Behind The Mic

Show Host

James Powell

James P

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James P is a certified co-active coach, speaker, facilitator, brand & marketing strategist, and cause marketing leader.

James’ experience seamlessly blends the profit and nonprofit sectors where he has worked with mega brands like Virgin, BMW, TAXI, Nike, Playboy, Best Buy, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, SickKids, M&C Saatchi, WE, Children’s Miracle Network and many others.

James works with both brands and individuals to help them connect to their core values so that they can build outcomes that allow them to grow and thrive.  James is an expert at looking at the bigger picture and helping to design systems, structures and process that facilitate ease, flexibility and performance.

James is an avid reader, journal writer, runner, HIIT enthusiast, proud dog Dad, uncle to four nieces, three nephews and a Big Brother to a Little Brother. 

And all of the above is what James WANTS you to see. Beneath the surface it’s a very different story… a story of what happens when you teach a child that they’re not allowed to love.  

James mission moving forward is to build a community that advocates for love, mental health and spiritual health.  

James is currently building this community through spoken word and mixed media to share his story of spiritual abuse, religious trauma, sexual abuse & addiction.  

By using his voice through a variety of creative mediums his intention is to bring light to the hidden psychological, spiritual, emotional and mental abuse that continues to be inflicted on LGBTQ+ children in religious communities.

Content + Scheduling Specialist

Michael M

Michael M

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Michael M is a content, scheduling and social media specialist.  He has a passion for working with creators to help share their voices across multiple platforms.

In the first part of his career, Michael created and implemented content strategies for large global brands with a focus on fitness, lifestyle and entertainment sectors.  

After recognizing and working through some of his own trauma Michael brings a wealth of empathy and experience around trauma informed care, religious trauma and addiction recovery.

Michael is now charting a new path forward that puts self-care and self-love first, while continuing to use the many skills he mastered in the ‘agency world’.  Michael loves the nomad life where he lives to travel and brings his work and passion for storytelling along for the journey.  

Guest Interviews - Season Two

S02E17 Riley + Candace Guest Photos

Riley + Candace Quick

Episode 17

Meet the incredible mother and son team of Candace + Riley.  Candace is an elementary school educator and mother of two boys. Riley, is currently in grade 11 and he made the courageous decision to came out as a transgender man as our world started going into Covid 19 lockdown in 2020.
 
Candace and Riley share part of their journey of unconditional love, acceptance, courage, strength & hope, and how they made a decision to come out as a family in the middle of the pandemic. 
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Andrew Pledger guest photo round

Andrew Pledger

Episode 15

Andrew is an art photographer and digital creator who is using his voice to bring awareness to religious trauma and spiritual abuse.
 
As a religious trauma survivor, Andrew uses his art as a medium to express his own thoughts, ideas, and emotions. Andrew’s strong drive to make art is a way for him to express some of the dark energy, that he is recently learned, has been trapped inside of him for most of his life.
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Andrew Pledger guest photo round

Andrew Pledger

Episode 15

Andrew is an art photographer and digital creator who is using his voice to bring awareness to religious trauma and spiritual abuse.
 
As a religious trauma survivor, Andrew uses his art as a medium to express his own thoughts, ideas, and emotions. Andrew’s strong drive to make art is a way for him to express some of the dark energy, that he is recently learned, has been trapped inside of him for most of his life.
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John Emery Worship Pastor

John Emery

Episode 13

John is a former evangelical worship pastor who made the decision to walk away from his role in the church in order to search for a more inclusive and affirming path forward for himself, his family, and for all people.
 
John is a strong LGBTQ+ ally who lives with his wife and three kids in Freeport Maine where he is the founder of branding agency Emery. Emery works to help bring clarity and confidence to brands and they believe that every “good idea” deserves a great reputation. John’s overall life goal in everything that he does is to help grow fruit on other people’s trees.
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James Sholl

James Sholl

Episode 10

James is the Senior Pastor of Wellspring Worship Centre in Toronto. The vision of the congregation at Wellspring is to love their neighbours by being a church that makes a difference for Christ in their immediate community, in Toronto and in the world at large.
 
