Singer-songwriter Jon Guerra joins Mark Labberton to explore devotional songwriting, public faith, and the tension between the kingdom of Jesus and American cultural power. Through music and reflection, Guerra considers how art can hold grief, courage, and hope together in turbulent times.

“Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one.”

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Guerra reflects on songwriting as prayer, the call to love enemies, and artistic courage in moments of cultural crisis.

Together they discuss devotional music, George Herbert’s influence, the Beatitudes and American culture, citizenship and immigration imagery, increasing polarization, suffering and grace, and the vocation of Christian artists.

Episode Highlights

“Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one.”

“When Jesus says to love your enemies… he is giving us a means of survival.”

“This is not sentimentality… the only way to resist becoming what one hates.”

“My songwriting… would be a means of coming into contact with the invisible God.”

“Beauty puts us in contact with invisible things.”

About Jon Guerra

Jon Guerra is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas, known for devotional music that blends poetry, theology, and contemporary cultural reflection. His albums include Little Songs (2015), Keeper of Days (2020), Ordinary Ways (2023), and American Gospel. Guerra has also composed music for film, including Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019). The son of immigrants from Cuba and Argentina, his work often explores themes of citizenship, prayer, justice, and the teachings of Jesus. His songwriting draws inspiration from figures like George Herbert and Howard Thurman, and seeks to connect spiritual devotion with public life.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jon Guerra website: https://www.jonguerramusic.com/

American Gospel album: https://jonguerra.bandcamp.com

A Hidden Life film: https://www.searchlightpictures.com/ahiddenlife

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman: https://www.beacon.org/Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-P1781.aspx

The Porter's Gate: https://www.portersgateworship.com/

Show Notes

• Devotional songwriting
• George Herbert influence on the pursuit of prayerful craft
• “Music for attending to the soul.”
• Monday morning prayer music framing devotional practice
• Beauty and invisible realities in artistic experience
• American Gospel song introduction and cultural critique
• Beatitudes inversion in American culture
• “How do I give Christ a say in this conversation?”
• Love Your Enemies composition and album Jesus
• Howard Thurman’s influence on enemy-love theology (Jesus and the Disinherited)
• Emotional formation through news, anger, and public life
• Death of ego and kingdom discipleship
• Kierkegaard and faith beyond ideology
• Worship as reordering power
• Kingdom of Jesus song and Pilate encounter
• Allegiance to a greater kingdom beyond nationalism
• Citizenship as foreignness imagery
• Immigrant family background shaping songwriting
• Citizens song written after 2017 inauguration
• “Come to you because I’m confused.”
• Five-four musical structure expressing disorientation
• Groaning beauty and Romans 8 resonance
• Artists as “holy fools” naming reality
• Moltmann and theology near the cross
• Simone Weil: gravity and grace reflection
• “Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one.”

Hashtags

#JonGuerra

#DevotionalMusic

#LoveYourEnemies

#ChristianArt

#AmericanGospel

#PublicFaith

#Jesus

#Gospel

#SpiritualFormation

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

When federal agents kill civilians and public outrage sweeps the nation, who gets to define justified force and who gets to hold power accountable? The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti have sparked protests, national shutdowns, and fresh debate about what security should look like in America.

Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the US Department of Homeland Security, joins Mark Labberton for a wide-ranging conversation about fear-based governance, moral responsibility, constitutional guardrails, and what faithful leadership looks like in a moment of political crisis.

“Cruelty is a deterrent.”

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Neumann reflects on how Christian faith and public service shaped her national security career and why recent forceful immigration enforcement and lethal encounters challenge constitutional limits and moral clarity.

Together they discuss the moral and political meaning of the Minneapolis killings, trauma and vocation, immigration enforcement and democratic consent, fear-driven leadership, and how citizens and faith communities respond when institutions break down.

Episode Highlights

“Cruelty is a deterrent.”

“I realized how much my hope and trust had been in man.”

“We wrapped the flag around the cross.”

“We see sufficiently, but not transparently.”

“This is not normal, and this is not okay.”

About Elizabeth Neumann

Elizabeth Neumann is a national security expert and former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the US Department of Homeland Security. She served across three presidential administrations, including senior roles during the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, and worked extensively on counterterrorism, prevention of political violence, and domestic extremism. A frequent public commentator and congressional witness, Neumann has become a leading voice on the moral and constitutional dangers of fear-driven governance. Her work bridges public policy, trauma studies, and Christian ethics, particularly where political power collides with faith commitments. She is the author of Kingdom of Rage, a deeply personal and analytical account of extremism, nationalism, and the cost of unexamined allegiance.

Helpful Links and Resources

Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Rage-Christian-Extremism-Peace/dp/1546002057

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Neumann’s experience growing up in North Texas
• Faith and party loyalty culturally fused
• “To be a Christian meant you were a Republican.”
• Early fascination with politics and government service
• University of Texas, late 1990s political climate
• George W. Bush campaigns as formative training ground
• Entry into White House work through campaign victory
• Faith-based initiatives before September 11 reshaped national priorities
• September 11 as lived experience, not abstraction
• Crossing the 14th Street Bridge as the attacks unfolded
• “We were under attack,” and nothing felt safe
• Fog, confusion, smoke, radios, and unanswered phone calls
• Trauma before resilience, fear before context
• Learning endurance from older colleagues who said, “We will get through this.”
• Trauma as vocational fuel
• Hypervigilance, workaholism, and mission-driven identity
• National security as moral calling rather than career ambition
• Warning from a CIA colleague: rebuild a cadence of normal life
• Vigilance versus fear-driven overwork
• Marriage, family, and a season of spiritual deepening
• Scripture as disruption: Jeremiah 17 and misplaced trust
• “I realized how much my hope and trust had been in man.”
• Public policy confidence challenged as spiritual idolatry
• Russell Moore sermon and the shock of naming Christian nationalism
• “We wrapped the flag around the cross.”
• Cultural Christianity exposed as formation, not gospel
• Deconstructing politics without deconstructing faith
• Becoming comfortable with ambiguity and moral gray
• Labberton on seeing “through a glass darkly”
• Interpretive humility versus certainty culture
• Returning to government during the Trump administration
• Saying yes out of mission, not agreement
• Guardrails inside government: translating impulse into lawful action
• Illegal orders, pressure, and survival mode governance
• Lafayette Square as turning point
• Peaceful protesters met with militarized force
• Optics over constitution
• Immigration enforcement reframed as cruelty-based deterrence
• “Cruelty is a deterrent.”
• ICE, CBP, and DHS operating outside traditional norms
• First, Second, and Fourth Amendment violations described
• Warrantless searches and administrative authority
• Law enforcement trained for war zones policing civilian streets
• Rapid ICE expansion without vetting or adequate training
• Fear rhetoric inside agencies creating enemy mentality
• Officers taught to expect violence from the public
• Predictable escalation and preventable deaths
• Moral injury to agents and terror inflicted on communities
• “This is not normal, and this is not okay.”
• Democracy requires consent of the governed
• Public trust collapsing when law breaks the law
• Call for stand-down, retraining, and accountability
• Faithful resistance as moral clarity, not partisan alignment

#ElizabethNeumann #FaithAndPolitics #NationalSecurity #ImmigrationCrisis #MoralCourage #PublicFaith

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Church planting is thriving at the very moment the church faces a crisis of credibility. What if the problem isn’t too few churches—but too narrow a vision of what church is for?

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Brad Brisco reflects on church planting shaped by Christology before strategy, mission before institution, and incarnation before programs. Together they discuss missionary imagination in the modern West, co-vocational ministry, alternative expressions of church, micro-church networks, church growth assumptions, vocation and work, justice and proximity, and what it means to return—daily—to the ways of Jesus.

––––––––––––––––

Episode Highlights

“We need to help church planters think less like pastors starting a Sunday service and more like missionaries engaging a unique context.”

“If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don’t need more of those.”

“Mission isn’t really ours. It’s about what God’s already doing.”

“We can say we’re gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus.”

“The only way the church gets this far off is by being void of the ways of Jesus.”

––––––––––––––––

About Brad Brisco

Brad Brisco is a missiologist and church planting leader, trainer, and writer who has spent more than twenty-five years coaching and resourcing church planters across North America. After beginning his career in the restaurant industry, Brisco entered ministry through church planting and later joined Send Network, where his work has focused on alternative expressions of church, co-vocational leadership, and missionally engaged discipleship.

He also serves on the national leadership team for Forge America Mission Training Network. Brad is the co-author of “Missional Essentials,” a 12-week small group study guide, “The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run” and “Next Door As It Is In Heaven.”

He is widely known for challenging church growth assumptions and for advocating Christ-centered, incarnational approaches that integrate faith, work, and neighborhood life.

Brisco remains closely connected to decentralized microchurch networks and innovative models of mission in urban contexts.

Follow him on X: https://x.com/bradleybrisco

––––––––––––––––

Helpful Links and Resources

Missional Church Network https://www.missionalchurchnetwork.com/

Send Network https://sendnetwork.com

The Shaping of Things to Come – Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost https://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Come-Innovation-Mission/dp/1565636597

Permanent Revolution – Alan Hirsch https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Revolution-Apostolic-Imagination-Practice/dp/0470907746

Tampa Underground https://www.tampaunderground.com/

––––––––––––––––

Show Notes

• Church planting boom alongside institutional church crisis
• Restaurant business background shaping entrepreneurial ministry instincts
• Conversion, seminary, and inherited assumptions about “real” ministry
• Early confusion about church planting as a category
• From planting one church to training planters nationally
• Church defined beyond buildings toward embodied communities
• “If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don’t need more of those.”
• Missionary context of the modern West
• Do we need more churches or more ways of being church?
• Underserved neighborhoods and unengaged people groups
• Declining interest in traditional church programs
• Airplane anecdote exposing attractional church assumptions
• “You just need a really good sound system and a good speaker.”
• Mission versus Sunday-centric church planting
• Christology–missiology–ecclesiology framework
• Jesus shaping mission before shaping church
• “Most church planters start with ecclesiology rather than the ways of Jesus.”
• Church growth movement assumptions challenged
• Recapturing the missionary nature of the church
• Church as sent people, not religious service provider
• Incarnational presence in neighborhoods and workplaces
• “Mission isn’t something we do over there.”
• Participation in the mission of God
• “The mission isn’t really ours—it’s about what God’s already doing.”
• Individual salvation versus communal discipleship
• Robust Christology beyond the cross alone
• Incarnation, life, resurrection, and kingdom shaping mission
• Brokenness, proximity, and responsibility for place
• Mission as communal, not individual activity
• Bi-vocational and co-vocational ministry distinctions
• Marketplace calling as missional advantage
• Sacred–secular divide challenged
• Time constraints forcing alternative church models
• Team-based leadership as non-negotiable
• Theology of work as essential formation
• Financial freedom reshaping church planting incentives
• Fully funded models drifting toward attractional pressure
• Co-vocational longevity and sustainability
• Microchurch networks and decentralized leadership
• Tampa Underground as proof of concept
• Mission-first communities addressing justice and brokenness
• “Mission is the mother of adaptive ecclesiology.”
• Diverse expressions emerging from contextual mission
• Established churches learning from church planting frameworks
• Incremental versus wholesale institutional change
• Sending churches supporting new expressions
• Calling the church back to the ways of Jesus
• “We can be gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus.”
• Credibility gap between Jesus and the church today
• Recalibrating discipleship for public faithfulness

––––––––––––––––

#ChurchPlanting

#MissionalChurch

#FaithAndWork

#Discipleship

#ChristianLeadership

#PublicFaith

#Vocation

––––––––––––––––

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Christian faith has been politicized. Arguably, this is not new. But what we see in America and other societies has a jarring impact for those who seek a credible public Christian faith. To examine how Christian faith has been politicized in recent years, preacher and public theologian Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove joins Mark Labberton, asking what moral resistance requires in this authoritarian moment.

“I couldn’t know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice.”

In this episode: Wilson-Hartgrove reflects on his Southern Baptist formation, his political awakening, and a conversion that reordered his understanding of Jesus, justice, and public life.

And: Trying to understand Christian nationalism, authoritarian power, poverty and race, moral fusion movements, just war theology, the discipline of prayer, and how churches can reclaim biblical values for the common good.

Episode Highlights

“I couldn’t know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice.”

“The radical separation of faith from justice was a way my faith was stolen from me.”

“We are in an authoritarian crisis that tells its own version of reality.”

“Christian nationalism offers an alternative reality that very sincere people come to trust.”

“Prayer interrupts the liturgy of consumerism and gives us another story.”

About Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and public theologian working at the intersection of Christian faith, moral movements, and public life. He serves as Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy and has spent more than two decades in faith-rooted movements for social change. A longtime collaborator with Bishop William J. Barber II, he has helped articulate the Moral Movement’s moral framing of poverty, race, and democracy. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of multiple books on public faith, justice, and Christian discipleship, and a co-creator of the widely used prayer resource Common Prayer. He lives in North Carolina, where his work remains grounded in local churches and communities.

