Explore every episode of the podcast Created in the Image of God

Candace Lynn Talmadge is a U.S.-based author of dark high fantasy and nonfiction on spirituality and emotional healing. She is best known for the Stoneslayer series—a politically charged, spiritually rich saga of demonic warfare, intrigue, and awakening that draws on her own past-life memories. Reviewers have praised Stoneslayer: Book One – Scandal as “excellent high fantasy” and noted its rich blend of mysticism, intrigue, and family drama.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Candace joins Wade to explore the deeper world behind Stoneslayer: Book Four – Outcast. At the center is Helen, a young woman marked by exile and danger, forced to grow into spiritual abilities that may protect not only herself but others around her. Together they discuss reincarnation, the moral cycles individuals and societies repeat, the corruption of institutions, and the clash between domination and compassion in both fantasy worlds and our own.This is a conversation about power, justice, spiritual memory, and the kinds of stories that help us wrestle with realities beneath the surface of ordinary life.

Mark and Jill Savage are authors, speakers, and marriage coaches who are passionate about helping couples and families find hope, healing, and practical encouragement. After decades in church ministry, parenting five children, and walking through a devastating marital crisis that nearly ended their relationship, they now share their story with remarkable honesty and grace to help others pursue restoration. Jill is the founder of Hearts at Home and the author of books including No More Perfect Moms and Empty Nest, Full Life, and together Mark and Jill co-authored No More Perfect Marriages.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Mark and Jill join Wade for a candid conversation about marriage, redemption, and the importance of getting help before it’s too late. They reflect on the pain of broken trust, the slow work of rebuilding, and the kind of hope that can carry couples through dark seasons. They also share practical insight on intimacy, communication, and why so many marriages stay stuck simply because people wait too long to act.This is a conversation for couples in crisis, couples in repair, and couples who simply want something deeper and healthier. With warmth, humility, and hard-won wisdom, Mark and Jill remind us that perfection was never the goal—healing, honesty, and redemption are.

Amy Peeler is a New Testament scholar, pastor, and writer who has devoted her career to exploring Hebrews, gender, and the family of God. She serves as Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and is the author of Women and the Gender of God, multiple works on Hebrews, and Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth. Trained at Princeton Theological Seminary and Oklahoma Baptist University, Amy brings together rigorous exegesis and theological reflection on how Scripture speaks about God as Father, Mary as mother of God, and men and women as God’s children.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Amy joins Wade for a rich conversation about gender, holiness, and belonging in the family of God. Drawing from Hebrews, the Gospels, and the wider biblical story, she reflects on why the language of God as Father has been both life-giving and difficult, and why its deepest meaning can only be understood through Jesus. The incarnation stands at the center: we know God as Father because the Son reveals Him, and the Son comes to us born of a woman.Together, they also explore Genesis, spiritual maturity, and the difference between grasping at knowledge apart from God and growing into wisdom with Him. For anyone seeking a more biblically rooted and theologically careful conversation about God, gender, and the church, this episode offers depth, grace, and real substance.

Jared Byas is a writer, speaker, and co-founder of The Bible for Normal People, where he helps people ask better questions about faith, Scripture, and what it means to be Christian. A former pastor and professor of philosophy and biblical studies, Jared is known for making complex ideas accessible and creating space for honest conversations about doubt, belonging, and spiritual growth. He is the author of Love Matters More, Jonah for Normal People, and co-author of Genesis for Normal People.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Jared joins Wade for a rich conversation about how we read the Bible, why so many people inherit rigid systems instead of living questions, and what happens when scholarship is kept out of reach of ordinary believers. Drawing from his journey through charismatic, Baptist, Presbyterian, academic, and pastoral worlds, Jared reflects on the shift from defending faith as a system to encountering Scripture as something more mysterious, human, and transformative.Together, they explore interpretation, doubt, wisdom, community, and the danger of pretending we come to the Bible without lenses. This is a conversation for anyone who still cares deeply about Scripture but suspects there may be a more honest, spacious, and faithful way to engage it.

