Sandra Glahn is professor of media arts and worship at Dallas Theological Seminary and author of A Woman's Place Is in the Story: Seeing Women in the Biblical Narrative. Sandra and Markus talk about the ways we skip, vilify, cameo, and domesticate the women of Scripture, and how reading them in the context of the larger story changes what we see.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Four ways we tend to get women in the Bible wrong.
• Why the women in Matthew's genealogy are not there for immorality, and what Matthew is doing with them instead.
• What the woman at the well looks like when John 3 and 4 are read together and our assumptions about her past are set aside.
• What levirate marriage was and why it matters for Tamar, Ruth, and the woman at the well.
• Why Jezebel's real sin was idolatry, and how the setting of Jezreel shows God keeping a promise.
• What it means when women are unnamed or silent in a story, from the midwives in Exodus to the woman at the end of Judges.
• Why reading bigger sections of Scripture, even on audio in the car, helps us see the story.
• Why pastors should learn from women who have studied these texts and stop segregating Scripture.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Sandra Glahn:
  • Website
  • Substack
  • Instagram
• Books mentioned:
  • A Woman's Place Is in the Story: Seeing Women in the Biblical Narrative, by Sandra Glahn

RELATED EPISODES:

• Empowering Women in Ministry, with Tara Beth Leach, author of Emboldened
• Against a Culture of Abuse, with Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, authors of A Church Called Tov
• Leadership Through the Lens of Hebrews, with Amy Peeler, author of Hebrews: Commentaries for Christian Formation

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Marcos Canales is the pastor of La Fuente Ministries, a bilingual, intercultural congregation in Pasadena, California, and a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary. In this conversation, Markus Watson and Marcos talk about ministry in a community reeling from both the Eaton fire and ongoing ICE enforcement, why Marcos describes it as an enforcement of terror, what a robust theology of suffering looks like, and how churches removed from the front lines can stand in solidarity without centering themselves.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Why Marcos describes current immigration enforcement as an enforcement of terror, and how it echoes the violence many Latin American families fled.
• How the Eaton fire and ICE operations compounded trauma in Pasadena and Altadena within a single month.
• Bilingual ministry as a daily practice of rehumanization.
• Why theologies that rush people toward superficial hope end up wounding them more.
• Gustavo Gutiérrez's reading of Job and the call to keep talking to God in the midst of suffering.
• The risen Jesus who never hides his wounds, and what that means for wounded leaders.
• Grief stations, gratitude, and building a congregational culture where lament is a spiritual practice.
• Resistance and re-existence, from prayer vigils to letters for people detained at Adelanto.
• Four concrete steps for majority-white churches that want to stand with immigrant neighbors.
• Marcos closes the conversation by praying the Immigrant's Creed.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Marcos Canales:
  • La Fuente Ministries
  • More about La Fuente Ministries
• Giving opportunities for migrant solidarity:
  • Clergy Community Coalition
  • La Fuente Ministries Compassion Fund (choose "LFM Compasión-Compassion Fund")
• Books mentioned:
  • On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, by Gustavo Gutiérrez
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
• Other resources:
  • The Immigrant's Creed / El Credo del Inmigrante, by Rev. José Luis Casal, director of Presbyterian World Mission

RELATED EPISODES:

• Episode 143: How the Church Can Respond to Immigration, with Karen Gonzalez, author of Beyond Welcome
• Episode 268: Borderless Faith, with Seth Clark, lead pastor of The Border Church
• Episode 287: Leadership and Lament, a Quick Conversation with Tod Bolsinger and Markus Watson

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Ben Daniel is the Senior Pastor of Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, California, and the author of Grace Over Guns: Pursuing Peace in a Militarized World. In this conversation, Markus Watson and Ben talk about the quiet reverence for military power that has crept into American Christianity, what it cost Ben personally to stop standing for the national anthem, and why he believes the church's silence on militarism is a form of complicity.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Ben Daniel argues that American Christianity has developed an unspoken reverence for military power that borders on idolatry.
• The conversation traces how flags, uniforms, and anthems entered church sanctuaries and became fused with Christian identity.
• Ben shares the moment that led him to stop standing for the national anthem, and the backlash it brought from his own congregation.
• Markus and Ben discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer's witness during the firebombing of Dresden as a model for costly, embodied pacifism.
• Ben makes the case that silence from the pulpit on militarism is itself a form of complicity.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Ben Daniel:
  • Montclair Presbyterian Church
• Books mentioned:
  • Grace Over Guns: Pursuing Peace in a Militarized World, by Ben Daniel
  • Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War, by Glen Stassen
  • The Log from the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck

RELATED EPISODES:

• Episode 234: Political Power and American Evangelicalism, with Tim Alberta, author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
• Episode 143: How the Church Can Respond to Immigration, with Karen Gonzalez, author of Beyond Welcome
• Episode 228: Dismantling the Myth of the White God, with Grace Ji-Sun Kim, author of When God Became White

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Is the church still relevant in a post-Christendom world? Kurt Fredrickson returns to Spiritual Life and Leadership to talk about his new book, Compelled, and to make the case that the local church, done right, is still "a small working model of the kingdom of God." Markus Watson and Fredrickson talk about why so many congregations operate like machines built to produce bigger Sundays, and what it would take to tend them like gardens instead.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• The church is still relevant because it functions as a small working model of the kingdom of God.
• Eugene Peterson's definition: the church is "named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection."
• Why the church of the 1950s can't simply be repeated in a post-Christendom, polarized culture.
• The garden-versus-machine metaphor on the cover of Compelled, and what it means to disrupt a congregation's system instead of engineering it.
• Deprofessionalizing the clergy: the provocative claim that professional clergy can become "the greatest impediment to the work of the church."
• Releasing the five-fold gifts of Ephesians so ministry isn't bottlenecked in the pastor's office.
• The isolation-plus-depletion-plus-conflict formula for how pastors get in trouble, and the ABCs (Abide, Breathe, Connect) for staying healthy.
• Kurt Fredrickson's own journey from twenty-four years pastoring a booming, machine-like congregation to asking, "would our community even miss us?"
• A story about a congregation that moved communion to the center of the room during a season of painful conflict.
• Why hospitality and the Lord's Table are the two disciplines Fredrickson considers essential for a missional community.

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• Kurt Fredrickson:
  • Faculty bio
• Books mentioned:
  • Compelled: Nurturing Local Missional Communities, by Kurt Fredrickson
  • The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry, by Matthew Erickson and Winn Collier
  • The Pastor as Midwife: Life-Giving Leadership for the Healing of the Church, by Shawna Songer Gaines
  • The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, by Alan Kreider
• Related episodes:
  • 103. Willingness to Adapt: The Church After Covid, with Kurt Fredrickson and Cameron Lee
  • 313. Embodied Spirituality for Pastors and Leaders, with Mark Scandrette and Dave Kludt
  • 314. Why Good Leaders Sometimes Make Their Churches Worse, with JR Woodward

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Are your congregants' jobs a distraction from their discipleship, or one of the main places it actually happens? Matt Rusten, president of Made to Flourish and editor-in-chief of Common Good Magazine, joins Markus to explore the theology of work and what it looks like for pastors and churches to help their people see their everyday jobs as spiritually significant.

This Episode's Highlights Include:

• Why the Bible introduces God as a maker before it describes him as holy or merciful
• What it means that every person in your pews has a "sphere of dominion" in their work
• How work forms your congregation over time, and how it can quietly deform them
• Why Jesus used work as the backdrop for most of his parables
• Why John the Baptist sent tax collectors and soldiers back into their same jobs
• Practical ways your church can help people connect faith and work: small groups, "This Time Tomorrow" interviews, and pastoral workplace visits

Relevant Resources and Links:

• Pastoring for Monday by Matt Rusten
• Made to Flourish

RELATED EPISODES:

• 288. Leadership That Smells Like the Gospel, with Jason Jensen
• 272. Beyond Church Revitalization, with Josh Hayden
• 247. The Kingdom of God as Present Reality

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Angela Weszely is the founder and CEO of ProGrace and the author of Becoming ProGrace: Expanding the Abortion Conversation Beyond Life Versus Choice. Twenty-one years ago she took a job at a Christian pregnancy center in Chicago and immediately felt the tension between what the organization said it believed and how it actually treated women. That tension became a decade-long journey that led her to found ProGrace. In this conversation, Angela and Markus explore what it looks like for the church to actually resemble Jesus in how it responds to abortion and unintended pregnancy.