James works to help people find their mission/purpose in life by helping people move out of their comfort zones and get involved with things that can make a difference in their lives and the lives of others.
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David Laskovski

David Laskovski

Episode 8

David Laskovski joins us to help us get a little more comfortable talking about suicide.  David developed the HELP model, that provides new tools and resources to professionals in Toronto’s Emergency Medical Services to intervene and help those who may be suicidal. 

In addition to helping others, David, my partner, has also helped me to grow in a number of ways over the past couple years.  I’m excited to invite David on to share some of his kindness, wisdom, and love so that it might help others too.

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Bonnie Violet

Bonnie Violet

Episode 6

Bonnie Violet is a trans femme genderqueer spiritual drag artist and digital chaplain. YouTuber, Twitcher & Host of a queer chaplain podcast with such series as Drag & Spirituality, TranSpirit & Faith Leaders. Co-host of Splintered Grace with her conservative christian aunt & At the CCC recovery podcast. 

Bonnie Violet shares her experience of strength and hope with HIV, recovering from drugs, alcohol, and sexual assault among other things in classrooms, community centers, churches, online and pretty much anywhere they’ll let her. 

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Dr. Mike Rosebush Guest Photos

Dr. Mike Rosebush

Episode 3 & 4

Dr. Mike Rosebush who describes himself as somewhat of a gay Christian Yoda.
 
Dr. Rosebush is a former US Air Force Fighter pilot, former Focus On The Family President & VP, and former Director of Professional Counselling at Exodus (yup, the disgraced reparative therapy company) .
 
Mike shares his experiences and learnings when he came out while in the Air Force, came out while a VP at Focus On The Family, and boldly shared the truth that ‘no one ever changes their sexual orientation’ while working for Exodus.
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Guest Interviews - Season One

LGBTQ parents Dave & Lorraine Powell

Dave & Lorraine Powell

Episodes 27 & 28

Meet the Powells.  On episodes 27 & 28 I’m joined with Christian parenting experts, LGBTQ2S+ advocates, and the earthly creators of me… yup, these are the interview episodes with my Mom & Dad.

Families can be some of the most complicated relationships that we have.  Adding elements of religion and queerness can be like adding fuel to an already roaring fire.

I am so incredibly proud of the vulnerability, honesty, strength, and love that my parents brought into this healing conversation

Mark & Vic notdefining guest photo

Mark & Vic
@notdefining

Episode 25

Meet orientation advocate Mark Smith and his wife Victoria.  Mark runs an Instagram support site, called @notdefining, for anyone struggling with their orientation.  He has an expanded heart and focus on humans who may be questioning, undefined, changing, Bi+, or fluid.  

Vic and Mark put share how our human need to DEFINE takes our focus away from where our focus should actually be.

Mark and Vic formed and defined their relationship around honesty.  

Honesty, vulnerability, connection, and love – these are what we need if we want to define relationships.

 

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Marc-Henri Sandoz Paradella

Marc-Henri Sandoz Paradella

Episode 23

Author Marc-Henri, grew up in Europe and was the son of a charismatic Pentecostal minister.  As a young boy, Marc-Henri was spiritually and psychologically abused, as he forced to undergo multiple public faith healings to cure him of a leg impairment.

After pastoring an evangelical church for 15 years Marc-Henri’s internalized messages of shame and unworthiness never went away.  Toxic Jesus shares how Marc-Henri faced his shadows, began long-term therapeutic and integrative work and began his process of deconstruction and reconstruction. 

 

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Junia "June" Joplin

Episode 18

Junia “June” Joplin began serving in church ministry over twenty years ago. She holds degrees from Appalachain State University and the Baptist Theologica Seminary at Richardmon and has served congregations in the U.S. and Canada.

A long-time advocate for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in faith communities, June made international headlines last summer when she came out as a trans woman and was subsequently fired by her congregation. 

