“Habit eats willpower for breakfast.” As the apostle Paul says in Romans 7, we do the evil we don’t want to do, and we don’t do the good we want to do. Pastor and author John Ortberg joins Mark Labberton on Conversing to discuss his latest book Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn’t Enough. Drawing on decades of pastoral ministry, the wisdom of the Twelve Steps, and the profound influence of Dallas Willard, Ortberg explores the limits of willpower, the gift of desperation, and the hope of genuine transformation. With humour, honesty, and depth, he reflects on why human will is insufficient, why churches struggle to embody desperation, and how communities of honesty and grace can become places of real healing.

Episode Highlights

1. “Habit eats willpower for breakfast.”
2. “The first step is a deeply despairing step. I can’t, and it feels like hell and death—and that opens people up to God.”
3. “If you have a wimpy step one, you will have wimpy steps two through twelve.”
4. “Desperation really is a gift.”
5. “Failure and pain so often become helps in our meeting God.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Find more from John Ortberg at becomenew.com
• John Ortberg, Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn’t Enough
• Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart
• Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice
• Stephen R. Haynes, Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting?

About John Ortberg

John Ortberg is a pastor, speaker, and bestselling author dedicated to spiritual formation and transformation. He served as senior pastor at Menlo Church from 2003 to 2020, and has written numerous books, including The Life You’ve Always Wanted and Faith & Doubt. He studied at Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a trustee at Fuller. His most recent book, Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn’t Enough, reframes the Twelve Steps as a wisdom tradition for all seeking deeper life with God.

Show Notes

• The Nature of Willpower and Habit
• John Ortberg reflects on Dallas Willard’s framework for understanding persons.
• “Habit eats willpower for breakfast.”
• The human will is essential, but terrifically weak when confronting sin, ego, or deep habits.
• The Gift of Desperation and the Twelve Steps
• First step: “We admitted we were powerless.”
• “The first step is a deeply despairing step. I can’t, and it feels like hell and death—and that opens people up to God.”
• Desperation becomes a gateway to spiritual power.
• “If you have a wimpy step one, you will have wimpy steps two through twelve.”
• Comparing church and AA
• Ortberg: “Desperation really is a gift.”
• The church often resists being a community of desperation.
• Honesty is not the same as desperation; both are needed for transformation.
• Why AA’s structure works: fellowship plus program.
• “Failure and pain so often become helps in our meeting God.”
• Storytelling and Transformation
• Testimonies and stories at the center of AA’s power.
• Why narrative makes meaning for human life.
• “Story is the essential unit of meaning for personhood.”
• Spiritual Practices and Confession
• Step 5: “Confess to God, ourselves, and one other person the exact nature of our wrongs.”
• John recalls confessing to a close friend: “John, I love you more right now than I’ve ever loved you before.”
• The liberating power of being fully known and loved.
• Addiction, Sin, and Disease
• The debate: is addiction a disease, a habitus, or sin?
• Disease language reduces shame but risks erasing agency.
• The overlap of sin, brokenness, and habit.
• The challenge of shame, judgment, and superiority in church contexts.
• Fellowship and Program
• “If you have program but not fellowship, you’re dead. If you have fellowship but not program, there is no hope.”
• AA as a model for church life: communal honesty plus concrete practices.
• The gospel calls for grace-filled action, not passivity.

Production Credits

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

Who are the black evangelicals? How has contemporary evangelicalism reckoned with racial justice? Theologian Vincent Bacote joins Mark Labberton to discuss Black + Evangelical, a new documentary exploring the in-between experience of black Christians in white evangelical spaces. Bacote—professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics—shares his personal faith journey, early formation in the Navigators, growing racial consciousness, and decades-long engagement with questions of race, theology, and evangelical identity. Together, they work through the tensions, challenges, and possibilities for a more truthful and hopeful evangelical witness.

Episode Highlights

1. “The goal of the documentary is not to be a kind of hit piece about the evangelical movement. It’s to tell the story of the church.”
2. “To be for Black people is not to be against somebody else.” – Tom Skinner
3. “I couldn’t understand why the Bible people weren’t leading the way on questions of race.”
4. “Participation in evangelical spaces can’t mean leaving part of yourself outside.”
5. “Realism allows you to have honesty, but also remember the good news is the greatest news of all.”
6. “God wants all of us—our whole selves—not a muted version.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Black + Evangelical Documentary (Christianity Today)
• Black + Evangelical Documentary Trailer
• The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life by Vincent Bacote
• Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News by Vincent Bacote
• Breaking Down Walls by Raleigh Washington & Glen Kehrein
• Tom Skinner’s Urbana 1970 Address (Full Audio)
• *The Color of Compromise* by Jemar Tisby

About Vincent Bacote

Vincent Bacote is professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. He is the author of several books, including The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life and Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology. His research and teaching address public theology, ethics, and the intersection of race and evangelical identity. Bacote is a widely cited commentator and a frequent voice in conversations about Christian faithfulness in public life.

Show Notes

• Mark Labberton welcomes Vincent Bacote, professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics.
• Introduction to the Black + Evangelical documentary, a project Bacote helped conceive and produce.
• Bacote’s upbringing at Shiloh Baptist Church of Glenarden, Maryland—unknowingly part of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
• Conversion experience around age ten, preceded by years of genuine faith.
• College years at the Citadel; involvement in the Navigators campus ministry.
• Influence of a summer training program in Memphis focused on African American ministry.
• Early exposure to evangelical culture through radio preachers like Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, John MacArthur, and James Dobson.
• Initial tensions over the lack of evangelical engagement on issues of race.
• Graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with the initial goal of becoming a pastor.
• Encounter with Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein’s Breaking Down Walls, grounding racial reconciliation in Ephesians 2.
• Observations of the scarcity of black theologians in evangelical seminaries.
• 1993 Geneva College conference on black evangelicals—learning from leaders like Bill Pannell, Tom Skinner, Tony Evans, Carl Ellis, and Eugene Rivers.
• Writing an editorial titled “Black and Evangelical: An Uneasy Tension?” for the student paper at Trinity.
• Realization that evangelicalism is both a biblical and socio-cultural movement with contextual blind spots.
• Arrival at Wheaton College in 2000 with a focus on public theology and ethics beyond race alone.
• Genesis of the Black + Evangelical project at a 2008 Fuller Seminary gathering with Ron Potter.
• Partnership with Christianity Today and filmmaker Dan Long to shape the documentary.
• Filming over forty hours of interviews with twenty-four participants, distilled into a ninety-four-minute film.
• Mark Labberton highlights Tom Skinner’s impact and his “Blackface” critique of white evangelicalism.
• Bacote reflects on his “racially optimistic” early years and growing awareness of systemic realities.
• Analysis of the Promise Keepers movement and the need for sustained relational work beyond large gatherings.
• Challenges in building genuine multiethnic churches versus surface-level diversity.
• The documentary’s aim: to tell the church’s story, honour lived experiences, and inspire commitment to mission.
• Bacote’s “four stages” for minorities in evangelical institutions: delight, dissonance, distress, and decision.
• Emphasis on “sober hope”—honesty about pain while holding onto the good news.
• The gospel’s call to bring one’s full self into the life of the church.
• Closing encouragement to watch and share Black + Evangelical as a story worth hearing for the whole church.

Production Credits

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

Conservationist and environmental advocate Ben Lowe discusses our ecological crisis, the role of Christian faith and spirituality, and how churches can respond with hope, action, and theological depth.

He joins Mark Labberton for a grounded conversation on the intersection of faith, climate change, and the church’s role in ecological justice. As executive director of A Rocha USA, Lowe brings over two decades of experience in environmental biology, ethics, and faith-based conservation to explore how Christians can engage meaningfully with environmental crises. They move from scientific clarity about climate urgency to the theological blind spots that have hindered the Christian response.

Together, they explore how churches across the US and beyond are reclaiming creation care—not as a political issue, but as a form of discipleship and worship. With stories ranging from urban stream cleanups to coral reef restoration, Lowe emphasizes small, local, relational efforts that respond to God’s ongoing work in the world. At the heart of the conversation lies a call to moral will, theological clarity, and faithfulness in the face of ecological grief.

Episode Highlights

“The world is good—but it’s groaning.”

“Small does not mean insignificant. … We have the solutions. The problem is not our technical ability—it’s our moral and political will.”

Learn More about A Rocha

Visit arocha.us for more information.

About Ben Lowe

Ben Lowe is executive director of A Rocha USA, a Christian conservation organization engaged in ecological discipleship, community-based restoration, and climate advocacy across the US and globally. He holds a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida and a BS in environmental biology from Wheaton College (IL). Ben has spent over two decades working at the intersection of faith, science, and environmental justice, and is passionate about equipping churches to participate in God’s restoration of creation.

Since his first encounter with A Rocha as a Wheaton student in 2003, Ben has served on A Rocha staff teams and boards, nationally and internationally, most recently as deputy executive director of A Rocha International. Ben’s training as a scientist and a minister inform his leadership and development of A Rocha USA’s national strategy and team.

Originally from Singapore, Ben was the founding national organizer of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and has served on the boards of A Rocha USA, A Rocha International, the Au Sable Institute, and Christians for Social Action. He is the author of multiple books, and his work has been featured in media outlets including Audubon Magazine, Christianity Today, and the New York Times. He has a bachelor of science in environmental biology from Wheaton and a PhD from the University of Florida focussed on the human, religious, and ethical dimensions of environmental change and conservation. Ben is based in the warm and watery state of Florida, where he can often be found kayaking on the Indian River Lagoon.

Show Notes

• Earth Day began in 1970, a pivotal moment for environmental awareness—“That means that I was a junior in high school when the world embraced this name as a way of trying to bring attention to the whole world about environmental issues.”
• Mark Labberton opens with concern for “the political moment that we’re in … in the United States and in other places around the world.”
• Ben Lowe introduces the biblical framing: “This world is good, but it’s also groaning.”

Why Climate Action Still Matters

• “We don’t know where we would be, were it not for Earth Day fifty years ago.”
• “The question is not whether we know what to do, but whether we’re doing the right thing and we’re doing enough of it.”
• “It’s never too late to take action and to get engaged.”

Scientific Consensus and Urgency

• “The science has gotten a lot more sophisticated and a lot clearer.”
• “We’re not talking about hypothetical issues anymore. We’re talking about issues that many, if not all of us, are tangibly experiencing now.”
• “Things are moving faster, further, and at a greater scale and magnitude than we were hoping to be experiencing right now.”

Oceans, Heat, and the Limits of Natural Buffers

• “The oceans are a huge gift to human society, and they have been buffering and absorbing a lot of the heat and the carbon that we’ve been emitting.”
• “The oceans are not limitless. … We are seeing signs that the oceans are warming more than they can sustain.”
• “Every year now we have these hurricanes that are huge in terms of their scale and the amount of water that they can suck up from these overheated oceans.”

Practical Impact of Climate Change

• “My homeowner’s insurance rates more than doubled in the last few years.”
• “We’re just getting all these signs coming from all of our systems that are warning us that we are on a completely unsustainable path.”
• “The silver lining to us being the driver of so many of these problems is that we can also choose to be part of the solution.”

Role of the Church in Ecological Transformation

• “The church can really shine a light of hope, of love of the good news that God promises for this world in the midst of all that.”
• “Small does not mean insignificant.”
• “We have the solutions we need. … The problem is not our technical ability, it’s our moral and political will that has been lacking.”

Global Clean Energy Transition

• “We are in a great transition, but that transition is happening and it’s sort of unstoppable.”
• “The question is how quickly will it happen and will we be able to move it forward quickly enough?”
• “Christians have a particular contribution. … We can bring the moral will to help shape the decisions.”

A Rocha’s Global and Local Work

• “A Rocha is a network of Christian conservation organizations in about twenty-five countries around the world.”
• In Florida, “we’re helping to work with local partners, universities, high schools, churches, to conserve the lagoon.”
• “In Austin, Texas … we have a lot of Spanish-language programming … to help connect recent immigrants with the communities that they’re living in.”

Partnering with Churches for Creation Care

• “The cutting edge of what we’re moving into now though is our work with churches.”
• “Research … is showing that there is a shift happening with more and more Christians in churches becoming aware of the problems in God’s world.”
• “Now we have more and more people coming to us, so much that we’re growing, but we’re not growing fast enough and we have to turn some people away.”

Localized Action and Practical Partnerships

• “We launched a cohort of Vineyard USA churches … to support Vineyard congregations that want to get more involved.”
• “We walk them through a process of discerning … the ways that God might be inviting them to participate in what God’s already doing.”
• “We’re working with a church on Oahu in Hawaii that bought a defunct golf course … we’re working together to help restore the native habitat.”

Creation Care as Worship and Witness

• “We see this as being in God’s hands … and us as playing a faithful role in responding to what God is doing.”
• “What would a follower of Jesus do in this situation?”
• “Everything that we do to care for creation … the offering itself is one that we direct to God as the creator.”

Theological Reformation, Not Innovation

• “It’s not theological change so much as it’s theological reformation. This is orthodoxy.”
• “We don’t see this work as of our own initiative. What we see ourselves doing is responding to what God is already doing.”

End Times Theology and Ecological Responsibility

• “We don’t treat anything else in life that way. We don’t treat our bodies that way. We don’t treat our children that way.”
• “It has been biblically orthodox from the very beginning to care for God’s world.”
• “It’s not because we’re Christian, it’s because we’ve not been Christian enough.”

Political Identity vs. Christian Witness

• “We see these issues first and foremost through our political lenses instead of through our theological biblical Christian lenses.”
• “These issues transcend any particular political ideology or party.”
• “They’re moral issues, they’re faith issues, they’re spiritual issues, and for us, they’re an integral matter of our Christian discipleship and witness.”

How A Rocha Helps Churches Avoid Partisan Pitfalls

• “We try to say, all right, what does God call us to do as people, as his image bearers in the world today?”
• “Let’s do a stream cleanup together.”
• “You kind of learn as you go … and before you know it, you look back and you realize, oh gosh, how far I have come.”

Discipleship and Environmental Stewardship

• “The longer I’m in this work, the more I’m learning how to care for creation and help others do the same.”
• “The closer I grow to Christ too, and the more I find myself being conformed into what the Bible calls us to be.”
• “It’s not always an easy journey, but it’s a really good and life-giving and sanctifying journey.”

Mark’s Personal Reflection: Replanting His Garden

• “It has utterly changed the way that I now look out the kitchen window.”
• “Just that small change has given me a better sense of life, a better sense of creation … a better sense of the importance of having a world that you can meditate on.”

