"What happens when life stops working?" Musician / Author Andrew Osenga talks with thinkers, artists, scientists and theologians about dealing with change, failure, and starting over again. Faith, health, career, family... No subject is off limits in this engaging and intimate series.
Site
RSS
Apple
Données mises à jour le 05/08/2026
Classements récents
Dernières positions dans les classements Apple Podcasts et Spotify.
Liens partagés entre épisodes et podcasts
Liens présents dans les descriptions d'épisodes et autres podcasts les utilisant également.
[ENCORE EPISODE] Allen Levi: Can You Trade the Spotlight for a Front Porch?
Épisode 132
mardi 4 août 2026 • Durée 01:00:36
What does a life spent practicing law have to do with crafting a blockbuster novel? For Allen Levi, the answer lies in the power of storytelling. Before the acclaim of his novel, Theo of Golden, Allen spent 13 years honing his skills as a lawyer—a profession where words were his primary tool for persuasion. In this encore episode, we explore how those years of legal practice—combined with his pivot into music and his dedication to observing the beauty in small, everyday things—laid the foundation for the deep, resonant narrative of Theo of Golden. Join us as we look back at the journey that brought this powerful book to life, proving that the stories we tell are defined by the experiences that shape us.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
“As a lawyer, my tool was words. My goal was to persuade. And so after 13 years of law practice, when I ventured into music, it just dawned on me—my tool is words with melody or music and rhythm. My job is to tell stories.” - Allen Levi
“To do small things well over a long period of time in the same place is how the kingdom seems to move forward.” - Allen Levi
“I see the crop that I’m responsible for as beauty. That’s what I farm.” - Allen Levi
David French: Can We Handle Criticism Without Breaking?
Épisode 131
mardi 21 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:06:03
It started with a dare. David French had his whole life planned out as a teenager — Air Force, fighter jets, the whole thing — until eyesight issues and a friend's bet rerouted him toward the LSAT, and somehow, Harvard Law School. From there, nothing about his career went the way he expected: over a decade defending free speech cases for people on the right and the left, then a writing habit that started as a hobby and eventually carried him to the National Review, the founding of The Dispatch, and a column at the New York Times. David talks with Andrew about what it means to “write with regret instead of outrage” — and what it actually looks like to let real criticism in without letting the bad-faith kind wreck you.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
“I would just summarize my life or my professional life as I'll just call it the accidental career. Like all the way through.” - David French
"It was literally my experience with people trying to censor me that got me interested in free speech and the First Amendment.” - David French
"My goal is to be a person with thick skin and a soft heart." - David French
"We're not God. We're wrong about a bunch of stuff. And we don't know what we're wrong about, obviously, because if we knew we were wrong, we'd change. So to learn that we're wrong, somebody has to show us." - David French
"A revival usually begins with, 'I have sinned.' A revolution begins with, 'you have sinned.'" - David French
The Dispatch — outlet David helped launch in 2019, home of his newsletter
— where David wrote from 2015–2019
Jason Gray: Do You Need All the Answers?
Épisode 130
mardi 7 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:31:02
Jason Gray has spent decades writing the songs that shaped Christian radio, but don't expect this conversation with Andrew Osenga to stay on the hits for long. It winds through Jason's theory of what actually makes a song great versus just successful, and into heavier territory: the childhood speech impediment he once believed God would heal as proof of faith, and what he learned instead when the healing never came. He talks candidly about his divorce, and how years of praying harder than he'd ever prayed for anything didn't save his marriage — and how that experience quietly took apart everything he used to believe about how God shows up for people. What's left, he says, is a faith that's less certain but somehow requires more trust. Along the way, Jason opens up about a stretch of years, brought on by the stress of the divorce, when he lost the ability to concentrate enough to read — and how getting a record player recently brought his love of music and reading back to life. It's an honest, unhurried conversation about growing up, letting go of certainty, and learning to be more suspicious of your own self-righteousness than anyone else's.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"It wasn't the things I said, it wasn't the songs I sang that spoke the loudest to people. It was the fact that I was broken and I got up and I did it anyway." - Jason Gray
"Maybe God doesn't want to heal me of my speech impediment, maybe he wants to bring healing to others through it. And maybe it's an example of God's spendthrift economy, where nothing is wasted and everything gets used." - Jason Gray
"The most radically transformational thing that I could do is just allow myself to be loved by God and to allow that to become the fundamental piece of my identity — that I'm God's beloved." - Jason Gray
"I'm interested in not being self-righteous, you know. And so much of the religious conversation is about being right, and I have the truth and I stand on the word of truth." - Jason Gray
"When my life broke in the middle, all of my answers turned into riddles." - Jason Gray
"How do I pursue truth but resist my need to be right?" - Jason Gray
Joey Lankford: Can Digging in the Dirt Change Your Life?