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Chad Rollo

Chad Rollo

Episode 16

Chad currently lives in Windsor, Ontario (across the border from Detroit) with his husband Bill and three cats.  Chad is an IT Consultant and teaches part time at a local college.

Coming from a strict conservative faith, Chad spent years deconstructing his faith.  He was blessed to meet different people and organizations to help and guide him along the way.  Chad’s faith has always been extremely important to him and being able to deconstruct and re-evaluate what aspects of his faith are important; he can now say with 100% certainty that he is more at peace than he has ever been. 

Colby Martin

Colby Martin

Episode 14

Colby is a best-selling author, podcaster, and PROGRESSIVE co-pastor of Sojourn Grace Collective in San Diego

Colby is one of leading voices of the Progressive Christian movement with two books on this topic UnClobber – Rethinking our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality and his newest release The Shift: Surviving and Thriving after Moving from Conservative to Progressive Christianity

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Rev Michael Coren

Rev Michael Coren

Episode 12

Michael Coren is a best-selling author, columnist, Anglican cleric and former nightly television and radio host.

Michael joins This Little Light Of Mine to talk about his book Epiphany and “what went wrong” on his journey from being the posterboy of Catholic conservatism towards his profound spiritual and personal change of heart towards the queer community.

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Matthias Roberts

Matthias Roberts

Episode 10

Matthias Roberts, host of Queerology, named one of the top 12 LGBTQ Podcasts by Oprah’s magazine O. 

Matthias is also a psychologist and author of ‘Beyond Shame – Creating a healthy sex life on your own terms’.

Matthias holds an M.A. in Theology and Culture and a M.A. in Counseling Psychology. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate (LMHCA) in the state of Washington.

 

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Cathy Webber

Cathy Webber

Episode 8

For most of her life Cathy Webber believed that God was punishing her after a self-started childhood accident covered her body with third degree burns. 

Filled with self-hate Cathy tried to sedate her pain multiple addictions until the day she surrendered and called out ‘God, help me!’.  Cathy now dedicates her life sharing how the gift of pain brought her back to God and provides her with the daily strength to be a grateful addict who grows in recovery on day at a time.

 

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Byron Fulkerth

Episode 6

Personal trainer and personal friend Byron Fulkerth joins us for a special PRIDE Month bonus episode of This Little Light Of Mine.

Byron will be joining me for five weeks as we celebrate our pride edition of afFIRMation Thursdays.  Each Thursday we will be sharing some of Byron’s personal intentions, visualizations and affirmations to help pump up your soul so that you can build the ultimate pride body from the inside OUT as we help you see that pride is an inside job.

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Jon Brower

Jonathan Brower, MA

Episode 5

Jon Brower is 4x conversion therapy survivor who was intimately involved in the very recent ban on conversion therapy in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  Jon has an MA in social justice and equity and has a passion for using theatre as a tool for education and activism.
Jon joins us to share his experiences growing up in the church, learning shame, how he was introduced to conversion therapy and what drew him back.  Jon also shares some of his insights on what you can do to help eliminate this abuse at home and around the world.
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Michael Cassabon Round

Father Michael Cassabon

Episode 3

Michael Cassabon, a native of the Bible Belt in South Carolina, served in parish ministry as a Roman Catholic priest for nearly ten years. He attended seminary at the Vatican, and studied theology and church law at the Jesuit and Opus Dei universities in Rome. He received another degree in theology from Duke Divinity School. Michael left ministry shortly after coming to terms with the abuse he suffered as a teenager by another priest. Ironically, this information came to the surface when Michael was forced into therapy by the Church when it was discovered that he was gay.

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Brent Hawkes Round

Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes, C.M.

Episode 1

A civil rights & LGBTQ icon, Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes, C.M., is the Founder and Executive Director of Rainbow Faith and Freedom, and Senior Pastor Emeritus of Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, where he was at the forefront of ministry to the LGBTIQ2S community for over 40 years. On January 14, 2001, he officiated at the first legal same sex marriages in the world. He received the Order of Canada, the Order of New Brunswick and three honorary degrees for his stand on social justice and human rights within the LGBTIQ2S communities.

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