“I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people in Altadena who have lost our homes to the fire and are trying to pick up the pieces and find out what to do next.” (Megan Katerjian, from the episode)

What is it like to lose your house in a fire?

The Eaton Fire in Los Angeles County started on January 7, 2025, and within twenty-four hours had burned over fourteen thousand acres of Altadena, California, and surrounding areas. Thousands of people have lost their homes (some without any guarantee of home insurance or FEMA aid), thousands of schools have closed, and life in this beautiful city has been completely transformed.

Today’s guest, Megan Katerjian, went from helping local homeless families find housing to experiencing homelessness herself, when her family’s northwest Altadena home burned down in the Eaton Fire. She is CEO of Door of Hope and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Megan to discuss her experience and perspective. Megan courageously and vulnerably opens up about the pain of losing a meaningful space of care and comfort, and shares about the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual realities of what this traumatic experience has been like.

Together they discuss:

• Megan’s story of losing her house in the Eaton Fire
• The insights Megan gained about homelessness through experiencing her own version of it
• Megan’s work and ministry as CEO of Door of Hope, a Christian non-profit, based in Pasadena, serving Los Angeles County. From their website: “One of the only homeless providers that can shelter any kind of family together in their own private unit, including single moms, single dads, and two-parent families together with their children.”
• The meaning of a social safety network
• The effect of trauma on decision-making
• What approach to self-care and restoration she is pursuing
• The social and economic impact of homelessness
• The difference between financial and relational poverty
• And how you can help those affected by the Eaton Fire

If you are unhoused for any reason, including having lost your home in the Los Angeles fires, visit DoorofHope.us for reliable information and practical resources. For additional information, visit Fuller Seminary’s Wind and Fire Resources page.

Additional links:

Summary of Eaton Fire

City of Pasadena Eaton Fire Updates

About Megan Katerjian

Rev. Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope, and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry, working for non-profits in Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Africa, as well as churches in California.

Megan holds two master’s degrees from Fuller Seminary, a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, and a certificate in non-profit management.

Megan lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fires in east Los Angeles County in January 2025.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Door of Hope: Empowering families facing homelessness to transform their lives
• Megan Katerjian shares about what the past month has been like after losing her house in the Altadena fires
• Temporary housing to transitional housing
• “I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people in Altadena who have lost our homes to the fire and are trying to pick up the pieces and find out what to do next.”
• Integrating Jesus and justice
• How Door of Hope works with Pasadena homeless
• The power-control cycle single mothers face
• A mother’s story of going from brokenness and despair to hope and empowerment
• Altadena’s fires
• Megan Katerjian tells her story of finding and then losing her home in northwest Altadena
• “It’s about the meaning of the home rather than the physical space.”
• Trauma-informed design: colors and arrangements bring the feelings of safety and comfort
• “I don’t think I’ve ever sobbed that hard in my life.”
• Losing a life-giving environment of comfort and peace
• How to pray for the devastation of the fires in Southern California
• Self-care
• “I can’t watch the news right now. … The fire coverage is really triggering.”
• Taking time off to grieve and pick up the pieces
• Being with people who went through the same experience
• Leaving town for respite in Goleta, California
• “I talked to God in very distracted conversations.”
• “The sun rises and sets every day, and God is present every day. And just that steadiness and that calm and that reminder was really, really important for me.”
• Expanding empathy and understanding of homelessness
• The irony of learning about homeless
• The impact of trauma-brain on the ability to make important decisions; slower processing
• “What the world might interpret as laziness or lack of motivation could just be the impact of trauma.”
• The “Social Service Shuffle”: good leads, bad leads, time wasted, etc.
• FEMA and “a sea of cots”
• “If I had nothing in my bank account and didn’t have a friend who had set up a GoFundMe page, I would be panicking right now.”
• “Homelessness is not just about financial poverty, it’s about relational poverty.”
• The benefits of a thick social safety network
• Walking through Asheville, North Carolina, after the hurricane flood
• Impact on the housing market for renting and buying homes
• Will any landlords be willing to take a Section 8 voucher?
• Multi-generation black homeowner families who have lived in Altadena for many years after redlining moved them out of Pasadena
• “The economics look a little different.”
• Three families in the same home—”what does their social safety network look like?”
• Door of Hope pivoting to create  the Eaton Fire Housing Assistance Program
• Working with FEMA and home insurance
• Working with the church to respond to the crisis and provide a family of care, support, and love
• Self-care as restorative rather than selfish
• A call to action: Please act and help those impacted by the fires in Southern California

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

A special episode for the inauguration of Donald Trump’s second term, as the forty-seventh president of the United States. Whether you’re filled with hope and joy, or anxiety and fearfulness, how can we pursue a common citizenship that is grounded in faith and moral sensitivity, focused on justice and love, and rightfully patriotic?

