Unfolding Short Stories: “We began to… say the Nicene Creed.” Glenn Packiam
The Unfolding
Northwestern Media
4.9 • 809 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“We began to… say the Nicene Creed.”
That decision changed everything for pastor and researcher Glenn Packiam, when a 2006 scandal rocked his Colorado Springs church. In this Unfolding Short Story, the Barna Group scholar and host of The Resilient Pastor podcast recounts how repeating the Creed each week knit a fractured congregation back together, and how its ancient words still steady believers facing today’s confusion and corruption.
Want to dig deeper? Check out Glenn’s new book What’s a Christian, Anyway?: Finding Our Way in an Age of Confusion and Corruption.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We began to, as a church, say the Nicene Creed regularly and then teach through it through a |
| 0:06.0 | sermon series. |
| 0:07.6 | God's story? |
| 0:09.4 | Your life. |
| 0:12.4 | Unfolding short stories. |
| 0:16.5 | What's a Christian anyway? |
| 0:20.0 | Glenn Packiam asks the question in his new book with that title. |
| 0:24.1 | Glenn was on staff at a famous church in Colorado Springs when a 2006 scandal found his senior pastor onto national news. |
| 0:33.4 | Determined to keep faith from collapsing with the fallout of a fallen leader, |
| 0:38.3 | Glenn turned his congregation onto a much stronger foundation, the Nicene Creed. |
| 0:44.0 | It's a unifying declaration of trust in a perfect God. |
| 0:49.3 | So I've served in pastoral ministry in the local church for 25 years, |
| 0:54.0 | and, you know, it seems |
| 0:55.9 | like I've had dozens and dozens of conversations with people who are wrestling with faith |
| 1:00.0 | on the edge of walking away from faith or on the other side, the other side of the margins |
| 1:04.7 | or borderlands of faith, if you will, people who are curious and looking in, but skeptical. |
| 1:11.1 | I think that really describes the age that we're living in right now. |
| 1:14.4 | Kind of this curious skepticism. |
| 1:16.7 | When I was first entering pastoral ministry, in a post-9-11 world, |
| 1:20.3 | Christianity or religion seemed to be really dangerous. |
| 1:23.2 | The idea was the more devoted you became, the more dangerous you were to society. |
| 1:26.8 | There's opportunity, but then there's also this skepticism and distrust. |
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