The Allender Center

05/25/2026

Spiritual abuse can leave deep confusion, grief, fear, and shame in its wake.
Healing often begins by finding language for what happened—and discovering you are not alone.

The Spiritual Abuse & Healing Online Course offers compassionate guidance for those seeking understanding, clarity, and restoration after harmful spiritual experiences.

Use code SPRING25 to save 25% on this and all signature online courses & webinar recordings during our Spring Sale, now through Tuesday, May 26.

🔗 online.theallendercenter.org

05/23/2026

Our stories shape and influence every dimension of our daily life and relationships.

Knowing the impact of our stories and finding God’s redemptive work within them is vital for emotional, relational, and spiritual health.

The To Be Told Online Course is far more than the popularized movement to “know your story.” It is an invitation to truth-telling, healing lament, deep soulfulness, and lasting change.

Right now, you can save 25% on To Be Told and all signature online courses during our Spring Sale.

Use code SPRING25 through Tuesday, May 26.

🔗 online.theallendercenter.org

05/22/2026

🌸 Our biggest sale of the season starts now! 🌸

For the next 5 days, save 25% on ALL signature online courses and webinar recordings from the Allender Center.

Whether you want to better understand your story, continue your own healing journey, deepen your relationships, or engage trauma with greater wisdom—this is a meaningful time to begin.

Every self-paced course and webinar recording includes lifetime access.
You can move through the material at your own pace and return whenever you need.

Use code SPRING25 now through Tuesday, May 26, to save 25%.

🔗 online.theallendercenter.org

05/22/2026

Have you ever felt like you were living between worlds? 🌎 Maybe you’ve moved across countries or cultures. Maybe your family story carries immigration, missionary work, military life, trauma, loss, or displacement. Or maybe, even surrounded by familiar people and places, you still carry an ache for belonging — a longing to feel fully known, rooted, and at home.

Today, Dan and Rachael sit down with Esperansita Bejnarowicz, who is a story coach, an NFTC Certified Facilitator with the Allender Center, and the founder of Far From Home.

Together, they explore the hidden grief, loneliness, and longing that can come from living “far from home” geographically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

The conversation considers the story of Jesus as someone deeply acquainted with displacement: a child forced to flee, a man who “had no place to lay his head,” and someone who understood sorrow, exile, and longing for home.

Whether you’ve crossed borders or simply know what it feels like to search for belonging, this conversation offers language, comfort, and hope for the parts of us still longing to find home.

We invite you to listen in this week wherever you get your podcasts, or stream each episode on our website.

🎧 theallendercenter.org/podcast

https://theallendercenter.org/2026/05/feeling-far-from-home-with-esperansita-bejnarowicz/

Explore the hidden grief, loneliness, and longing that can come from living “far from home” — geographically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

05/19/2026

“Wisdom is the presence to love well. And when [you] love, you don’t have a guidebook on what to do. You just know that in the moment, there’s something that needs to be said, something that needs to be done, that enters into a way of bringing something of what God intends for us to experience. That’s wisdom.”
-Sam Lee, LPC, Director of Narrative Focused Trauma Care® Training

05/15/2026

How do we live faithfully in a world where stories no longer seem to anchor us to a shared reality?

Returning to the Allender Center Podcast, Pastor James A. White joins Dan and Rachael to wrestle with the confusion, distortion that shape our cultural moments, both past and present.

Together, they explore the idea of “story wars”—the deeply human tendency to create narratives that help us survive, but can also estrange us from truth, one another, and the heart of God.
At the center of the conversation is the resurrection story itself: a story so disruptive and improbable that even Jesus’ closest companions struggled to believe it.

And yet, the resurrection is precisely what recalibrates reality. Not because it erases suffering or uncertainty, but because it offers a new way of seeing: that even in places marked by grief, confusion, fear, or loss, hope and transformation are still possible.

This conversation invites us to examine the stories shaping us personally and collectively, and to ask difficult but necessary questions about truth, power, fear, belonging, and hope.