Kelly Edmiston is a pastor, teacher, author, and speaker who is passionate about helping people break free from shame and move toward deeper healing and flourishing. Raised in a church tradition where women weren’t expected to preach or lead, Kelly now lives boldly into that calling—creating honest, grace-filled conversations around faith, identity, and topics many churches avoid. She is the author of Shame-Free Sex Talks, a practical and hopeful resource for helping families talk about relationships, emotional health, and sexuality without fear or silence.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Kelly joins Wade for a thoughtful conversation about spiritual formation, the goodness of the body, and why so many Christians struggle to speak honestly about relationships and sexuality. She explains why everyone is being formed by something, why the church has often treated the body as a barrier instead of a gift, and why healthy conversations have to begin not with panic or moralism, but with a deeper theological vision of what it means to be human.Drawing from her research, interviews, and pastoral work, Kelly offers a more grounded and grace-filled approach to conversations many families desperately need but don’t know how to begin. For anyone longing for a more honest, healing, and faithful way forward, this episode offers clarity, courage, and hope.

Michael Ward is a theologian, literary scholar, and leading voice in C.S. Lewis studies, serving as an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. He is best known as the award-winning author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, bringing together deep theological insight with a rich appreciation for imagination, literature, and faith. He has also held chaplaincy and research roles at Oxford and Cambridge, and helped lead major public tributes to Lewis, including the memorial in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Michael joins Wade for a rich conversation about Lewis’s theological imagination, the symbolic world behind Narnia, and why Lewis’s work still matters so powerfully today. Drawing especially on Planet Narnia, Michael explores the medieval vision of the seven heavens and how Lewis wove those cosmic meanings into the Chronicles in ways most readers never notice—but deeply feel.Together, they also touch on That Hideous Strength, The Abolition of Man, the Tower of Babel tradition, and the enduring power of stories to reveal truth. For anyone drawn to Lewis, Tolkien, imagination, or the meeting place of theology and literature, this episode offers both delight and depth.

Paul Dafydd Jones is a theologian and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia whose work explores Christian thought, public life, and the enduring questions of theology in the modern world. Educated at Oxford, Harvard Divinity School, Heidelberg, and Harvard University, he has written widely on Protestant theology, Christology, political theology, and the theology of patience. He is the author of The Humanity of Christ and Patience: A Theological Exploration, and co-editor of major volumes including the Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth and Karl Barth and Liberation Theology.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Paul joins Wade for a thoughtful conversation about theology’s public relevance in a fragmented age. Drawing on his teaching at a major public university, he reflects on why faith must be able to give an account of itself in the modern world—and why the best theology is never cut off from real questions of justice, freedom, discrimination, and ecological responsibility.Together, they explore Calvin, Karl Barth, Schleiermacher, liberation theology, and the challenge of integrating deep Christian tradition with contemporary moral and political concerns. For anyone wrestling with how serious theology can remain both intellectually honest and publicly engaged, this episode offers depth, nuance, and real substance.

Sarah E. Frazer is an author, Bible teacher, and encouraging voice for women walking through weariness, disappointment, and unexpected turns in life. Through her writing, courses, and Bible studies, she helps readers face fear, stress, and uncertainty with God’s peace and a deeper understanding of Scripture. She is the author of I Didn’t Sign Up for This: How to Rest in God’s Goodness When Your Story Shifts and has been featured by outlets such as Christian Today, First5, and Crosswalk.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Sarah joins Wade for a tender conversation about anxiety, sleeplessness, and the healing power of God’s Word—especially in the dark hours when fear feels loudest. She shares how a season of depression and spiritual struggle during pregnancy led her to the Psalms, and how hearing Psalm 27 read aloud in the middle of the night became a turning point in her experience of God’s peace.That journey eventually gave rise to her Psalms to Help You Sleep podcast and her upcoming book, He Is With Me Through the Night. Together, they explore why the Psalms speak so powerfully to fear, grief, and uncertainty, and how Scripture can become a place of rest when life does not go as planned.

Dan Allender, PhD, is a pioneering therapist, professor of counseling psychology, and co-founder of The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, known for his groundbreaking work at the intersection of trauma, abuse, and the Christian story. For more than 40 years, the Allender Theory has helped hundreds of thousands engage their stories of harm in light of the gospel, reshaping how pastors, counselors, and ordinary people think about abuse, sexuality, marriage, grief, and healing. He is the author of influential books such as The Wounded Heart, The Healing Path, To Be Told, Redeeming Heartache, and—with Tremper Longman—The Cry of the Soul and Bold Love.In this deeply unusual episode of Created In The Image of God, the conversation becomes something more than an interview. As Wade describes the recent deaths of two sisters and his father, along with the family conflict and legal burdens that have followed, Dan responds not as a distant expert but as a wise guide into the disorienting terrain of grief, trauma, death, and meaning. Together, they explore what it means to read one’s own life honestly, to face the darkness without comparison or escape, and to ask whether even the most painful parts of our story might still be revelatory.This is a raw, searching conversation about death, family, authorship, suffering, and the possibility that even in the most disruptive chapters of life, something true and beautiful is still being revealed.