Learn more and follow at jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com and @wilsonhartgrove

Helpful Links and Resources

Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506484136/Revolution-of-Values

Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne) https://www.zondervan.com/p/common-prayer/

White Poverty (with William J. Barber II) https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469661927/white-poverty/

Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy https://publictheology.yale.edu/

Show Notes

– Growing up in rural North Carolina tobacco country; The Andy Griffith Show based on his former community

– Southern Baptist formation, scripture memorization, and the King James Bible

– Moral Majority era shaping faith and politics

– Early ambition to serve Jesus through political power

– Greyhound trip to Washington, DC with grandfather

– Becoming a Senate page at sixteen

– Working in the office of Strom Thurmond

– Encountering the racial subtext of American politics

– “There was a distance between Sunday school and what was practiced”

– Learning how southern politics realigned after civil rights

– Leaving partisan politics searching for faithful public life

– Disorientation and not knowing another way to be Christian

– Meeting a preacher shaped by the civil rights movement

– Discovering a faith that named injustice without condemnation

– “I needed another way to be Christian in public”

– Colorblind theology and segregated church life

– Conversion as seeing Jesus and reality differently

– Faith reordered by relationships, not ideology

– Christian opposition to the Iraq War

– Traveling to Iraq during U.S. bombing

– “According to just war theory, this wouldn’t be a just war”

– How common sense changes over time

– Christian nationalism and manufactured moral narratives

– Alternative realities formed by trusted information sources

– “We are in an authoritarian crisis”

– Mutual aid, churches, and local resistance

– Poverty as a moral and political vulnerability

– Prayer as resistance to consumerist liturgy

– Common Prayer and the rhythm of scripture

– “Prayer gives us another story to live inside”

#JonathanWilsonHartgrove

#Authoritarianism

#PublicFaith

#ChristianNationalism

#MoralMovement

#FaithAndJustice

#CommonGood

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

As violence erupts around the world, how must we respond to those who worship power? In Venezuela, global power has reshaped lives overnight, and Elizabeth Sendek and Julio Isaza join Mark Labberton to reflect on faith, fear, and Christian witness amid political upheaval in Latin America.

“It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol.”

Together they discuss how experiences of dictatorship, displacement, and pastoral caution shape Christian responses to invasion and regime change; the relationship between power and idolatry; the moral realities that come with violent and nonviolent action; fear and pastoral responsibility; the global impact of diaspora and migration; how prayer informs action; and how the church bears faithful witness under ruthless power.

––––––––––––––––––

Episode Highlights

• “It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol.”
• “Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis.”
• “Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace.”
• “They are very cautious, because they are not sure who is in control.”
• “We should not normalize violence just because it has always existed in history.”

––––––––––––––––––

About Elizabeth Sendek

Elizabeth Sendek is a theologian and educator specializing in Latin American Christianity, theology and power, and the church’s public witness under political violence. Her work draws from lived experience across Latin America, particularly contexts shaped by dictatorship, corruption, displacement, and ecclesial resilience. She has taught theology in academic and pastoral settings, engaging questions of ethics, political theology, and Christian responsibility in fragile societies. Sendek is widely respected for her ability to connect historical memory, biblical theology, and contemporary crises, especially regarding migration, authoritarianism, and Christian hope. Her scholarship and public engagement consistently emphasize prayer joined with concrete action, resisting both naïveté and cynicism. She speaks regularly to churches, students, and leaders seeking faithful responses to power and suffering.

About Julio Isaza

Julio Isaza, born in Colombia, is married to Katie Isaza and is the father of Samuel and Benjamin. He served with the Covenant Church of Colombia from 1995 to 2006 and later earned a master of divinity degree in Chicago, where he lived for six years. Between 2012 and 2015, he worked in the formation of university students and young professionals with Serve Globally in Medellín, Colombia. From 2016 to 2025, he served in peace-building processes in conflict areas of Colombia and also as a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, teaching in the areas of missional theology, cultural context, and holistic impact strategies. During this time, he also worked with Indigenous communities in the Colombian rainforest, engaging in oral theology initiatives. His work has focused on holistic discipleship, theological education, and peace-building. He holds a master’s degree in Conflict and Peace from the University of Medellín and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology and Peace at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in England. A US citizen, he resides in Minnesota with his family, where he is writing his doctoral dissertation titled “Cultivating Integral (Biblical) Peace in a Context of Socio-environmental Violence.”

––––––––––––––––––

Helpful Links And Resources

Princeton Theological Seminary https://www.ptsem.edu

Psalm 73 (New International Version) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+73&version=NIV

Brownsville Covenant Church (David Swanson) https://www.brownsvillecovenant.org

Christians for Social Action https://christiansforsocialaction.org

––––––––––––––––––

Show Notes

• News of Venezuelan invasion and presidential extrication
• Awakening to international headlines and Colombian news coverage
• Power displacing morality and theology
• “It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place.”
• “We have chosen our idol.”
• Violence beyond headlines and unseen civilian consequences
• Personal stories from Caracas neighbourhoods and bomb damage
• “You see in the news about Maduro taken, but you don’t see the consequences of what happened.”
• “Some of her family was killed in Caracas because of the bombs.”
• Childhood shaped by armed conflict in rural Colombia
• Guerrilla groups, military raids, and forced displacement
• Paramilitary violence and state-backed terror in towns
• “When I was a child, I would draw helicopters and militaries killing each other.”
• Conversion shaped by studying the life of Jesus
• “When I began to study the gospel, I thought that Jesus’s way is not a violent way.”
• Pastoral caution under volatile political regimes
• Fear shaping Christian speech and public silence
• “For the sake of my congregation, I cannot voice any opinion.”
• Churches continuing ministry amid uncertainty
• “They agreed that this time is an opportunity to share the gospel of hope.”
• Prayer as resistance and sustenance
• “Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis.”
• Prayer joined with embodied action
• “Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace.”
• Long histories of dictatorship shaping Latin American theology
• Skepticism toward purely academic liberation theology
• Credibility rooted in lived solidarity with the poor
• Diaspora pressure and forced return narratives
• “Now people say Venezuelans can go back to their own country.”
• Xenophobia and fear within host communities
• Displacement as ongoing trauma for migrant families
• Scripture shaping hope amid cynicism
• “When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply, till I entered the sanctuary of God.”
• Refusing to normalize power’s violence
• “Our call is not to normalize it, nor to declare it an act of God.”

––––––––––––––––––

#FaithAndPolitics

#LatinAmerica

#ChristianWitness

#PowerAndViolence

#Venezuela

#ChurchAndState

#PublicTheology

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What happens when a long pastoral calling ends, friendships fade, and the church faces cultural fracture? Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer (42 years in ministry at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, CA) joins Mark Labberton for a searching conversation about retirement from pastoral ministry, loneliness, leadership, and the meaning of credible witness in the Black church today.

“Ministry can be a lonely business.”

In this episode, Bishop Ulmer reflects on the stepping away after four decades of pastoral leadership, navigating aloneness, disrupted rhythms, and the spiritual costs of transition. Together they discuss pastoral loneliness, friendship and grief, retirement and identity, church leadership after elections, authenticity versus attraction, political division in congregations, and whether the church still centers Jesus.

Episode Highlights

• “Ministry can be a lonely business.”
• “[Boy, pointing to a church] Is God in there? [Pastor] Sometimes I wonder.”
• “There’s a Moses in you that will see farther than you’ll go.”
• “The tension is authenticity versus attraction.”
• “Jesus is the answer for the world today.”

About Kenneth C. Ulmer

Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer is Bishop Emeritus of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, where he served as senior pastor for more than four decades. A nationally respected preacher, civic leader, and mentor, Ulmer played a significant role in the spiritual and economic life of Los Angeles, including the preservation of the Forum as a major community asset. He has been a prominent voice in conversations about the Black church, urban ministry, and faithful Christian leadership amid cultural and political change. Ulmer continues to teach, preach, and advise leaders while reflecting publicly on vocation, aging, and wisdom in ministry.

Learn more and follow at https://www.faithfulcentral.com

Helpful Links And Resources

• Faithful Central Bible Church: https://www.faithfulcentral.com
• Conversing with Mark Labberton: https://comment.org/conversing
• Credible Witness podcast: https://faith.yale.edu/credible-witness

Show Notes

• Long pastoral tenure ending after more than four decades of leadership
• Friendship formed through shared grief and the loss of trusted companions
• Prayer, friendship, and ministry forged “on our knees” at Hollywood Presbyterian
• Loss of regular companionship revealing unexpected loneliness and aloneness
• “Ministry can be a lonely business.”
• Absence of trusted friends exposing a deep relational void
• Final sermon titled “I Did My Best,” echoing 2 Timothy imagery and the words on Kenneth Ulmer’s father’s grave
• “I fought a good fight” as closing vocational reflection
• Disrupted spiritual rhythm after forty-one years of weekly preaching
• “My rhythm is off.”
• Identity shaped by Sunday coming “every seven days”
• Question of where and how to worship after stepping away
• Public recognition colliding with uncertainty about purpose
• Therapy as a faithful response to grief and transition
• Energy and health without a clear channel for vocation
• Question of “what do you do now?” after leadership ends
• Seeing farther than you will go as a leadership reality
• Deuteronomy 34 and Moses viewing the Promised Land
• “There’s a Moses in you that will see farther than you’ll go.”
• Passing vision to a Joshua who will go farther than he can see
• Grief of cheering from the sidelines while no longer on the field
• Wrestling with authenticity versus attraction in church leadership
• John 12:32 and the tension of lifting up Jesus to draw others
• “The tension is authenticity versus attraction.”
• Fear of entertainment, production, and celebrity eclipsing Christ
• Question of whether churches are built on preaching or personality
• Political polarization dividing congregations and pulpits
• Question pastors must ask: “Who am I going to be after this ballot?”
• Kingdom identity beyond donkey or elephant, only the Lamb
• “Holding up the bloodstained banner” as faithful witness
• Doors of the church open—how wide are they, and for whom?
• Concern for credibility after the benediction and after the election
• Civic engagement without surrendering theological center
• Preserving community good beyond church walls and buildings
• Forum purchase as economic stewardship, not church expansion
• Question of whether God is still “in that house”
• How much of the God inside gets outside into the neighborhood?
• Jesus as the enduring answer amid cultural confusion
• Worship song, “We Offer Jesus”
• “Jesus in the morning, Jesus at noonday, Jesus in the midnight hour.”
• Call to be the extended incarnation in ordinary life: “You are the temple.”
• “Who are you turning away that he [Jesus] would not turn away?”

#KennethCUlmer

#PastoralLeadership

#ChurchAndCulture

#CredibleWitness

#FaithAfterRetirement

#AuthenticityVsAttraction

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Can joy be anything but denial in a rage-filled public life? Michael Wear joins Mark Labberton to reframe politics through the kingdom logic of hope, agency, and practices of silence and solitude. As 2025 closes amid political discord, we might all ask whether joy can be real in public life—without denial, escapism, or contempt.

"… Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing."

In this conversation, Michael Wear and Mark Labberton reflect on joy, hope, responsibility, and agency amid a reaction-driven politics. Together they discuss the realism of Advent; the limits of our control; how kingdom imagination reframes anger; hope beyond outcomes, dignity under threat, and practices (including silence and solitude) that restore clarity.

Episode Highlights

"Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing. … Joy is not a technique to then get people to do what you want them to do."

"God's Kingdom is the range of his effective will."

“ Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say.”

"Our will is effective and those things in which our will is not effective."

"The pattern of domination and violence is an old one."

About Michael Wear

Michael Wear is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan nonprofit that contends for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. He has served for more than a decade as a trusted advisor to civic and religious leaders on faith and public life, including as a presidential campaign and White House staffer. He is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life and Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America. Learn more and follow at https://www.michaelwear.com.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics https://www.zondervan.com/9780310367239/the-spirit-of-our-politics/
• Michael Wear, Reclaiming Hope https://www.thomasnelson.com/9780718082338/reclaiming-hope/
• Center for Christianity and Public Life https://www.ccpubliclife.org/
• A National Call to Silence and Solitude https://www.silenceandsolitude.org/
• Dallas Willard: “Personal Soul Care” https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/personal-soul-care
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited https://www.beacon.org/Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-P1781.aspx

Show Notes

• End of 2025, cusp of Christmas; fraught public moment; joy as the lynchpin for faithful presence in politics and public life
• Joy held with pain, suffering, complexity
• Refusing denial while trusting a God who relentlessly pursues the world in love and hope
• Joy intertwined with hope, responsibility, agency
• Where does responsibility end and faithful agency begin?
• “Willard would say joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing.”
• “ It is very difficult to have joy if you are taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility.”
• Public life as joyless space; lacking imagination for joy amid provocation, antagonism, and constant political showmanship
• “If there are places in our life where we can't conceive of joy, it's a problem with our view of God.”
• Misplaced responsibility, misplaced hope; joy collapses when taking on burdens that aren’t ours and treating agency as ultimate
• “God's kingdom is the range of his effective will.”
• “We each have our own little kingdoms … where what we say to be done is done.”
• Politics reveals limits; a clarity about what we can do, what we can’t do, and what we must import into the rest of life
• “Our will is effective, and there are things in which our will is not effective.”
• “Faithfulness is not the ability to determine a righteous outcome … to everything in which our lives touch.”
• False responsibility, obscured agency
• Are we taking charge of what isn’t ours while ignoring the real choices we do have?
• “That's a recipe for joylessness.”
• Poked and prodded by provocations; entertainment, antagonisms, and helplessness normalize reaction and justify complicity
• Anger as political fuel
• Many assume that raising your voice is the only faithful posture inside the public arena.
• “I’ve had people respond to me: ‘How am I going to get anything done in politics without anger?’”
• “Political imagination has been taken over by a political logic as opposed to a kingdom logic.”
• Relearning responsibility and agency; hope not grounded in our effectiveness, but in what God is doing beyond our reach.
• “Ultimate hope lies outside of the range of our effective will.”
• “It is in that realm in which we are perfectly safe.”
• Hope is for a life that pervades all things.
• “So when your hope is in the right place, you can hope for a whole range of things.”
• “ Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say.”
• Hope and joy “when your back is against the wall”
• Allen Temple Baptist Church: Joy at the margins of culture
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
• First Presbyterian Church in Evanston, IL
• Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics
• Psalm 23 as distress-psalm: Enemies are still present, yet God leads beside still waters and cares most in greatest distress.
• “Take off the old self with its practices and put on the new self.”
• “Put on Christ now in a way that will affect everything around us.”
• Herod: The paranoid leader
• Advent into Christmastide—what it means to dwelling in Emmanuel
• “This is why the incarnation is such an extraordinarily important cornerstone: It's that God enters in through Jesus into our world, in a world in which, yes, there may be great praises in heaven and on earth from those who understand something at least of who he is and what he's there to do. But it also lands him in a world of immediate physical and familial vulnerability of political and social, if not military, violence.”
• Are we protected from vulnerability, or living in precarity?
• The pattern of domination and violence
• Refusing forgetfulness as 2026 approaches with fresh pressures and fresh calling.
• National call to silence and solitude; disinvesting from reactionary instincts to engage the world with renewed vision and clarity. silenceandsolitude.org
• “Silence and solitude… can infuse your public activity with right vision and right clarity.”