🎧 You can listen to the Allender Center Podcast anywhere you stream your podcasts, or find each episode, plus transcripts and show notes, on our website.

How do we live meaningfully in a world where stories no longer seem to anchor us to a shared reality? Returning to the Allender Center Podcast, Pastor James A. White joins Dan and Rachael to wrestle with the confusion, distortion that shape our cultural moments, both past and present.

05/11/2026

“By the way that we hold one another’s suffering, we can change the trajectory of trauma.” -Dr. Dan Allender

05/08/2026

Welcome back to the second half of this powerful conversation with Jay Stringer. Building on the foundation of his book, “Desire,” Jay moves us deeper into one of the most provocative ideas of the conversation:

Sometimes our desires must disrupt and even destroy something in order to make way for something more true.

This isn’t destruction for destruction’s sake. Iconoclasm is the breaking of false structures, identities, and “provisional selves” that no longer serve us. And as Jay explores, when we don’t have wise guides or meaningful rites of passage, that disruption often shows up as self-sabotage—affairs, addictions, burnout, or relational breakdown.

But instead of dismissing those moments as failure, Jay invites us to see them as honest signals—clues pointing back to our story, our unmet longings, and the deeper work our soul is trying to initiate.

Desire has the power to both build and break. The question is not whether disruption will come—but whether we’ll have the courage, support, and curiosity to let it lead us somewhere good.

🎧 Check out today's episode of the Allender Center Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or stream it on our website. And be sure to grab a copy of Jay's new book, "Desire," as well!

05/05/2026

Learning to recognize shame more clearly can shape not only how we understand our own story, but also how we respond when shame and humiliation shows up in the stories of those around us.

Join Dan on May 9 to witness how a real story of shame is entered with attentiveness and wisdom, what it looks like to stay present instead of turning away, and how that changes what becomes possible in the story.⁠

The Art of Story Engagement⁠
Saturday, May 9 | 9 AM – 1 PM PT⁠
Live online session + recorded access included⁠

🔗 Register at:
https://theallendercenter.org/event/the-art-of-story-engagement-with-dr-dan-allender/

05/01/2026

What if desire isn’t something to suppress or fear, but something to honor and steward?
In this two-part conversation, therapist and author Jay Stringer joins Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to explore that very question through the lens of his new book, “Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow.”

From the very beginning, it was clear this topic couldn’t be contained in a single episode. Dan arrived with 16 pages of notes—so settle in for a deep, expansive conversation that unfolds across the next two weeks.

In Part 1, Jay traces the long personal and clinical journey behind Desire, opening up a deeper question beneath the surface of struggle and behavior: how do we learn to want well?

This conversation invites you to get curious about your desires—not to judge them, but to understand where they come from and where they’re leading you.

Be sure to come back next week as Jay re-joins us to explore the disruptive role of desire, the courage it takes to engage it, and how to grow it within the context of community.

🎧 You can find the Allender Center Podcast on your favorite listening platform, or stream each episode and get transcripts and show notes on our website.

Therapist and author Jay Stringer joins Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to talk about his latest book, "Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow."

04/29/2026

Registration is now open for the Story Workshop in Seattle!⁠
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The Story Workshop is a 3.5-day, in-person experience in Seattle where you’ll be invited to slow down, explore the heart of your story, and discover transformation in a space marked by care, wisdom, and hope.⁠
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You’ll receive live teaching from Dr. Dan Allender, Rachael Clinton Chen, Wendell Moss, and other Allender Center instructors. But the heart of this experience lies in the small, facilitated Story Groups, where your story will be held with deep compassion, wisdom, and honor. It’s in these Story Groups that true transformation happens.⁠
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This weekend is a sacred interruption—one that gently invites you to stop running from pain and begin walking toward healing, with others beside you.
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Will you join us?⁠
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🗓️ August 20–23, 2026
📍 Seattle, WA⁠
🔗 Registration is now open! Visit theallendercenter.org/workshops