Ben Lowe’s Formative Experiences in Singapore and the Black Hills

• “We’d sort through the catch with them and they’d give us the things that they couldn’t sell.”
• “Being able to step out into a national forest and breathe the air … reminds me that … there is still so much good in this world worth protecting.”

Production Credits

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

Introducing Credible Witness, a new podcast produced by Mark Labberton and the Rethinking Church Initiative.

In this episode of Conversing, Mark features the full premiere episode of Credible Witness, and is joined by host Nikki Toyama-Szeto and historian Jemar Tisby.

Exploring how Christian witness to the gospel of Christ has become compromised—and what might restore its credibility. Reflecting on five years of candid, challenging conversation among diverse Christian leaders during the wake of George Floyd’s murder and rising Christian nationalism, the three discuss the soul-searching, disillusionment, and hope that emerged.

Together, they examine the cultural fractures, theological tensions, and moral failures that have pushed many to extremes, elevating strident voices as an increased number of people to leave the church.

They articulate the mission and vision of Credible Witness, testify to a persistent hope in Jesus and the power of honest community, face painful truths, and imagine a church that more truly reflects the love, justice, and mercy of God.

Key Moments

1. “We absolutely get that… but we’re still on board with Jesus. And Jesus has always been with us and hasn’t left us.”
2. “This isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.”
3. “We’ve got a better story to tell.”
4. “It was the church that was putting the church at risk.”
5. “The church has a reputation in the United States… and not a good one by and large.”

About the Guests

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is the host of Credible Witness, and is executive director of Christians for Social Action, equipping the church to pursue justice and follow Jesus in the tension of our times.

Jemar Tisby is the author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism, and founder of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective. He is the host of Pass the Mic.

Show Notes

• “This isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.” —Jemar Tisby
• Nikki introduces Credible Witness as a space for honest stories of faith amid moral complexity and social tension
• Mark recalls the origins of the conversation in summer 2020: COVID-19, George Floyd, church division, and racial injustice
• Jemar Tisby clarifies the mission for imagining a more credible Christian witness
• Nikki reflects on trust-building in a space that welcomed “tricky truths” and honesty without pretense
• The group’s five-year journey begins as a short experiment but grows into a lasting community of deep discernment
• “We weren’t trying to replicate any harm.” —Jemar Tisby
• The group names white Christian nationalism and silence on injustice as threats to the church’s credibility
• Ephesians 2 and the power of “coming together of the unlikes” as a witness to the resurrection
• “It was the church that was putting the gospel at risk.” —Mark Labberton
• Nikki explains how church neutrality began to speak volumes: “Choosing silence was actually a loud voice.”
• Discussion on the failure of integrity: “Too many things in isolation” eroded credibility
• Jemar highlights story as central to public theology: “We’ve got a better story to tell.”
• The group wrestles with algorithmic distortion and toxic digital narratives shaping Christian identity
• “Not just message, but embodiment”: The church’s credibility depends on lived ethics, not just theological claims
• Mark emphasizes self-examination: “Are we credible?”
• Dissonance and disagreement as gifts: “What kept people in the room was the gift of dissonance.” —Nikki Toyama-Szeto
• Jemar recalls moments of tension over how to prioritize justice issues while remaining unified in Christ
• The group’s diversity as a deliberate strategy: different traditions, backgrounds, and responsibilities within the church
• Nikki names divine timing: the conversation is more urgent now than when it began
• “We’re not all supposed to be the same... That’s how everything gets covered.” —Jemar Tisby
• Mark frames the church’s failure as internal implosion—not external threat
• “Why is the church seemingly so unchanged?” —Mark Labberton
• Nikki describes how marginalized voices carry wisdom for the way forward
• Jemar articulates the podcast’s goal: a mirror and a window for listeners to see both themselves and the larger church
• Nikki closes with an invitation to slow down and listen generously: “Pull up a chair...”

Production Credits

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

In the aftermath of the devastating Eaton Canyon Fire in Altadena, California, three Pasadena community leaders—Mayra Macedo-Nolan, Pastor Kerwin Manning, and Megan Katerjian—join host Mark Labberton for a sobering and hopeful conversation on what it takes to rebuild homes, neighbourhoods, and lives. Together they discuss their personal losses, the long-term trauma facing their neighbours, the racial and economic disparities exposed by disaster, and how the church is rising to meet these challenges with grit, grace, and faith.

Their stories illuminate how a community holds fast when the media leaves, when vultures circle, and when the work is just beginning. This is a conversation about sacred presence, practical resilience, and the enduring witness of faithful service—even in the ashes.

Mayra Macedo-Nolan is executive director of the Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena

Kerwin Manning is senior pastor of Pasadena Church

Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope Ministries

Helpful Links and Resources

• Door of Hope Pasadena – Family homelessness intervention and fire assistance program
• Pasadena Church – Kerwin Manning’s congregation and relief center
• Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena – Mayra Macedo-Nolan’s organization supporting pastors and churches
• Isaiah 61:3 – “Beauty for ashes” verse referenced by Kerwin
• Andre Crouch – “Soon and Very Soon” – Gospel anthem of hope quoted by Pastor Kerwin

Show Notes

• CCC (Clergy Community Coalition) rapidly pivoted to virtual meetings the morning after hurricane-force winds and fire struck Altadena.
• “We moved it to virtual … and then we had no idea what was gonna happen that evening and overnight.” —Mayra Macedo-Nolan
• After the fire started, fifty-six participants gathered online, including city leaders and faith-based partners, forming a core response network.
• “Everybody wanted to be together … especially in a crisis like this.” —Mayra
• Pastor Kerwin and his wife Madeline evacuated with almost no notice after hearing the sheriff outside their door.
• “We, Madeline and I, like so many others, were fleeing for our lives.” —Kerwin Manning
• For weeks, they didn’t know whether their home was still standing; the priority became their church and community.
• “We didn’t know if our home was standing … we were more concerned about our church, our community.” —Kerwin
• Pasadena Church began relief work immediately—even before confirming their own housing stability.
• “This is the first interview or anything I’ve done online back in my home.” —Kerwin
• Door of Hope’s CEO evacuated with her children and lost her home; she quickly organized shelter responses for others.
• “I found out that my house had been entirely destroyed.” —Megan Katerjian
• Within ten days, Door of Hope launched a formal housing assistance program for fire-affected families.
• “Door of Hope had launched what we call the Eaton Fire Housing Assistance Program.” —Megan
• The CCC became a spiritual and logistical backbone for Altadena’s recovery, activating two decades of community-building.
• “This was a time that it was really important for the local clergy to be in conversation with one another.” —Mayra
• Pasadena Church became a distribution hub, serving as far east as any organization in the city.
• “We wore our church members out.” —Kerwin
• Over two months, the church distributed daily essentials from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., shifting to a long-term weekly rhythm.
• “We thought we would do it for a couple of weeks … we were doing it every day … for about two months straight.” —Kerwin
• “We might run out of water, we might run out of toothpaste, but we refuse to run out of smiles and kindness.” —Kerwin
• Altadena’s west side—long a haven for black and brown families—suffered the worst structural damage and displacement.
• “Altadena had been a haven really for black and brown families who couldn’t purchase homes anywhere.” —Mayra
• Many affected residents were informal renters or multigenerational households without clear legal housing claims.
• “These are the stories of people … for whom there is no path back to Altadena anytime soon.” —Megan
• Eleven churches were lost or damaged, including small and under-resourced congregations still unsure about rebuilding.
• “We lost ten houses of worship, and one was partially burned … essentially eleven.” —Mayra
• Local churches served both members and neighbors regardless of formal affiliation, often the first to show up with aid.
• “We don’t do any of this work alone.” —Megan
• CCC supports over a hundred churches across Pasadena with infrastructure, grants, emotional care, and community strategy.
• “We want them to be okay … and then as they serve their church members and the neighbors surrounding their church.” —Mayra
• Door of Hope offered security deposits, rent, emergency shelter, tool replacement, and even vehicles to affected families.
• “Beauty for ashes”
• “We just have to do more of it.” —Megan
• Volunteers gave out handwritten cards from kids across the country; some were shared at distribution events.
• “I’ve got a box full of cards from kids … just like it’s going to be okay. We’re praying for it.” —Kerwin
• A guiding pastoral metaphor: vultures circling a wounded deer, and the need to protect the vulnerable from predation.
• “The vultures were circling … and I covered the deer … and the vultures left.” —Kerwin
• “The needs have not slowed. …  Finances always follow just heart and compassion and awareness.” —Megan
• “You learn so much in the middle of crisis. One of the things that crisis does is it confirms character and you realize like what people are made of when you're going through something.”
• “Until. Until the need is gone, until we don’t have to do it anymore.” —Kerwin
• The immigrant community faces a second “fire”—ICE raids and deportation threats layered atop housing loss.
• “The intersection of those … the two fires, the fire that we didn’t know we were gonna have, and the fire that we knew was coming.” —Mayra
• CCC pastors protested ICE actions together, maintaining peace through community presence and music.
• “The pastors were there … and then it’s just … it’s a sacred party.” —Mayra
• Latino cultural traditions of protest, grief, and celebration shaped a healing, communal public presence.
• “We cry and we’re gonna probably celebrate and eat food and dance together.” —Mayra
• Local leaders are pushing back against a ten-year recovery timeline with a goal of rebuilding within three to five years.
• “We reject that. She said three to five years, that’s what we’re gonna push for.” —Mayra
• Community grief deepened when the first burned lot was sold; hope emerged again when the first rebuilding began.
• “There they go … it’s gonna start selling.” / “We think there was … this collective celebration.” —Mayra
• “Soon and very soon we’re gonna see the King.” —Kerwin
• Kerwin invoked Isaiah 61:3: “Beauty will rise” as a spiritual theme for their church’s recovery ministry.
• “We believe that we’re able to continue to do what we’re doing knowing that, trusting that beauty’s gonna rise.” —Kerwin
• The phrase “Altadena is not for sale” became a rallying cry—although some elders opted to relocate for peace.
• “It’s up to you. Our prayer is that more people will want to stay than leave.” —Kerwin
• Ongoing challenges include zoning delays, state and county coordination issues, and political friction at the national level.
• “The church has always been a vital provider of resources, critical social services and resources in communities on an ongoing basis in normal time.” —Mayra
• ”The greatest sense that you get from being there is people are together. There’s a sense of unity and community protection that is very palpable.”
• A sacred party
• Resilience and God’s presence and strength
• “It feels like our president doesn’t like us … our governor … whatever they’ve got going on affects us.” —Kerwin
• “The church … is always a vital provider … of resources, critical social services … in normal time.” —Mayra

About the Guests

Mayra Macedo-Nolan is executive director of the Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena, where she leads efforts to strengthen faith-based response to systemic inequities in housing, education, and social services. Formerly on pastoral staff at Lake Avenue Church, she’s spent two decades in community leadership in Pasadena and Altadena.

Pastor Kerwin Manning is senior pastor of Pasadena Church and a founding leader in the Clergy Community Coalition. A long-time advocate for youth and justice, he’s served the Pasadena community with a heart for unity, compassion, and spiritual renewal.

Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope, a Pasadena-based non-profit serving homeless and at-risk families. With over twenty years in non-profit leadership, Megan is also an ordained pastor with deep roots in faith-based social services and community development.

Production Credits

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

Are the best days of the church behind us? Or ahead? Kara Powell and Ray Chang join Mark Labberton to discuss Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation, co-authored with Jake Mulder. Drawing on extensive research, practical frameworks, and decades of leadership at Fuller Seminary and the TENx10 Collaboration, Powell and Chang map a path forward for the church—one rooted in relational discipleship, kingdom diversity, and tangible neighbour love. In a moment marked by disaffiliation, disillusionment, and institutional fragility, they offer a hopeful vision: churches that are brave enough to listen deeply, lead adaptively, and partner with the next generation in mission. This conversation unpacks their “Here to There” framework, the role of human agency in ecclesial change, and why honouring young people isn’t pandering—it’s planting seeds for the future of faith.

Episode Highlights

1. “We believe the best days of the church are ahead.”
2. “Leadership begins with listening.”
3. “Unless strategy emerges out of culture, or unless the culture is changed, it’s really hard to lead.”
4. “Everything rises when we focus on young people.”
5. “Agency is the intersection of knowing, being, and doing.”

Helpful Resources and Links

• Future-Focused Church by Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Ray Chang (InterVarsity Press)
• Fuller Youth Institute—Research and innovation for youth ministry
• TENx10 Collaboration—Movement to help faith matter more for ten million young people over ten years
• Asian American Christian Collaborative—Equipping Asian American Christians for faithful public witness
• ”Churches and Change: Adaptive Leadership”—Heifetz on adaptive vs. technical change (Harvard Business Review)
• Rethinking Church in the 21st Century (Fuller Seminary)—Ongoing work in contextual theology and church innovation

About Kara Powell

Kara Powell is the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary, executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and founder of the TENx10 Collaboration. A leading voice in youth ministry and church innovation, she is author or co-author of numerous books including Sticky Faith, Growing Young, and 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager. She is co-author of Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation.

About Ray Chang

Ray Chang is executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration and president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative. A pastor, activist, and writer, Ray’s work focuses on racial justice, next-gen discipleship, and building churches that reflect the diversity of God’s kingdom. He is co-author of Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation.

Show Notes

• Kara Powell is chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary and executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute
• Ray Chang is executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration and president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative
• Future-Focused Church offers a framework for adaptive change, grounded in Scripture, research, and practical leadership
• “Leadership begins with listening”—Kara shares the importance of appreciative inquiry and asking youth what matters to them
• Ray describes today’s church as “a church actively trying to define and redefine itself in tumultuous and complex times”
• Simple but powerful framework: Here to There—understanding where we are and where God is calling us next
• Three checkpoints of a future-focused church: relationally discipling young people, modelling kingdom diversity, tangibly loving our neighbours
• “Everything rises when we focus on young people”—churches flourish when the next generation is centered
• Data shows only one in three senior pastors rank young people among their top five priorities
• Kara: “I wish the problem was that young people were overly prioritized—sadly, it’s the opposite”
• Church innovation isn’t just strategic, it’s adaptive: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
• Ray explains why Covid exposed the difference between technical and adaptive change in the church
• Kara: “We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and underestimate what we can do in three to five.”
• Biblical foundations explored—Paul’s epistles blend being and doing; Galatians 5 offers a model of fruitful action
• Human agency as divine invitation—Ray: “God invites us to partner in God’s work for the flourishing of humanity”
• Kara’s church story: youth sat in the front, fully engaged—“They prioritized us”
• Simple action steps from churches include showing up to youth events and publicly celebrating young people’s milestones
• Mark Labberton challenges the idea of “pandering” to youth—Kara responds with data and theological reflection
• Ray reflects on the complex dynamics in immigrant and second-gen Asian American churches—“placelessness” and a search for belonging
• Importance of community: following Jesus together, across generations, cultures, and neighbourhoods
• Kara reframes giving: “Young people want to give to people and to purpose—not to perpetuate programs”
• “Culture is where values are held; unless strategy aligns with culture, it will be resisted”—Ray on organizational change
• Intergenerational relationships are critical—older adults model faith and love through presence and commitment
• The book offers not just direction but formation: process, practice, and people matter as much as the goal
• “If there’s ever a moment to care about the church—and young people—it’s now.”