#MichaelWear #MarkLabberton #ChristianPublicLife #ChristianPolitics #SpiritualFormation #Joy #Advent #SilenceAndSolitude #Hope #PublicWitness

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What if taking Mary seriously actually deepens, rather than distracts from, devotion to Jesus? Art historian and theologian Matthew Milliner joins Mark Labberton to explore that possibility through history, theology, and the Incarnation. In a searching conversation about Mary, the meaning of Marian devotion, and the mystery of the Incarnation, they draw from early Christianity, Protestant theology, and global Christianity, as Milliner reframes Mary as a figure who deepens devotion to Christ rather than distracting from it.

“I don’t see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions in regards to the way that women are understood.”

In this episode, they reflect on Mary as presence, witness, and theological key to understanding God’s entry into human life. They discuss Marian devotion before the Reformation, excess and restraint in Christian practice, the Incarnation’s implications for embodiment and gender, Protestant fears and recoveries, global Marian traditions, grief and discipleship, and why Mary ultimately points beyond herself to Christ.

Episode Highlights

• “I love Jesus so much that I love his mom too. Isn’t she great too?”
• “ What relationship do you have in your life where if you knew the parents of the person you're in relationship with, that would damage the relationship? … It’s a sign of deep intimacy.”
• “There is no Christianity without Mary. That’s how God came into the world.”
• “She is my tutorial in grief.”
• “If it’s the real Mary you’re dealing with, she will point you to Jesus.”
• “The answer to the abuse is to point to the best use.”
• “She became a presence in the church for me.”
• “I don’t see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions.”

About Matthew Milliner

Matthew J. Milliner is Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College, where he specializes in early Christian, Byzantine, and global Christian art. His scholarship explores theology through visual culture, with particular attention to Mary, the Incarnation, and Christian devotion across traditions. Milliner is widely published in academic journals and popular outlets, including Comment Magazine, where he has written extensively on Marian theology and Christian art. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on Christianity and aesthetics, and his work bridges evangelical theology, Anglican practice, and historic Christian tradition. Milliner is also known for his teaching on icons, pilgrimage, and the relationship between art, doctrine, and discipleship.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Read Matthew Milliner’s column, Material Mysticism, for Comment Magazine https://comment.org/columns/material-mysticism/
• Matthew Milliner, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon: https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Lamb-Story-Global-Icon/dp/1506478751
• Matthew Milliner faculty page: https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/matthew-milliner/
• Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217216/mary-in-early-christian-faith-and-devotion/
• Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/goddesses-and-the-divine-feminine/paper
• William Johnston, The Wounded Stag: https://www.harvard.com/book/9780823218394
• The Angelus Prayer (recited in this conversation): https://www.usccb.org/prayers/angelus
• Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham: https://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk

Show Notes

• Opening prayer invoking Mary’s witness, comfort, and example as a way of drawing listeners toward Christ rather than away from him
• Evangelical identity reclaimed as gospel proclamation rather than political alignment or cultural branding
• Early Marian devotion emerging “early and often” in Christian history, grounded in Jerusalem rather than later medieval invention
• “I love Jesus so much that I love his mom too. Isn’t she great too?”
• Honoring Mary without worship, framed through Revelation imagery of the bride and the people of God
• Archaeological and manuscript discoveries reshaping assumptions about early Christian practice
• Marian devotion expanding intimacy rather than competing with Christological focus
• Newman on devotion requiring excess, extravagance, and emotional overflow to be genuinely human
• “Let the Christian Church let it boil over every once in a while.”
• Reformation dynamics producing extremes: feverish excess on one side and stone-cold rejection on the other
• Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine
• Pagan goddess traditions contrasted with Marian imagery and their treatment of women’s bodies
• Aphrodite imagery as endorsement of male desire versus Marian imagery as reverence for God’s entry into flesh
• “Find me an image of Mary that does anything close to that.”
• Incarnation reshaping how Christians see the female body, sexuality, and dignity
• “This is the body God entered the world through.”
• The angel Gabriel’s Annunciation and Mary’s consent
• Annunciation framed as consent rather than coercion, with Luke emphasizing Mary’s agency
• “Nothing happens to her until she consents.”
• Mary as theological answer to pornographic and exploitative religious imaginations
• “I don’t see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions.”
• Guadalupe as evangelistic bridge for indigenous peoples pointing toward Christ without blood sacrifice
• Mary’s global accessibility across Muslim, Hindu, and non-Christian contexts
• “She is a real evangelist, Mary.”
• Walsingham pilgrimage as Anglican recovery of Marian devotion
• Marian attraction functioning as penumbra drawing outsiders toward Christianity
• “If it’s the real Mary you’re dealing with, she will point you to Jesus.”
• Abuse of Marian devotion acknowledged alongside historical self-correction within Catholicism
• “The answer to the abuse is to point to the best use.”
• Matthew Milliner’s personal spiritual journey from childhood Catholicism through evangelical conversion
• Anti-Mary phase followed by rediscovery through art history and theology
• “She became a presence in the church for me.”
• Mary understood as presence rather than abstract idea, without becoming divine
• William Johnson’s, The Wounded Stag: God is beyond gender
• Devotional practice as tributary flowing into Trinitarian worship rather than replacing it
• “There is no Christianity without Mary. That’s how God came into the world.”
• Angelus prayer as scriptural meditation culminating in Trinitarian praise
• “Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord.”
• Psychological and spiritual healing through Marian presence without theological confusion
• Mary as guide for grief through images of sorrow and seven swords
• “She is my tutorial in grief.”
• Black Madonna traditions interpreted through devotion, time, soot, and divine darkness
• Darkness as sign of overwhelming divine light rather than absence of God

#ConversingPodcast #MatthewMilliner #MaryTheology #Incarnation #ChristianTradition #AdventReflections #FaithAndArt

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

How should Christian faith shape work in an era of pluralism, fear, and systemic inequality? Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund (Rice University) is presenting new insights for faith at work through data, theology, and lived experience.

“People love to talk about individual ethics … but what was really hard for them to think about was, what would it mean to make our workplace better as a whole?”

In this episode, Ecklund joins Mark Labberton to reflect on moving from individual morality toward systemic responsibility, dignity, and other-centred Christian witness at work. Together they discuss faith and work, the gender and race gaps created by systemic injustice, fear and power, religious diversity, rest and human limits, gender and racial marginalization, and the cost of a credible Christian witness.

Episode Highlights

• “People love to talk about individual ethics.”
• “What would it mean to make our workplace better as a whole?”
• “People are much more apt to take us seriously if we first take them seriously.”
• “Suppression of faith in particular is not the answer.”
• “God is God and I am not.”

About Elaine Howard Ecklund

Elaine Howard Ecklund is professor of sociology at Rice University and director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. She is a leading sociologist of religion, science, and work whose research examines how faith operates in professional and institutional life. Ecklund has led large-scale empirical studies on religion in workplaces and scientific communities, supported by the National Science Foundation, Templeton Foundation, and Lilly Endowment. She is the author or co-author of several influential books, including Working for Better, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other, and Science vs. Religion. Her work informs academic, ecclesial, and public conversations about pluralism, justice, and moral formation in modern society.

Learn more and follow at https://www.elaineecklund.com and https://twitter.com/elaineecklund

Helpful Links And Resources

• Working for Better (IVP): https://www.ivpress.com/working-for-better
• Why Science and Faith Need Each Other (IVP): https://www.ivpress.com/why-science-and-faith-need-each-other
• Elaine Howard Ecklund website: https://www.elaineecklund.com
• Rice University Boniuk Institute: https://boniuk.rice.edu
• Conversing with Mark Labberton: https://comment.org/conversing

Show Notes

• Sociological study of religion, work, and group behavior
• Christian faith taken seriously at personal and academic levels
• Ecklund’s former research focus on science as a workplace environment
• Expanding faith-at-work research beyond scientific communities
• Compartmentalized Christian faith and the fear of offending colleagues
• Friendship and collaboration emerging from leadership retreats
• Large-scale data-driven study on religion in changing workplaces
• Religious pluralism at work and changing workplace demographics
• Writing for Christian audiences shaped by empirical research
• From individual ethics toward systemic responsibility at work
• “People love to talk about individual ethics.”
• Systemic injustice blind spots
• Moral shorthand focused on time sheets and office supplies
• Organizational leadership and culture change
• Difficulty imagining organizational or structural workplace change
• Fear of retaliation when confronting unjust systems
• Responsibility for workplace realities
• Power underestimated by those holding leadership positions
• Costly examples of speaking up against workplace injustice
• Christian fear of marginalization in pluralistic environments
• Suppression of religious expression as common workplace response
• Suppression versus accommodation: “Suppression of faith in particular is not the answer.”
• Religious diversity as unavoidable reality of modern work
• Other-centered faith rooted in dignity of every person
• Imago Dei shaping engagement across religious difference
• “People are much more apt to take us seriously if we first take them seriously.”
• Racialized religious minorities: the double marginalization of racial minorities of faith
• Gender inequity and underexamined workplace power dynamics
• Faith-based employee groups
• Fear masquerading as anger in cultural and religious conflict
• Workplaces as rare spaces for meaningful civic encounter
• Justice beyond activism
• Rest as theological foundation for justice and leadership
• Limits, Sabbath, and resisting productivity as ultimate value
• “God is God and I am not.”
• Human limits in leadership

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

#FaithAndWork

#ElaineHowardEcklund

#ChristianEthics

#WorkplaceJustice

#ReligiousPluralism

#RestAndFaith

As global powers double down on militarism and defense, Daniel Zoughbie argues that the most transformative force in the Middle East has always come from citizen diplomacy.

A complex-systems scientist and diplomatic historian, Zoughbie joins Mark Labberton to explore how twelve US presidents have “kicked the hornet’s nest” of the modern Middle East. Drawing on his work in global health and his new book Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump, Zoughbie contrasts the view from refugee camps and micro-clinic networks with the view from the Oval Office, arguing that American security rests on a three-legged stool of defence, diplomacy, and development.

He explains why Gerald Ford stands out as the lone president who truly leveraged diplomacy, how the Marshall Plan model of enlightened self-interest can guide policy now, and why nationalism, not mere economics, lies at the heart of Gaza’s future. Throughout, he presses listeners toward “citizen diplomacy” that resists pride, militarism, and fatalism.

Episode Highlights

• “We’ve constantly ignored diplomacy.”
• “ You don't have to be enemies with people to get them to do what is in their own self-interest.”
• “You can build skyscrapers in Gaza. You can build the Four Seasons in Gaza and it's not going to work. You're just going to have another war until you address that core issue of nationalism.”
• “These three D’s, defense, diplomacy, development, are the three-legged stool of American security and we know how important diplomacy and development are.”
• “From Truman to Trump, only one president, and that is Gerald Ford, surprisingly the only unelected president, gets this right.”
• “Pride—national pride, the pride of any one individual—is toxic. It's toxic to the individual. It's toxic to the nation. It's toxic to the world.”
• “Foreign policymaking is not just something for secretaries of state and those in power. All of us in a democracy have a role to play.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kicking-the-Hornets-Nest/Daniel-E-Zoughbie/9781668085226
• American University of Beirut (founded as Syrian Protestant College), a key example of long-term educational diplomacy https://www.aub.edu.lb
• Al-Ahli Arab (Gaza Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital
• Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/weber_max_1864_1920_politics_as_a_vocation/weber_max_1864_1920_politics_as_a_vocation.pdf
• Quaker Friends School, Ramallah: https://www.rfs.edu.ps/en
• Amman Baptist School: https://baptist.edu.jo/
• American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem founding in the Husseini Estate by the author of "It is Well" https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/americancolony/amcolony-family.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colony_Hotel
• Foreman Christian College, Pakistan (Presbyterian) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forman_Christian_College
• American University of Cairo (Presbyterian) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_in_Cairo

About Daniel Zoughbie

Daniel E. Zoughbie is a complex-systems scientist, historian, and expert on presidential decision-making. He is associate project scientist at UC Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, a faculty affiliate of the UCSF/UCB Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy, and Economics, and principal investigator of the Middle East and North Africa Diplomacy, Development, and Defense Initiative. He is the author of Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump and of Indecision Points: George W. Bush and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. His award-winning research has appeared in journals such as PLOS Medicine, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, and Social Science and Medicine. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UC Berkeley, he studied at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship and completed his doctorate there as a Weidenfeld Scholar.

Show Notes

Middle East Background and Micro-clinic Origins

• Daniel Zoughbie recalls visiting the Middle East as a child—“frankly horrified” by what he saw
• UC Berkeley protests over the Iraq War and post-9/11 US policy in the region
• Metabolic disease and type 2 diabetes as an overlooked “greatest killer in the region.”
• Neighbours in the West Bank sharing food, medicine, and blood-pressure cuffs—leads to the “micro-clinic” concept
• Good health behaviours, like bad ones and even violence, can be contagious through social networks

Social Networks, Anthropology, and Security

• Social anthropology, political science, and international relations
• Medical problems as simultaneously biological and sociological problems
• Understanding Middle East security demands attention to decisions “at the very bottom” as well as “the view from above”
• October 7 and 9/11 illustrate how small groups of people can “change the world with their decisions.”

