Northern Seminary

Um, and so at that point, I got to this place where I was like, "I literally don't know what I believe," and I was fine with that.

And so, um, but part of that journey was I didn't wanna just stop in that place, and so I actually enrolled at Northern Seminary and, um, pursued a master's degree in worship.

And that's when I started to be introduced to more, um, you know, theologies where like, oh, there's, there's ways to view justice not as retribution but as restoration.

Um, there's, there's ways to view salvation not as having to fit into a gendered hierarchy, you know, eventually, but, but liberation from the empire and the, all the embodiments of empire that, you know, we feel in our world today.

You're finishing up some cohorts there, and you're the co-founder of the Center for Embodied Faith, and co-author of the, uh, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection.

But you're also newly going to be the professor of theology starting next July at Northern Seminary.

Yes.

And you're gonna be teaching a cohort.

Uh, I've taught at a number of institutions across the United States, but I taught for six years at George Fox University, which is in Oregon, which is why I live in Oregon.

And then I was hired at Northern Seminary during the pandemic, um, and so it made sense to stay put here for me and my family.

Um, so my wife Amy is a marriage therapist.

She's also done some ministry work, but she's currently a marriage therapist.

Mm.

So that story really stayed with me, and then there's a second story that stayed with me.

I te- I teach a course at Northern Seminary.

I'm a seminary professor.

But first, just tell us briefly why you wrote this book and what you're trying to accomplish with it.

Yeah, so when I was at Northern Seminary after spending 20 years leading worship, and I was pursuing my master's degree in worship at Northern Seminary, I started noticing we had these different kinds of classes.

So some of them were church history classes, and it was really interesting because We'd all be really excited about, you know, discovering how the church grew throughout the world.

You know, this is going to be great.

Welcome to the Eden Podcast.

I'm your host, Bruce C. E. Fleming, Executive Director of the True316 Foundation, and our website is true316.com. That's true316.com. For this episode, I'm happy to bring on board Dr. Ingrid Farrow, PhD, MDiv, and she's the interim president and professor of Old Testament at Northern Seminary in the Chicago area.

Her book is Redeeming Eden, How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation, and she's co-author as well of Honest Answers, Evil in Genesis, and and co-author of The Forthcoming, As We Forgive, A Biblical Theology of Forgiveness.

And she's written a lot of other things and teaches a lot of good things.

You are right now acting president of a wonderful seminary.

Tell us a little bit about where you are.

Yeah, Northern Seminary, I have been there eight years, a little over eight years now, and it has been such a wonderful experience for me because Northern Seminary is a place that honors women in ministry, in any role in ministry.

And so about half of our seminary students are women.

Yeah.

And, um, so you've got that background with you, and if you've also got a master's degree from, uh, Northern, I think it's Northern Seminary in, in worship.

That's, I didn't even know there, there, there was such a thing.

[laughs]

It's interest- interesting how that works.

So, um, one of the things I'm trying to get my head around is that how did you realize that the theology behind evangelical worship was actually toxic? What was that process like that you finally kinda came to terms with that?

So I, as part of my deconstruction process, I ended up going to Northern Seminary-

Mm-hmm

I'm Prior to becoming a journalist, he led worship for 20 years.

Pitcock has a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary and is an at-home parent of five children and the author of Weapons of Worship, what we're going to talk about today.

He and his family live in Southern California.

Rick, welcome here to Capyard.

Yeah, it's interesting because it's important to remember that worship wasn't an invention of the 20th century.

It was actually first written about in scripture, which was written during a time of empire.

And so one of the things that was interesting was And when I was at Northern Seminary, we would have these three different kinds of classes.

We'd have these church history classes where everybody would go in all excited, thinking we're going to learn about how the Christianity spread throughout the world.

Me too.

And so unfortunately, I didn't know anything about you when I went to Northern Seminary.

Knew your husband did, though, yeah.

Yeah, and I...