Production Credits

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

With a B3 organ, a prophetic imagination, and a heart broken wide open by grace, gospel music legend Andraé Crouch (1942–2015) left an indelible mark on modern Christian worship music. In this episode, Stephen Newby and Robert Darden offer a sweeping yet intimate exploration of his life, spiritual vision, and genre-defining genius.

Together with Mark Labberton, they discuss their new biography Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch. Through laughter, lament, and lyrical memory, Newby and Darden—both scholars at Baylor University and co-authors of the first serious biography of Crouch—share stories of discovering Crouch’s music, the theological and cultural forces that shaped it, and why his legacy matters now more than ever. They offer insights about modern musical history, spiritual reflections, and cultural analysis, inviting us into the soul of a man who helped bring modern gospel into being.

Episode Highlights

1. “Musical genius is where observation, curiosity, imagination, and humility are baked in the oven.”
2. “He was always tracking what was going on in the room and in his heart. He understood the cues, clues, and codes of what God was doing.”
3. “Andraé felt it was important that the music was just as inspired as the lyrics. It was total praise.”
4. “’Soon and Very Soon’ is an ancient future song—we have to keep singing it, especially now.”
5. “Andraé burned out a lot of musicians—but all of them adore him to this day.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch by Stephen Newby and Robert Darden (Penn State University Press)
• Black Gospel Music Preservation Project (Baylor University)
• “Jesus Is the Answer,” by Andraé Crouch
• “Through It All,” by Andraé Crouch
• “Soon and Very Soon,” **by Andraé Crouch
• People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music by Robert Darden

About Stephen Newby

Stephen Michael Newby is a composer, conductor, and scholar. He serves as the Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship at Baylor University and is a professor of music in the Baylor School of Music. A widely recognized expert on gospel, jazz, and black sacred music, he is also affiliated with the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project as an ambassador and collaborator. He is co-author of Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch.

About Robert Darden

Robert F. Darden is emeritus professor of journalism at Baylor University and founder of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project. A former gospel music editor at Billboard magazine, Darden is the author of numerous books on gospel music history, including People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music and Nothing But Love in God’s Water. He is co-author of Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch.

Show Notes

• Andraé Crouch called the “father of contemporary modern gospel” for his groundbreaking influence on the genre
• Guest Stephen Newby holds the Lev H. Pritchard III Chair in Black Worship and Music at Baylor University
• Guest Robert Darden is emeritus professor of journalism at Baylor and founder of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project
• Labberton celebrates the book’s narrative, musical, and sociocultural scope
• Crouch grew up in a Pentecostal context that encouraged musical exploration and spiritual improvisation
• Gospel rooted in KoGIC (Church of God in Christ) tradition, blending Beale Street sounds with evangelical fervour
• Darden describes Crouch’s early music as “jazz, pop... but wait, it is gospel—they’re singing about Jesus”
• Crouch and his sister Sandra composed “Jesus Is the Answer,” considered the first modern praise and worship song
• The book includes more than two hundred interviews from gospel musicians, friends, and collaborators
• Crouch read the room and followed the Spirit—every performance was improvisational, responsive, alive
• “Through It All” composed after the heartbreak of a failed relationship; the grief birthed one of his most lasting songs
• Gospel music as lament and praise: “We hear the pain, we hear the resolve, we hear the lament turning to praise”
• Crouch’s “Take Me Back” begins with Billy Preston on B3 organ—“He hasn’t forgotten the church,” says Newby
• Earth, Wind & Fire, Motown, and classical influences shaped Crouch’s orchestration and arrangements
• Darden: “He wanted the music to sound as good as the words. It was obsessive—but it was for God.”
• Andraé’s collaboration with producer/drummer Bill Maxwell led to a string of gospel albums with unmatched quality
• “We are going to see the King”: the timeless hope of “Soon and Very Soon” rooted in the black spiritual tradition
• Crouch’s music was not only groundbreaking—it was pastoral, prophetic, and profoundly personal
• Evangelistic to his dying breath, Crouch witnessed to hospital staff and janitors alike
• The book's subtitle “Transformative Music and Ministry” is more than academic—it’s biographical theology
• Newby and Darden’s friendship mirrors Crouch and Maxwell’s cross-cultural collaboration
• Soon and Very Soon offers readers a chance to read with phone in hand—listening and learning simultaneously
• “Jesus is the answer” remains a musical and theological call across generations

Production Credits

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

During a moment of historic turbulence and Christian polarization, Trinity Forum president Cherie Harder stepped away from the political and spiritual vortex of Washington, DC, for a month-long pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago—a.k.a. “the Camino” or “the Way.”

In this episode, she reflects on the spiritual, emotional, and physical rhythms of pilgrimage as both counterpoint and counter-practice to the fracturing pressures of American civic and religious life. Together, she and Mark Labberton consider how such a posture of pilgrimage—marked by humility, presence, and receptivity—can help reshape how we understand Christian witness in a fraught and antagonistic time.

Harder explores how her Camino sabbatical offered her a deeply embodied spiritual liturgy—one that grounded her leadership and personal formation after years of intense service in government and faith-based institutions. She also reflects on the internal and external catalysts that led her to walk three hundred miles across Portugal and Spain, including burnout, anxiety, and the desire to “walk things off.” What emerged was not a single epiphany but a profound reorientation: a reordering of attention, a rediscovery of joy, and a new kind of sociological imagination—one that sees neighbourliness through the eyes of a pilgrim, not a partisan.

Episode Highlights

1. “Being a pilgrim, one is a stranger in a strange land, one has no pretensions to ruling the place. … It’s a different way of being in the world.”
2. “There was a widespread belief in the importance of persuasion … a very different posture than seeking to dominate, humiliate, and pulverize.”
3. “Every day is literally putting one foot in front of the other. And you spend each day outside—whether it’s in sunshine or in rain.”
4. “There’s a pilgrim sociology that is so counter to how we interact in civic space today. … It’s a different way of being in the world.”
5. “You’re tired, and there’s an invitation to stop and to pray.”
6. “I didn’t have an epiphany, but what I had instead was a daily practice that fed my soul.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• The Trinity Forum
• The Way (film) – a film about the Camino starring Martin Sheen
• Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain by Jack Hitt
• Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (Project Gutenberg)
• Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann
• Camino de Santiago Overview – Wikipedia

About Cherie Harder

Cherie Harder is president of the Trinity Forum, a non-profit that curates Christian thought leadership to engage public life, spiritual formation, and the arts. She previously served in multiple leadership roles in the US government, including in the White House under President George W. Bush, and as policy director to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. A graduate of Harvard University, she is a writer, speaker, and advocate for grace-filled public discourse and thoughtful Christian engagement in civic life.

Show Notes

• Cherie Harder is president of the Trinity Forum, a non-profit based in Washington, DC, and focused on Christian thought leadership.
• She previously served in the White House and as policy director for the Senate Majority Leader.
• Harder reflects on how leadership now requires “counterforce just to stay in the same place.”
• She critiques the rise of “performative belligerence” in both civic and Christian life.
• “There’s a premium placed on humiliating and deeply personally insulting the other side—and somehow that’s seen as strength.”
• She contrasts past politics, which valued persuasion, with today’s polarization, which valorizes domination.
• “Persuasion takes others seriously. It assumes they’re reasonable and open.”
• The Camino de Santiago and pilgrimage
• Harder walked over three hundred miles, from Lisbon to Santiago, along the Portuguese Camino.
• She frames pilgrimage as an act of spiritual resistance against anxiety, burnout, and cultural chaos.
• “I need to find a way to walk this off.”
• The daily rhythm of the Camino offered physical and spiritual rest: wake, walk, eat, reflect, rest, repeat.
• “Every day was the opportunity to just move, to see, to attend to what was in front of me.”
• She was struck by the liturgical nature of walking: “There’s no perfect walk, but you have to start.”
• Each step became a form of prayer, an embodied spiritual practice.
• Embodied spiritual formation
• Harder calls the Camino “a liturgy of the body”—a spiritual discipline grounded in physical motion.
• “Being in your body every day changes you—it makes your needs visible, your limits felt, your joy more palpable.”
• She found that physical needs—food, rest, shelter—highlighted spiritual hungers and gratitudes.
• The rhythm reoriented her from leadership stress to lived dependence on grace.
• “I didn’t have an epiphany. But what I had instead was a daily practice that fed my soul.”
• Spiritual renewal and rhythmic practices
• Harder affirms that the Camino gave her a hunger for spiritual rest she hadn’t fully realized.
• “It showed me the deficiency was greater than I thought … I’ve missed this.”
• She explores how practices of solitude, walking, and prayer can carry over into her work.
• Mark Labberton proposes Sabbath-keeping as one way to embody pilgrimage back home.
• “We may not all get to Portugal—but we can still find a Camino in our days.”
• Harder is now exploring how to sustain “a rhythmic alteration of how we hold time.”
• Pilgrim sociology and neighbourliness
• Harder describes a “pilgrim sociology”—a social vision rooted in vulnerability, curiosity, humility, and shared burdens.
• “We’re in a strange land. We’re not here to rule, but to receive.”
• The Camino fostered solidarity through shared hardship and generosity.
• “You literally carry each other’s burdens.”
• She draws a sharp contrast between the posture of a pilgrim and the posture of a combatant.
• “It leads to a much kinder, gentler world—because it’s not a posture of domination.”
• Spiritual lessons from the Camino
• The convergence at Santiago prompted reflection on heaven: “All these people, from different paths, looking up at glory.”
• She was reminded of Jesus’s words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
• “The Camino literally means ‘the Way.’ You’re relying on direction that is true.”
• The historic path invites pilgrims into the long, sacred story of the church.
• “You feel part of something bigger—millions have gone before you.”

Production Credits

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

For Christians, morality is often set by our interpretation of Jesus. In this episode, Reggie Williams reflects on the moral urgency of resistance in the face of rising nationalisms and systemic racial injustice that persists.

Reggie Williams is associate professor of black theology at Saint Louis University, and author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus. Exploring the transformative and fraught legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he draws from Bonhoeffer’s encounter with black Christian faith in Harlem. He traces both the revolutionary promise and the colonial limits of Bonhoeffer’s thought—ultimately offering a compelling call to face the challenge of colonialism embedded in Christian theological frameworks, and unmask and dismantle the assumptions of white Western dominance within theology.

Episode Highlights

• “Even the most sincere and most brilliant, and even pious Christian, if we’re not paying attention to the way in which we are formed, repeats the problems that he’s trying to address in society.”
• “Our interpretation of Jesus shapes our morality as Christians.”
• “Hitler and Dietrich both understood their crisis as christological—just with radically different ends.”
• “Christ is actually present in the world in space and time—but for Bonhoeffer, that was the West. That’s a problem.”
• “The arbiter of culture owes it to the rest of the world not to be cruel. But what if the whole project needs to be undone?”
• “Access for black people has always meant white loss in the white imagination. That’s the virus in the body politic.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus by Reggie Williams
• Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Just Peacemaking by Glen Stassen

About Reggie L. Williams

Reggie L. Williams is associate professor of black theology at Saint Louis University. A scholar of Christian social ethics, he focuses on race, religion, and justice, with a particular interest in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological development during his time in Harlem. Williams is the author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus and a leading voice on the intersections of colonialism, theology, and ethics.

Show Notes

• Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus reframes theological ethics through the lens of Harlem’s Black Church experience
• Reggie Williams explores how racialized interpretations of Jesus shape Christian morality
• Glen Stassen’s just peacemaking framework helped form Williams’s commitment to justice-oriented ethics
• Bonhoeffer’s exposure to black theology in Harlem was transformative—but its disruption didn’t last
• “The church must say something about those targeted by harmful political structures.”
• Bonhoeffer saw racism as a theological issue after Harlem, but still defaulted to Western Christology
• “Christ is located in the real world—but for Bonhoeffer, that meant colonial Europe and America”
• Williams critiques Bonhoeffer’s failure to see Christ outside the imperial West
• “Behold the man”—Bonhoeffer’s formulation still echoes a European epistemology of the human
• The human as we know it is a European philosophical construct rooted in colonial domination
• Bonhoeffer’s Ethics critiques Nazism but still centres the West as the space of Christ’s incarnation
• “The unified West was his answer to fascism—but it still excluded the harmed and colonized.”
• Even as a resister, Bonhoeffer operated within metaphysical frames of white supremacy
• “A reformed imperial Christianity is still imperial—we need a theological break, not a revision.”
• Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship reflected troubling views on slavery—he changed over time
• “From 1937 to 1939 he moves from withdrawal to coup attempt—his ethics evolved.”
• Reggie Williams argues the theological academy still operates under Bonhoeffer’s colonial presumptions
• “White Christian nationalism is a sacred project—whiteness floats above history as God’s proxy”
• Racial hierarchy was created to justify economic domination, not the other way around
• “Black access is always imagined as white loss in the American imagination”
• The DEI backlash reflects a long pattern of retrenchment following black progress
• “How we treat bodies is how we treat the planet—domination replaces communion”
• Bonhoeffer’s flaws do not erase his significance—they remind us of the need for grace and growth
• “He’s frozen in time at thirty-nine—we don’t know what he would’ve come to see had he lived.”
• Mark Labberton calls the current moment a five-alarm fire requiring voices like Williams’s
• “We are at the precipice of the future all over again—the old crisis is still with us.”
• The church’s complicity in empire must be confronted to recover the radical gospel of Jesus
• The moral imagination of the church must be unshackled from whiteness, ownership, and dominance

Production Credits

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

“More of the church is committed to their immigrant neighbours than the media or politicians would like the public to believe.” (Myal Green, from the episode)

Myal Greene (president and CEO of World Relief) joins host Mark Labberton to discuss the global humanitarian crises, refugee resettlement, and the church’s responsibility to respond with courage and compassion. From Rwanda's post-genocide reconciliation following 1994 to the 2025 dismantling of humanitarian aid and refugee programs in the US, Greene shares how his personal faith journey fuels his leadership amid historic humanitarian upheaval. Rooted in Scripture and the global moral witness of the church, Greene challenges listeners to imagine a more faithful Christian response to suffering—one that refuses to turn away from the world’s most vulnerable. Despite the current political polarization and rising fragility of moral consensus, Greene calls on the church to step into its biblical role: speaking truth to power, welcoming the stranger, standing with the oppressed, and embodying the love of Christ in tangible, courageous ways.

