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Wholehearted WORSHIP Rhythms in a Dark Season with Douglas McKelvey (Every Moment Holy) · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Simply Wholehearted Podcast with Amy Wiggs, your wholehearted life and business coach.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: You should know this podcast will inspire you to grow in self-awareness, be passionate about your faith, and get clear on your calling.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you are new here, then welcome to a community of multi-passionate women who love to go deep on topics like faith, Enneagram, relationships, leadership, and community.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation might provide the step you need to make the change you desire.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get started.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, as I reflect on 2024, well, the best way I could sum it up is that 2024 was a year that brought me face to face with a dark night of the soul.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that phrase alone is pretty hefty.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that I'll totally unpack it right now and right here.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, I think we're going to unpack it over the next several weeks and maybe even the next several months.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in summary, there were just many days that I just wasn't sure that I could engage and give my full self to my daily life as I had before.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a low hum of depression, but it was more about a lack of vision, a lack of clarity about what was ahead.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't have as much enthusiasm and my typical seven Vim and vigor that I typically have.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to unpack, and I'm still unpacking it personally.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll share it as I go along.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But basically the thing that kept me anchored in those darker days were my rhythms of getting in the word, of worship, and writing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the tools and the resources that I use, because we need some help and support, we need what I call crutches oftentimes, especially in those dark nights of the soul or those really tough seasons laced with grief and loss.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: One of those tools was the three-volume series Every Moment Holy.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, if you haven't heard me talk about them before, I am so excited to introduce you to this amazing resource today.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Every Moment Holy volumes gave me language and words just to voice my prayer, my feelings, my thoughts, my hopes, when I didn't have any that I could speak for myself.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It also helped remind me of God's truth when I was feeling untethered or unanchored or just was kind of floating in this liminal space, waiting for God to present his word and his presence to me.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when one of my favorite publicists reached out and asked if I would want to interview Douglas McKelvey, who is the author of the Every Moment Holy series, I was like, yes, please.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And while I thought we would maybe fit this conversation into our worship week, it ended up being really applicable for both worship and those writing rhythms.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the way the conversation unfolded fits so beautifully in both of these weeks.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to make it a two-part series here in our January whole-hearted rhythms series.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Douglas is a gifted storyteller, and I think you'll appreciate how he unpacks his journey not only in the writing of these books, but also in his journey of faith and his overall process of doing what the Lord has called him to do and asked him and gifted him in.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I know you'll love the Every Moment Holy series and this conversation.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I pray that it can help reorient your heart and anchor you even in the storms of life.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're experiencing sunny days and maybe 2025 is going to be full of them.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is wonderful.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And even then, may you engage in these wholehearted rhythms to keep you floating along in God's grace, in the presence of God, and the fullness of what he wants to offer you.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've ever felt overwhelmed by darkness or you've needed a way to connect with God in the small moments, I believe you're going to love this conversation and the every moment holy series.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was so excited.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know Janna Munksinger because we share a mutual friend, Sarah Hagerty.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she actually even did a podcast episode years ago.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while I reach out to her and just say, hey, I'm planning, you know, next quarter for podcasting.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she sent your name along with someone else.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this is awesome because I can't tell you how many times I've talked about the Every Moment Holy books to my community and of people about them as books.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always thought, well, that'd be so cool to talk to someone about this because every time I read a prayer, I'm like, how do people write these prayers?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like this just feels beyond me to be able to tap into that sort of gifting.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just excited to get to hear more about the journey of that and your walk and how the Lord has gifted you uniquely.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm happy to talk about all of that with you.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm curious to know, and just nosing at that necessarily my friends would know this.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: How does it fit in with the rabbit room and that organization and group and then this vein of every moment holy?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can you explain the connection and tell me a little bit more about that?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: There are connections on a number of different levels.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Rabbit Room is a nonprofit organization that was started, I don't know, maybe 15 or 17 years ago by um Andrew Peterson and his brother Pete Peterson.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an organization that sits at that intersection of Christianity and creativity.