Steve Bezner is a pastor, professor, and author who now serves as Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Theology at Truett Seminary at Baylor University. After more than a decade as Senior Pastor of Houston Northwest Church, Steve has become known for helping Christians think more clearly about discipleship, culture, and the ways American values can distort the way we follow Jesus. He is the author of Your Jesus Is Too American: Calling the Church to Reclaim Kingdom Values over the American Dream and has also invested deeply in pastoral training, church collaboration, racial reconciliation, and interfaith bridge-building.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Steve joins Wade for a conversation about the church, the kingdom of God, and why a growing number of people—especially young adults—seem hungry for a vision of life that is bigger than career success, political identity, or cultural tribalism. Drawing on his pastoral experience, Steve reflects on why the church can still offer something deeply compelling in a fractured age: not a partisan platform, but a different way of living in the world.Together, they explore what makes a healthy church, why politics so easily becomes ultimate, and how Christians can recover a vision of discipleship rooted more deeply in the kingdom of God than in the promises of the American dream. For anyone trying to understand faith, culture, and the church’s relevance right now, this episode offers a wise and needed challenge.

Derek Vreeland is a pastor, author, and discipleship leader who serves as Discipleship Pastor at Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Known for thoughtful, humorous, and authentic teaching, he is the author of several books, including Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms Our Communities, Ethics, & Spiritual Lives, a 2024 ECPA Book Award finalist, and the God in the Neighborhood Bible study series. Through his writing, preaching, and Peaceable and Kind podcast, Derek has become a trusted voice on spiritual formation, peacemaking, and the way of Jesus.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Derek joins Wade to talk about the origins of God in the Neighborhood, a three-book Bible study series built around the unique language and imagination of The Message translation. Inspired by Eugene Peterson’s rendering of John 1:14—“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood”—the series traces the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the story of God joining us fully in our humanity.Together, they explore how fresh language can reopen familiar Scripture, why discipleship must stay centered on Jesus, and how the gospel speaks not only to personal faith, but to the life we share with others right where we live.

Graham Tomlin is a British theologian, author, and former Church of England bishop who now leads the Centre for Cultural Witness, helping the church speak more clearly and imaginatively into public life. He previously served as Bishop of Kensington in the Diocese of London from 2015 to 2022, where he became a key pastoral voice in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire and its national memorial service. Before becoming a bishop, he spent many years in theological education as chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford, and as dean, principal, and now president of St Mellitus College.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Tomlin joins Wade for a timely conversation about what it means for Christians to offer “cultural witness” in a rapidly changing world. Drawing on books like The Provocative Church, The Widening Circle, and Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea, he explores how the church can engage a secular, polarized society without surrendering either theological depth or spiritual vitality.Together, they discuss how Christians can listen more carefully, speak more imaginatively, and embody a more faithful public presence in a fractured age. For seekers and believers alike, this episode offers a compelling vision of faith that is intellectually serious, spiritually alive, and publicly relevant.

This special episode of Created In The Image of God is dedicated to the memory of Professor John L. Esposito, the pioneering Georgetown scholar whose work helped generations of students, readers, and leaders think more clearly about Islam, pluralism, public life, and Muslim–Christian understanding. Scheduled to appear on the show, Esposito passed away on July 15, 2026, in Philadelphia as a result of complications from heart surgery. His absence is deeply felt, but so is the enduring influence of his life’s work.Wade Fransson takes this moment to reflect on life, death, and the strange weight of loss when it becomes deeply personal. Having lost two sisters and his father in the last two years, Wade shares thoughts shaped not just by ideas, but by grief, memory, and the reality of saying goodbye.This is a tribute, a meditation, and a personal reflection on what remains after a life ends: the questions, the love, the sorrow, and the legacy. In honoring John Esposito, the episode also opens space for a larger conversation about mortality, remembrance, and how we carry the lives of others forward."In this episode of Created In The Image of God, he reflects on the rise of authoritarianism, the globalization of Islamophobia, and the ways anti-Muslim racism distorts not only religion, but politics, diplomacy, and public life. He shares how Georgetown’s Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding was born out of a concern that Islam would be cast as the next global threat—and why that concern has only become more relevant.Together, we explore Muslim–Christian relations, the fractured legacy of the children of Abraham, and the challenge of building genuine understanding in a world still shaped by fear, rivalry, and inherited mistrust. For anyone looking for a wiser, more historically grounded way to think about Islam, pluralism, and our shared future, this conversation offers clarity, depth, and humanity.