This Episode's Highlights Include:

• Angela's journey from a legalistic upbringing into leading a Christian pregnancy organization
• The four theological frameworks Christians get wrong about abortion: equal value and dignity, political identity over Christian identity, grace, and shared responsibility
• Why only 7% of women, and 16% of church-going women, ever approach a church before an abortion decision
• The narrative that shames women and lets partners off the hook
• What the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 actually reveals about grace and systemic injustice
• What it means to be the beloved, and why that identity changes how we respond to people in crisis
• The objectification hiding inside the abortion debate

Relevant Resources and Links:

• Becoming ProGrace: Expanding the Abortion Conversation Beyond Life Versus Choice, by Angela Weszely
• ProGrace

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JR Woodward is the National Director of the V3 Movement, a faculty member in the Doctor of Global Leadership cohort at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the author of The Scandal of Leadership: Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church. In this conversation, JR and Markus explore what it looks like to lead communities that bring the Kingdom of God to life in the places where we live.

THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• What it means that Jesus's primary message was the kingdom of God, and how that shapes everything a church does
• Shalom as a holistic picture of human flourishing: restored relationships with God, others, creation, and ourselves
• The NEAR framework for understanding a neighborhood: Narrative, Ethics, Associations, Rituals
• The four spaces of belonging and how Jesus inhabited all four: intimate (3–4), personal (5–12), social (20–50), public (70+)
• Why closed discipleship groups differ from open missional spaces, and why you can't build depth if the door is always open
• How people often belong before they believe, and how behavior changes before beliefs do
• How our desires are shaped by whoever we look up to, and how this creates rivalry and division in churches
• How conflict in a congregation can escalate until one person becomes the target
• What Philippians 2 teaches about giving up honor and titles as a path to healthier leadership
• How love of image, institutional self-preservation, and ideology become corrupting forces in church life
• Oscar Romero as a real-world example of the downward path of leadership
• V3 Movement's interdenominational church planting training
• The Doctor of Global Leadership cohort at Fuller Seminary

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• The Scandal of Leadership, by JR Woodward
• V3 Movement
• Fuller Doctor of Global Leadership Program

RELATED EPISODES:

• 288. Leadership That Smells Like the Gospel, with Jason Jensen
• 272. Beyond Church Revitalization, with Josh Hayden
• 247. The Kingdom of God as Present Reality

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Mark Scandrette has spent over twenty years wrestling with a hard realization: knowing a lot about God doesn't mean you're good at following Jesus. Dave Kludt spent fifteen years in pastoral ministry learning that everything, down to how you arrange the chairs in a room, forms people. Together they co-teach a Doctor of Ministry cohort at Fuller Seminary built around two words: integral and embodied. Mark is the founder of Reimagine and author of Practicing the Way of Jesus and The Ninefold Path of Jesus, and a longtime friend of the podcast (he first joined us back on episode 112). Dave is the president of Reimagine's board, a former pastor of 15 years, and Mark's partner in this new cohort, a Substack, and an upcoming podcast.

IN THIS CONVERSATION:

• Why "getting more information" doesn't lead to transformation, and what does
• What Dave means by an "integral" approach to formation, and why it starts with facing the world's fractures honestly
• What Mark means by "embodied" formation, and the Learning Lab model Reimagine uses to teach by doing
• Why the leader of a Learning Lab has to be a participant, not just an expert
• Moving from a "closed fist" to an "open hand" posture toward your next step
• Why discomfort with failure gets in the way of formation in many churches
• How Mark and Dave use the Enneagram as a formation tool, not a personality quiz
• The "formation edges" Mark and Dave are each working on right now
• Mark and Dave's hopes for the Fuller Doctor of Ministry cohort on integral and embodied formation

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• markscandrette.com — Mark's website
• reimagine.org — Mark and Dave's organization
• Fuller Seminary's Doctor of Ministry program
• Books mentioned:
  • Practicing the Way of Jesus, by Mark Scandrette
  • The Ninefold Path of Jesus, by Mark Scandrette

RELATED EPISODES:

• The Beatitudes and Spiritual Leadership, with Mark Scandrette
• The Spiritual Life of a Leader, with Tod Bolsinger
• The Neuroscience of Spiritual Formation, with Jim Wilder

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Click HERE to get my FREE online course, BECOMING LEADERS OF SHALOM.