Today, Mark welcomes friends Pete Wehner (columnist, The Atlantic, and Fellow, Trinity Forum), Anne Snyder (editor-in-chief, Comment magazine), and David Goatley (president, Fuller Seminary).

Together they discuss:

The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term in office;

The meaning of patriotism in an unfolding, rambunctious democratic experiment;

Repentance, repair, and understanding;

How to keep a moral-ethical grounding in political life;

Balancing open curiosity and genuine concern;

What rejuvenates and renews us during anxious political times (exploring beauty in nature and art);

Learning disagreement in a post-civility era;

Peacemaking instead of polarization;

Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal;

And how to pray for Donald Trump as he enters his next term in office.

About Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports, and friendships.

Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which the New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, **which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit comment.org for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

About David Goatley

David Emmanuel Goatley is president of Fuller Seminary. Prior to his appointment in January 2023, he served as the associate dean for academic and vocational formation, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Research Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry, and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for nine years (1986–1995).

In addition to his articles, essays, and book chapters, Goatley is the author of Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion and A Divine Assignment: The Missiology of Wendell Clay Somerville, as well as the editor of Black Religion, Black Theology: Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts. His current research focuses on flourishing in ministry and thriving congregations, most recently working on projects funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Duke Endowment.

Show Notes

• What each guest values and honours about America, expressing commitment and affection as citizens
• “Any presidential inauguration is weight bearing.”
• Pete Wehner: a first-generation American
• From ideals to reality about the history of America
• “ I’m the kind of patriot who is committed to the country being the best that it can be.”
• “Rambunctious unfolding-still … democratic experiment.”
• The scene for Inauguration Day 2021
• Strength and vitality of American life
• What are your commitments and hopes for the next four years?
• “Some of my siblings for whom their angst is new, and I’m happy to say, welcome to my world.”
• The posture of believers and people of good will to “keep a moral ethical grounding”
• “Justice, especially for the dispossessed, the aliens, the powerless”
• Pulled in different directions
• Eugene Peterson formulation: “There’s the Jesus truth, and the Jesus way.”
• Called to be different things at different moments
• Name reality as best we can
• “Is it possible to be both prophetic and the force of unity at the same time?”
• Will there be a World War III in the next decade?
• Creative ways to develop resilience
• “A great chastening”
• “I feel both curious and really concerned.”
• When patience runs out
• “ I'm socially and humanly curious—and strangely a little hopeful for new frames of how we are with one another—but I am steeling myself for turbulence and violence at a time when it feels like we can't afford those things.”
• The shifting global stage
• The need for deep compassion and energy that doesn’t stop listening or caring
• What rejuvenates and renews you in this moment?
• Being outside, natural beauty, artistic beauty, and staying actively in community with people who will stay reflective.
• Turning off the news
• National Gallery of Art’s Impressionist exhibit (link)
• “For most of us, our day-to-day lives, even in the political realm, are not really driven primarily by what's happening with the presidency.”
• Jon Batiste
• “Healthy, substantive arguments that are not ad hominem”
• Are we living in the post-civility era?
• Peacemaking instead of polarization
• Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal
• “Something has gone deeply wrong in the white evangelical world”
• “ I'm completely fine with deconstruction as long as there’s reconstruction.”
• “There’s a great line that the ancient Greeks used, Bobby Kennedy used that in a speech of his in the late ‘60s, where he said that the task was to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
• Prayers for Donald Trump
• That the Spirit of God would overshadow Donald Trump and political leaders
• That “Not our will but Thy will be done.”
• For moral sensitivity
• ”I'll just be candid here. I have a sense that he's a, he is a person with a lot of brokenness in his life.”
• “We’re part of a story, and there’s an author. … But those chapters aren’t the whole story.”
• A notorious chapter in American history
•  

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“The Good News is still good news.”