Complex Systems and Foreign Policy

• Complexity is always increasing, and diplomacy and development exist to slow it down.
• Definition of “complex system”: as one where many inputs produce outcomes that cannot be reduced to single causes.
• “We almost have a new law here, which is that complexity is always increasing in the universe. And the role of diplomacy and development, as I see it in international relations, is to slow things down. It’s to stop complexity from advancing so that people have time to cool their tempers and to solve major security crises.”
• Type 2 diabetes as a model for thinking about how city planning, economics, relationships, and habits interact
• He applies that lens to international relations: nations, leaders, institutions, and history form a “cascade of complexity.”

From Refugee Camps to Presidential Palaces

• George Shultz and Tony Blair: decision-makers as “real human beings,” not abstractions
• Theological and ideological forces—such as certain apocalyptic readings of Scripture—that shape US foreign policy
• Gnosticism and eschatology within American right-wing Christianity
• Painstaking global health work on the ground and sweeping decisions made in Washington, Brussels, or New York

Twelve Presidents and One Exception

• Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: analysis of twelve presidents from Truman to Trump through the lens of Middle East decision-making
• Core claim: Only Gerald Ford truly rebalanced the three D’s of defence, diplomacy, and development.
• US policy in the Levant: heavy reliance on militarism, coups, and covert actions while underinvesting in diplomacy and development
• Claim: “Far better alternatives were on the table” for every administration, yet consistently passed over.

Gerald Ford, Kissinger, and the Path to Peace

• Daniel contends that the 1967 and 1973 wars were both preventable and nearly became global nuclear catastrophes.
• Ford inherits the presidency amid Watergate and national division, but keeps Henry Kissinger at State.
• Ford presses Israel and Egypt toward serious negotiations, empowering Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy and personal ties.
• A sharply worded letter threatening to “reconsider” the US-Israel relationship
• Ford’s diplomacy and the development of Camp David and the enduring Egypt-Israel peace based on “land for peace.”

Pride, Personality, and Presidential Failure

• Did Ford’s temperament keep him from making himself the center of the story?
• In contrast, many presidents and other leaders write themselves “thickly” into the narrative of the conflict.
• Pride—personal and national—as a toxic force that repeatedly undermines US policy
• The Iraq War and democracy-promotion agenda and the self-defeating nature of moralistic, militarized crusades

Marshall Plan and Enlightened Self-Interest

• George Marshall and harsh punishment after World War I helped produce Nazi Germany
• The Marshall Plan models an “enlightened way of viewing the American self-interest”: rebuilding Europe and Japan to secure U.S. security.
• He contrasts that with the neglect of the Levant, where aid and institution-building never matched military activism.
• Marshall’s genius lies in locating the intersection between others’ deepest needs and American capabilities.

Militarism, Iran, and Nuclear Risk

• Recent US-Israel-Iran confrontation as an “extremely dangerous moment”—with 60 percent enriched uranium unaccounted for
• JCPOA as an imperfect but effective diplomatic achievement, but dismantled in favor of militarism
• Claim: Bombing Iran scattered nuclear material and increased complexity rather than reducing the threat.
• He warns that one nuclear device could be delivered by low-tech means—a boat or helicopter—endangering civilians and US forces in the Gulf.
• The only realistic path forward: renewed multilateral diplomacy between US, Israel, Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and regional actors

Ethical Realism and Max Weber

• “Ethical realism”—Max Weber’s distinction between the ethic of the gospel and the ethic of responsibility
• Statespeople bear responsibility for using force, yet the greatest can still say “here I stand and I can do no other.”
• Claim: True leadership seeks a higher ethic where national interest aligns with genuine concern for others.

Gaza, Nationalism, and Two States

• Welcoming the end of active war between Israel and Hamas and critiquing reconstruction plans that ignore politics
• Conflict is fundamentally nationalist: a struggle for self-determination by both Jewish and Palestinian peoples
• Claim: Economic development without a credible political horizon will not prevent “another October 7th and another terrible war.”
• In his view, only partition of mandatory Palestine into two states can meet legitimate self-determination claims.
• For example, “You can build skyscrapers in Gaza… and it's not going to work” without addressing nationalism.

Citizen Diplomacy and a Better Way

• Foreign policy is not only the work of secretaries of state; democratic citizens have responsibilities.
• American University of Beirut and the Gaza Baptist Hospital as fruits of citizen diplomacy
• Claim: Educational and medical institutions can change lives more profoundly and durably than military campaigns.
• Redirecting resources from bombs to universities and hospitals to reduce the need for future military interventions
• An invitation to citizen diplomacy: informed voting, sustained attention, and creative engagement for a more just peace

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Rabbi Michael G. Holzman joins Mark Labberton to explore the formation of his Jewish faith, the pastoral realities of congregational life, and the multi-faith initiative he helped launch for the nation’s 250th anniversary, Faith 250. He reflects on his early experiences of wonder in the natural world, the mentors who opened Torah to him, and the intellectual humility that shapes Jewish approaches to truth. Their conversation moves through the unexpected depth of congregational ministry, the spiritual and emotional weight of the pandemic, the complexities of speaking about God in contemporary Jewish life, and the role of cross-faith friendships. The episode concludes with Rabbi Holzman’s reflections on how the suffering in Israel and Palestine reverberates among Jews and Muslims in America.

Episode Highlights

• “I think we are desperately in need of ways to get Americans to agree that they're in the same community… simply by naming the Declaration of Independence as a piece of shared American scripture… we are inviting people and really challenging ourselves to think about the words in those documents seriously, and prayerfully.”
• “My formation as a child was relatively non-theological… my mother just would sit there and say, ‘Do you feel that wind?’ And for me, knowing that it was in a national park mattered… being in such a grand and awesome space, under the enormity of the heavens.”
• “The pursuit of truth with epistemic humility really became the cornerstone…if Moses wasn't allowed to see God's face, I'm never gonna see God's face—and yet we are all still pursuing what the meaning of this incredible text is.”
• “I was a little bit unprepared… until you experience it as a pastor, you don't really understand the power of those things. That rootedness in this particular congregation gave me a sense of existential meaning that I didn't anticipate.”
• “The thing that got me through that darkness was Saturday morning Torah study… just being there with the text and with these faces and these people… that to me was my path through the darkness.”
• “When people are sitting over the text, the most palpable experience of God is this moment of understanding another human being… it's so vulnerable and it's so fleeting and it's so beautiful.”
• “There is an experience happening on the ground of absolute suffering and horror on both sides… and there's a parallel experience happening for Jews and Muslims in America. It's powerful, spiritually powerful, emotionally powerful, and to people’s core.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Faith 250 https://www.faith250.org/
• “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus
• “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
• “America the Beautiful” by Katherine Lee Bates https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/america-beautiful-1893
• I and Thou, Martin Buber https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780684717258/i-and-thou

About Rabbi Michael G. Holzman

Rabbi Michael G. Holzman is the Senior Rabbi of Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation (NVHC), where he has served since 2010. His work focuses on spiritual formation, civic engagement, multi-faith partnership, and the cultivation of communities grounded in dignity, learning, and ethical responsibility. He founded the Rebuilding Democracy Project, which developed into Faith 250, a national multi-faith initiative preparing communities for the 250th anniversary of the United States through shared reflection on foundational American texts. He teaches and writes on Jewish ethics, civic life, and spiritual resilience.

Show Notes

Faith 250 American Scripture

• Faith 250 as a response to political despair and a way for clergy to exercise agency
• Four core American texts explored as shared scripture across faiths
• Intent to counter politicization of the 250th anniversary through spiritual depth
• Multi-faith relationships grounding the initiative in shared civic and moral concern
• Emphasis on clergy as conveners of spiritually safe, local containers for reading
• The Declaration, New Colossus, Frederick Douglass, and America the Beautiful as “scriptural” portals to civic meaning
• “American scripture” as a means of naming shared identity and shared community

Jewish Formation and Torah

• Childhood shaped by nature, wonder, and ethical awareness rather than synagogue life
• Early encounters with the Everglades as formative experiences of spirit and awe
• Discovery of Torah study as a young adult across Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform settings
• Epistemic humility as a defining mark of Jewish study practice
• Pursuit of truth understood through the “through a glass darkly” frame of Moses
• Torah received “through the hand of Moses” as mediating truth and mystery
• Chevruta (paired study) as the engine of discovery, disagreement, and meaning

Pastoral Life and Congregational Meaning

• Surprised by the depth of pastoral work: weddings, funerals, life-cycle passages
• Intimacy of congregational leadership as a source of meaning rather than tedium
• Congregational relationships forming an existential and vocational anchor
• The role of community support during family medical crises
• How decades-long pastoral presence shapes shared covenantal life
• Teaching 12- and 13-year-olds to encounter the text as spiritual practice
• The power of intergenerational relationships in spiritual resilience

Pandemic and Spiritual Survival

• Early months of 2020 as a time of fear, isolation, and emotional strain
• Counseling families whose loved ones were dying without visitors
• Previous experience with depression creating early warning signals
• Telehealth therapy as a critical intervention
• Saturday morning Torah study on Zoom becoming the path through darkness
• Growth of the study community throughout the pandemic
• Predictable humor and shared reading as markers of communal stability

Textuality, God-Language, and Jewish Hesitations

• Jewish discomfort speaking explicitly about God for theological and cultural reasons
• Layers of humility, anti-mysticism, differentiation from Christianity, and historical experience
• Sacredness and mystery of the scroll growing in the digital age
• Physicality of the Torah scroll attracting deeper attention and reverence
• Hebrew as a source of multivalent meaning, sonic power, and spiritual resonance
• Reading together as the most common encounter with God: understanding another’s soul
• Pastoral awareness of individuals’ life stories shaping group study dynamics

Cross-Faith Devotion and Shared Honor

• Friendships with Muslim, Christian, and Hasidic leaders deepening spiritual insight
• Devotion in others sparking awe rather than defensiveness
• Disagreement becoming a site of connection rather than separation
• Devotion in other traditions prompting self-reflection on one’s own commitments
• Stories of praying with and learning from ultra-Orthodox leaders
• Shared pursuit of truth across tradition lines as a form of civic and spiritual honor
• American religious diversity offering unprecedented exposure to sincere piety

Israel, Gaza, and American Jewish Experience

• Suffering, fear, and horror experienced by Israelis and Palestinians
• Parallel emotional and spiritual pressures faced by Jews and Muslims in America
• Concern about political manipulation of community trauma
• Generational trauma and its transmission, including Holocaust-era family stories
• Emotional resonance of global conflict in local congregational life
• Distinction and connection between geopolitical realities and American spiritual experience
• Call to honor emotional realities across neighborhoods and communities

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

In this Thanksgiving reflection, Mark Labberton opens up about a period of darkness and despair, when as a younger man he considered ending his life. But when he was invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a local couple, his eyes were opened to concrete acts of hope, friendship, and joy—all embodied in the simple feast of a community “Friendsgiving” potluck.

Every year since, Mark calls these friends on Thanksgiving Day, in gratitude for and celebration of the hospitality, generosity, beauty, friendship, and hope he encountered that day.

Here Mark reflects on the emotional and psychological difficulties he was going through, the meaning and beauty of friendship, how every dish of a Thanksgiving dinner is an act of hope and community, and how hospitality and generosity can uplift every member of a community.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with depression or considering suicide, there is help available now. Simply call or text 988 to speak with someone right away, share what you’re going through, and get the support you need.

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• A story about Thanksgiving Day many years ago, during Mark Labberton’s master of divinity degree at Fuller Seminary
• “… not just overwhelmed, but really undone”
• “ … the possibility of ending my life …”
• Every Thanksgiving dish as an act of hope and community
• Beauty of friendship
• A magnificent extravaganza
• Sharing not just food but hope
• “Things had radically changed. And that in fact they had, they had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.”
• “For me, Thanksgiving Day holds this deep and pensive awareness that Thanksgiving doesn't always come easy, that often it's a difficult act, that it involves things that are sometimes impossible for certain people to carry. And at the same time, it's possible for other people to carry them in our place, which is what these friends did for me that day.”
• If you’re feeling despair, seek professional help. Call or text 988 for an immediate response with a counsellor.
• Seek community.
• “Whether you're in darkness or in light, whether your heart feels full of gratitude or whether it may not, I just hope that you'll be aware that God is with you, that you are not alone, that there are people that want to support you and help you, and that there are people that know you who would welcome you into a circle of celebration and gratitude today.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

To exist as a black male in America is to be perceived as a threat, where criminality is attributed by default and violence is justified from racial bias. And as a young man, Pastor Mike McBride learned through personal experience that following Jesus does not protect you from the violence of the state. How could it, when Jesus himself was crucified by religious- and state-sponsored violence?

In this episode, Pastor Mike (The Way Christian Center, Berkeley, CA) joins Mark Labberton to discuss the confluence of Black Pentecostal holiness, police brutality, gun violence prevention, Christian nationalism, political polarization, racial justice, and the urgent spiritual crisis facing the American church.

From his childhood in the San Francisco neighborhood of Bayview–Hunter’s Point, to the trauma of a police assault in 1999, to national leadership in Ferguson, to confronting the rise of authoritarian Christianity, Pastor Mike traces the formation of his vocation and the cost of staying faithful to Jesus in a nation shaped by anti-blackness and state-sponsored violence. His story of survival, theological awakening, moral urgency, and hopeful action is rooted in the gospel’s call to respond with peaceful action against the violence of the world.