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it's not an organization that was ever supposed to be just for people who were professional songwriters or artists or something like that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: But really, the best way I've come up with to describe it over the probably 13 years since I was kind of introduced to it and began to dabble in being a part of things that Rabbit Room was doing.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: The best description that I've come up with is it is a group of people who share a love of a certain type of redemptive storytelling in all its forms.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you have people from all sorts of walks of life and vocations, but most of them have been impacted by certain types of books and songs and films and various sorts of mediums and genres, in particular authors.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of love for Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers and a number of other folks within the Rabbit Room community, but those really are the lowest common denominator ties that sort of bind all of that together.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And over the years, the Rabbit Room grew from just being um a website where Andrew and Pete had invited their friends who were authors, songwriters, recording artists, pastors, and visual artists, and so forth, invited them to contribute on a regular basis.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there would be almost daily a new post, some essay that someone had written.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this community of thousands of people kind of began to form around that, and then out of that grew the Hutchmoot Conference, which is an annual conference in the Nashville area in Franklin, Tennessee, every year now.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have had Hutchmoot UK conferences several times now.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there were two, I think, before the COVID years and everything got shut down.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Originally, it was being held in Oxford the last two summers.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um it has been in the middle of England, just a little south of where the peak district starts, I think, but at a conference center there.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are just all sorts of other things that the Rabbit Room does.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Rabbit Room Press began somewhere in there just as a small, you know, one-person operation.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Pete Peterson was the only person initially doing everything there.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea was, you know, there are books that need to exist, but that a major publisher isn't going to pick up because you know it might not have that large a potential audience.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now that has grown into, I would say there are 10 at least.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's an in-house publicist and um social media marketing specialist and and on and on.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's become this very vibrant, exciting thing.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was to Rabbit Room that I initially pitched the idea for the every moment holy book for volume one, and they immediately said yes to that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, they said yes, but we don't have the kind of money to you know to do this the way we would want to.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: So give us a year to figure out how we could get the money together, you know, to print a book that would be as aesthetically beautiful and nice as what they ended up doing.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the a more recent new facet of Rabbit Room is Rabbit Room Theater.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the I think the first production that was done through Rabbit Room Theater was The Hiding Place.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they also did a film adaptation, kind of a hybrid between a stage play and a film that showed in theaters uh nationally and and internationally.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, it's just continued to be a very organic growth with the Rabbit Room organization.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of it just because of collaborations that naturally come out of friendships that develop amongst people who have met each other, you know, through various rabbit room sorts of connections.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the shorter, quicker overview.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's great.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I just was curious because uh really one thing leads to another.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're not far from the rabbit room and all the offerings and there, you know, going down that rabbit hole, pun intended.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if once you find every moment holy and vice versa.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just wondered what that connection was.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you allude to a lot of this as birth out of relationship, which is so important in my community and for me, and it's really played into my story again and again, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It just comes out of relationship when it's the Lord instead of forcing something and it happens in this night, you know, a little bit more life-giving rhythm, I think, when we lean into those and allow that to build.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for giving us a little bit of that insight on that connection because um Andrew Peterson's work is phenomenal and uh clearly God's grace has been on this extension of his ministry and just so neat that he could really share his wealth of experience and uh giftings with a huge community who's obviously the ripple effect is outstanding.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what's really neat to get to watch.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I'm sure he's considered as well.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you're clearly good to be one of that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot I want to talk about today.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise our conversations are not ours and hours.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I do bring them to a healthy close.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm really excited about is every year, now, this is the eighth year in January, we do the wholehearted rhythms.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we just reassessed what the whole-hearted rhythms are, the foundations, if you will, the pillars of the community.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we go back to those conversations and we invite others to speak into what those rhythms look like for them and invite us to consider what they could look like for us right now in this year ahead.