Hey, friend. Welcome to Job with Julie. I'm Julie Slattery, and thanks so much for joining me.

This podcast is an outreach of authentic intimacy and ministry dedicated to reclaiming God's design for sexuality.

Well, we are coming up on Easter this weekend, and I wonder, are you planning to go to church?

You know, I meet more and more Christians who have just given up on church.

We're too busy, too disappointed in our leaders, maybe tired of the politics, and it's just easier to watch your favorite pastor on YouTube or binge on religious podcasts.

In fact, according to a recent Pew study, Protestant churches are around 85% of tenants when compared to pre-COVID attendance levels.

I guess we've just been rethinking church, and that's particularly true of women.

Well, today I've invited Erica Anderson Sylvester to join me to talk about why this is happening, and why we need to go back to church.

Erica is a wife, a mom, and a freelance writer. She's written for major publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

She's a calmness for world magazine opinions, and a contributor to Christianity today.

But most recently, she's written a book called Reason to Return why women need the church and the church needs women.

Before you head to the coffee shop, I want to let you know that registration for our spring online book studies is open.

Now, we have online studies going through God-sectioning or marriage, rethinking sexuality, surprised by the healer, passion pursuit, grace-based recovery for women, and sex in the single girl.

These groups meet weekly on Zoom, and they're led by an authentic intimacy train leader, and include a live Q&A with the author of the book, and a lot of times that's me, so I get to meet you on Zoom.

And if you're an authentic intimacy member, you get 25% off.

Now, these groups fill up fast, so head to authenticanimacy.com to register today.

Now, here's my conversation with Erica Anderson Sylvester.

Erica, it is not easy to write a book, and usually we don't write books because we have a passing thought.

It's a topic that is burdening us, and I'm guessing that this is the case with this book that you've written Reason to Return.

Tell me about the journey that you've been on in terms of coming the conclusion that I really need to write a book about this.

Yeah, definitely. So, you know, after my first book came out about four years ago, I was doing a lot of freelance writing, and my first book related to addiction, and mental illness, and things like that.

And so I was sort of writing on these topics, and as a Christian, I'm always interested in how those things intersect with faith.

...