Episode Highlights

1. “What is it about this gospel that their family members, their parents trust you with the salvation of their souls, but not the safety of their bodies.”
2. “It forced me to really have a strong come to Jesus meeting about how am I being prepared to do what I was already feeling a lifeline calling of ministry while I was starting the work of justice as a first victim and crime survivor.”
3. “It is some kind of delusion for us to follow Jesus who got crucified and killed by the state and then be surprised when we get crucified by the state.”
4. “I think there was just this sensibility that was a part of our upbringing that this is what it means to be black in America.”
5. “People are being discipled into racism. People are being discipled into anti-blackness.”
6. “I hope that feeding the hungry clothing the naked healing the sick is not something that in 2025 Christians identify as some leftist socialist liberal Christianity or we’ve lost it.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Live Free USA https://www.livefreeusa.org
• Roots, Alex Haley https://www.amazon.com/Roots-American-Family-Alex-Haley/dp/030682485X
• Boston TenPoint Coalition / Eugene Rivers https://btpc.org/
• Oscar Grant Case (NPR Overview) https://www.npr.org/2010/07/09/128401136/transit-officers-verdict-sparks-violent-protests

About Michael McBride

Pastor Michael McBride (often known as “Pastor Mike”) is the National Director of Live Free USA, a nationwide movement of faith leaders and congregations dedicated to ending gun violence, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of Black and Brown communities. A respected activist, pastor, and organizer, he has been a prominent voice in national efforts to address police violence, promote community-based safety strategies, and mobilize churches for racial justice. Pastor Mike is also the founding pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, California. His leadership, advocacy, and public witness have been featured across major media outlets, integrating faith, justice, and community transformation.

Show Notes

• Holiness, formation, and black pentecostal roots
• Growing up as the second oldest of six in Hunters Point with deep Southern family roots
• “We grew up just very much enmeshed in a black church, holiness culture.”
• Strict holiness prohibitions: no movies, no drinking, no secular music, no dancing.
• Holiness as both constraint and survival strategy during the crack era
• The world of Southern Baptist school culture colliding with black identity
• Racial Identity, Civil Rights Memory, and Family Formation
• Annual watching of Eyes on the Prize as civic and spiritual ritual.
• Leaving school to attend MLK Day celebrations: “I dare you to say something about it.”
• Roots, Alex Haley, and early consciousness of black struggle and survival
• State violence, trauma, and theological turning point
• March 1999 police assault: physical and sexual violence during a “weapons search.”
• “You can be following Jesus faithfully and still be subjected to violence at the hands of the state.”
• The dissonance of worshiping a crucified Messiah while denying contemporary crucifixions
• Youth in his ministry revealing they didn’t tell him because “we didn’t think the church would do anything.”
• Call to ministry, theological awakening, and training
• Exposure to church history, patristics, Thomas Merton, and MLK Jr.
• Grant Wacker inviting him to Duke; scholarship leading to seminary training
• Influence of black theologians and faculty shaping his justice imagination
• Meeting Eugene Rivers and the birth of a vocation in violence reduction and organizing
• Ferguson, activism, and the crisis of Christian witness
• Returning from Cape Town when Mike Brown was killed; sudden call to St. Louis
• Tear gas, militarized police, and “the ugly underside of the American law enforcement apparatus.”
• “Our marriages didn’t survive that era.”
• Ferguson as exposure of the divide within the American church: respectability politics, sexuality panic, racial division
• “People are being discipled into racism … into militarism … into economic exploitation.”
• Political polarization and Christian Nationalism
• 2016–present: Trumpism as a carrier of a broader reactionary Christian political project.
• Concern for Christian authoritarianism masquerading as religious fidelity.
• “You should definitely live out your convictions… but that don’t mean you should kill everybody else on your hill.”
• Deep grief over the church’s inability to discern the danger
• George Floyd, red lines, and the urgency of now
• Summer 2020 as national smelling salt: “the banality and the violence of this state.”
• The ceiling on empathy in American evangelicalism
• Targeted universalism and the need for differentiated strategies for shared goals
• Wealth inequality, homelessness, hunger, and the moral failure of Christianized politics
• “I hope that feeding the hungry clothing the naked healing the sick is not something… Christians identify as leftist.”
• Participatory democracy as spiritual stewardship
• The Trinity as a model of unity-with-difference
• Holiness as public witness: protecting bodies and souls
• A charge to oppose Christian nationalism and join justice-infused faithfulness

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

How would the black church’s public witness guide Christians through today’s polarization, culture-war dynamics, and ideological captivity? Drawing from Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around, Justin Giboney joins Mark Labberton to reflect on Christian credibility (and lack thereof), the black church’s public witness, and the deep forces shaping American polarization.

Reflecting on the legacy of the twentieth-century civil rights generation, Giboney describes how the black church’s fusion of orthodoxy and social action offers a model for healing division, resisting ideological captivity, and embodying what he calls “moral imagination.”

Citing the formative influences of his grandmother Willie Faye, the example of Mahalia Jackson, and the ongoing challenge of navigating truth, justice, family, unity, and political engagement in a fractured moment, Giboney explores discipleship in an ideological age, the cost of a credible public witness, and the hope of a church capable of transcending partisan allegiance to seek the good of neighbor and the glory of God.

Episode Highlights

“One thing that I saw in the civil rights generation is they were able to have a bigger perspective, even in songs like ‘Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.’”

“Love is self-sacrifice. It's being willing to at my own expense in some instances give up what I have to others.”

“This was a deliberate decision that they made to say, we're not gonna choose one of these two sides that these groups are creating for us.”

“Within the public square, credibility is currency.”

“I want all Christians to take that as their own and build on that.”

Helpful Links and Resources

Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around by Justin Giboney https://www.ivpress.com/don-t-let-nobody-turn-you-around

The AND Campaign https://andcampaign.org/

Mahalia Jackson biography (PBS) https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mahalia-jackson-about-the-singer/602/

Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley https://ivpress.com/reading-while-black

About Justin Giboney

Justin Giboney is an attorney and political strategist in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization focused on asserting the compassion and conviction of the gospel in the public square. He has served as an attorney, political organizer, and civic leader, and he regularly speaks and writes on the intersection of Christianity and politics.

Show Notes

• Justin Giboney describes being an attorney, political strategist, and ordained minister, and cofounder of the AND Campaign
• He explains the AND Campaign’s mission to raise civic literacy among Christians and resist purely partisan frameworks in favor of a biblical one
• “Social justice and moral order, love and truth, compassion and conviction” as a united Christian vision rather than opposing camps
• Lit City literacy initiative in Atlanta bringing churches across racial and partisan divides together for shared mission
• Ten-week programs for Christians preparing to run for office or engage politics constructively
• Naming and confronting polarization as a dialectical division that splits what should be held together
• Intro and summary to Giboney’s book, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around, framed as applying civil rights wisdom to the current culture-war moment
• Giboney’s grandmother Willie Faye and Mahalia Jackson as representative figures of the civil rights generation’s theological and moral framework
• Moral imagination defined as the capacity to see what ought to be, not merely what is: “the ability to see what will be based on God’s promises”
• Songs like “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” as examples of moral imagination sustaining courage and humility
• The necessity of Scripture’s authority and why the black church’s orthodoxy and orthopraxy shape public witness
• Giboney’s critique of individualism and his insistence that love is fundamentally “self-sacrifice” rather than self-expression
• Historical correction: The black church neither mirrors conservative ideology nor progressive ideology; it deliberately resisted both.
• “If we go to the right, we lose our bodies… if we go to the left, we could lose our soul.” The strategic theological posture of black church leaders
• Christian credible witness requires coherence, humility, and honesty—rather than partisan performance
• Credibility in public “is currency,” requiring self-examination, confession, and honesty about ideological idols
• Civil Rights Movement disciplines: self-purification, preparation through prayer and fellowship, resisting bitterness before engaging action
• Parenting, resilience, and teaching his sons not to give disproportionate emotional energy to racist comments, while still confronting wrongdoing
• The role of community formation, honor, and integrated humanity within black church worship life
• Hopes for the church: rejecting secular assumptions about who can reconcile, cultivating humility across divisions
• AND Campaign’s twenty-year vision: Christians uniting across party lines around shared commitments like racial justice, family, sanctity of life, and poverty
• Final exhortation: The black church’s public witness is a gift and challenge to the entire American church, not just one community.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What is the book of Revelation really about? For ages, it has been the source of sensationalism, idolatry, confusion, and end-times predictions. But at its root, it is about the power and worship of the Lamb who was slain.

Biblical scholar Michael J. Gorman joins Mark Labberton to explore how Christians can read the book of Revelation with wisdom, faith, and hope rather than fear or sensationalism. Drawing from his book Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness—Following the Lamb into the New Creation, Gorman offers a reorientation to Revelation’s central vision: worshipping the Lamb, resisting idolatrous power, and embodying faithful discipleship in the world. Together they discuss Revelation’s misuses in popular culture, its critique of empire and nationalism, and its invitation to follow the crucified and risen Christ into the new creation.

Episode Highlights

1. “The book of Revelation is about lamb power—not hyper-religious or political power. It’s about absorbing rather than inflicting evil.”
2. “This book is for those who are confused by, afraid of, and or preoccupied with the book of Revelation.”
3. “We shouldn’t look for predictions but for parallels and analogies.”
4. “Worship, discipleship, and new creation—that’s where Revelation hangs its hat.”
5. “At its root, Christian nationalism is a form of idolatry.”
6. “The only way to come out of Babylon is to go back into Babylon with new values and new practices.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Reading Revelation Responsibly – https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Revelation-Responsibly-Following-Creation/dp/1606085603/
• Reverse Thunder by Eugene Peterson – https://www.amazon.com/Reversed-Thunder-Revelation-Praying-Imagination/dp/0060665033
• St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore – https://www.stmarys.edu

About Michael J. Gorman

Michael J. Gorman is the Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland. A leading New Testament scholar, he is the author of numerous books on Pauline theology and Revelation, including Reading Revelation Responsibly, Cruciformity, and Participating in Christ. Gorman’s teaching and writing emphasize Scripture as a call to cruciform discipleship, faithful worship, and the hope of new creation.

Show Notes

• Introducing Reading Revelation Responsibly
• “This book is for those who are confused by, afraid of, and or preoccupied with the Book of Revelation.”
• “Apocalypse” means revelation, not destruction.
• Emerging from twenty-five years of study and teaching, aimed at rescuing Revelation from misinterpretation or neglect
• Growing up amid 1970s end-times obsession—Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and fearful youth-group predictions of the world’s end
• Fear of the book of Revelation until he studied it with Bruce Metzger at Princeton Seminary
• Why he wrote the book: for people who have been scared or confused by Revelation’s misuse
• Interpretation and misreading the book of Revelation
• Early questions: Does Revelation predict particular events or people?
• No predictions, but symbolic speaking into every age
• “Our task is not to find predictions but to discern parallels and analogies.”
• Warning against mapping Revelation onto modern crises or personalities
• “When those predictions fail, the book gets sidelined or scoffed at.”
• Keep one foot in the first-century context and one in the present
• Worship and discipleship
• The heart of Revelation is worship.
• “This is a book about worship—and about the object of our worship.”
• Explaining the subtitle: Uncivil Worship and Witness—Following the Lamb into the New Creation
• “Uncivil worship” contrasts with “civil religion”—worship that refuses to idolize political power
• Influence from Eugene Peterson’s Reverse Thunder and his own teaching at St. Mary’s, where Peterson once taught Revelation
• Worship leads to discipleship: “Those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.”
• True discipleship mirrors the Lamb’s humility and non-violence.
• The lamb and the meaning of power
• Interpreting Revelation’s vision of the slain and standing Lamb as the key to understanding divine power
• “The crucified Messiah is the risen Lord—but he remains the crucified one.”
• The Lamb appears twenty-eight times, a symbol of universality and completeness.
• “Revelation is about lamb power—absorbing rather than inflicting evil.”
• Discipleship is cruciform: following the Lamb’s way of self-giving love.
• The unholy trinity and the danger of idolatry
• Chapters 12–13 depict the dragon and two beasts—the “unholy trinity” of satanic, imperial, and religious power.
• “Power gone amok”: political, military, and spiritual domination that mimic divinity
• How true worship resists empire and exposes idolatry
• Warning against reading these beasts as predictions of the UN or the pope; rather, they reveal recurring alliances of religion and politics
• “At its root, Christian nationalism is idolatry.”
• When political identity eclipses discipleship, “political power always wins, and faith loses.”
• Faith, politics, and worship today
• Christian nationalism as a modern form of “civil religion,” conflating patriotism with divine will
• “It’s only Christian in name—it lacks Christian substance.”
• Idolatry is not limited to one side: “It permeates the left, the right, and probably the centre.”
• Labberton agrees: false worship is endemic wherever self-interest and fear shape our loves.
• Both stress that Revelation calls the church to worship the Lamb, not the state.
• “Revelation critiques all human systems of false worship.”
• Revelation’s goal: Not destruction, but new creation
• “Destruction is penultimate—cleansing the way for renewal.”
• Believers already live as citizens of that new creation.
• “The only way to come out of Babylon is to go back into Babylon with new values and new practices.”
• Communal, not merely individual, discipleship: “Revelation is written to churches, not just believers.”
• Reinterpreting Revelation 3:20: Jesus knocking isn’t an altar call to unbelievers but Christ seeking re-entry into his own church.
• “Jesus always wants to come back in.”
• Living revelation today
• Spirituality of hope, not fear or withdrawal
• “Reading Revelation responsibly means engaging the world through worship and witness.”
• How true worship is dangerous because it transforms our allegiance.
• “Following the Lamb into the new creation is the church’s act of resistance.”
• Conclusion: “Worthy is the Lamb.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Adverse childhood experiences are notoriously hard to overcome, and they can affect a person well into adulthood. But the grace of close, stable, nurturing relationships can offer hope.

