Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

Creating Communities of Sacred Curiosity with Mike Hardie

·1 hr 4 min·4 clips

At 12, Mike Hardy watched a healing story collapse after his father told him, "what you saw probably wasn't what you thought happened."

Will opens by naming the crisscrossed path that brought him and Mike together. Mike speaks plainly about a faith crisis he did not set out to have. He traces part of that rupture back to purity culture and says it left him convinced that those old assumptions were neither true nor good. The conversation does not hurry past that pain. It stays there long enough to let the loss land. From there, it turns toward what a different kind of church might look like. Mike keeps returning to honesty, kindness, and a willingness to keep learning. He says there is no evidence for eternal conscious torment in the Bible, and he treats that not as a provocation but as part of a wider commitment to truth. Will and Mike then work through the question of decolonizing church structures. The tone stays reflective rather than combative. Mike names the pain of rejection and marginalization in church spaces. He says those experiences keep him grounded and humble. That humility shapes the way he speaks about leadership. This is not about building a personal platform. It is about making space for other people. He describes the new community around him as messy, complicated, and alive, and calls it Oasis. He sounds energized by the stories people bring. Their journeys become part of his own spiritual movement. Will notes the tension between gatekeepers of spiritual truth and the people who are actually in front of us, longing for belonging. That tension gives the episode its shape. The discussion treats community as something that has to be built slowly. It also treats spiritual misfitting as a real location, not a failure. The episode closes with a sense that there is still a long way to go. What matters is keeping the path open, keeping honest, and keeping kind.

As heard by us

A thoughtful conversation about rebuilding community after church hurt, with no easy answers and a steady sense of hope.

The episode follows a conversation about building faith without old gatekeepers, with care for people who have been hurt by purity culture and church control.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a gentler path through faith after being burned by it.

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