Episode Highlights

1. “Inherently, reconciliation of people who have done the worst things imaginable to you is not a human thing.”
2. “To truly be a follower of Christ, you can't be completely for a politician or completely for a political party.”
3. “What we’ve seen is that more of the church is committed to their immigrant neighbours than the media or politicians would like the public to believe.”
4. “The challenge for pastors is: How do I talk about this issue without losing my job or splitting my congregation?”
5. “If we’re failing to define our neighbour expansively—as Christ did—we're always going to get it wrong.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief
• Open Doors World Watch List 2025
• 2024 Lifeway Research on Evangelicals & Immigration
• PEPFAR Program – US Department of State
• National Association of Evangelicals
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ron Sider
• Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen
• Walking with the Poor, by Bryant Myers

About Myal Greene

Myal Greene has a deep desire to see churches worldwide equipped, empowered, and engaged in meeting the needs of vulnerable families in their communities. In 2021, he became president and CEO after serving for fourteen years with the organization. While living in Rwanda for eight years, he developed World Relief’s innovative church-based programming model that is currently used in nine countries. He also spent six years in leadership roles within the international programs division. He has previous experience working with the US government. He holds a BS in finance from Lehigh University and an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary in global leadership. He and his wife Sharon have three children.

Show Notes

• Myal Greene’s call to faith-rooted leadership in alleviating poverty
• Greene’s path from Capitol Hill to World Relief, shaped by his conversion in his twenties and a deepening conviction about God’s heart for the poor
• “God was working in me and instilling a deep understanding of his heart for the poor.”
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ron Sider
• Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen
• Walking with the Poor, by Bryant Myers
• Psalm 31:7–8: “I’ll be glad and rejoice for you have seen my troubles and you’ve seen the affliction of my soul, but you’ve not turned me over to the enemy. You’ve set me in a safe place.”
• “ Not only will God transform your life, but what it means to actually have experienced that and to feel that and to make that a very real personal experience.”
• 2007 in Rwanda
• Rwanda’s one-hundred-day memorial period for the 1994 genocide
• “The effects of the genocide were always there. You wouldn’t be able to see it, but it was always there.”
• Gacaca courts (system of transitional justice to handle the numerous legal cases following the 1994 genocide).
• “People would come and talk about what happened. … The attempts at apology, the attempts at reconciliation were powerful.”
• ”There are so many stories from Rwanda of true reconciliation where people have forgiven the people who’ve killed their family members or have forgiven people who’ve done terrible things to them.”
• ”How did the Gachacha courts see an interweaving or not of Christian faith in the process of the acts of forgiveness?”
• The church’s role: “The hard part and the amazing part of Rwanda is that reconciliation is deeply connected to individual cases.”
• “Inherently, reconciliation of people who have done the worst things imaginable to you is not a human thing.”
• World Relief's Legacy & Mission
• Founded in 1944 at Park Street Church, Boston, in response to World War II European displacement.
• “Feeding 180,000 people a day in Korea during the Korean War.”
• “We boldly engage the world’s greatest crises in partnership with the church.”
• The global displacement crisis
• Over 122 million forcibly displaced people worldwide—up from under 40 million in 2007 (a fourfold increase)
• “A handful of the most fragile nations of the world are experiencing extreme violence, fragility, rising poverty, the effects of climate change, and people are being forced to flee and put into d desperate situations.”
• “The generosity of the country is not being seen at a time when people in crisis face the greatest need.”
• World Relief is “one of ten refugee resettlement agencies, and we have been a refugee resettlement agency partnering with the US government since 1980 to do the work of welcoming refugees who come to this country. And we’ve partnered with every presidential administration since Jimmy Carter to do this work and have, have done so proudly.”
• Trump’s immigration and refugee resettlement policies
• Refugee resettlement has been halted since January 20, 2025—an estimated one thousand people per month left unwelcomed
• “At a time when people experiencing crisis are facing the greatest need, the generosity of the country is not being seen.”
• 120,000 refugees were welcomed in 2024.
• “We expected around 12,000” in 2025.
• “Should Christian organizations receive federal funding?”
• Cuts to federal humanitarian funding
• USAID interruptions directly affect food, health, and medical services in fragile states like Sudan, Haiti, and DRC.
• On PEPFAR: HIV-AIDS specific program established by George W. Bush
• PEPFAR: “25 million lives have been saved … now it’s among the casualties.”
• “Have these [federal cuts to humanitarian aid] increased philanthropic giving or has philanthropic giving dropped almost as a mirror of the government policy change?”
• Church response and misconceptions
• How should we manage uncertainty?
• When to use one’s voice to speak truth to power?
• “Polling shows evangelicals overwhelmingly support refugee resettlement—even Trump voters.”
• “Over 70 percent of evangelicals believe the US has a moral responsibility to welcome refugees to this country. Sixty-eight percent of of evangelicals voted for Trump agree with that statement as well.”
• Lifeway Research found only 9 percent of evangelicals cite the Bible or their pastor as their main source on immigration. “It would sit uncomfortably to any pastor if that were true about any other major issue.”
• “Pastors find themselves in this difficult place where they're trying to figure out, ‘How do I talk about this issue without losing my job and splitting my congregation?’”
• ”The dissonance between the way the press represents evangelical opinions about immigration”
• “Whether the church’s voice has enough authority to be able to actually affect people’s real time decisions about how they live in the world”
• “To be a truly a follower of Christ, you can’t be completely for a politician or completely for a political party because then you put that ahead of your faith in Christ.”
• “You have to be able to have that freedom to disagree with the leader or the party.”
• “A dog with a bone in his mouth can't bark. … I think that that's where we find ourself as a church right now. We want certain victories through political means, and we're willing to sacrifice our moral authority in order to get those. And I think that that's, that's a very dangerous place to be in as a church.”
• How Lifeway Research approaches their understanding of “evangelical Christian”
• “What is the authority of the church, and how is it exercising or failing to exercise its voice right now?”
• Hope for a compassionate church
• “The real movement happens when the church unites and uses its voice.”
• “One in twelve Christians in America will either be deported or live with someone who is subject to deportation.”

Production Credits

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

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Angela Williams Gorrell joins Mark Labberton to discuss her latest book, Braving Difficult Decisions. With poignant storytelling and theological depth, Gorrell shares how this book was born out of personal crucibles and a yearning to make sense of liminal, paralyzing spaces we all encounter—individually and communally. Together they explore how discernment is not just about decision-making but also about cultivating a life of wisdom, attentiveness, and spiritual depth.

Rooted in Christian tradition yet capacious across communities and contexts, Gorrell invites listeners to slow down, ask deeper questions, and consider the spiritual, emotional, and communal terrain that shapes every meaningful decision.

Episode Highlights

1. “To not make a decision is to make one as well.”
2. “This journey is about an inward journey that says, how do I look at the state of my own soul?”
3. “Sometimes good decisions don’t feel good.”
4. “What if the best idea isn’t the good idea? And what if the data can’t tell us that?”
5. “Lady Wisdom invites us to dine—to sit at a table with God and others, and not rush the meal.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Braving Difficult Decisions, by Angela Williams Gorrell
• The Gravity of Joy, by Angela Williams Gorrell
• Life Worth Living course at Yale
• www.angelagorrell.com
• @angelagorrell on Instagram

Show Notes

• The “liminal space” of facing a difficult decision, arriving at a crossroads
• Defining discernment as “a practice, not a single moment of choice”
• The book stems from her decision to leave a tenured-track faculty position, and a painful personal choice about marriage
• Perpetua and Felicity—early Christian martyrs
• Individual discernment and soul work
• Life Worth Living at Yale
• “Can I be suffering and my life still be good?”
• The deeply heartbreaking experience of grappling with the question of divorce
• “I really struggled to find a book that was like, you can be deeply Christian, deeply spiritual, and make this very difficult choice.”
• “You have to put them in your own heart and soul. You have to grapple with these ideas, and then you write them.”
• Should we avoid difficult decisions?
• Discerning, then acting
• “To not make a decision is to make one as well.”
• “I wanted to write a book that spoke to that liminal space where we feel paralyzed.”
• “Good decisions don’t always feel good—they might still break your heart”
• Discusses difference between chronic pain and acute pain in decision-making
• Discernment helps identify not just what is “right,” but what leads toward peace
• Michaela O’Donnell and chronic pain
• Discernment is about “looking at the state of your own soul and becoming a steward of it”
• “This story that God is nurturing in the world—that story doesn’t hinge on like this decision in your life.”
• Self-examination, and feeling alone in the decision
• Community-based decision-making
• “There are all these false binaries.”
• “What baggage do you have from the past? And how do you make sure that you're not seeing the present moment through the past?”
• Being as gracious as possible
• “ What is a way that we can create space to really hear from God?—to hear from each other, and to move forward in a way that we're doing change together and not to each other.”
• “They need to figure out something together that matters deeply.”
• The book offers a pathway for congregations and organizations discerning together
• “How do we do change with people?”
• Encourages communities to take time, name past wounds, and define who makes decisions
• Identifies the importance of setting clear expectations, timelines, and spiritual framing
• “Listening to everyone takes time, but it leads to deeper collective ownership.”
• Invites communities to ask: What values do we want to embody in this moment?
• “Sometimes the most valuable part of the process is the slowness.”
• Wisdom, complexity, and culture
• Decision-making in our polarized society must account for nuance, empathy, and complexity
• “What if the data tells us one thing, but the Spirit tells us something else?”
• Resist “data-driven” decisions as totalizing; discernment includes emotion, history, and spirituality.
• “Sometimes good decisions don't feel good, you know? Sometimes a life worth living is not about pursuing happiness.”
• “Lady Wisdom invites us to come and to dine at her house and to sit at a table together.”
• Names systemic fatigue: “Organizations optimize while their people starve.”
• Decision-making is affected by race, gender, trauma, context—“there is no one-size-fits-all path”
• Discernment as a practice, not a moment
• Braving Difficult Decisions includes exercises and frameworks, such as the “iceberg model”
• “Most big questions are like an iceberg. There’s all this ice beneath the surface that you don't see. That’s really the stuff that people are grappling with.”
• Encourages ongoing wisdom practices: surrender, self-reflection, value-alignment
• The book is not just a guide for one hard moment, but a long-term companion
• Ideal for pastors, therapists, educators, spiritual directors, and leaders

About Angela Williams Gorrell

Rev. Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is an author, speaker, and consultant. Gorrell speaks and writes about finding the life worth living, joy, meaning, and purpose, and the intersection of spiritual and mental health. She is the author of Always On, The Gravity of Joy, and Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. Angela’s research has been highlighted in media sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Gorrell has taught at several schools including Yale University and Baylor University. She has provided thought leadership and consulting for numerous organizations including the US Army and the NBA. You can find her at her website www.angelagorrell.com or on instagram @angelagorrell.

Production Credits

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

Mental, emotional, and spiritual healing requires more than clinical technique—it demands sacrificial empathy, institutional trust, and a profound affirmation of the image of God in every human being. In this episode, clinical psychologist and Pine Rest CEO Mark Eastburg joins Mark Labberton to discuss the rising need for mental health care—especially for children, adolescents, and those recovering from severe trauma.

Eastburg offers insights about the post-pandemic mental health landscape; psychological and emotional resilience; trauma-informed therapy; deep listening; and the theological, moral, and social commitments that drive Eastburg’s approach to mental and spiritual health. They also discuss the systemic injustice underlying many mental health disparities, inviting us to see mental health care as a vital form of justice work rooted in compassion, dignity, and Christian witness.

Episode Highlights

1. “We’re in the healing moments business. That’s what we do … and I think those healing moments are the building blocks of the kingdom of God—just like atoms are the building blocks of the material world.”
2. “We’re in the healing moments business. … Those healing moments are the building blocks of the kingdom of God.”
3. “Mental health work is justice work … especially when we’re helping people who’ve been victims of injustice get back into community.”
4. “If you just react to people’s symptoms, you’ll get more symptoms. But if you can see the beautiful human being underneath, you’ll see more of that.”
5. “A Christian approach to therapy starts with the belief that every person is made in the image of God—and they are someone’s favourite brother or sister.”
6. “Jesus’s care for the outsider, for the downtrodden, the excluded—that has to define what we mean when we say we express the healing ministry of Christ.”

About Mark Eastburg

Mark Eastburg, PhD, is president and chief executive officer of Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, one of the five largest free-standing behavioural health organizations in the United States. With a doctorate in clinical psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary, Eastburg has served in both clinical and leadership roles at Pine Rest for over three decades. He is a passionate advocate for trauma-informed care, access to mental health services, and a faith-integrated approach to healing grounded in human dignity and Christian compassion.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
• American Rescue Plan

Show Notes

• Mental Health Landscape post-Covid
• Surge in mental health needs for children and adolescents, especially after pandemic lockdowns
• Dramatic increase in psychiatric crises among youth: anxiety, self-harm, aggression
• Tele-therapy rose during Covid, but adolescents strongly prefer in-person care
• “The post-Covid world—everything seems to have become more intense.”
• The symptoms of the adolescent mental health crisis
• Rise in social media use and marijuana legalization amplifying symptoms
• Anxiety, substance abuse
• “We are really shaped and developed by practices.”
• The experience of children in foster care
• Trauma-informed care essential for children with abuse and neglect histories
• Empathy requires the therapist to engage in “sacrificial vulnerability”
• Human mutual vulnerability—”The therapist, to express such empathy, has to themselves be prepared to manifest their own vulnerability to the person who has their own underlying vulnerabilities.”
• Sage advice for therapists: “If you just react to people symptoms, you’re going to get more symptoms. But if you could look past the symptoms and see what he liked to call ‘the beautiful human being underneath everybody,’ anyone that you interact with, you'll see more of that.”
• Sacrificial empathy
• Working toward healing moments—the building blocks for the kingdom of God
• Christian psychotherapy: “the ability to look at people as made in God’s image.”
• Mental illness is another form of marginalization and exclusion
• “People are more than a set of symptoms to be treated.”
• Managing a crisis versus seeing a person
• How Pine Rest approaches mental health care
• Pine Rest’s new $100 million pediatric behavioural health center in Michigan
• “Instead of waiting months for care, kids can just walk in and we’ll sort it out.”
• New specialty clinics for autism, depression, eating disorders, and anxiety
• The universality of how mental health touches our lives
• Who sustains mental health care financially?
• What stokes a readiness for empathy?
• Deeper friendships and safe relationships of belonging as the foundation for mental health
• Stories of youth overcoming institutionalization and abuse through care
• “When a therapist sees the image of God, not just the behaviour, healing begins.”
• Cyprian of Carthage: “Let us be philosophers not in words, but in deeds.”
• “We often misperceive one another and then we misname one another and then we act in relationship to that person with the wrong name and the wrong perception.”
• Empathy, trauma, and Christian therapy
• “Our actions, our words can re-traumatize if we’re not approaching with care.”
• Connection between sacred empathy and human flourishing
• “You can’t manage people like machines—you have to wish for their flourishing.”
• The church, community, and mental health
• The role of church and community institutions in fostering resilience
• “You can’t train enough therapists to solve the crisis—we have to go upstream.”
• Stories of church communities embracing those with mental illness
• “Belonging precedes healing. If someone feels cared for, they’re more likely to show empathy.”
• Global suffering, Western understanding of “avoiding suffering,” and the search for meaning
• Contrast between global Christians and Western assumptions about suffering
• “While I think our work here at Pine Rest Mental Health—we're here to relieve suffering—there is suffering that is full of meaning and full of lessons to teach.”
• Christian healing values clashing with other predominant Western medical approaches
• “Suffering doesn’t equal God’s abandonment—it’s often where God meets us.”
• Concerns about over-medicalizing suffering and ignoring its spiritual richness
• Lessons from early Christian health-care pioneers—“the reckless ones” who ran toward the sick
• “There is suffering full of meaning and lessons that Western models tend to miss.”
• Justice, dignity, and the Christian vocation to empathic care
• “Mental health care is justice work—especially for those traumatized or left out.”
• “People suffering, struggling with mental illness are often the victims of injustices.”
• The practice of psychotherapy and mental health care as pursuing social justice
• Connections between structural injustice and mental illness
• Biblical vision of justice includes care for those seen as defective or excluded

Production Credits

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

What is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)? And what does it have to do with conservative political power in the United States and abroad?