Terence Lester—author of From Dropout to Doctorate and founder of Love Beyond Walls—joins Mark Labberton for a conversation about resilience, faith, and the redemptive power of seeing and being seen. Lester recounts his life’s journey from poverty, homelessness, and gang membership in southwest Atlanta to earning his PhD in public policy and social change. Together, they explore the impact of childhood trauma on personal development; education as a form of love, justice, and community service; and the healing potential of local community and proximity. Lester’s story is a testament to divine grace, human courage, and the transformative impact of compassionate words and faithful presence.

Episode Highlights

1. “The higher your ACE score, the more your body has to overcome… Every ‘yes’ cultivates a stronger relationship with pain. Your counterparts with lower scores may never develop those same muscles of resilience.”
2. “Education is a tool that increases your capacity to serve others.”
3. “People don’t become what you want them to become—they become what you encourage them to become.”
4. “I am a product of people who invested in me and of the things I’ve had to resist.”
5. “You can’t love your neighbour if you’re not concerned about the neighbourhood that produces your neighbour.”
6. “Each sentence spoken can become a seed of hope—or a curse that crushes it.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Terence Lester’s website – https://terencelester.com/
• From Dropout to Doctorate – https://www.ivpress.com/from-dropout-to-doctorate
• I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People – https://www.ivpress.com/i-see-you
• Love Beyond Walls (Terence Lester’s non-profit) – https://www.lovebeyondwalls.org
• ACEs Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) – https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html
• The Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby – https://jemartisby.com/the-color-of-compromise/

About Terence Lester

Terence Lester is a speaker, activist, author, and founder of Love Beyond Walls, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about poverty and homelessness while mobilizing communities to serve those in need. A graduate of Union Institute & University with a PhD in public policy and social change, he is the author of I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People, When We Stand: The Power of Seeking Justice Together, **and All God’s Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity. His latest book is From Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice. Through storytelling, advocacy, and faith-rooted organizing, Lester seeks to dismantle systemic barriers and call communities toward justice, empathy, and proximity.

Show Notes

• Education and social change
• Terence Lester describes sitting beside his father’s hospital bed reflecting on vulnerability, legacy, and resilience.
• His father’s words—“I’m proud of you”—affirmed the journey from poverty to doctorate.
• Growing up amid trauma, gangs, and homelessness in southwest Atlanta.
• The generational impact of systemic injustice and public policy shaping social outcomes
• Education as a tool for empowerment and community transformation, not self-advancement
• “Education is a tool that increases your capacity to serve others.”
• How the post–Civil Rights era shaped identity and pride in blackness while still marked by inequality
• Frames poverty itself as a form of trauma, calling for empathy and systemic response
• Trauma, resilience, and the ACEs framework
• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) test as a tool for understanding trauma
• Lester shares his 10/10 ACE score—complete exposure to childhood trauma
• “Every ‘yes’ cultivates a stronger relationship with pain… You must climb out of a pit to reach emotionally stable ground.”
• How adversity produced resilience, not fragility
• Connecting personal trauma to compassion in ministry among the unhoused
• How proximity to suffering forms the capacity for empathy and love
• Faith, identity, and calling
• Connecting resilience and faith: “I believe my being was intricately woven together by God.”
• Psalm 139 and seeing himself as “fearfully and wonderfully made”
• Jesus’s life as a model of proximity and compassionate visibility—“Jesus saw.”
• The church as a community of affirmation and blessing
• How words spoken over others—curses or encouragement—shape identity
• “People don’t become what you want them to become—they become what you encourage them to become.”
• Community, visibility, and flourishing
• “You can’t love your neighbor if you’re not concerned about the neighborhood that produces your neighbor.”
• Warns of a “compassion deficit” and urges the rebuilding of community communication
• Seeds and environments: people cannot flourish where conditions are hostile
• The need for better care for impoverished environments that stunt potential
• Community as the soil of hope—“People find hope and possibility in community.”
• Lester’s mother’s resilience and faith—earning her own doctorate while raising two children
• “I am a product of her never giving up.”
• The generational power of education and faith as liberation
• Hope, words, and the power of blessing
• Transformative and timely sentences: encouraging words of seeds or yeast—small yet life-altering
• How to speak life, not curses, over others
• “Each sentence spoken can become a seed of hope—or a curse that crushes it.”
• Mentorship, community affirmation, and divine proximity as instruments of healing
• Interrogating falsehoods: “God is not the source of cursing.”
• A call to faith-rooted compassion, proximity, and collective responsibility.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

How can we  address the problem of violence against the poor? International Justice Mission exists to answer this question by protecting and rescuing victims, bringing criminals to justice, restoring survivors to safety and strength, and helping local law enforcement build a safe future that lasts.

In this episode, International Justice Mission’s founder and CEO, Gary Haugen, joins Mark Labberton to reflect on almost three decades of IJM’s fight against violence and slavery worldwide—and the spiritual formation that sustains it. Haugen shares the origins of IJM in response to systemic violence against the poor, the evolution from individual rescues to transforming justice systems, and the remarkable rise of survivor leaders transforming their own nations. Together they reflect on courage, joy, and faith amid immense risk—bearing witness to God’s power to bring justice and healing through ordinary people.

Episode Highlights

1. “Protecting the poor from violence is God’s weight, but it’s our work, and we're gonna seek to do it Jesus's way.”
2. ”In this era, I just think what the world is aching to see is the followers of Jesus who have a incandescent freedom from fear and a life-giving joy.”
3. “Most of this violence will go away if government does just even a decent job of enforcing the law.”
4. “Our first commitment is to help each other become more like Jesus—and from that strength, to do justice.”
5. “The greatest miracle of IJM is not only the results—it’s the freedom from fear and the joy with which they’ve done it.”
6. “God saw them in their darkness, and they now testify to the goodness of an almighty God who loved them.”

Helpful Links and Resources

International Justice Mission – https://www.ijm.org

Gary Haugen, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence –

https://www.amazon.com/Locust-Effect-Poverty-Requires-Violence/dp/0199937877

Gary Haugen, Just Courage: God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian – https://www.amazon.com/Just-Courage-Expedition-Restless-Christian-ebook/dp/B001PSEQR4

Riverside Church Sermon by Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam” — https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam

William Lloyd Garrison biography – https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Lloyd-Garrison

Rwanda Genocide Investigation (UN Historical Overview) – https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda

About Gary Haugen

Gary Haugen is the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), the world’s largest international anti-slavery organization. Before founding IJM in 1997, he served as the director of the United Nations’ investigation into the Rwandan genocide and previously worked at the US Department of Justice, focusing on police misconduct. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, Haugen has dedicated his life to ending violence against the poor and mobilizing the global church for justice.

Show Notes

• The founding of IJM in 1997 as a Christian response to violence against the poor
• Gary Haugen’s formative experience directing the UN’s genocide investigation in Rwanda
• Realization that hunger and disease were being addressed—but violence was not
• Early cases in the Philippines, South Asia, and Peru exposing police-run brothels and child slavery
• IJM 1.0: rescuing individuals from slavery and abuse, case by case
• IJM 2.0: strengthening local justice systems to prevent violence before it happens
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Jericho Road” as a model for systemic transformation
• Formation of small multidisciplinary teams—lawyers, investigators, social workers
• IJM’s evolution from rescue operations to building sustainable justice infrastructure
• Twenty-year celebration: Liberate conference and the global IJM staff retreat
• IJM’s culture of spiritual formation: daily solitude, prayer, and community rhythms
• A Christian order of justice rooted in prayer, silence, and shared joy
• Spiritual formation as the foundation for sustainable justice work
• Experiments in Cambodia, the Philippines, and South Asia reducing violence by up to 85 percent
• Replication of IJM’s model across 46 regions to protect 500 million vulnerable people
• Goal by 2030: one million freed from slavery, 300 million living under protection
• Empowering survivor leaders: from victims to advocates and elected officials
• Stories of transformation like Pama in South Asia leading the Release Bonded Laborers Association
• The Kenyan case of Willie Kimani—murdered IJM lawyer whose legacy reformed police accountability
• IJM’s resilience: pursuing justice for six years until conviction of perpetrators
• Theological grounding: justice as God’s work, pursued in Jesus’s way
• Haugen on resilience: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”
• Joy and freedom from fear as hallmarks of IJM’s culture
• How IJM balances global crisis fatigue with focused mission clarity
• Future challenges: technology-driven oppression—live-stream child abuse and forced scamming
• Global body of Christ as the essential network for courage and joy
• Sustainability and local leadership as the future of global justice movements
• Spiritual communities as the seedbed for future justice leaders

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What is the theological meaning of American history? In this episode, American church historian Grant Wacker joins Mark Labberton to explore the theological dimensions of American history, the legacy of Billy Graham, and the evolving face of evangelicalism. Wacker reflects on his Pentecostal upbringing, his formation as a historian, and his conviction that faith and scholarship must speak honestly to one another. Together they trace how religion has both shaped and distorted American life—from the enduring wound of slavery to the reformist spirit woven through its history. Wacker, now in his eighties, offers his perspective on evangelicalism’s past, present, and global future.

Episode Highlights

1. “Religion has always been at the forefront of rationalizing and making enslavement seem perfectly normal—perfectly natural. It’s just the order of things.”
2. “Many of the very finest religious historians are not believers—and they do superb work in understanding where religion lies.”
3. “I don't think there is Christian nationalism out there. What there is is that there is nationalism that draws on Christian categories to legitimate itself.”
4. “I don’t think what we’re looking at is a religious movement. We’re looking at a political movement that uses religious categories.”
5. “We should write about others the way we wish they would write about us.”
6. “You Americans are always asking the Holy Spirit to bring revival. What you ought to be doing is asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to the revival that is already flourishing.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Pastor-Graham-Shaping-Nation/dp/0674052188
• Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Below-Pentecostals-American-Culture/dp/0674011287
• One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/One-Soul-Time-Religious-Biography/dp/0802885500/
• Mark Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis — https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Crisis-Steven-Janice-Lectures/dp/1469621819
• Religion in American Life: A Short History — ****https://www.amazon.com/Religion-American-Life-Short-History/dp/0199832692/

About Grant Wacker

Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. A leading scholar of American religious history, he is the author of numerous books including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture and America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. His research has helped shape modern understanding of American evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the intersection of faith and culture.

Show Notes

• Wacker’s path to the study of history through mentorship at Harvard Divinity School and a fascination with theology’s relationship to historical reality
• He distinguishes between observing “religion operating in history” and perceiving “the divine hand,” emphasizing the tension between secular and theological approaches to the past.
• Four major contexts that define the American story: geography, capitalism, immigration, and race
• Eleven domains where the power of religion—and possibly divine influence—can be seen, from colonization and enslavement to revivalism and reform.
• “We are a people of plenty—prosperous partly because of the accident of geography.”
• Reformed and Wesleyan theology as twin engines shaping the nation’s moral and social imagination.
• Humility as “at the heart of Reformed theology: we don’t run our lives; something else is running the show.”
• Wesleyan theology, by contrast, stresses human enablement and responsibility: “If we are able to do it, we are responsible for doing it.”
• Catholic contributions to the American story, especially the richness of liturgy and the continuity of two thousand years of history
• Reflections on racial sin as a “permanent wound,” calling religion both complicit in and necessary for confronting slavery’s legacy
• Mark Noll’s The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, highlighting how both sides invoked Scripture without self-awareness or self-critique
• “Religion has always been implicated in making enslavement seem natural—as natural as breathing.”
• Describes evangelicalism’s deep roots in pietism and revivalism, its mainstream dominance by the late nineteenth century, and its later fragmentation.
• “Evangelicalism became the main line—it was the standard way Protestantism operated.”
• Outlines the modern trifurcation: fundamentalists, liberals, and a centrist evangelical river that remains influential.
• “Christian nationalism” is largely a political, not religious, phenomenon: nationalism using Christian categories to legitimize itself.
• “Religion is rarely an independent variable in determining how people vote.”
• Richard Bushman (paraphrase):  Have we written about [the subjects of academic history] as fairly and honestly as we can, or have we distorted their story in order to make ourselves look good?
• A call for fairness in historical judgment: “Write about them the way you wish they would write about you.”
• Prediction: Evangelicalism’s future lies “south of the equator”—in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Quotes a Jesuit: “Americans keep asking for revival; they should ask to see the revival that’s already happening.”
• On Christian nationalism: “The question is not whether religion and politics collude—they always have—but whether we can be self-conscious and humble about it.”
• Identifies power, prosperity, and digital speed as the toxic combination shaping contemporary polarization.
• “Speed is a narcotic for humans—we want to be connected now.”
• Reflects on Billy Graham’s unifying role and his progressive evolution on race and nuclear disarmament: “He became increasingly moderate, increasingly inclusive.”
• Notes Graham’s three conversions—to Christ, to racial justice, and to peace.
• “The United States and the Soviet Union are like two little boys in a bathtub filled with gasoline, playing with matches.”
• On teaching and legacy: “My students are earnest—they want to do well for the world they live in.”
• “Whatever good has come—it’s a gift, not earned.”
• Humility, humor, and grace as rare marks of faith and scholarship integrated

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“Migration is grace,” says UCLA professor Robert Chao Romero, author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. In this episode, he joins Mark Labberton to discuss the immigration crisis through stories from Southern California, theology of migration, and the challenge of Christian nationalism for the American response to the immigration crisis we face.

Romero narrates heartbreaking accounts of ICE raids, racial profiling, and dehumanization, while also offering hope rooted in scripture and the early church. He points out the “Xenodochias” of the ancient and medieval church that cared for migrants. And he shows how biblical narratives—from Abraham to Jesus—reveal God’s mercy in migration. Romero calls Christians to see the image of God in migrants, resist the “Latino threat narrative,” and reclaim the church’s historic role in welcoming the stranger.

