors feel a little less afraid if they encounter someone who has that kind of experience because survivors are everywhere. I mean, hopefully that they're equipped, they're empowered. They have a few tools, they have some sense of, of direction, of how to not be afraid and how to preach into this as an opportunity to speak the gospel in this situation, rather than ignoring it or running away from it or denying it or whatever other kind of tools that we were using before to manage our own anxiety. So I think that's probably my biggest hope and that ultimately, maybe some people might begin to experience some sense of healing in their congregations or with their members. as a result of, of preaching into this setting, that God might, might do something through it. I mean, obviously all of us just as our sermons, we pray that God might use these words. I think it's the same for those of us who write that God might use it somehow, to do God's work.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for this time and for this book and what you had to offer to preachers and to lay leaders and to, just people interested in preaching and oratory, how we speak, how we care for one another. I really appreciate your time.
Joni Sancken:
Oh, and I've enjoyed doing this a lot. This is I'm thankful for the chance to talk about this.
Dayle Rounds:
You've been listening to The Distillery. Interviews are conducted by me, Dayle Rounds.
Sushama Austin-Connor:
And me, Sushama Austin-Connor.
Shari Oosting:
And I'm Shari Oosting.
Amar Peterman:
I'm Amar Peterman and I am in charge of production.
Dayle Rounds:
Like what you're hearing? Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or your preferred podcast app. The Distillery is a production of Princeton Theological Seminary’s Office of Continuing Education. You can find out more at thedistillery.ptsem.edu. Thanks for listening.