Leah Payne and Caleb Maskell join Mark Labberton for a deep dive into the emergence and impact of the New Apostolic Reformation—a loosely affiliated global network blending Pentecostal Christian spirituality, charismatic authority, and political ambition. With their combined pastoral experience and scholarly expertise, Payne and Maskell chart the historical, theological, and sociopolitical roots of this Pentecostal movement—from Azusa Street and Latter Rain revivals to modern dominion theology and global evangelicalism. They distinguish the New Apostolic Reformation from the broader Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, and explore the popular appeal, theological complexity, and political volatility of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Episode Highlights

• “Isn't this just conservative political activism with tongues and prophecy and dominion?”
• “At no point in time in the history of these United States … have Protestants not been interested in having a great deal of influence over public life.”
• “You can be super nationalistic in Guatemala, in Brazil, in India, and in the United States. … It is a portable form of nationalism.”
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy or American exceptionalism because they have in their mind the end times and the nation of Israel.”
• “Charismatics and Pentecostals, unlike other forms of American Protestantism … do not have a theological value for democracy.”

Main Themes

• Pentecostalism’s history and global influence
• Charismatic Christianity versus Pentecostalism
• Defining and explaining the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
• C. Peter Wagner, Lance Hall, and Seven Mountain Mandate
• Dominion theology, Christian nationalism, and the religious Right
• Pentecostals and Trump politics
• Zionism in charismatic theology
• Vineyard movement, worship music, and intimacy with God

Linked Media References

• About Vineyard USA
• God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music by Leah Payne
• The New Apostolic Churches by C. Peter Wagner
• This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti
• Atlantic Article: “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” by Stephanie McCrummen
• Bonhoeffer's America: A Land Without Reformation, by Joel Looper
• Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity, by Joel Looper

Show Notes

• Leah Payne defines Pentecostalism as “a form of American revivalism”
• William J. Seymour
• Marked by interracial desegregated worship and spiritual “fireworks” like tongues and prophecy
• Mystical experiences of God
• Desegregation and physically touching one another in acts of miraculous healing
• The Azusa Street Revival (1906) identified as a global catalyst for Assemblies of God denomination
• There is no founding theological figure, unlike Luther or Calvin
• Caleb Maskell emphasizes Pentecostalism’s roots in “a founding set of experiences,” not a founding theological figure
• “Limits to what makes a church”
• Lack of ecclesiological clarity leaves Pentecostalism open to both renewal and fragmentation
• Leah highlights Pentecostalism as “a shared experience … a shared series of practices.”
• “Holy Rollers” and being “slain in the Spirit”
• “A different way of knowing”
• “Christians are made through an encounter with Jesus.”
• The global “charismatic movement” and how it has had cross-denominational Influence
• “Charismatic” was a mid-twentieth-century term for Spirit-led practices arising within mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions
• Charismatic means “gifted” or “being given gifts”
• “‘Charismatic’ has typically been a more inclusive word than ‘Pentecostal.’”
• Emphasis on personal spiritual gifts and intimate worship styles
• “They are not respecters of institutions.”
• Figures like Oral Roberts and Amy Semple McPherson were “too big” for denominational constraints
• “Too-bigness” as driven by both an over-inflated ego and spiritual mysticism
• Frederick Buechner: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
• Spellbound, by Molly Worthen (see Conversing episode 212)
• What are the origins and key ideas of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)?
• New Apostolic Reformation: “a form of institutionalized charismatic identity that builds on grassroots consensus.”
• “NAR” coined by C. Peter Wagner at Fuller Seminary in the 1990s
• Wagner promoted post-denominationalism and “reality-based” church governance centred on individual charismatic gifts
• Emerged from a “larger soup” of charismatic ideas—often practiced before being systematized.
• Closely tied to the “Seven Mountain Mandate”: that Christians should influence key societal sectors—family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government
• The role of dominion theology and political alignment
• “The convergence of egos, the convergence of ethos … is a natural thing to see emerging.”
• “Dominion is really just two or three logical steps from an obsession with cultural relevance.”
• Payne sees dominionism as a Pentecostal-flavoured version of a broader conservative political strategy.
• “Charismatics and Pentecostals are everywhere … so we should expect them on the far right.”
• Many deny the NAR label even as they operate in its mode.
• ”When Bob Dylan’s in your church, suddenly your church is relevant, whether you like it or not.”
• Defining “Dominionism”
• “Dominion is really just two or three logical steps from an obsession with cultural relevance. Cultural relevance says church should fit—not prophetically, but should fit all but seamlessly—into modes of culture that people are already in.”
• What are the “Seven Mountains of Culture”?  Family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government—”the world would go better if Christians were in charge of each of those arenas.”
• “At no point in time in the history of these United States and the history of European settlers in the new world have Protestants not been interested in having a great deal of influence over public life.”
• Trump, Zionism, and global Pentecostal nationalism
• Christian nationalism versus religious Right
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy. … They think the nation of Israel is the nation of all nations.”
• “Isn’t this just conservative political activism with tongues and prophecy and dominion?”
• Anti-institutional and anti-structural
• How Trump seeks power and ego affirmation
• Christian theocratic rule?
• ”It may simply be a part of what it is to be a Christian is to say, at some level, within the spheres that I’m given authority in, I ought to have the right kind of influence, whatever it is.”
• “ I think what’s scary about the moment that we’re in right now is in fact the chaos.”
• A book about Donald Trump—God's Chaos Candidate, by Lance Wall
• ”The beliefs in divine prophecy are so widespread that they transcend partisanship.”
• Black Pentecostalism: immune to the charms of Trump and populist conservatives
• Trump’s Zionist overtures strategically captured charismatic loyalty
• The rise of global Pentecostal nationalism in countries like India, Brazil, and Guatemala parallels US patterns.
• “They don’t actually care long-term about American democracy.”
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy or American exceptionalism because they have in their mind the end times and the nation of Israel.”
• Prosperity gospel
• Dominionism and the Roman Catholic “doctrine of discovery”
• The gospel of Christ as “sorting power”
• “It is a portable form of nationalism.”
• Concerns about power, order, and eschatology
• Mark Labberton reflects on Fuller Seminary’s controversial role in NAR’s intellectual development.
• Payne critiques the equation of widespread Pentecostal practices with far-right dominionism.
• “What’s scary … is the chaos. And a number of people associated with NAR have celebrated that.”
• NAR theology often prioritizes divine chaos over institutional order.
• Warnings against super-biblical apostolic authority and spiritual authoritarianism.
• Pentecostalism beyond politics
• “There’s a vivid essentialism—make everything great and all the nations will gather.”
• Vineyard worship as a counterweight to dominionism—emphasizing intimacy and mystical union with Christ.
• “That emphasis on Jesus as a friend … is a really beautiful image of God.”
• Vineyard music helped export a gentle, intimate charismatic spirituality.

About Leah Payne

Leah Payne is associate professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary and a 2023–2024 public fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). She holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University, and her research explores the intersection of religion, politics, and popular culture. Payne is author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: a History of Contemporary Christian Music (Oxford University Press, 2024), and co-host of Rock That Doesn’t Roll, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) podcast about Christian rock and its listeners, and Weird Religion, a religion and pop culture podcast. Her writing and research has appeared in The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today.

About Caleb Maskell

Caleb Maskell is the associate national director of theology and education for Vineyard USA. Born in London, he immigrated with his family to New Jersey in 1986, at the age of nine.

Caleb has been involved in leadership in the Vineyard movement for twenty-five years. After spending a gap year at the Toronto Airport Vineyard School of Ministry in 1995, he went to the University of Chicago to study theology, philosophy, and literature in the interdisciplinary undergraduate Fundamentals program. While there, he joined the core planting team of the Hyde Park Vineyard Church, where he served as a worship leader, a small group leader, a setter-up of chairs, and whatever else Rand Tucker asked him to do.

After college, full of questions that had emerged from the beautiful collision of serious academic study and the practical realities of church planting, Caleb enrolled in the MDiv program at Yale Divinity School. For four years, he immersed himself in the study of theology, church history, and Scripture, while also leading worship and working with middle school and high school youth groups. After graduating in 2004, he worked for three years as the associate director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.

In 2007, along with his wife Kathy and their friends Matt and Hannah Croasmun, Caleb planted Elm City Vineyard Church in New Haven, Connecticut. That year, he also began a PhD program at Princeton University, focusing on the history of American religion, with an additional emphasis in African American studies. After moving to Manhattan for four years while Kathy went to seminary, the Maskells ended up in suburban Philadelphia, where Caleb completed his PhD while teaching regularly at Princeton Theological Seminary, and serving as the worship pastor at Blue Route Vineyard Church.

Since 2010, Caleb has led the Society of Vineyard Scholars, which exists to foster and sustain a community of theological discourse in and for the Vineyard movement. Caleb is passionate about developing leaders and institutions that will help to produce a healthy, courageous, and hospitable future for the church in the twenty-first century. Caleb and Kathy now live with their two kids, Josiah and Emmanuelle, in the heart of Denver, where Kathy pastors East Denver Vineyard Church.

Production Credits

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

Historian and journalist Molly Worthen explores the mysterious and potent force of charisma, and its power to shape American identity, culture, politics, and religion. She explains how storytelling, transcendence, and authority are used by America’s most charismatic leaders.

Drawing on her new book, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump, Worthen shares how charismatic authority reveals deep human desires for meaning, agency, and transcendence. The conversation explores themes of vulnerability, spiritual hunger, religious disaffiliation, and the evolving nature of belief and belonging in modern society.

Worthen unpacks the often-overlooked distinction between charisma and charm or celebrity, examining the role of storytelling in cultivating authority and devotion.

She also shares how researching this subject intersected with her own spiritual journey, culminating in her recent conversion to Christianity.

Key Moments

• Molly Worthen discusses her latest book, Spellbound.
• Charisma: a relational, story-driven phenomenon, not mere charm or celebrity
• Our religious impulse persists despite declining traditional affiliation
• Worthen’s personal spiritual journey: from intellectual agnosticism to Christian faith while writing the book
• Donald Trump’s narrative charisma and religious-political appeal examined in depth
• Human longing for transcendence and meaning as the root of charismatic power

Episode Highlights

1. “Evangelism is just telling people what happened to you.”
2. “The heart of charisma is the leader’s ability to tell a story … that does a better job at explaining the chaos and the suffering.”
3. “We want the comfort of knowing that some force larger than us is ultimately in charge—and yet we also seek agency.”
4. “I came to realize I was writing a book that was fundamentally about spiritual hunger—and that I myself had that hunger too.”
5. “Authenticity as a personal style has no necessary relationship with honesty.”
6. “We kid ourselves if we think more sources solve the mystery of charisma—reality is an asymptote we never perfectly reach.”

About Molly Worthen

Molly Worthen is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in North American religion, politics, global Christianity, and the history of ideas. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times and author of several books, including Apostles of Reason and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost. Her most recent book is Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump.