Épisode 129
mardi 23 juin 2026 • Durée 59:19
Joey Lankford’s journey is anything but predictable. He went from running a 10-location healthcare company in his early 30s to selling everything he owned and moving his family to the tip of South Africa. When he eventually returned home to Tennessee, he started something totally different: a workforce development farm on state land. In this episode, Joey traces the thread connecting those wild shifts. It all started with adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia, which completely changed how his family viewed their purpose in life. He shares what he found living in the townships outside Cape Town—the unexpected joy, the friendships that reshaped him, and a simple greenhouse of tomatoes that eventually inspired his farm, Cul2vate. Now, that same vision is helping previously incarcerated men and women across Middle Tennessee build new careers.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"What we thought was the adoption of a baby girl to save her from the plights of Africa actually ended up being God's upside-down story of her redeeming our lives and giving us purpose and mission." - Joey Lankford
"It was harder to move back from Africa than it was to move to Africa — because I knew what I was coming back to." - Joey Lankford
"There's something about putting your hands in the dirt with somebody that makes it not matter if you just got out of jail or if you drove a Bentley up to the barn. The dirt just sort of equalizes it." - Joey Lankford
"We all have addictions — yours are just socially disapproved of. Mine just don't create the need for anyone to put me in a cage. But they take me to the same end: separation from the Lord." - Joey Lankford
"When people talk about doom and gloom, I'm like — no. The kingdom is moving at warp speed. There are people doing some really cool stuff, using their resources to redeem a lot of broken things." - Joey Lankford
Links, Products, and Resources Mentioned:
Cultivate — Joey's workforce development farm ministry; farms behind churches across Tennessee employing previously incarcerated individuals.
Sara Groves: Are You a 'Mom and Pop' or a Walmart?
Épisode 128
mardi 9 juin 2026 • Durée 01:03:16
Sara Groves is on the Mount Rushmore of Christian singer-songwriters, but this conversation is less about the catalog and more about the life she's been quietly building offstage. Sara joins Andrew to talk about trading a 4,000-square-foot suburban house for a 700-square-foot home down the street from an old church, and what it's taken to keep Art House North — a community arts space in Minnesota — running for fifteen years. Sara also reflects on creativity as a practice for everyone, not just artists, stating her belief that "Beauty will save us," — and why the second half of life might be when you finally start making your most honest work.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"When you're young, you look ahead and think 'if I want to head there, I probably should turn in that direction.’ And then so much happens that you're like — ‘some of it happened because you turned that way, but a lot of it happened because of just, yeah, this isn't doing it anymore.’" - Sara Groves
"If you make community the point, you'll kill it. You have to be in mission together to some end." - Sara Groves
"The people who already had a thing going are not coming to your thing because they're already tending a fire. So you're gathering people who were looking for a fire." - Sara Groves
"God is the ocean and we keep writing about a cup of water. I started writing about the ocean with ‘Add to the Beauty.’" - Sara Groves
"My songs used to be weaponized belief system songs. And now they're not. They're just bearing witness songs. I'm just bearing witness to what it means to be human." - Sara Groves
"You're always invited to the party that you throw. So throw a party. Play to the room you can fill. If you have 50 friends, play in a room for 45 and have five standing at the back. That's gonna be a really fun night." - Sara Groves
"I think everyone should have a creative habit in the same way they have a fitness habit — whether they're a doctor or whoever they are. Beauty will save us." - Sara Groves
Who Is Amy Grant Now?
Épisode 127
mardi 26 mai 2026 • Durée 53:06
Thirteen years is a long time to be quiet, especially when music has been your whole life. Amy Grant joins Andrew Osenga on The Pivot to talk about what it took to come back: a bike wreck in the summer of 2022, hours of neurological testing at Vanderbilt, and a doctor who gave her two words of advice — lean in. What followed was a new album, The Me That Remains, built not from a record deal or a producer contract, but from a poem Amy wrote to herself about who she was now, on the other side of everything. They talk about the song she wrote with Tom Douglas the morning after her mother passed, why she calls her daily movement routine "child's play," and what it actually feels like to make music in your sixties — without pressure, without pretending, and with something that sounds a lot like peace.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"Everyone is always in some state of recovery. You can't live life and not be." - Amy Grant
"Everything is the result of incremental change over the long haul. That just has been the beautiful lesson of a long season of recovery." - Amy Grant
"Most mornings I wake up and I just feel like — I woke up. I got another day." - Amy Grant
"It's a noisy world, it's a busy world. What everybody probably needs is a little more silence, space, peace. But as a creative, I hope I create something, anything, that somebody wants to return to." - Amy Grant
"Caring for something — a person or something — is a big part of loving it." - Amy Grant
N.T. Wright: What If Christianity Got Heaven Completely Wrong?
