Tag Archives: podcast

Introducing: The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast!

Posted on December 3, 2025 by | Leave a comment

This has been in the works for a while and I am so excited to launch with a little teaser episode today, with a full episode coming next week! You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and more!

Coming soon: interviews with Becky Buck (co-founder of our blog and FB page so many moons ago!), Jenna Dunn (Bible study author at Ezer Bible), Amber Jones (author of Sacred), Scott Harris (missionary), and Dr. Roy Ciampa. You can comment here or email me suggestions for future episodes at ruthperry@thebeautifulkingdombuilders.com.

Transcript:

Welcome to The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast. I’m your host, Rev. Ruth Perry. This is a space for redemptive dialogue on gender, justice, abuse, and healing within the Christian faith.

This short teaser episode is here to introduce the podcast and give you a glimpse of what’s coming in the weeks, and maybe years, ahead.

More than ten years ago, my friend Becky Buck and I created The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Facebook page as a place to share what we were learning— and unlearning—about God’s dream for women and girls in His Church. Over time, that community grew and expanded into conversations on racism, abuse, Christian Nationalism, and many other issues that affect the Church in America.

I believe those conversations matter deeply. But posting articles and memes has always felt incomplete. I’ve longed for a space where we can explore these topics with more depth, nuance, and compassion. That’s what this podcast will do, I hope.

I’ll be talking with friends, mentors, authors, theologians, pastors, and activists—people who have been influential in shaping my faith and helping me to obey Jesus’ greatest commands, to love God with all my heart, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself.

There are so many beautiful expressions of Christianity—shining examples of what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully. And there are also expressions that have, frankly, become bad news for many of our neighbors. The American Church has hemorrhaged 40 million people in the last 25 years, the fallout of her culture wars. Let’s talk to some of those folks, too.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that loving our neighbors well starts with listening to them well. And so I invite you to listen in as I host these conversations.

God is love and God’s grace and power to save are bigger and better than we’ve ever imagined. God’s kingdom is beautiful, and God is moving in powerful ways to heal and redeem the world. It is our deepest purpose as his followers to partner with God in that redeeming work.

I’ve already recorded several episodes and I have a hundred more in mind. These first conversations have been life-giving, challenging, and so much fun for me. I cannot wait to share them with you.

Please subscribe, share with your friends, find The Beautiful Kingdom Builders on all the socials, and join me as we imagine and build more beautiful expressions of Christianity—expressions that reflect God’s heart and God’s will, for earth as in heaven.

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Thanks for listening and following along! Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and subscribe to emails here on the blog if you would like to read transcripts and episode notes!

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Audrey Assad and Sarah Bessey on Finding Their Voices

Posted on January 12, 2017 by | Leave a comment

audrey-assadAudrey Assad – Witness

Although women are often excluded from teaching roles in complementarian churches that believe in “Biblical gender roles,” leading worship is one area often deemed appropriate and the hymns and songs written by women are included in complementarian services.  Interestingly, corporate worship through song is a time of powerful transformation and spiritual development.  On the RCA website, they say,

“Through congregational singing Christian faith is not only expressed; to a very real degree it is formed. Since people tend to remember the theology they sing more than the theology that is preached, a congregation’s repertoire of hymnody is often of critical importance in shaping the faith of its people.” 

And in a video entitled Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing? from the Desiring God 2008 National Conference, complementarian Bob Kauflin says (citing egalitarian scholar Fee),

“New Testament scholar Gordon Fee once said, ‘Show me a church’s songs and I’ll show you their theology.’ And it’s true. Or as Mark Noll puts it, ‘We are what we sing’ (Noll, ‘We Are What We Sing,’ Christianity Today, July 12, 1999, 37). Words should be the first thing we consider when we think about what songs to sing when we gather as the body of Christ.”

It makes me happy that through songwriting, women have been powerfully influential theologians even in patriarchal churches.

With that in mind, I enjoyed watching Audrey Assad‘s testimony yesterday about finding her voice and calling from God to public ministry as a singer/songwriter despite being nurtured and formed within a strongly patriarchal tradition, the Plymouth Brethern Christian Church.  I love Assad’s songs and heavenly singing, and I really love this talk:

And now, visit her website, buy her music, and listen to her top tracks, leting her beautiful lyrics soak in and draw you closer to Jesus.

Sarah Bessey – Learning You Have a Voice

I also listened to The Road Back to You: Looking at life through the lens of the Enneagram podcast’s most recent episode yesterday, featuring Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile’s interview with Sarah Bessey in which she talked about finding her voice as an Enneagram 9: The Peacemaker.  I am also a 9 and found her self-description and experiences to be helpful.

You can listen here.

Bessey’s voice is one I always tune into to learn from.  She’s taught me so much about God’s love and vision for women through her blog and books, Jesus Feminist and Out of Sorts.  Or something that is fun is scrolling through her quotes on Good Reads. 🙂

Thanks for visiting The Beautiful Kingdom Warriors!  God can use your voice in powerful ways too.  Don’t be afraid to explore your gifts and calling!

God bless. 🙂

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