Show Notes

• Authority—who should we listen to?
• Internal battles within American evangelicalism
• The definition of charisma and its distinction from charm, celebrity, and power
• Charisma: “ the allure in a leader that gives him or her the power to move a crowd that is premised on a relationship. … You need two parties at least. It’s not solely a quality of fluorescence that shines out from the individual without other people to interact with it.”
• The leader’s ability to tell a story that explains the audience’s experience of life
• Paradoxical quality: we want our decision to make a difference in our fate, but we also want some being or force larger than us to make it all okay.
• “ It’s not just about looking at the one who is the special anointed one, but it’s that somehow through that person, I too, or we too, see ourselves more clearly.”
• Special revelation and stories of experiencing God in particular ways
• “Capturing the ineffable”
• Role of charismatic leaders in American religious and political life
• Impact of Joseph Smith, Anne Hutchinson, JFK, and Adlai Stevenson
• Why institutional religion no longer captures spiritual impulse for many Americans
• Storytelling as the essence of charismatic authority
• Evolution of American individualism and the cult of authenticity
• How mass media, trauma, and cultural crises shape charismatic influence
• Coming to terms with the limits of your “source base”—”Reality is an asymptote.”
• “It’s that sort of transcendent storytelling ability that is the heart of charisma.”
• Mormonism and the charisma of Joseph Smith
• Leaders like JFK and Adlai Stevenson offered different models of modern charisma
• “So much of my book is really about the fortunes of established institutions in American culture because charismatic figures always define themselves vis-à-vis institutions.”
• Routinizing charisma (cf. Max Weber)
• “The gap or the consistency between what our subjects are, are thinking and intending consciously and what they actually do.”
• Intuition versus analysis—steeping in cultural milieu and operating out of personal life experiences
• The Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson
• “Very few humans are out-and-out cynics.”
• Charismatic figures aren’t always attractive or eloquent—they resonate through meaning-making.
• “ The religious impulse is finding a place to land other than organized religion.”
• Protestant roots of American consciousness tied to authority and self-discovery
• Humanist psychology and positive thinking
• “The age of the gurus”
• Charisma and Contemporary Politics: Donald Trump
• Trump’s story of victimhood, self-made success, and defiance of institutions as a charismatic myth
• Trump’s stream-of-consciousness style perceived as authenticity by many followers.
• “For example, his rambling stream-of-consciousness speaking style that actually is a core to his appeal, I think, for many Trump supporters because it comes across as a kind of authenticity—as a willingness to tell it how it is and speak off the top of his head. And authenticity as a personal style has no necessary relationship with honesty in terms of correspondence to, you know, empirically verifiable facts.”
• The alignment between his narrative and the prosperity gospel
• ”While Donald Trump is no one's idea of an orthodox Christian, he grew up in Norman Vincent Peale's church in New York City, Marble Collegiate Church, hearing the prosperity gospel, the gospel of positive thinking.”
• ”I think Trump has a, has a really acute spiritual instinct for. That picture of reality one in which we can really reshape reality with our minds.”
• Early support from independent charismatic church networks shaped his rise.
• Importance of positive thinking theology (e.g., Norman Vincent Peale) in his spiritual instincts.
• “I suppose I was about two-thirds of the way through the rough draft of this book when I was rudely interrupted by the Holy Spirit. I have always studied Christianity as a very sympathetic and, frankly, envious outsider and never was entirely happy with my agnostic fence sitting, but also wasn't actively looking to resolve my metaphysical questions.”
• “ I’ve always had this conviction that humans are fundamentally religious creatures and they have this impulse to connect to a transcendent source of meaning to worship.”
• “I came to realize that I was writing a book that was fundamentally about spiritual hunger and how humans cope with it. But that I myself had had that hunger as well—that I’m not immune to that feature of the human dilemma.”
• “We want to be pulled into something transcendent, where we are more fully ourselves.”
• Praying for a mystical experience—at least being “strangely warmed”
• ”God had already done something to my desires—I was walking in the direction of Jesus already.”
• “ I always see every kind of historical problem as somehow having to do with contesting visions of human nature.”
• “There’s this silly misconception that Christianity is intellectually stultifying—that to become an orthodox, traditional Christian is to shut off all kinds of questions and accept a black-and-white way of thinking. And that has not been my experience.”
• Research project on miracles
• “ Evangelism is just telling people what happened to you.”
• Conversion was driven by rigorous academic inquiry into the resurrection and New Testament
• Experience echoed themes in the book: story, vulnerability, and being seen
• Her analysis: “God had already done something to my desires before the arguments convinced me.”
• Post-conversion excitement about theological study, healing, and miracles

Production Credits

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

Cancer is among the most common and feared diseases in the modern world. Dr. Selwyn Vickers—president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—joins host Mark Labberton to discuss how precision oncology, data, and faith are transforming cancer treatment.

A distinguished cancer surgeon and pancreatic cancer researcher, Vickers explains how groundbreaking advances in genomics, immunotherapy, and AI are transforming once-lethal diagnoses into survivable and even chronic conditions. Together, they explore not only the cutting-edge science of cancer care but also the spiritual, emotional, and social dimensions that affect every patient and caregiver.

Resonating with themes of suffering, hope, and resurrection, this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and courage for all who are affected by cancer—from those newly diagnosed, to medical professionals, to grieving families and curious listeners.

Episode Highlights

• “We’re getting to a point where we will, in the next five to seven years, have a much better chance to cure people—and to make pancreatic cancer a chronic illness.”
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• “Cancer is a disease that creates an existential threat in ways no other illness does.”
• “If a tumour forms, it means your body’s immune system has made a social contract with the cancer.”
• “We changed the diagnosis in 10–12 percent of the patients who come to us—sometimes from cancer to no cancer.”
• “Cancer care is a team sport. And our patients often inspire us more than we help them.”

Helpful Links & Resources

• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• BioNTech – creators of mRNA vaccines for COVID and cancer
• CAR T-Cell Therapy Overview (Cancer.gov)
• Tim Keller on cancer and hope
• Emma Thompson’s Wit (HBO)
• BRCA1 and BRCA2 Genes and Cancer Risk
• MSK-IMPACT: Next-Gen Tumor Profiling

About Selwyn Vickers

Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, is the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and the incumbent of the Douglas A. Warner III Chair. He assumed the role on September 19, 2022.

Vickers is an internationally recognized pancreatic cancer surgeon, pancreatic cancer researcher, and pioneer in health disparities research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has served on the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Board of Trustees and the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. Additionally, he has served as president of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract and the Southern Surgical Association. Vickers is the immediate past president of the American Surgical Association. He also continues to see patients.

In 1994, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, where he was later appointed to professor and the John H. Blue Chair of General Surgery. In 2006, Vickers left UAB to become the Jay Phillips Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Born in Demopolis, Alabama, Vickers grew up in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. He earned baccalaureate and medical degrees and completed his surgical training (including a chief residency and surgical oncology fellowship) at the Johns Hopkins University. Vickers completed two postgraduate research fellowships with the National Institutes of Health and international surgical training at John Radcliffe Hospital of Oxford University, England.

Vickers and his wife, Janice, who is also from Alabama, have been married since 1988. They have four children.

Show Notes

• The ongoing threat and fear of cancer
• How Selwyn Vickers got into medicine
• Pancreatic cancer: Vickers’s expertise
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• Sequencing the human genome
• “Is there a drug that might target the mutation that ended up creating your cancer?”
• Cancer as both a medical and existential diagnosis
• The revolution of precision oncology through human genome sequencing
• ”It takes a billion cells to have a one centimetre tumor.”
• Immunotherapy: checkpoint inhibition, CAR T-cell therapy, and vaccines
• Cellular therapy:   ”Taking a set of their normal cells and re-engineering them to actually go back and target and attack their tumors. … We’ve seen patients who had initially a 30 percent chance of survival converted to an 80 percent chance of survival.”
• “We know in many tumours there’s something called minimal residual disease.”
• “Immunizing yourself against cancer is a significant future opportunity.”
• Managing the power of data with AI and computational oncology
• Cancer-care data explosion: the role of computational oncologists
• Cancer vaccines: breakthrough mRNA treatment for pancreatic cancer
• ”Didn’t ultimately win. We had to suffer through her losing her life, but was so appreciative that she got much more than the six months she was promised.”
• Tumour misdiagnoses and the importance of specialized expertise
• Pancreatic cancer challenges: immune cloaking and late-stage detection
• In the past, one in four would die from the operation for removing pancreatic cancer
• Long-term survival
• Future of cancer detection: AI-based medical record analysis and blood biopsies
• More accurate blood tests to confirm conditions
• Using AI to select those who are high-risk for cancer
• Pastor Tim Keller died of pancreatic cancer.
• In the past, “your doctor … helped you learn how to die.”
• ”[God’s] given man the privilege to discover those things that have been hidden. And over time we've gradually uncovered huge opportunities to impact people’s lives.”
• The state of breast cancer research and treatment
• “If you get the diagnosis of breast cancer, you have a 90 percent chance to survive and beat it over a five-year period of time.”
• ”In general, we’re in a great state of understanding how to treat breast cancer, how to detect it early, and then have selective and targeted mechanisms to prevent it from coming back.”
• Prostate cancer research and treatment
• Theranostics: using a specific antibody to target cancer cells specifically
• Pediatric cancer:  ”We actually treat more children for cancer than any hospital in America now, but in general, the survival for pediatric cancers is greater than 80 percent.”
• Emotional, psychological, and spiritual toll of cancer: importance of psycho-oncology
• How Sloan Kettering developed psycho-oncology to help cancer patients with mental and spiritual health
• Personal story: how a cafeteria worker empowers patients through food choices
• “We give back to them the right to choose what they get to have on their tray.”
• Cancer treatment is a team sport.
• Wit (film, Broadway play)—actress Emma Thompson plays a cancer patient studying the work of John Donne on death
• Socioeconomic and racial disparities in cancer care outcomes
• The healing role of community, support teams, and compassionate listening
• The importance of listening to cancer patients who are preparing to die
• The spiritual courage of patients and the transformative power of faith
• “Our patients often help us. We see the grace with which they often handle that journey.”
• The inspiration behind becoming a doctor: family legacy and human impact
• Terminal care: the sacred responsibility of walking with patients to the end
• Cancer research and treatment as a Christian vocation and expression of humanity

Production Credits

“Leadership is defined by listening.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton explains the essential role listening plays in leadership and successful communication.  Leaders are often known for what they’ve said publicly or privately, but in actual fact, the experience of leadership and the effectiveness of leadership is determined by the mutuality of listening and learning that goes on between the primary leader and the team that they’re working with at any given time. Here, Mark shares from his decades of leadership experience as a Presbyterian minister and seminary president.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

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

• Relationships of trust
• “ Listening is as critical to the existence of leadership as it is to the partnership of leadership.”
• “ If we don't have listening, then the partnership that leadership requires simply can't exist.”
• What leadership is really about: the people you’re leading are known, served, discovered, changed, renewed
• Tone-deaf leaders: leaders who are out of touch
• If you don’t want to be out of touch or tone deaf, “enter the room listening.”
• “Leaders are often known for what they’ve said publicly or privately, but in actual fact, the experience of leadership and the effectiveness of leadership is determined by the mutuality of listening and learning that goes on between the primary leader and the team that they’re working with at any given time.”
• Mutuality of learning and listening together—adding oxygen to the room
• Bringing part of yourself versus bringing your whole self to a leadership relationship
• “ Let’s not listen to one another first critically and negatively. Let’s listen to one another with hope, with earnestness, with a genuine desire to receive their perspective and letting that actually inform how we lead.”
• “When I ran into people who are having difficulties with their senior leader, it’s almost always around the leader’s failure to listen. At one level or another, they are not hearing the people that they’re leading.”
• “A leader who doesn't listen is like a person deciding to jump off a cliff. …  The longer they don’t listen, the more they are isolated by themselves and at risk.”
• Leadership enriched by an understanding of each other
• “A shared communion of decision making”

Production Credits

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

Strong leadership is born not from control, but from authentic community and the cultivation of people and teams. Nathan Hatch, former president of Wake Forest University and esteemed historian, joins Mark Labberton to reflect on the nature of transformative leadership. Drawing from his decades of experience at Notre Dame and Wake Forest—and from his new book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders—Hatch explores how leaders cultivate thriving institutions through humility, vision, and empowerment. Hatch shares his personal journey from growing up in a Presbyterian home to leading major universities, while reflecting on the comomunity, character, instincts, and freedom required for lasting institutional impact.

Episode Highlights

• "Organizations aren't self-generating—you bet on people, not on strategy."
• "Organizations are best served when you have a team of like-minded people, each using their own strengths."
• "Leadership has to flow out of who you are authentically—you can't try to be someone else."
• "If you have exceptional people, it takes management of a different form—it's collaboration."
• "Leadership is not about control but about strength: hiring strong people is harder, but it's transformative."
• "People read your real meanings, not your words—authenticity is the heart of leadership."

Helpful Links & Resources

• The Gift of Transformative Leaders, by Nathan Hatch
• University of Notre Dame
• Wake Forest University
• Jim Collins - Good to Great

About Nathan Hatch

Dr. Nathan O. Hatch is President Emeritus of Wake Forest University and one of America’s leading scholars of religion and higher education. Prior to his presidency at Wake Forest (2005–2021), Hatch served as provost at the University of Notre Dame. His groundbreaking scholarship in American religious history includes The Democratization of American Christianity, and his latest book is The Gift of Transformative Leaders. Hatch is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and continues to speak and write on leadership, higher education, and culture.

Show Notes

• Raised in a Christian home; son of a Presbyterian minister and teacher
• Influenced early by history teacher and work experiences in Cabrini Green, Chicago
• Studied at Wheaton College, Washington University in St. Louis, and Johns Hopkins University
• Became an unlikely but successful historian at the University of Notre Dame
• Leadership philosophy shaped by early experiences with supportive professional teams and deep community and friendship
• How did the past come to change and create the world we live in?
• Transitioned from historian to administrator, balancing scholarship and administration
• Provost at Notre Dame: emphasized empowering faculty through development and resources
• President at Wake Forest: built strong leadership teams, expanded institutional vision
• Reflections on Father Theodore Hesburgh’s visionary leadership at Notre Dame
• “Organizations aren’t self-generating. … [it takes] a vision and leader.”
• "Leadership must be authentic; it must come out of who you are."
• The transformative impact of great leadership teams over hierarchical control
• Importance of raising institutional aspirations and empowering individuals to flourish
• "Hiring strong people makes the leader stronger, not weaker."
• Nathan Hatch’s book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders
• Profiles 13 leaders who exemplify commitment, character, and institution-building
• Focus on people-centric leadership: authenticity, humility, vision
• Leaders described as radiating positivity, cultivating others, and advancing institutional missions
• Catholic and Protestant institutional differences in faith expression
• Creating inclusive religious life in pluralistic academic communities
• Investing in character education through initiatives like Wake Forest's scholarship programs
• Building culture: "Noticing people, investing in them, seeing their potential."
• “How do we help young people live their life?”
• Identifying and empowering exceptional talent
• Embracing unconventional hiring practices
• Building thriving, collaborative, life-giving teams
• Cultivating environments where people pursue a common good
• Navigating faculty-administration relationships with authenticity and transparency
• Facing organizational financial challenges without losing people-first priorities
• Leadership in contexts with limited resources: raising people’s potential
• Authenticity and empathy are foundational to leadership
• Humility and commitment to the common good are non-negotiable
• Leaders must genuinely invest in the flourishing of others
• Institutions are transformed not by structures alone but by transformative people

Production Credits

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

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nicholas Kristof (opinion columnist, the New York Times) reflects on his career of reporting from the front lines of injustice and human suffering, discussing hope, human resilience, and the urgency of responding to global injustice.

An advocate for empathy-driven journalism that holds power accountable and communicates the stories of the most vulnerable, Kristof joins Mark Labberton in this episode to discuss his life’s work of reporting from the world’s most troubled regions—from Gaza to Congo, from rural Oregon to global centres of power. Known for his unsparing storytelling and deep empathy, Kristof shares the family roots and personal convictions that have shaped his lifelong pursuit of justice and hope.

They also explore how despair and progress coexist, the role of faith and empathy in healing, and how local acts of courage can ripple globally. Grounded in gritty realism, but inspired by everyday heroes, Kristof invites us to resist numbness and embrace a hope that fights to make a difference.