Épisode 126
mardi 12 mai 2026 • Durée 55:26
What if the goal of the Christian life isn't to escape this world — but to welcome the next one into it? N.T. Wright, one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars and author of 87 books, joins Andrew Osenga on The Pivot for a conversation as warm and wide-ranging as it is theologically rich. Tom traces the arc of a life shaped by choir stalls in northeast England, Scripture Union camps in the Scottish Highlands, and a decades-long love affair with the Bible that has never stopped surprising him. He unpacks the central argument of his new book, God's Homecoming — that Christianity was never about souls escaping to heaven, but about heaven coming down to earth. Along the way, he reflects on what it means to hold your convictions with both conviction and humility, why personal transformation and theological understanding are more connected than we think.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"Most people today imagine that the point of Christianity is to go to heaven when you die. They are all wrong. The point of Christianity is not that we should go to heaven. The point of Christianity is that heaven should come to us." - N.T. Wright
"That's always been a sign for me that Christian maturity has, as one of its markers, the moment when texts you couldn't figure out before suddenly make sense — and you realize there's probably a lot more out there still waiting for us to grow into." - N.T. Wright
"I think I'm a writer who happens to be in love with the Bible and theology." - N.T. Wright
"But so I grew up in that atmosphere and the mantra really was, I will disagree like anything with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say what you say and to see the stuff like you see it." - N.T. Wright
"You can't rush things as a theologian. You're working on a problem — and then gradually, gradually, you come around a corner, see things from a different light." - N.T. Wright
Links, Products, and Resources Mentioned:
“” — N.T. Wright
Sissy Goff & David Thomas: The Five Skills Every Kid Needs
Épisode 125
mardi 28 avril 2026 • Durée 54:06
What if the thing we're most trying to protect our kids from is exactly what they need? Sissy Goff and David Thomas — children's therapists, co-hosts of Raising Boys and Girls, and founders of Daystar Counseling — join Andrew Osenga on The Pivot to talk about their new book Capable and the growing crisis of capability they're seeing in kids and teens. From the rise of anxiety and depression to kids who won't get their driver's license or text a new friend, Sissy and David break down what's going wrong, and more importantly, what parents can do about it. They talk about the five skills every kid needs, why stress and discomfort can be growth-giving, and how parents can stop getting in the way of the independence their kids are desperately craving. This is one of those conversations that will change how you parent starting today.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
"Kids learn that they're capable by experience." - Sissy Goff
"When I exercise, I don't get stronger unless I stress my muscles. The exact same thing is true of our souls." - David Thomas
"You will experience some really, really hard things and loss will knock the wind out of you. And there will be something transformative on the other side if you allow that to happen." - David Thomas
"The more connected kids are with their parents, the more healthy adults they grow into." - David Thomas
"Parenting is so hard, and it is so important that we are encouraging each other, that we're cheering each other on." - Sissy Goff
“I Am Capable” — the companion workbook for “Capable”
Tim Timmons: Stop Working for God and Start Joining Him
Épisode 124
mardi 14 avril 2026 • Durée 01:09:36
Tim Timmons is a singer/songwriter, author, podcaster, pastor, cancer survivor, and—as of this year—the subject of a major motion picture. But this conversation isn’t really about the movie. It's about what it’s like to be Tim Timmons right now, in the middle of one of the busiest and most surreal seasons of his life. Andrew and Tim talk about what it means to stop working for God and start joining Him, why sorrow is a lot like manure (seriously), how Tim thinks about holding grief and gratitude at the same time, and what years of practicing obscurity have to do with the doors that are opening now. This one’s honest, funny, and surprisingly freeing—for anyone who’s ever tried to build their own little suburb in the kingdom of God.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
“I quit working for God and I said I'll never open a door again.” - Tim Timmons
"Sorrow sobers us and gives us a perspective we've never had before." - Tim Timmons
“My ministry is just being a re-presenter of the heart of God everywhere I am in the mundane and in the freaking awesome.” - Tim Timmons
"Once I stop working for [God] and just start hanging out with Him, I just become more beautiful." - Tim Timmons
Dr. Curt Thompson: Overcoming Anxiety Through Connection
Épisode 123
mardi 31 mars 2026 • Durée 43:06
What if the problem isn’t that you don’t know enough, but that you’re trying to change alone? In this episode of The Pivot Podcast, Andrew sits down with psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson to explore the intersection of neuroscience, faith, and emotional healing. Together, they unpack why anxiety is often rooted in the feeling of being alone in our suffering and how real transformation happens through connection, not just information. Drawing from interpersonal neurobiology, Curt explains how relationships shape the brain and why healing from trauma, shame, and painful memories requires safe, consistent community.
Thought-Provoking Quotes:
“Anxiety is ultimately about my perception that I am being left alone with myself in my suffering.” - Dr. Curt Thompson
“We think information will transform us, but that’s not how the brain works.” - Dr. Curt Thompson
“The brain becomes less anxious when it is connected to other people.” - Dr. Curt Thompson
“It takes about less than three seconds for shame to encode… a remembered event of joy takes 60 to 90 seconds.” - Dr. Curt Thompson
"If I'm hearing a voice that is telling me something I didn't see before and is asking me to do something I don't want to do, I don't think I'm generating that. I think that is someone else." - Jason Gray
"Dear God, bust apart my ideas of you so I can keep growing deeper into intimacy with you." - Jason Gray
Découvrez des podcasts liées à The Pivot. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