“I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”

(Walter Kim, from this episode)

How does evangelicalism relate to the dominant political powers of our world?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes Walter Kim to Conversing. As the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and host of the Difficult Conversations podcast, Walter holds on to deep Christian orthodoxy alongside the most vigorous and necessary intellectual, personal, ethical, and theological reflections, offering a vision of leadership and spiritual-moral imagination to bolster the future of evangelicalism.

Together they discuss:

Christianity, pluralism, and polarization

The fraught meaning of “evangelicalism” in America and what it means to be a “good news person” in this political moment

The human impulse to wield power and the temptation of evangelicals to join with empire

The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding and the necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism

How evangelicals are retelling and recasting the story of the gospel in today’s political climate

About Walter Kim

Walter Kim serves as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a role he’s held since January of 2020. Previously, he was the pastor of Boston's historic Park Street Church, and has served other churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He received a BA from Northwestern University, an MDiv from Regent College, and a PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He hosts the Difficult Conversations podcast.

Show Notes

• Long-term faithfulness to the gospel in the maelstrom of challenges and difficulties
• ”My experience has been one of extremes. … There is the lived reality of polarization, at which I find often myself right in the centre.”
• ”Sober self-assessment … one should always, as a Christian, be self-suspicious: Am I compromising? … Am I responding in faith or out of fear?”
• “Purveyor of the good news in action.”
• “Our labour in Christ is not in vain … ultimately Christ remains Lord and Savior of all.”
• The word “evangelical” and the state of US evangelicalism
• What does it mean to be a “good news person”?
• World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly
• Laussane and a gathering of five thousand evangelicals from around the world
• “It’s not a branding issue. It’s a substance issue.”
• “Global church with a polycentric distribution of leadership and resources”
• “Whatever our maelstrom and vortex may be in America, it pales in comparison to what brothers and sisters are experiencing throughout the world.”
• “I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”
• Religious community vs “the other”
• How does the church relate to dominant powers?
• Image of God is not just an abstract idea
• “The democratization of the image of God to all people—not just to the rulers—was a profoundly prophetic statement.”
• Tower of Babel: A story not just about hubris, but about hoarding power and the ways political imperialism can use religion for its own purposes.
• “This is not a uniquely American problem. … This is a problem of humanity.”
• Evangelicals who have given themselves to empire
• Marring God’s image and remaking God in our own image
• Pluralism and Christianity
• The capacity for self-reflection
• The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding, and the rise of Christian nationalism
• “What’s different now is the pluralism.”
• The necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism
• Ingredient 1: The belief that America was founded as a Christian nation
• Ingredient 2: A sense or feeling of loss
• Ingredient 3: The answer to regaining what you lost is political
• Descriptive versus prescriptive: Was America founded as a Christian nation?
• Hope in the loving and just reign of God
• No national church: “living under their own vine and fig tree.”
• The reason we don’t privilege Christianity in the Constitution
• Lilly Endowment project
• “The Good News is still good news.”
• “Retelling and recasting the story … as a message of hope.”
• “ This initiative is an opportunity for us to tell the beautiful story of Jesus, while not neglecting the ways that story has been marred.”
• Luke 4: Jesus’s first public speech. “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed. And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“An attentive, earnest ear.”

“We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”

“Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

(Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton offers a principle he learned from his parents: enter the room listening. He reflects on the purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point; the character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”; what listening does for the speaker; some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment; and the observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this advice.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• How Mark’s parents taught him from an early age to “enter the room listening.”
• Start by paying attention to others.
• The gift of listening and hospitality
• What listening does for the speaker
• “It gave the speaker permission to go on.”
• “We’re in a crisis of conversation in our culture.”
• “An attentive, earnest ear.”
• The purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point
• The character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”
• “ When I became a Christian, I was stunned by the fact that Jesus had so much to say and that I had so little clue about what it was that He was describing.”
• “ I was called to be a listening disciple, not a speaking disciple.”
• “We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”
• “What I'm bringing into the room only occasionally should be the thing of first importance. Instead, I think what I realized was that the thing of first importance was what was already happening in the room and that I was getting to join and find a place in it.”
• Some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment
• The observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of entering the room listening
• Emotional attunement and “reading the room”
• Enhanced experience of the speaker and their words
• “And  I was just aware that I was at a feast. And that I would want to share in all that the room had to offer.”
• “I learned a lot about my parents by watching how my parents would listen to their guests and how they would treat their guests.”
• “Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.