• Stories from Gaza, Congo, Pakistan, and beyond
• Balancing heartbreak and hope in humanitarian reporting
• Why empathy must be cultivated and practiced
• The global impact of Christian activism and its complexities

Episode Highlights

“Side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the very best.”

“We focus so much on all that is going wrong, that we leave people feeling numb and that it’s hopeless … but people don’t want to get engaged in things that are hopeless.”

“Empathy is something that, like a muscle, can be nurtured.”

“The worst kinds of evil and the greatest acts of courage are often just one decision apart.”

“We are an amazing species—if we just get our act together.”

“You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency there.”

About Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, and is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, **where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Born, raised, and still working from his rural Oregon home, Yamhill, he is a graduate of Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

He is the co-author, with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. In 2024, he published a memoir, *Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.*

Books by Nicholas Kristof

Tightrope

A Path Appears

Half the Sky

Thunder from the East

China Wakes

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life

Helpful Resources

International Justice Mission

Dr. Denis Mukwege – Nobel Peace Prize

PEPFAR: The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

Tim Keller’s Final Interview with Kristof (NYT)

Show Notes

• A voice of conscience
• How a global orientation for journalism developed
• Kristof reflects on his humble roots in Yamhill, Oregon, as the son of two immigrants
• “My dad was a Armenian refugee from Eastern Europe. His family had spied on the Nazis during World War II. They got caught. Some were executed by the Nazis, others were executed by the Soviet communists, and my dad was very lucky to make it out alive and was sponsored by a family in the US in 1952.”
• “I think that one fundamental mistake that bleeding hearts make, whether they’re bleeding hearts in journalism or in the non-profit community or in advocacy, is that we focus so much on all that is going wrong that we leave people feeling numb and feeling that it’s hopeless, so there’s no point in engaging. And there’s pretty good evidence from social-psychology experiments that people don’t want to get engaged in things that are hopeless. They want to make a difference. And so I think that we need to both acknowledge all the challenges we face but also remind people that there can be a better outcome if they put their shoulder to the wheel.”
• Extraordinary changes for justice and what’s going right
• David Brooks: “A deeply flawed country that also managed to do good in the world.”
• ”It just breaks my heart that kids are dying unnecessarily.”
• On losing PEPFAR foreign aid: “I hope that this damage can be repaired and that bleeding hearts of the left and the right can work together to try to help restore some of these initiatives.”
• The tragedies that followed from dismantling USAID
• Kristof’s book Chasing Hope
• “The fact is that I've seen some terrible things, and I think I may have a mild case of PTSD from, you know, seeing too much.”
• Nicholas Kristof on Gaza: “I don’t see Israel and Hamas as morally equivalent, but I absolutely see an Israeli child, a Palestinian child, and an American child as moral equivalents.  And we don’t treat them that way.”
• “What human beings share is that when terrible things happen, some people turn into psychopaths and sociopaths, and other people turn into heroes.”
• Cowardice and malevolent tendencies
• Empathy can be nurtured
• Children dying without anti-retroviral drugs in South Sudan
• Empathy Project in Canada
• Mass literature to inspire perspective taking
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Black Beauty and animal rights/well-being
• Kristof’s run for Oregon governor
• Eastern Congo and UNICEF
• “A child is raped every thirty minutes in Eastern Congo.”
• Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize laureate treating women brutally injured by militia rape in Bukavu, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Small gestures of compassion as an empathy grower for local communities
• “One of the lessons I think of Congo is that violence can be and inhumanity can be terribly contagious.”
• Genocide in Rwanda in 1994
• The global sex-trafficking crisis
• “We don’t have the moral authority to tell other countries to do better unless we clean up our own act.”
• The American sex-trafficking crisis: systemic failures such as foster care pipelines into trafficking
• “There are no statistics, but I think it’s plausible that a girl in foster care is more likely to emerge to be trafficked than she is to graduate from a four-year college.”
• American sex-trafficking practices by PornHub and X-Videos: “Their business model is monetizing kids.”
• “You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency there, and I, I think we’ve just blurred that too often.”
• Christianity’s disappointing response to injustice
• Nicholas Kristof’s engagement with the activism and theology of the Christian church
• William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery movement in the 1780s
• President Bush’s establishment of PEPFAR in 2003: “This incredible program to reduce the burden of AIDS that has saved 26 million lives so far. It’s the most important program of any country in my adult lifetime in terms of saving lives.”
• “Evangelicals are very good in terms of tithing and donating money to good causes, but they’ve often opposed government programs  that would create opportunity and address these problems.”
• “Liberals are personally stingy, but much more supportive of government programs that that make a difference.”
• Criticizing the dismantling of global aid programs like USAID: “How can you read the Gospels and think this is good?”
• “I think being part of a religious community has led people to do good works together.”
• Christian advocacy for freedom of religion
• Kristof on scripture and belief: “We read the Bible and develop our religious views, and I think so often just reflects our priors rather than what the text says.”
• A closing example of hope: The Afghan war
• “We are an amazing species if we just get our act together.”

Production Credits

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

In this episode, Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, joins Mark Labberton to discuss the seismic political, moral, cultural, and spiritual crises facing American evangelicalism and how to respond.

Reflecting on his own journey from the Southern Baptist Convention to his current role, Moore offers a candid and theologically rich diagnosis of a movement he describes as simultaneously fragmented, bored, and longing for renewal.

Drawing parallels to historical awakenings and moments of global upheaval, Moore challenges listeners to consider what faithful Christian witness looks like in a time of digital saturation, political idolatry, and ecclesial disillusionment. Together, they wrestle with how evangelical institutions can resist becoming co-opted by market forces or ideologies, and instead return to the soul of the gospel—Jesus himself.

Episode Highlights

“We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.” (Russell Moore)

“The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.” (Mark Labberton)

“You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.” (Wendall Berry, cited by Russell Moore)

“Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.” (Nicholas Carr, cited by Russell Moore)

“Christian Nationalism is like ‘Bizarro Evangelicalism’ … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.” (Russell Moore)

Karl Barth on Christian disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.”

About Russell Moore

Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House).

The Wall Street Journal has called Moore “vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate.” He was named in 2017 to Politico Magazine’s list of top fifty influence-makers in Washington, and has been profiled by such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, **and the New Yorker.

An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics.

Moore was a Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and currently serves on the board of the Becket Law and as a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C.

He also hosts the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show and is co-host of Christianity Today’s weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin.

Russell was President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.

A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons. They live in Nashville, where he teaches the Bible regularly at their congregation, Immanuel Church.

Show Notes

• Comparing Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary
• Religious reconsiderations post-World War II
• “My grandfather was blown out of a tank by the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge and came back. He went an unbeliever, came back really feeling his mortality and, and searching for answers. And ended up at a revival meeting where he came to know Christ.”
• A false choice presented to Christians: “You had this false choice being presented to Christians … you either go with an ever narrowing, ever quarrelsome sort of group of fundamentalists or you liberalize.”
• Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The recent history of Evangelical Christianity
• A Movement in Crisis: What is the state of Evangelicalism in America?
• Revival preachers and entrepreneurialism: a religious, market-driven reality
• “Lifelessness and deadness”
• “ I can't think of a single church that has split over Christology. Most of the arguments have to do with politics and, and related sort of cultural issues because that's what people really care about and what they really think often is important.”
• Tumult of the digital economy
• Alienation, dehumanization: “We can simultaneously think of ourselves as gods and as sets of data and algorithms.”
• Speed of change and life
• Teaching ethics: a final exam question students have never thought about
• How to prepare people for ethical problems and real-life challenges
• Mental health crisis: “high rates of depression and anxiety driven by a piece of glass that everybody carries in his or her pocket that can connect that person with all of the information in the entire world.”
• 100 years since the invention and use of the microphone
• No microphones, but extraordinary voices
• “The dials are askew, because the sound that evangelicalism is evoking in so many quadrants is a sound that is hostile and grading and brash and arrogant.”
• “The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.”
• Secularization
• How Evangelicalism appeals to people: End Times Prophecy, Marriage and Family Values, and Shocking Attention-Grabbing
• “Real life takes on the characteristics of the internet.”
• Wendall Berry: “You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.”
• Can you give us some hope?
• “Hope that is seen is not hope. Instead, there's suffering that creates endurance. Endurance that creates character, character that creates hope, and hope does not put to shame.”
• Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones
• What is the work of Christianity Today right now?
• Redefining who is “us.” Who is the “we” of Evangelicalism?
• “We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.”
• 2 Corinthians 4: “The glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus Christ.”
• Karl Barth and disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.”
• How to cultivate freedom
• “One of the major challenges to a freedom is loss of attention.”
• “I have to be free from the constant whirl—and what he meant at the time was the radio, you know, which is nothing compared to what we have—because my attention is necessary for me to be able to serve and to give.”
• “Kingdom of God is like yeast.” Waiting, attention, and a longer view of time
• “How do you then hold onto this freedom that we're describing in a way of connected disconnectedness or disconnected connectedness or something?”
• Nicholas Carr: “Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.”
• Revelation and the Book of Daniel: “Seal all this up for now. … Don’t worry about it.”
• Nebuchadnezzar demanding  that. Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego bow down and worship the golden statue.
• Evangelical Pastors: Preaching the Bible versus advocating a political vision
• Galatians 1 and 2—Paul’s not yielding to false teachers in order to preserve the Gospel
• New Apostolic Reformation
• Christian Nationalism: “Bizarro Evangelicalism … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.”
• “Blood mysticism”
• Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes
• Keeping guard up in conversations with disagreement
• “Simply asking for Christians to be who we say we are.”

Production Credits

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

“If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR.”

PEPFAR is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. And as of March 25, 2025, its congressional reauthorization has expired.

For more than two decades, its website states, “the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history—saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.”

Now, some estimate that over 20 million people will lose access to antiretroviral drugs, which may result in up to 1,650,000 deaths over the coming year.

In this episode, Mark Labberton speaks with Mindy Belz, an award-winning journalist and longtime war correspondent, to explore the urgent moral and humanitarian implications of PEPFAR’s uncertain future. Drawing on Belz’s deep reporting experience in conflict zones and her time covering global health efforts, their conversation traces the remarkable legacy of the U.S. government’s investment in HIV/AIDS relief, the stakes of congressional inaction, and the broader questions this crisis raises about American moral leadership, Christian charity, and global responsibility.

Together they discuss:

Mindy Belz’s background as a journalist and war correspondent

The significance of PEPFAR in the global battle against HIV/AIDS

The pivotal leadership role the U.S. government has played in supporting AIDS relief efforts for the past two decades

The devastating impact that losing PEPFAR would have on human life around the world, particularly in Africa

And, perspectives on charity, moral conscience, and faith in American Christianity

Helpful Links

mindybelz.com

Mindy’s Article about PEPFAR: “1,650,000: How killing a global program to fight HIV/AIDS kills”: “PEPFAR contracts ended under Trump mean 20 million people on treatment now face HIV disease again. Without more reinstatements that could lead to a death toll of 1.6 million in a year's time.”

About PEPFAR, the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”: Through PEPFAR, the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history – saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.

From ThinkGlobalHealth: “PEPFAR Misses Reauthorization Deadline: What's Next for Global HIV Fight?”

Mindy’s book They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East

Follow Mindy on X @mindybelz

Follow Mindy on Substack: Globe Trot

About Mindy Belz

Mindy Belz is an award-winning American journalist. For over two decades, she has covered wars and victims of conflict in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Sudan and the Balkans. She recounts some of her experiences in a 2016 award-winning book, They Say We Are Infidels.

Her work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Plough Quarterly, and other publications. The New York Times calls her “one of the bravest and best foreign correspondents in the country.”

Mindy currently is editor of the 2024 Christianity Today Globe project. Her news roundup, Globe Trot, is read by thousands each week and available on Substack. She speaks internationally and has taught journalism courses in Uganda, India, Hungary, and the United States. She is the former senior editor at World Magazine.

A mother of four and grandmother of three, Mindy was married for 40 years to Nat Belz, who died in 2023. She lives in North Carolina.

Show Notes

Mindy Belz: A Journalist in the Trenches

• Mindy Belz and her career at World Magazine
• Mindy’s coverage of the AIDS pandemic in East Africa and the war in Sudan
• The rise of Islamic extremism, Al-Quaeda, and crossing the Tigris into Iraq
• Her early experiences in journalism and what drew her to war reporting
• How she came to report from the Middle East and other conflict zones
• The challenges Mindy faced as a woman journalist
• “We've all experienced some of the conflict in the world. We've all experienced some terrorism and violence … this is a part of life in a broken and fallen world, and so learning from women, from men, from children incredible resilience in the face of terrible breakdowns is that I just consider a real privilege of my work.”
• Working with a Sudanese NGO—finding starving people, barely surviving
• “For Americans, we always get to walk away. I'm really aware in whatever hard situation I'm in, there's little voice at the back of my brain that's saying, ‘Don't forget you get to go home.’”

What is PEPFAR?

• “ President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” developed by George W. Bush in 2003
• Trendsetting program to battle HIV/AIDS
• Anti-viral drug program to prevent the spread (but not cure) the disease
• “We still don’t have a real cure for HIV.”
• “You have 20 million people who are currently taking antiretroviral drugs that are funded under PEPFAR and most of those people just suddenly could not have access to their medicine and, and that means that we are watching even now the disease grow.”
• “The Trump administration has basically shuttered the program and they have done so without the oversight of Congress.”
• Nicholas Kristof’s NYT March 15 article estimates that 1.6 million people could die over the next year. Link: “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.”
• “The scale of the devastation is mind-bending.”
• What can we do?
• “Congress is not exercising its oversight responsibilities right now.”
• “If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR.”
• What is the role of our government?
• “I've also seen PEPFAR working and working incredibly. I routinely and in lifesaving ways.”
• Understanding moral conscience
• “We are needing to call our nation not to a Christian identity, which I think is the, the false attempt of Christian nationalism, but to a moral identity. That people of faith, little faith, no faith, other faiths, can enter into and share. And I think some element of that has been operational in the United States for a very long time. And now all of that is being dismantled and being labeled, as you say, by a really cheap word like charity, as though there's no wider frame than simply compassionate sentimentality, as opposed to something that's really taking the moral realities of the world and all of their urgency seriously. And not pretending that we need to be (as we've sometimes tried to be as a nation) the healer of the nations, but to say that we should actually be a force for taking these issues with great national seriousness, and not just repudiating it because it's not inside the boundaries of our own country.”
• “Use the influence and the economic force of the United States to fund local programs.”
• “ We have the resources to go and make a difference in this situation. And by doing that we set an example for others to do it.”
• “We  have adopted an attitude of scarcity.”
• The impact and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs to improve the lives of people with HIV/AIDS—”To suddenly cut them off is an act of cruelty.”
• “This is a system, not just medication.”
• “If we’re suddenly saving $5 billion a year, what is that going to be used for?”
• ”If these things are all happening by executive decision, and Congress does not have a meaningful role, then essentially the people are cut out of the conversation.”
• “People who become sicker with HIV will become more likely to have tuberculosis, more likely to be suffering from other diseases than side effects of the virus itself.”

