Weightier Worship - Biola University

Biolans Up Close
Exploring apologetics, soul care and the ‘White Woods’
When people ask author Jonalyn
Fincher (M.A. ’03) what she and her
husband, Dale (M.A. ’02), hope to
achieve with their nonprofit, Soulation, she says,
“We help people have healthy souls.” She
recently shared with Biola Magazine what this
looks like in her life and ministry.
“Soulation” is a word my husband
Dale and I made up for our nonprofit,
combining the words “soul” and “formation” or
“celebration” or “foundation.” Soulation began
in the spring of 2005 when Dale resigned from
working with Ravi Zacharias to partner with me as
a husband-wife apologetics team. Now we have a
strong handful of volunteers and freelancers who
hold down the fort when we travel nationally to
speak, helping us offer imaginative apologetic
articles, blogs, podcasts, online chat sessions and
hundreds of free resources at soulation.org to
help build up better souls.
A sub-topic and my favorite area
is “women and spirituality.”
For instance, I like to compare Jesus
and other religious founders on their
treatment of women. I like to
speak on what makes women
unique image bearers of God.
My first book, Ruby Slippers:
How the Soul of a Woman
Brings Her Home, covers the
way a woman’s soul is unique,
different from a man’s and different from
other women. It’s an alternative to the
Eldredges’ Captivating and includes gender
studies, spiritual formation and my own
“coming of age” story. Coffee Shop Conversations:
Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk is our most
recent book project. Dale and I co-wrote this
one to help Christians who might be
discouraged about talking about Jesus, especially
in this post-Christian culture.
Writing changed my views about
men and women because I came in contact
with theologians, Scripture, women, churches
and studies that didn’t fit my cherished beliefs. I
couldn’t understand how God could have made
men and women equally valuable and still
F A L L ’ 1 0
include verses like 1 Tim. 2:11–15 in his Word. I
wrote to reconcile my intuition (yes, women are
significant and as valuable as men) with my love
for God and Scripture.
I came to see God as a hero for
women. I learned that Jesus championed
females more than I would have dared expected.
And I came to find the Holy Spirit unrelenting in
asking me to keep telling the truth as I found it,
even if neither side (complementarian or
egalitarian) wanted to claim me.
For the past three years we’ve made
our home in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
The Rocky Mountains offer so many differences
we never experienced in Los Angeles, from
golden aspen in the fall to sliding down icy
Tom Fluharty
driveways. A typical day starts with me taking our
son, Finn, for my morning “on duty” time while
Dale hits as many blog comments, e-mails and
articles he can. I get the afternoons to catch up. I
try to blog at least once a month about women and
spirituality (www.jonalynfincher.com) and we
travel regularly. So when you don’t find us tucked
away in our tiny cabin in the woods, we’re on the
road speaking together.
Finn just turned five months old.
Having a baby helped me feel more included in
all those stereotypically mom things (play dates,
a birth story, nursing, etc.), but Finn also
surprised me by not being as invasive, turnyour-world-upside-down
as most people told
me a baby would be. I still work for Soulation; I
still partner on the stage with Dale; we still do
radio interviews and writing together. We’re
both just part time for now.
Our dream is to build a Soulation
retreat center in the 100-acre aspen forest
where we live, which we call the White
Woods. We want to build a group of cabins
for the gathering of people from all over
the country, a dozen at a time, to taste rich
food and rich beauty in community and discuss
ways to build (not simply engage) lasting
human culture.
Online, we just launched a
Soulation forum to cover hundreds of
excellent questions we personally
respond to on e-mail into a more
publicly beneficial and accessible place
(soulation.org/forum). We hope that the new
thread “My Faith Hurdle” (also accessible
through myfaithhurdle.com) will bring more
people — believers and non-believers — the
safety to discuss their real questions and doubts.
I’m getting ready to launch a new blog
with a psychologist friend of mine, focusing
exclusively on female friendships. I’ve also been
working on a book on women and friendship for
the last several years, how girlfriends can be our
best friends (and worst enemies). I finished the
proposal last December.
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