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are again.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's January.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We do a focus on word and worship and write.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then what's kind of cool about you is you can speak about all three.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think you could give us a lot of helpful inside information.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I I really see the prayers as worship and a regular part of my rhythm of worship every day.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and I have the privilege of having all three volumes in the travel size, and they are beautiful and aesthetic as you alluded to, but it it helps orient my heart in a posture of worship.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to kind of give that this is where we're going, but we want to talk about Enneagram and I want to talk about just how did you write these and where did that come from?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And did you always write prayers?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about that process for you of this bent and really a beautiful gift.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I did not always write prayers.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Most of my life I dabbled at least in writing poetry in various forms.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And when I moved to Nashville in my mid-20s, within a couple of years, doors had opened for me in the songwriting world.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I spent the next 12 to 15 years working as a lyricist, where songwriting was my primary vocation.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's 12 to 15, because there was some there was a transition period of several years as I was moving away from that and into focusing on some other sorts of writing.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: But those things in hindsight, once I was in the middle of writing volume one of every moment, holy there was a moment when I realized, oh, those paths that I went down that had a lot more promise at the beginning of them than the way they played out, because it was right when the industry was changing, and you know, just a few years into doing that and thinking it would be a good way to provide for my growing family at the time, and that it could eventually be the retirement for my wife and I.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Then, you know, there was this new MP3 technology, and people quit buying music, they were just you know downloading it without paying for it, and suddenly I could no longer hope to make a living from that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So along that journey, there was a lot of so what was that all about?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I spent those years doing that, and then the industry turned upside down and I couldn't make a living at it anymore.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, flash forward to eight years ago, when I was working on volume one of Every Moment Holy, and just you know, had this sense of purpose and passion about what I was doing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized how I couldn't have written the kinds of prayers I was writing if I had not spent all those years crafting or honing the craft of lyric writing for songs, that sense of the rhythm and the feel of words and of learning to condense a maximum amount of meaning in a minimum amount of space in such a way that that a particular image could unfold in the reader's mind very quickly, but in a way that would you know give an expanded understanding of a concept.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not one to think that in the span of our mortal lives that we're going to be able to find a one-to-one equivalency for everything that happened and that it's all gonna make sense on this side of the new creation.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: But there are moments when we do get those glimpses, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: When we do get some partial confirmation that, okay, our creator knows the tapestry that he's weaving, this is intentional, and my path might feel meandering to me, and there might be some parts that are confusing and disappointing and feel pointless, but in the light of eternity, once we you know step beyond this veil and see clearly, none of those things will be wasted.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they will all be revealed in in that new light.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I I got just a little taste of that in my own life, in my own story as I was working on the every moment holy prayers.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take us on another rabbit trail because I think you speak to something here, and in fact, the prayer, the liturgy around death of a dream, and that's in volume one.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have read it many times, and I have experienced the death of a couple dreams.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would also allude to coupled with that sometimes is the dark night of the soul.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why I love liturgy uh at large.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I if I had my dithers, I would go Anglican um just because of some of the tradition there and the angering elements of our faith.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I say all of that is that you speak about the death of a dream.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And for you, two things.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of your prayers probably come are birthed out of personal experience.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe even though this is the new year and there's shiny hope, there might also be some necessary endings that have taken place, or there are some deaths, if you will, of what we thought was going to happen.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so you've spoken to some hope that God does still use it, but any other words of consolation, if you will, or encouragement as we maybe have to wrestle through that in our own lives.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've been thinking recently, and I I've been rereading the gospels, and I think it was just this morning that I was reading in Matthew where a teacher of the law comes to Jesus and says, Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus has this somewhat enigmatic response of saying, you know, birds of the air have their nests and foxes have their holes, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what Jesus was communicating there was it's not about following me to someplace, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because the guy came to him and said, I will follow you wherever you go.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is redirecting him and saying, No, it's not about a particular destination.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're you might be hoping that that where I'm taking you is to the overthrow of the Romans and kicking them out of Israel and you know, establishing, you know, in short order this new kingdom of Israel, but it's not about your agendas and your hopes.