Episode Highlights

1. “Migration is grace. … You wouldn’t have a Bible without migration.”
2. “Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders, and he rose to new life among outsiders.”
3. “The gospel is an outward pushing invitation… it is the pushing out actually into the far and remote places of suffering in need.”
4. “This level of targeting of the Latino community has not happened since 1954 and Operation Wetback.”
5. “We think that crossing the US border is like crossing the Jordan into the promised land, and we’re baptized into the Yankee Doodle song.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Brown Church by Robert Chao Romero
• UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies
• Fuller Seminary’s Centro Latino
• CLUE: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice
• World Relief

About Robert Chao Romero

Robert Chao Romero is an associate professor in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and in the Asian American Studies Department. With a background in law and history, his research and teaching explore the intersections of race, immigration, faith, and justice. He is the author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity (IVP Academic), which chronicles the long history of Latino Christian social justice movements. Romero is also an ordained pastor, active in local church ministry and theological reflection on immigration, Christian nationalism, and the global church.

Show Notes

Immigration Crisis and ICE Raids

• Student testimonies of fear and trauma at UCLA during immigration crackdowns
• Stories of ICE targeting bus stops, car washes, and Home Depots in Southern California
• Latino citizens, veterans, and even high school students detained despite legal status
• A man fleeing ICE was killed in traffic, sparking vigils and protests

Historical Parallels and Christian Nationalism

• Comparison to Operation Wetback of 1954, when over one million were deported
• Escalating racial profiling, reinforced by Supreme Court decisions
• “Latino Threat Narrative” portrays Latinos as criminals and unwilling to assimilate
• Christian nationalism merges citizenship and faith, echoing “manifest destiny”

Theology of Migration and Outsiders

• Migration as grace: God intervenes with compassion in nearly every biblical migration story
• “We live alongside the world. We don't belong to the world.”
• “ Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders, and he rose to new life among outsiders.” (Jorge Lara-Braud)
• Jesus as an asylum seeker in Egypt; Ruth and Joseph as biblical migrants
• Early church created “xenodochias”—ancient and medieval social service centers for immigrants and the poor
• Outsider theology: Christians as strangers and aliens, called to care for outsiders
• “Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders.”

Policy Challenges and Misconceptions

• Millions of mixed-status households trapped by the “10-year bar” in immigration law
• Asylum seekers legally present cases at the border under U.S. law
• Refugees undergo extensive vetting, often over decades
• Common myths about immigrants as “illegal” are contradicted by law and history

Faith, Empathy, and the Church

• Empathy as central to Christian response, counter to narratives of fear and scarcity
• Latino pastors passing on both the gospel and nationalism from missionary influence
• The church historically provided refugee care before the UN Refugee Agency existed
• Worship with immigrant congregations as a source of hope and resilience
• Orthodox theology: worship joins heaven and earth, every tribe and nation before the Lamb

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Millions of people today face dire medical and mental health challenges. What role should the church play in foreign humanitarian aid to address starvation and deadly illness? In this episode, Eric Ha, CEO of Medical Teams International, joins Mark Labberton for a sobering, hopeful conversation on global humanitarian crises and the role of the church in responding to both the physical and spiritual needs of those who are suffering. Drawing from his years at International Justice Mission and now at Medical Teams International, Ha shares vivid accounts from refugee camps in East Africa and migrant communities in Colombia. He reflects on the collapse of US foreign aid, the limits of humanitarian response, and the urgent need for churches to reclaim their historic role in caring for the vulnerable. Ha wrestles candidly with the calling of Christian communities to embody God’s expansive love even amid staggering need.

Episode Highlights

1. “These humans that bear the image of the divine and the eternal, and the holy and the sacred.”
2. “Last year, Medical Teams staff helped deliver fifty thousand babies—that's a delivery every ten minutes, somewhere around the world in these extraordinarily harsh settings.”
3. “Finding the thread and kernel of hope is actually a lot more challenging.”
4. “For thousands of years prior to the UN, the infrastructure and ecosystem for the care of refugees was the church. It was God’s people.”
5. “The gospel is an outward pushing invitation.… It is the pushing out actually into the far and remote places of suffering in need, and to see the presence of God.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Medical Teams International
• International Justice Mission
• UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency
• PEPFAR—The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
• Clinton Global Initiative

About Eric Ha

Eric Ha is the chief executive officer of Medical Teams International, a Christian humanitarian relief organization providing life-saving medical care for people in crisis worldwide. Before joining Medical Teams, he served more than a decade in senior leadership roles at International Justice Mission, advancing global efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery. A lawyer by training, Ha brings a deep commitment to justice, compassion, and the mobilization of the church in service of the vulnerable.

Show Notes

Global Humanitarian Crises and Refugee Care

• Eric Ha shares his journey from law and IJM to leading Medical Teams International
• Medical Teams founded in response to Cambodia’s killing fields, continuing nearly 50 years of healthcare missions
• Primary healthcare for refugees: maternal care, vaccinations, mosquito nets, antimalarials, antidiarrheals, and mental health
• Serving 9 million people in East Africa, including Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Sudan
• Refugee camps lack electricity, clean water, and adequate shelter—average displacement nearly 20 years
• Medical Teams delivers maternal care that dramatically reduces mortality, helping deliver 50,000 babies last year

Healthcare and Human Dignity

• The crisis is not statistics—it’s humans bearing God’s image, glimpses of laughter, joy, and resilience
• Colombia: working with Venezuelan migrants amid drastic cuts in U.S. aid (down to 10% of prior levels)
• Withdrawal of foreign aid leaves communities devastated and forces NGOs to scale back
• Transition from justice work at IJM to medical humanitarian work brings both immediacy of impact and insufficiency of resources

Hope and Despair in Humanitarian Work

• Theories of change at IJM allowed for hope in systemic reform; displacement crises feel harder to solve
• Challenge of holding onto hope in the face of preventable death and suffering
• Churches historically provided refugee care before the UN; today, withdrawal of aid exposes the need for church re-engagement
• Need to reimagine church-government partnerships in humanitarian response

Empathy, Collaboration, and Mental Health

• Empathy as essential orientation in humanitarian work, easily lost without intentionality
• Competitiveness and survivalism among NGOs risks eclipsing empathy
• Mental health needs are massive: trauma among children in refugee camps threatens future stability
• Clinton Global Initiative highlights Medical Teams’ commitment to expand mental health care for children in Sudan
• Training local health workers and communities to recognize trauma and create safe spaces for children

Invitation to the Church and Listeners

• The gospel calls us outward, not inward—expanding our experience of God’s vastness through engagement with suffering
• Churches must discern how to integrate humanitarian concerns without distraction, embracing their historic role in refugee care
• Prayer requests: for hope, for patience to wait on the Lord, and for wisdom in making hard decisions
• “We are invited into a different orientation—the empathy piece is so critical because it is the thing that allows us to engage.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

The church is so much more than a building—but when it comes to managing the physical property of church real estate, we often overlook the great good that can emerge from the land and structures. In this episode, social entrepreneur, strategic executive, and author Mark Elsdon joins Mark Labberton on Conversing to explore how churches and faith communities can reimagine their assets—land, buildings, and money—as instruments for mission, community transformation, and spiritual flourishing. From his decades of work at Pres House in Madison, Wisconsin, to his role as consultant, author, and co-leader of RootedGood, Elsdon shares stories of innovation, courage, and the hard but hopeful work of repurposing property and resources for God’s mission in the world.

Episode Highlights

1. “It isn’t about property, nor is it about money. It’s about people’s lives and it’s about God’s work in people’s lives.”
2. “We often have the faith of our forebears in the church. But the question is, do we have the courage of them?”
3. “I don’t think God’s going away. I don’t think God’s declining. But the way people are engaging their faith is really changed and is changing.”
4. “Sometimes I talk about this as like the Blockbuster Video moment… People still want experiences of the divine. They just don’t want to access it primarily on a Sunday morning.”
5. “Constraints can produce creativity and, in the life of faith, can also produce a willingness to trust.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Mark Elsdon's Website
• *We Aren't Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry,* by Mark Elsdon
• *Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition,* by Mark Elsdon
• RootedGood - resources for congregations, judicatories, and other church leaders related to social enterprise and church property
• Good Futures Accelerator course
• How-To Guides
• Threshold Sacred Development - A mission-aligned property development company focused on supporting churches doing community-oriented development

About Mark Elsdon

Mark Elsdon lives and works at the intersection of money and meaning as an entrepreneur, non-profit executive, author, and speaker. He is the author of We Aren't Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry (2021) and editor of Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition (2024). In addition to his role as a director with RootedGood, Mark is also executive director at Pres House, where he led the transformation of a dormant non-profit into a growing, vibrant, multi-million-dollar organization.

Mark has a BA in psychology from the University of California–Berkeley, a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin School of Business. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Mark is an avid cyclist and considers it a good year when he rides more miles on his bike than he drives in his car.

Show Notes

• Mark Elsdon reflects on thirty years of ministry, beginning with campus work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Launch of a $17 million student housing project that became a transformative ministry for thousands of students.
• Elsdon’s discovery: “It isn’t about property, nor is it about money. It’s about people’s lives and it’s about God’s work in people’s lives.”
• Creation of a sober housing program at Pres House that has saved the state of Wisconsin more than a million dollars in addiction-related costs.
• Innovative blend of mission, ministry, and real estate development to foster student flourishing.
• The unique impact of housing students in recovery alongside the wider student population.
• Elsdon’s MBA studies at UW–Madison and his calling at the intersection of money and mission.
• The “Blockbuster Video moment” for American Christianity: people still seek meaning, community, and transcendence, but not in traditional formats.
• Challenges churches face with aging buildings, declining attendance, and financial strain.
• How repurposing property reveals new opportunities for mission and ministry.
• RootedGood’s “Good Futures” Accelerator course: helping churches rethink land, buildings, and resources for social enterprise and revenue generation.
• Example of two congregations in Madison merging to create an environmentally sustainable multifamily housing project and community center.
• Redefining church property as community space: “flipping the script” so the building belongs to the neighborhood, with the church as anchor tenant.
• Courage, risk-taking, and letting go of past models are essential for churches to reimagine their future.
• The critical role of pastoral and lay leadership in sparking change and vision.
• Storytelling as central to church renewal: “We often have the faith of our forebears in the church. But the question is, do we have the courage of them?”
• Learning from the pandemic: every church has the capacity for innovation and adaptation.
• Honouring grief and loss while embracing resurrection hope in church property transitions.
• Example from San Antonio: members resisted redevelopment until their need for funerals in the sanctuary was acknowledged—turning “either/or” into “both/and.”
• Affordable housing crisis intersects directly with church land opportunities.
• Turner Center study: California churches and colleges hold land equal to five Oaklands suitable for affordable housing development.
• Elsdon warns against cookie-cutter “models” and emphasizes local context, story, and creativity.
• Forecast: up to 100,000 church properties in the US may be sold or repurposed in the next decade.
• Elsdon’s hope: more repurposing than selling, with land and buildings becoming assets for life-giving mission.
• The value of constraints: “Constraints can produce creativity and, in the life of faith, can also produce a willingness to trust.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Unity is acting together even when we don’t think alike. And one of the primary aims of the American Constitution is to support a democracy of those unified in diversity. Yuval Levin joins Mark Labberton to explore the precarious state of American constitutional life and the imbalance of power between the branches of the U.S. government. Drawing from his book America’s Covenant, Levin argues that the Founders designed the Constitution above all to preserve unity in a divided society. Yet today, he warns, the imbalance of power—particularly the weakness of Congress and the rise of presidential authority—threatens democratic legitimacy. In this conversation, Levin reflects on originalism, the courts, Donald Trump’s expanding influence, and the dangers of both passivity and autocracy. With clarity and urgency, he calls for renewed civic engagement and for Congress to reclaim its central role.

Episode Highlights

1. “Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike. Unity means acting together. And the question for a modern political society is how do we act together when we don't think alike?”
2. “The biggest problem we have is that Congress is under-active, radically under-active and has turned itself into a spectator.”
3. “The president is in charge of the executive branch, but the executive branch is not in charge of the American government.”
4. “I am very concerned about this kind of Caesar-ism. I think it is very dangerous.”
5. “What we're seeing is constitutional creep, where the president is pushing and nobody's pushing back, and only Congress can do it.”
6. “I worry a lot about Donald Trump. But the reason I worry is because Congress isn’t doing its job.”
7. “The politics of an autocratic state is a politics of spectators, and we just cannot become spectators.”
8. “All of us will find ourselves in the minority sooner or later.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• America’s Covenant: The Constitution and the Path to National Unity, by Yuval Levin
• American Enterprise Institute (Find Yuval Levin’s current research and publications)
• *New York Times Opinion* – Yuval Levin’s columns at the New York Times

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. He is the founder and editor of National Affairs, senior editor of The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024), which examines the U.S. Constitution through the lens of national unity in a divided society.