Mandy Smith is a pastor, author, and one of the clearest voices speaking into the need for sustainable, human‑scaled ministry. Best known for The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry, she has spent years exploring what it means to take Jesus seriously in a world that prizes power, polish, and control. Her writing asks a simple but disruptive question: if God really shows His strength in our weakness, what would it look like to live and lead as though that were true?In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Mandy reflects on the deep thread running through all her work—from weakness and dependence, to hospitality, emotional honesty, collaboration, and the hidden life of the kingdom. She shares how God has taught her to stop apologizing for being human, and how some of the very qualities often dismissed as “soft” or secondary can become channels of renewal in leadership, church life, and community.This conversation is for pastors, leaders, and anyone exhausted by performance-driven faith. Mandy offers a hopeful reminder that God’s kingdom often grows like yeast in dough—quietly, slowly, and in places the world has learned to overlook.

Mark Galli is an American Catholic writer, editor, and former Protestant pastor best known for his leadership at Christianity Today, where he served in various roles—culminating in seven years as editor in chief. A California native who moved from Presbyterian ministry into evangelical Anglicanism before returning to the Catholic Church in 2020, he has written widely on evangelicalism, theology, and spiritual life in books like Jesus Mean and Wild, Beyond Smells and Bells, God Wins, Chaos and Grace, Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals, and With All the Saints: My Journey to the Roman Catholic Church.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Mark joins Wade for a thoughtful conversation about faith, conscience, and the long spiritual journey through—and beyond—American evangelicalism. Raised Catholic, shaped by evangelical conversion, formed through pastoral ministry and decades of religious journalism, and later received back into the Catholic Church, Mark brings a rare perspective on the tensions between conviction, tradition, public witness, and political power.Together, we explore what happens when loyalty to Christ challenges loyalty to tribe, how conscience is formed in times of cultural and ecclesial upheaval, and what it means to keep seeking truth with humility across the changing landscapes of Christian identity. This is a conversation for anyone wrestling with belonging, integrity, and the cost of spiritual honesty.

Richard Strilowich is a corporate SAGE coach who helps conscious professionals treat their careers as a spiritual path—integrating inner wisdom with outer success. Drawing on more than 40 years in IT, including leadership roles in small, medium, and global companies, he brings a systems-thinking mindset and practical depth to questions of work, identity, and purpose. Over three decades of spiritual exploration—through mind-body-spirit modalities, energy-consciousness work, somatic therapy, and spiritual direction—have shaped the way he now guides others through StillPoint Coach.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Rich joins Wade for a deeply personal conversation about the long road from Catholic boyhood to corporate leadership to spiritual integration. He reflects on formative moments that shaped him—from singing at the Vatican as a 13-year-old and receiving communion from Pope Paul VI, to finding a quiet, wordless communion with God in nature, to losing himself in software development and later discovering that even debugging code could become a kind of mystical focus.Together, they explore what happens when success no longer satisfies, why inner pain can become the beginning of calling, and how the spiritual path sometimes finds us long before we know how to name it. For anyone trying to reconcile ambition, faith, work, and wholeness, Rich offers a thoughtful invitation: your career may not be separate from your soul’s journey after all.

Brian Adamson is a Kingdom business coach, co-founder of Purpose to Profits, and host of the Believers N Biz podcast. He helps faith-driven coaches, consultants, and experts grow to six and seven figures through scalable business models built on biblical principles rather than hustle, burnout, or constant one-to-one effort. After leaving corporate at 35 and building his own online business to nearly $10 million, Brian developed his “1 to Many” system to help purpose-driven entrepreneurs expand their impact without sacrificing what matters most.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Brian joins Wade for a practical and faith-centered conversation about what it means to grow a business God’s way. Together, they explore how entrepreneurs can move beyond inconsistent income, overwork, and survival mode into models shaped by clarity, conviction, and Kingdom alignment.They also discuss why focusing on the right inputs matters more than obsessing over outcomes, how biblical principles can reshape the way we think about scaling, and what becomes possible when our work is anchored in truth and surrendered to God. For anyone building a business while trying to stay faithful, present, and sane, this episode offers both strategy and encouragement.