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Either you follow me, and I am both the journey and the destination, and it's not inevitably going to end up going where you're hoping.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So either you follow me or you don't, and you don't attach any conditions to it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the gospels as well, I'm I'm just struck more and more by how much the disciples, even those closest to Jesus, just missed it, just didn't get it because they did have their agendas, right?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is so plainly over and over trying to tell them what's he what he's about, what's going to happen.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm I'm going to be handed over to the authorities, I'm gonna be beaten and crucified and die and.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, three days later I'll be raised from the dead.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter takes him aside and rebukes him.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that's because that's not what Peter was signing up for when he followed Jesus, right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that happens to us too.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: That Jesus calls us, says, follow me, and we begin following.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that following is so much a process of coming to terms with how Jesus does not fit our agendas.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't fit any of our agendas for our own lives, for the ways that we want them to play out.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he has something more eternal and truer and better.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you know, in the midst of our discouragements, that's something to come back to, is that our call is to follow Jesus regardless of our perception of the immediate outcomes.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And our hearts, they are going to be purified in a crucible that involves the removing of some of those impurities, of those, which doesn't mean something that's necessarily sinful or wrong in and of itself.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just we can't attach that to following Jesus.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: We can't ultimately put those conditions on God.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: That it seems like the life of a disciple is a life that should constantly be involving the peeling back of additional layers of those things that we are pursuing that are not the ultimate thing and that ultimately are our encumbrances, even though we don't see them that way at the time.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think if I reached a point where I wasn't being challenged in that way by the word of God and you know the things that Jesus says and does in the gospels, I would think I've probably missed something and taken a wrong turn along the way because I've lived with this long enough to expect that okay, this is part of the process.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is what's supposed to be happening, this is what it means to be conformed little by little, more and more into the image of Christ.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: It does involve these little deaths, these little taking up of our cross every day, and saying, Well, here's what I want, but not my will be done.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, your will be done, God.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we resist at first, and you know, sometimes we're like the son in the parable where the the father asked his two sons to go labor in the field that day, and and one of them said, sure thing, dad, and then didn't go.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the other one said, No, I've got better stuff to do.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, he felt some conviction afterward, and even though he had said no, he went and did what his father had asked, and then you know, Jesus said, Which of these two sons obeyed their father or did his will, or however he phrased it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that a lot.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's part of the process, too, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is that there's something in front of me that I have a sense of conviction that this is what I should be doing.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: This would be good stewardship of the things that have been entrusted to me.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: But for a multitude of reasons, my initial response is uh I don't I don't want to do that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, but I I want to have uh the kind of heart that is open to that ongoing convicting work of God's spirit, that even though my first inclination is often to resist, um I want to have a heart that's tender enough that ultimately my response is okay.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, sorry for my first response.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, more than that I want comfort or just ease or distraction or whatever it might be, that that my initial preference would be more than that.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I want to live a life of faithful obedience, step by step, little by little.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I've showed up here right now.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's so good.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: While we're going to finish this conversation with Douglas McKelvey next week, I love the first part of this and how it reminds me of the beauty of reorienting our hearts daily to the presence of God.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, worship is more than singing on a Sunday morning, as we've amply discussed here.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is really the act of surrender and anchoring yourself in the truth of who God is, even as you face different challenges.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this episode was encouraging to you, consider diving into every moment holy for yourself.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's three volumes.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find prayers for all seasons, including the dark and uncertain ones.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know of someone who needs a reminder of God's faithfulness, I'd love for you to share this conversation with them.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's keep leaning into these rhythms of wholehearted worship together.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, we'll be back as we continue on this wholehearted rhythm series, and we'll be talking more about the rhythm of riding with Douglas McKelvey.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, friend, we are all broken, we are all blowing it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the brave one who did something about it.