I’m Lisa Stephenson, and this is my story.

My husband Dave and I are longtime Chase Oakers. I was a churchgoer my whole life. I was there on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. I taught Sunday school. I just never really connected what those stories meant to and for me, other than just a common theme for the activities in which I was participating.

And it wasn’t until after I was married and I was in my 30s that I was attending a Christian conference that I heard a presenter speak in a way that I was like, “Oh my gosh, I finally get it. I understand what this means for me personally.” And it was at that point that I went from being a churchgoer to being a Christ follower.

After that point I was all in. Following Jesus in the context of the local church was the center of my life.

So enter the year 2020.

It was a mess. We had the global pandemic. We had economic disparities that were unspeakable. We had racial unrest. The things that were the worst things for me was how my fellow Christ followers were addressing it. There was divisiveness, there was vitriol, there was anything but loving sacrifice. I didn’t understand it. It threw me completely off-balance. At that point, I was done. Jesus certainly hadn’t let me down, but I felt like his followers had.

Subconsciously, I started to believe that because I was feeling this way, that God must be disappointed in me. I separated myself from him in shame. Not only was I not going to church, now I was no longer reading my Bible or listening to worship music or praying or doing any of those things.

I became more and more isolated, not even—not just from the church, but also from my faith, even to the point where there was a time that I contemplated taking my own life.

Rebranding Christianity

One day, I was scrolling through social media. I was still following Jeff Jones on social media and still following Chase Oaks. And I heard him talking about coming back from his sabbatical and learned about the book that he had written entitled Rebranding Christianity. I literally read it from cover to cover in the first sitting. It was balm to my soul. It talked about all of the things that I had been feeling for the last three years that I thought were wrong.

So the more I reread the book and of course the Scripture that supports the book and listen to the podcast, I realized how incredibly simple it is.

It is love God and love your neighbor, the end. Period. Nothing else.

And that really got me excited about the church again, and I came back to church.

I think through this whole process that it would not be an exaggeration to say that Rebranding Christianity and all that it stands for has literally saved my life.