About Becoming Untwisted

OUR MISSION:

Helping people to become who they are meant to be – becoming untwisted in order to fully thrive. 

OUR VISION:

When God created the world, everything was good – in fact, it was very good (Gen 1:31). However, with the Fall, everything that was once good, true, and beautiful in this world became distorted. Everyday, we face the consequences of this, feeling stuck, frustrated, and unable to escape the twisted reality that impacts all aspects of our lives, including relationships, work, purpose, and spirituality.

What if believers in all spheres of society embraced their true identity in Christ, rather than striving to conform to societal and religious norms? By becoming untwisted, our perspective on relationships, work, purpose, and spirituality would begin to shift. This transformation would allow us to exist in the world as God intended, leading to our flourishing as salt and light. We would have greater clarity on our calling and more courage to utilize our skills and talents for the Kingdom. Consequently, the communities and cities we are part of would also thrive.

OUR APPROACH:

We use the framework of a Kingdom story to develop resources and offer services that help individuals on their path to becoming untwisted. Our goal is to create spiritual formation resources that are both simple and accessible to everyone.

Truman and Amber Lo – Our Story

As co-founders of Becoming Untwisted, our desire is to see people truly thrive. Between the two of us, we have served in some form of ministry capacity for over 40 years. But throughout those forty years, whether that be serving in a church, in a large missions agency on college campuses in the US and abroad, working in corporate America, serving marketplace leaders in cities around the world, or coming alongside parents of young children, we have seen a common thread – people are striving but not thriving.

About ten years ago, while I (Truman) was in seminary pursuing a Christian Formation and Soul Care degree, God put a phrase in my mind that I was never able to shake. That phrase was “becoming untwisted.” In my classes, I was learning about the true self/false self. I was learning about unhealthy attachments, the integration of various spiritual practices and disciplines, and the significance in the power of the presence of God. But there wasn’t yet a clear word from God what I was supposed to do with that phrase at the time, but I did know that it resonated with my soul.

I was working in the faith & work space of the Christian movement, or some might call it vocational discipleship and whole-life discipleship, while Amber pulled back from “on the field” ministry to homeschool, yet found herself squarely in the mix with a rich ministry alongside mothers struggling in their motherhood journeys. Engaging in that work helped us to see that God truly cares about everything. Our formational journeys were deeply evangelical – in the sense that what was important and urgent was the sharing and discipling of the salvation gospel message. But our work in marketplace ministry and family ministry showed us that what the world needed was to see that God cares about all aspects of life and that all work mattered – whether that be missions work, marketplace work, or work in the home.

In his book “Why God Made Cities”, Timothy Keller says, “If sin has twisted the city as it’s twisted the family, and God invented the city, then we don’t abandon it – we build it.” The picture of twistedness really began to take shape in my mind. So much of life, in my own life, in the lives of those we have ministered to, is a journey of trying to uncover all the areas in which we are stuck – to untwist those areas. It is about untwisting the lies we have come to believe in – about ourselves, about God, and the world around us.

God gave us this vision of creating a space, a ministry, that would help people to lean into their identity in Christ, to lean into their journey of becoming untwisted. It is a journey marked by rest, rather than striving. It is not about trying harder, but sitting in the presence of God and paying attention to the unforced rhythms of grace.

Our dream for Becoming Untwisted is to create experiences and resources, accessible to all, built on the unfolding of the Kingdom story framework – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, to equip, encourage, and inspire believers to stop striving and start thriving. When people know their identity in Christ, experience the presence of God, their lives will began untwisting and start flourishing.