She was sitting beside me at the table as the monthly women’s dinner was finishing, arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes burning.
At first I thought she was furious with me.
And in a way, she was.
After listening for a while she turned to me, literally shaking. Not with fear – with anger and grief tangled together.
“I have attended church my entire life,” she said, her voice cracking, “why have I never heard any of this before?”
That moment is why Barefoot Evangelist exists.
Because somewhere along the way, Christianity became more about control than compassion, more about rules than relationship, more about who’s in and who’s out than about who is hurting and who needs love.
Too many people were handed a Gospel that was small, fearful, and brittle. A Gospel that told them they were broken before it told them they were beloved. A Gospel that made them shrink instead of stand up.
But that isn’t the faith Jesus lived or taught.
Jesus didn’t build an institution.
He built a movement.
He told stories instead of issuing policies.
He healed people the system had discarded.
He broke religious rules when love required it.
He sat at tables with the people religion didn’t trust.
And when we read Scripture in its historical and cultural context, we discover that the early Christian movement was radical, disruptive, compassionate, and deeply grounded in grace.
Barefoot Evangelist exists to make that faith visible again.
This space is about peeling back centuries of fear-based theology and rediscovering the wild, generous, challenging heart of the Gospel. It’s about giving people permission to ask the questions they were told were dangerous. It’s about offering a Christianity that doesn’t require you to check your brain, your grief, or your integrity at the door.
It’s also about telling better stories.
Stories that sound like real life.
Stories that hold doubt and faith in the same hands.
Stories that make room for people who have been hurt, confused, or quietly pushed out.
Barefoot Evangelist is faith with its shoes off.
It’s theology that’s not afraid of the dirt.
It’s Christianity that looks more like Jesus and less like a rulebook.
If you’ve ever sat in a pew feeling angry, confused, or betrayed… or just plain bored…
If you’ve ever wondered why the church didn’t sound like the Jesus you met in the Gospels…
If you’re still brave enough to hope there’s more…
You’re why this exists.
The Barefoot Evangelist 