Jen Pollock Michel is an author, speaker, and writing mentor whose work circles around desire, time, home, and the ordinary practices that shape a life with God. She has written six books—Teach Us to Want and In Good Time (both award‑winners), Surprised by Paradox, Keeping Place, A Habit Called Faith, and her forthcoming A Rule for the Rest of Us. With degrees in French, literature, and an MFA in creative writing, she now mentors writers in Whitworth University’s MFA program and pens a popular Substack of “Monday letters” from her near‑empty nest in Cincinnati.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Jen and Wade trace the story beneath those books: a childhood spent moving around the Midwest and South as her English‑teacher dad pursued a PhD in communications; a home where poems were written for birthdays and words were the family currency; and a church life rich in Bible drills and doctrine, but—at least at first—thin on joy. As a teen, Jen assumed she’d follow Jesus “later,” once she’d had her fun. Then, at 16, a youth camp encounter shifted everything, turning faith from cramped rules into a spacious path of joy, obedience, and grace.From there, the conversation dives into how we misunderstand God’s law as mere restriction, why “choose to sin, choose to suffer” is more about reality than lightning bolts, and how being re‑storied by Scripture helps us love rightly—God, neighbors, children, and even our own desires—in proper proportion.For anyone who grew up in church but quietly wondered if a life with God would be too small, Jen’s story is an invitation into a bigger, truer way of being human: one where limits are gifts, obedience leads to joy, and every ordinary day can be woven into God’s surprising, spacious grace.

Vinoth Ramachandra is a Sri Lankan theologian, writer, and international lecturer who has spent decades helping Christians engage the university and public life with intellectual rigor and social integrity. Trained in nuclear engineering at the University of London, he returned to Sri Lanka rather than pursue an academic career in the West, helping to build an inter-denominational Christian university ministry and later serving on IFES’s Senior Leadership Team as Secretary for Dialogue & Social Engagement. His work has also included civil rights advocacy in Sri Lanka, global networks for development and justice through Micah Network, creation care with A Rocha, and advisory roles with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Vinoth joins Wade for a searching conversation about cultural witness shaped not in comfort, but in the midst of conflict. From Sri Lanka’s long civil struggles to the wider myths of nationalism, secularism, and Western modernity, he explores how Christians can resist shallow narratives and recover a more faithful, globally aware discipleship. Drawing on books like Gods That Fail, Subverting Global Myths, and Sarah’s Laughter, Vinoth brings theology into conversation with suffering, doubt, politics, and hope.Together, they ask what faithful public presence looks like in a fractured world—and why genuine witness must be courageous, dialogical, and deeply attentive to the humanity of every person.

Jay Kim is a pastor, author, and cultural observer who serves as lead pastor of WestGate Church in the heart of Silicon Valley. He is the author of The Pace of Peace, Listen Listen Speak, Analog Christian, and Analog Church, where he explores what it means to follow Jesus with depth, attention, and embodied presence in a distracted digital age. A contributor to outlets like Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and Relevant, Jay also hosts IVP’s Digital Examen Podcast.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Jay joins Wade for a searching conversation about faith, technology, church hurt, and the pressures of modern life. Born in South Korea and raised in Silicon Valley after his mother’s dramatic conversion to Christianity, Jay grew up in the world of the immigrant church—where faith, belonging, and community were deeply intertwined. But when that world fractured through betrayal and pain, he walked away, only to find his way back through the patient love of friends who embodied Jesus differently.Together, they explore what it means to pursue peace in an anxious age, why digital life so easily fragments our attention, and how a more faithful Christian presence begins not with speed or performance, but with slowness, depth, and love.

Jennifer J. Wiseman is an astrophysicist whose journey runs from a childhood in rural Arkansas to labs and observatories connected with MIT, Harvard, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As an undergraduate she discovered the periodic comet Wiseman–Skiff and has since become a leading expert on star‑forming regions, studying interstellar clouds, protostars, and stellar outflows across the Milky Way.Beyond her research, Jennifer is widely known for her work at the intersection of science, faith, and public life—directing the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, and serving with organizations like BioLogos and the American Scientific Affiliation. In this episode of Created In The Image of God, she and Wade explore what our rapidly expanding picture of the universe means for life on Earth: from galaxies, dark matter, and black holes to the emerging science of astrobiology and the search for life beyond our planet.Together they ask how cosmic discovery can deepen, rather than diminish, our sense of wonder, ethics, and responsibility. What does it mean to speak of being created in the image of God on one small world in a vast, ancient cosmos? How might the possibility of other worlds and other lives reshape the way we think about God’s creativity, human humility, and our call to care for this planet and each other?