Show Notes

• Constitutional unity and division
• Yuval Levin summarizes America’s Covenant as a reintroduction to the Constitution framed around the challenge of unity in diversity.
• “Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike. Unity means acting together.”
• The Constitution prioritizes bargaining, negotiation, and legitimacy over efficiency.
• Congress was designed as the “first branch” of government to embody pluralism and force compromise.
• The decline of Congress and rise of the presidency
• Levin argues Congress is radically under-active, ceding ground to presidents and courts.
• “The biggest problem we have is that Congress is under-active, radically under-active and has turned itself into a spectator.”
• Excessive focus on the presidency erodes democratic legitimacy.
• Current frustrations stem from misunderstanding the system’s design: it resists narrow majorities and forces broad coalitions.
• Courts, originalism, and the unitary executive
• Levin affirms he is an originalist: “a philosophy of judicial interpretation … a mode of self-restraint for judges.”
• Supreme Court decisions in recent years repeatedly signal: “Congress, do your job.”
• He outlines the unitary executive theory: the president controls the executive branch, but not the government as a whole.
• “The president is in charge of the executive branch, but the executive branch is not in charge of the American government.”
• Trump’s expanding power
• Levin warns of the growing push to centralize authority in the presidency.
• “I am very concerned about this kind of Caesar-ism. I think it is very dangerous.”
• Trump’s second term differs because restraints have vanished; his circle now encourages unrestrained executive action.
• Disruption of long-held norms has weakened trust in American institutions globally and domestically.
• Constitutional crisis vs. constitutional creep
• Levin distinguishes between “creep,” “conflict,” and “crisis.”
• He argues the U.S. is experiencing constitutional creep: unchecked executive power without Congress pushing back.
• True crisis would involve direct defiance of the courts—something still possible but not yet realized.
• The role of citizens and civic responsibility
• Levin stresses the danger of passivity: “The politics of an autocratic state is a politics of spectators, and we just cannot become spectators.”
• Citizens should keep writing to Congress, vote with clear expectations, and engage in local governance.
• State legislatures, though less visible, often function better than Congress today.
• Clear thinking itself, Levin suggests, is a moral act for a healthy republic.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

There’s no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible. Every reading is inflected by first-person experience, cultural context, history, and more. In this episode, biblical scholars Janette Ok and Jordan J. Ryan join Mark Labberton to reflect on The New Testament in Color, a groundbreaking new biblical commentary that brings together diverse voices across racial, cultural, and social locations. They share how their own ethnic and cultural backgrounds as Asian American and Filipino Canadian readers shaped their understanding of Scripture, the importance of social location, using the creeds as guardrails for hermeneutics, and how contextual interpretation deepens biblical authority rather than diminishing it.

Episode Highlights

• “There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible.” —Mark Labberton
• “It really dawned on me the importance of being aware of who I am, my family background, my history in the United States, all these things.” —Janette Ok
• “Filipinos I think are always sort of on the margins… trying to understand how Asian we really are or aren’t.” —Jordan J. Ryan
• “Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity.” —Jordan J. Ryan quoting Bernard Lonergan
• “Colorblindness is actually something that's not true… particularity is fundamental to the gospel.” —Janette Ok
• “It was one of the most freeing experiences that I’ve had because it finally gave me permission to do the thing that I’d always wanted to do.” —Jordan J. Ryan

Helpful Links and Resources

• The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary on the New Testament (IVP Academic)

About Janette Ok

Janette Ok is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. A leading scholar in Asian American biblical interpretation, she is a co-editor of The New Testament in Color and author of Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter.

About Jordan Ryan

Jordan Ryan is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, and author of The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus and From the Passion to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. His research explores Acts, archaeology, and Filipino American biblical interpretation.

Show Notes

• The New Testament in color and contextual biblical Interpretation
• “There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible.”
• Janette’s growing up in a Korean immigrant church in Detroit, carrying “the weight of assimilation.”
• Asian American literature, especially Bone by Fae Myenne Ng
• Opening our eyes to the power of articulating immigrant experience
• Jordan Ryan’s mixed-race Canadian upbringing—Filipino mother, white father—and early encounters with Scripture through unhoused communities.
• “Filipinos are always sort of on the margins of Asian America.” —Jordan Ryan
• Contextual reading of the bible
• All readings are contextual, contrasting liberation theology, unhoused readers, and Western academic traditions
• Challenges and dangers of contextualization
• “The first danger is to think that we can remove ourselves from the work of textual interpretation.”
• Social location is not an external lens but intrinsic to the gospel.
• “Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity.”
• Archaeology that informs contextual questions
• “Colorblind” readings ignore particularity and miss the incarnational nature of Scripture.
• Biblical authority and the living word
• Biblical authority as central: “It’s why I teach at Wheaton College and not somewhere else.”
• “When we say the Bible is the living Word of God… it means it has to speak to us today.”
• Preachers already contextualize every Sunday; The New Testament in Color makes this explicit and communal
• New Testament in Color was initiated by Esau McCaulley in 2018
• Preceded by works like True to Our Native Land and Women’s Bible Commentary
• Distinctive by gathering scholars from African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and European American backgrounds in one volume
• Goal: Embody diversity without sacrificing particularity or biblical trust.
• Commentary on Acts, including Filipino American theology and diaspora identity
• “It was one of the most freeing experiences that I’ve had.”
• He traced themes of foreignness, colonialism, and God’s care for the imprisoned in Acts
• 1 Peter and Asian American biblical interpretation, wrestling with exile, belonging, and “perpetual foreigner” stereotypes
• Home as central theological concern—“not everyone feels at home in the same way.” —Janette Ok
• Editing, diversity, and reader reception
• Balancing freedom with theological boundaries rooted in the creeds
• Diversity created unevenness, but also richness and authenticity.
• “The fingerprints that make it so living.” —Janette Ok
• Professors report the book resonates with students of color whose lived experiences often feel absent in traditional scholarship
• “Sometimes people don’t know where to begin… I encourage my students to always consult scholars who read and look differently from themselves.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Creativity doesn’t come easy. It is often an act of resistance against chaos and other de-personalizing forces. In this episode, author Mitali Perkins joins Mark Labberton to discuss her latest book Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives. Known for her acclaimed novels for young readers—including You Bring the Distant Near and Rickshaw Girl—Perkins reflects on the creative life as both a gift and a struggle, marked by tenderness and tenacity. With candour about rejection, moments of mortification, and the relentless call to keep making, Perkins offers encouragement for artists who want their work to be both beautiful and just.

Episode Highlights

1. “I was very, very close myself to giving up on the creative life.”
2. “Any time we’re bringing order from chaos, there’s going to be pushback—and it’s diabolical pushback.”
3. “Stories widened my heart, they widened my mind, they gave me a sense of calling that I was not just here for myself.”
4. “We can’t put on our faith like lace and bows; it has to be in the bones of the story.”
5. “When I feel that embarrassment, that mortification, if I can just stay and do something physical to honour my work, goodness comes pouring back.”
6. “To not write it, after hearing your passion to combat this foe of our age, would be exactly what the diabolical enemy wants us to do.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives by Mitali Perkins
• *You Bring the Distant Near* by Mitali Perkins (National Book Award finalist)
• Rickshaw Girl (adapted into a film)
• *Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls* by Mitali Perkins
• The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton
• Kiva Microloans

About Mitali Perkins

Mitali Perkins writes novels for young readers that cross borders and break down walls. Her books include You Bring the Distant Near, a National Book Award nominee; Rickshaw Girl, now a feature film; and Tiger Boy, winner of the South Asia Book Award. Born in Kolkata, India, Perkins immigrated to the United States as a child and has published with major houses including Penguin Random House, Charlesbridge, Candlewick, and Little, Brown. Her newest book for adults, Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives, encourages artists to persist with both tenderness and tenacity. She speaks widely at schools, libraries, and conferences. More at mitaliperkins.com.

Show Notes

• Perkins describes the heart of Just Making as born from nearly giving up on the creative life during the pandemic.
• Creativity, tenderness, and tenacity
• “I was very, very close myself to giving up on the creative life.”
• Just Making: a survival guide for writers and artists facing rejection, discouragement, and the sense that their work doesn’t matter
• The struggles of the creative life
• Perkins speaks candidly about rejection, failed manuscripts, and the long twelve-year gap between her first and second published books.
• “You end up looking at the exterior packaging—my career looks amazing on social media—but inside it’s pride, vainglory, rejections, bad reviews.”
• Practices such as finding “third spaces” and championing one’s own work sustain her through rejection.
• Childhood, immigration, and storytelling
• Born in Kolkata, India, Perkins immigrated to New York at age seven.
• She calls herself a “feral reader,” devouring fourteen hundred novels in four years as a child
• “Stories widened my heart, they widened my mind, they gave me a sense of calling that I was not just here for myself.”
• Obstacles and motivation during her upbringing as the daughter of refugees
• Encountering faith through story
• Growing up in a Hindu home and finding coming to Christ in college
• Through reading the Gospels and C.S. Lewis, she encountered Jesus as “the true story behind all the stories.”
• Conversion and baptism while a student at Stanford
• Writing, justice, and flourishing
• “We can’t put on our faith like lace and bows; it has to be in the bones of the story.”
• Fiction that tackles themes of poverty, gender, courage, and flourishing
• Justice is defined not only as righting wrongs but fostering shalom—wholeness and human flourishing.
• Publishing industry and perseverance
• Perkins recounts the twelve-year struggle to publish her second book, revising manuscripts dozens of times.
• “It was twelve years between my first book and my second book.”
• Tenacity grounded in prayer and a sense of God’s invitation: “I’ve got the heavy yoke; will you walk with me?”
• Moments of humiliation
• Perkins shares a public humiliation at a book signing where no one lined up for her book. Choosing not to leave, she pulled out her manuscript and began editing
• “When I feel that embarrassment, that mortification, if I can just stay and do something physical to honor my work, goodness comes pouring back.”
• How Rickshaw Girl was published and adapted into a film
• Coaching for creatives
• Perkins counsels Mark Labberton on his unfinished book about fear
• “To not write it, after hearing your passion to combat this foe of our age, would be exactly what the diabolical enemy wants us to do.”
• How to embrace imperfection and see writing as part of a larger communal conversation
• Community and the impact of children’s literature
• Direct engagement with children in classrooms and libraries
• How young readers form friendships with her characters and are inspired toward justice
• How books like Rickshaw Girl and her forthcoming The Golden Necklace connect global justice issues with young readers’ imaginations

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What are the implications of Jesus’s radical ethics of love and shalom? How far are Christ followers meant to go with the compassion and witness of the gospel?

Philosopher Tom Crisp (Biola University) reflects on how a powerful religious experience transformed his academic career and personal faith. Once focused on metaphysics and abstract philosophy, Crisp was confronted in 2009 by the radical compassion of Jesus in the Gospels. That moment led him toward the Catholic Worker movement, the teachings of Dorothy Day, and ultimately, deep involvement in labour and immigrant justice through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE).

He describes participating in civil disobedience, forming solidarity with marginalized communities, and serving as a nonviolent presence in immigration courts where migrants face arrest and deportation. Through these stories, Crisp testifies to the cost and invitation of discipleship: following Jesus into the margins with courage, humility, and love.

Episode Highlights

• “What struck me was Jesus’s deep compassion, mercy, fiery concern for people in the margins. And it came to me as deeply convicting.”
• “I immersed myself in the writings of Dorothy Day… she's had an enormous influence on how I've come to think about what it would look like to be a Jesus follower in our context.”
• “I was having this very powerful sense of God’s presence, feeling broken by it, feeling like I’d hit a turning point in my life.”
• “If Jesus really is the Jesus of the margins that I’m seeing in the Gospels, then I need to figure out how to get to the margins.”
• “This isn't a matter of guilt, it’s invitation… we’re always being invited further in.”
• “When you’re with someone who’s been separated from their children, when you’re with someone who’s shaking with fear… it’s just a completely different thing.”
• “So a horrific violation of human rights is happening around us in our immigration courts, and it’s happening here in Orange County.”
• “We are trying to be a presence of love for everybody there.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE)
• Shalom Ethics: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself, by Thomas M. Crisp
• The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, by Shane Claiborne

About Tom Crisp

Tom Crisp is professor of philosophy at Biola University, specializing in ethics and justice. After completing his PhD at Notre Dame, Crisp shifted his academic work toward Christian ethics following a transformative religious experience in 2009. He is a community member of the Orange County Catholic Worker and active in Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), advocating for immigrant and labour rights through nonviolent action and accompaniment.

Show Notes

• Religious Experience and Transformation
• Tom Crisp recounts his 2009 religious awakening while reading the Gospels.
• “Fire—my soul is blowing apart, I need to quit my job.”
• Realization of Jesus’s “deep compassion, mercy, fiery concern for people in the margins.”
• Movement from abstract philosophy to Neighbour Love Command.
• Catholic Worker movement and Dorothy Day
• Influence of Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution and new monastic movement.
• Encounter with Dorothy Day’s writings as a model of radical discipleship.
• Involvement with the Orange County Catholic Worker community.
• Attraction to Catholicism
• Inspired by Notre Dame liturgy and Benedictine practices.
• Influenced by saints like St. Francis, Maximilian Kolbe, Oscar Romero.
• “As I spend time in Catholic spaces, I feel the presence of this cloud of witnesses.”
• CLUE and Nonviolent Action
• History of CLUE: founded by Rev. James Lawson, trained in Gandhian nonviolence, connected to Martin Luther King Jr.
• Focus on labour justice and immigrant rights.
• Training in nonviolent presence, civil disobedience, and accompaniment.
• Example: shutting down LAX in a five-hundred-person protest for hotel workers.
• Court Observation and Migrant Accompaniment
• CLUE partnership with Orange County Rapid Response Network.
• ICE arrests of migrants who believed they had lawful parole status.
• “A horrific violation of human rights is happening around us in our immigration courts.”
• Strategy of nonviolent presence to “dramatize bureaucratic and physical violence.”
• Clergy presence offers spiritual authority and comfort.
• Judges and ICE agents sometimes allow moments of prayer or comfort before deportation.
• “We want to accompany migrants into this dark, dark space and be there as a source of comfort to them.”
• Formation and Solidarity
• “When you're with someone who's been separated from their children, when you're with someone who is shaking with fear … it’s just a completely different thing.”
• Experience of humility, solidarity, and courage among migrants and workers.
• Philosophy, theology, and action integrated in discipleship.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.