Where Is God in All of This?

• “It's a dangerous world. Go anyway.”
• “We have to trust that the hand of God is there and that it will meet us in the midst of those hard situations.”

Production Credits

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

"Listening is everything. Without listening, there’s no music, no art, no understanding—just noise.” (Charlie Peacock, from the episode)

Acclaimed musician, producer, podcaster, and author Charlie Peacock joins Mark Labberton to reflect on music, art, attention, listening, faith, and spirituality. From his groundbreaking work in pop music production (e.g., Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars), to his deep engagement with faith and mentorship, Charlie explores how attention shapes creativity, why making space for beauty is a spiritual discipline, and how a life of music can be an act of service. Through stories of artistic risk, collaboration, and calling, this conversation explores the rhythms of a flourishing life.

In this episode, they discuss:

Charlie’s new memoir, Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music

The communal nature of making and producing music

The unsung music heroes from Charlie’s life

Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things

Hearing and visualizing music

The intersection of creativity, spirituality, and paying attention,

How listening transforms both art and relationships,

Life lessons from jazz, pop, and worship music production,

And the role of both sound and silence in artistic and spiritual life.

About Charlie Peacock

Charlie Peacock is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician and producer, having produced Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars, and many more artists. A three-time recipient of the Gospel Music Association’s Producer of the Year Award, he’s named by Billboard’s Encyclopedia of Record Producers as one of the five hundred most important producers in popular music history. His latest book is Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music, and you can listen to his podcast, Music & Meaning. For more information visit charliepeacock.com.

Episode Highlights

"If you’re not paying attention, you’re missing the song that’s already being sung around you."

"A mentor doesn’t hand you a map; they help you learn how to navigate."

"Faith and art are both about trust—trusting the unseen, the unfinished, and the uncertain."

"The hardest and best lesson for any artist: keep showing up and doing the work."

"Music isn’t just a product—it’s a means of connection, healing, and worship."

Show Notes

• Charlie Peacock, Roots & Rhythm
• Music and community
• The unsung music heroes from Charlie’s life
• Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things
• Hearing and visualizing music
• Michael Polanyi tacit understandings
• Re-creation of the old into the dramatically new—e.g., Notre Dame Cathedral
• The joy of generational community
• Jazz: spirit, skill, and ability
• “That’s what I love about jazz improvisation. There was nothing and then there was something. Over and over again. … When you have those people in a room making music … it’s hard to go to sleep at night.”
• “I have been pursued by a loving Creator … God-haunted since I was a little boy.”
• “I wanted to know everything. … how, why, what, when … everything.”
• “Never once was there a moment when I was out of God’s grip.”
• Charlie Peacock’s Secret of Time: “God gives you time to be saved.”
• John Coltrane’s spiritual journey
• “250 people a night…”
• “I took the F-word out of two songs, and stopped taking 10% from the bar tab.”
• Hans Rookmaaker
• Inklings
• Time in England and the Netherlands, including time at L’Abri (run by Francis and Edith Schaeffer)
• “An artist and a follower of Jesus, and how those two could be congruent …”
• “Our death is life to life. The kingdom has already begun. We have been living it. And we will continue to live it.”
• “Playing with the entire history of music in your brain.”
• The Civil Wars: “We re-presented hyper-dynamics. … A lot of people have never heard that before. … It invites you in and lets you sit back.” (e.g., pianissimo to forte)
• Over-compressed music.
• “That lean in to the music is a part of your participation. … I’m committed to this music.”
• “I produced music in the ‘80s. I know how to ruin a record. … Big hair and big snare. … But really it had to do with technology.”
• Music in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s
• Neil Postman: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
• “When I use this tool I have to make sure it doesn’t use me.”
• “My subtext is that this is a book about epistemology. … To say, ‘This is how I know what I know.’ It came through God, people, and place.”
• A worker-bee in the music business
• “Like a house with a party going on”
• Vocation, epistemology, and how an artists become who they are

Production Credits

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

“They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane. … There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. Since when has anybody said mercy for some and not for all? … Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up.  … This is not an impossible crisis to solve. … We need to not be divided by our political affiliations. As Christians, we stand with Christ, who critiques all human institutions.” (Alexia Salvatierra, from the episode)

The immigration crisis on US borders reveals a deeper crisis of humanity—another example of democracy at a turning point. What should be the Christian response to the current immigration crisis? How can the individuals and small communities take effective action? And who are the real people most affected by immigration policy in the United States?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes theologian, pastor, and activist Alexia Salvatierra. She shares stories from the front lines of immigration justice.

Alexia Salvatierra is an ordained Lutheran pastor and a leading voice in faith-based social justice movements. She serves as assistant professor of integral mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a key organizer in immigrant advocacy for over four decades. She co-authored Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and works extensively with grassroots organizations to address the intersection of faith, justice, and policy.

Together they discuss:

• Personal testimonies and policy insights based on stories of real people facing the immigration system in the United States
• The challenges immigrants face under an increasingly unforgiving system
• How faith communities can respond with faithful courage and productive grief, instead of outrage
• The global nature of the immigration, refugee, and foreign-aid crisis
• The width of God’s mercy and the effectiveness of immigration and refugee public policy
• A call to action for Christians to become “gracious disrupters” and stand with the vulnerable

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief – Christian organization supporting refugees
• Lutheran Social Services – Organization falsely accused of money laundering

Show Notes

• Immigration policy and the church’s response
• The impact of executive orders on deportation and asylum seekers
• Faith-based advocacy for immigrants
• The role of Latino churches in immigrant support
• How Christians can move from outrage to courageous action
• Immigration reform
• Faith-based activism
• ICE raids on churches
• Asylum seekers and deportation
• Christian response to immigration crisis
• Latino churches and advocacy
• Political fear versus Christian courage
• The role of the church in justice
• Broken immigration system
• Policy changes under different administrations

Immigration Today: Stories and Case Studies

• An Assemblies of God pastor from Guatemala, facing deportation despite three qualifying cases for legal residency—South Los Angeles
• “ That’s what we mean by a broken system, is there’s all these little wrinkles in the system that don’t work.”
• Detention at a deportation facility called Adelanto
• ”They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane.”
• Asylum, ankle bracelets, and “legitimate fear”
• “ They said he was a criminal because he had entered without authorization twenty years before when he was a teenager.”
• ICE agents attempting to detain a man during a worship service
• ICE and “sensitive locations”—Is a church an ICE “sensitive location”?
• Hispanic Theological Education Association
• Latino Christian National Network
• “That arrest has  provoked intense fear. …  they’re terrified to go to church.”
• The impact of anti-immigration policies on church attendance and spiritual care
• A desperate mother of a special-needs child preparing legal custody papers in case of deportation
• The economic and moral contradictions in mass deportation efforts
• “Cities that have municipal sanctuary laws are threatened with suit by the new administration.”

The Global Immigration and Refugee Crisis

• “All around the world immigration is in crisis.”
• 1980 Refugee Act
• “All the countries who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have to take refugees.”
• The concept of “Refoulment”—”which means that you’re sending someone back to die.”
• “Not only are all refugee programs stopped, but current refugees are not getting the support that they need.”
• “ Costa Rica is a five-million-person  country and they’ve taken two million refugees.”

American Immigration During the Trump Administration

• Elon Musk saying “ that Lutheran Social Services was a money-laundering machine.”
• Current administration’s policies as “ bold, unilateral, and so comprehensive and unnuanced”
• “If the Trump administration is successful at deporting ten million people, many of whom have been here over twenty years, thirty years, um, where will we find the labor that we need?”

Policy and Legal Discussion

• The end of Deferred Deportation under the Trump and Biden administrations
• Executive orders eliminating prioritization of deportation
• The freezing of USAID and refugee support programs
• “All foreign aid has always been strategic. It’s never not.”
• “Global warming refugees”
• “The current president of Venezuela loves gangs.”
• “Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. …  this is not an impossible crisis to solve.”
• The bipartisan immigration bill that Trump advised Republicans to block
• Historical immigration policies and their effectiveness
• “Policy does make a difference.”
• Objection to open borders: What about mercy for Americans? A false dichotomy. God’s mercy is wide.
• “We have a number of believers in Congress who are acting out of fear right now and not out of faith.”

Call to Action

• How faith communities can support immigrants
• “Immigrant churches are taking the brunt of this.”
• Why outrage doesn’t help the process
• Ways to engage with legislators and advocate for reform
• The importance of standing with immigrant churches in this moment
• Supporting organizations like World Relief and Lutheran Social Services
• “The bulk of the people in the United States, the majority, have not had to grieve on this level. Not had to grieve with this intensity, with this constancy. Our spiritual muscles are weak—in terms of knowing how to grieve and keep going and trust God. ‘Though he slay me, I will worship him.’”
• “Encourage literally means ‘to get more courage.’ You know, to give courage, to get courage. And so I just would want everybody to stop being outraged and start being courageous.”

Production Credits

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

“If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the full-bodied, empathetic nature of listening and the communication process. He reflects on good listening, the empathy it requires, and what it means to truly recognize and successfully understand each other.

Listening and perceiving are bound up together in a fundamental way, offering us an opportunity to enter into another’s experience, truly seeing and recognizing them and receiving who they are.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

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

• “Listening is almost always seeing.”
• Full-bodied listening and how perception adds to our understanding of each other
• “If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”
• Examples of bad listening: “pinning words on the speaker.”
• Recognition for the speaker: “My listening reflects that I'm actually perceiving them.”
• The fun and joyful work of communication
• Total body experience of listening and perceiving is about empathy.
• Empathy and entering the speaker’s world and experience
• The difference empathy makes
• “Empathy, even when you're wanting to give it doesn't make it automatic.  It often has to be something that emerges out of the communication experience itself.”
• Hearing, perception, and full-bodied communication
• “How we see and receive another person’s being…”
• Achieving a communication breakthrough: “Oh, I see!”
• ”It is like amazing grace is playing in the background. And I want to say ‘I once was blind, but now I see’ that's what it feels like a real revelatory discovery.”

Production Credits

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

“‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ …  That is the core of our Christian belief.”

“I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad brush.”

(Condoleezza Rice, from this episode)

In this episode, Condoleezza Rice joins Mark Labberton to discuss the state of US foreign and domestic policy in light of Christian moral convictions. Secretary Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 1981, and is currently the director of the Hoover Institution.

Together they discuss:

The state of US foreign policy and international relations

How to think about American involvement in global politics

The importance of US foreign assistance

American patriotism and Christian devotion

And Condoleezza Rice’s prayers for American leaders right now: discernment, judgment, compassion, and policy that reflects the dignity of all human beings.

About Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For more information, visit her profile at the Hoover Institution.

Show Notes

• The state of US international relations
• “ The beginning of any administration is a bit chaotic”
• “I continue to hope that we will find a way to help Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin doesn't benefit from the aggression that he committed.”
• “The United States will undoubtedly play a different role. … That is the outcome of what's been eighty years of post World War II American engagement. … And so we need to ask, what are our values? What are our interests? And I think we're going to, we're going to see a good, solid American role in foreign policy.”
• Is the world order in the process of receiving a shock treatment?
• “ We really do need to rebuild our defense industrial base.”
• USAID: “ I'm a great believer that foreign assistance is one of the important tools in our toolkit of foreign policy.”
• “ I actually am one who believes that the absorption of USAID into the State Department is the right answer.”
• On US foreign assistance
• “A lot of what we do is purely humanitarian, purely life saving. We should. Just do that. Some of what we do is also strategic. What countries do we help to develop to be less fragile so that they don't become hubs for terrorism? …  And sometimes our assistance is to stabilize places in the world so that we don't face a security problem down the road.”
• Developing infrastructure
• “Am I patriotic? Do I love my country? Am I a nationalist? Absolutely. Am I Christian? Yes. And so I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad crust.”
• “But if we think about what it means to be Christian, it means to care about every human being, because every human being is created in the image of the Lord, and therefore every human being has worth.”
• “One of the closing comments from President Bush was, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected. …  that is the core of our Christian belief.”
• What is  the state of the Christian influence in American politics and life?
• Emulating the early church in establishing orphanages and hospitals, “and  to be a voice on behalf of those who are dispossessed.”
• Religious Freedom
• “When I was secretary of state, not because I was Christian, but because I was secretary of state, I would take a list of religious objectors with me to countries like China.”
• “The evangelical church has been very involved in human trafficking issues. We actually do have a problem of modern slavery.”
• “The church has a lot of potential to be a really good force in the world.”
• Condoleeza Rice’s most passionate prayers for the nation and the world right now
• “My most passionate prayer is that our leaders would have—and I actually pray this prayer— that they would have judgment and discernment, that they would have compassion, that they would lead from a position of knowing how much America has, and that they would understand that our role in the world derives from our universal belief in human freedom and that it is the only way that human beings have the dignity that they should have as having been created by God.”
• “I think one of the reasons we've had a bit of a backlash against some foreign assistance is that people wonder, ‘Well, are you thinking about Americans in the same way?’”

Production Credits

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

“ When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

Why is it so hard to communicate? To accomplish the simple task of delivering and receiving information?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton suggests that real and successful communication is a miracle, and an infrequent one at that. Our failure to communicate regularly demonstrates just how far we are from adequately listening to one another. Ultimately, if we want to seek the miracle of communication, we need to take the responsibility to “close the loop” and do the work of hearing, listening, and acknowledging receipt.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

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

• Endless communication meetings talking about the failure of our communication
• News media’s failure to communicate
• Marital failures to communicate
• Parent-child failures to communicate
• Overcommunicating with too much information
• Undoing miscommunication
• “Communication is a miracle and not a frequent one.”
• Why is it so hard to communicate?
• “ In many ways, the stakes are against us when we’re really trying to communicate.”
• Ears, eyes, space, time, sounds, lighting
• How far we are from adequately listening to one another
• Acknowledging receipt of a message
• “The world is pushy. Culture is pushy.”
• Clarity of mind and heart
• ”When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.”
• The importance of closing the communication loop
• “If I’m seeking the miracle of communication, then I have to live into the responsibility of closing the loop of communication and not just being a passive recipient of what it is that’s been said.”
• Failure to close the loop is what allows us to measuring the infrequency of true, successful communication.

Production Credits

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