Tremper Longman III is one of the world’s leading Old Testament scholars, serving as Distinguished Scholar and emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College after nearly two decades there and eighteen years at Westminster Theological Seminary. Trained at Ohio Wesleyan, Westminster, and Yale (PhD in Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern studies), he has written influential commentaries on Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Daniel, Jeremiah, and more, and co‑edited the award‑winning Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings. As a senior translator for the wisdom books in the New Living Translation and author of works like Confronting Old Testament Controversies and The Bible and the Ballot: Using Scripture in Political Decisions, he is known for combining rigorous scholarship with accessible guidance for Christians wrestling with Scripture and contemporary issues.In this episode of Created In The Image of God, Tremper and Wade ask what our “Judeo‑Christian heritage” really means. If the Bible helped shape Western law, notions of justice, and the very idea that humans bear God’s image, is it still relevant for public life today? How should Scripture inform political decisions without becoming a partisan weapon—or being pushed to the margins as merely “private” belief?Together they explore how the Old Testament speaks into questions of justice, power, character, and community, and how believers can engage culture and politics with humility, wisdom, and a deeper respect for the text at the heart of their faith.

Born in Vietnam and forced to flee as a child after the fall of Saigon, David Truong’s life traces a modern Exodus—from war, displacement, and refugee camps to rebuilding in America and discovering a deeper freedom in Christ. After escaping by boat and surviving the uncertainty of camp life, he and his family eventually resettled in the United States, an experience he recounts in his memoir Escape to America, featured on NPR and in regional media.Today David is a husband, father, corporate attorney, and deacon at Dulles Church of Christ, a Bible‑based congregation he helped plant more than 20 years ago. In this episode of Created in the Image of God, he reflects on how God met him in trauma and transition, reshaped his understanding of freedom, duty, and opportunity, and turned a family’s desperate escape into a story of redemptive love and purpose.We talk about memory, migration, and gratitude—what it means to honor the life you narrowly escaped, the life you were given, and the responsibilities that come with both. For anyone wrestling with hardship, origin stories, or the meaning of “promised land” in their own journey, David’s story offers a sober, hope‑filled look at providence, perseverance, and thankfulness.

Jason Heinritz grew up in a conservative Christian home in Waukesha, Wisconsin—church on Sundays, sports and good grades through the week. But underneath the wholesome exterior, he learned to draw his worth from performance: being liked, being captain, winning. In college, that drive found a perfect outlet in direct sales with Cutco Cutlery, where he quickly became a top producer and then a successful office owner.Through his twenties, Jason lived the classic “work hard, party hard” script: binge‑drinking weekends, achievement‑driven hustle, and a faith life largely reduced to an hour on Sunday. He still called himself a “Jesus guy,” but his real priorities were trips, trophies, and building his own kingdom. The breaking point came when he got engaged in a relationship built on chemistry and convenience more than shared calling—and realized, just months before the wedding, that he couldn’t honestly bring God into a future he was already compromising.In this episode, Jason unpacks that wake‑up call and the year of reset that followed: calling off the wedding, stepping back from dating, diving into Scripture, morning routines, and wholehearted surrender. We trace how God led him from divided loyalties into a life of “holy habits”—launching the Wake Up Jesus People movement, the 40 Forge Challenge, and the journal and practices now helping believers move from hustle to sustainable rhythms with Jesus.If you’re tired of living split between your public success and your private soul, Jason’s story is a practical, hopeful invitation to let God reorder your days—so you can live with deeper peace, purpose, and joy in a noisy, distracted world.

If you ask Steve Chalke why Oasis exists—a network of churches, schools, housing projects, youth work, anti‑trafficking initiatives, and community hubs serving tens of thousands across the UK—he’ll take you back to a teenage boy walking home in South London. The son of a South Indian railway worker and a white English mother, Steve grew up in poverty, watching his father passed over for jobs and literally watched people cross the street to avoid him. At school his nickname was “half‑caste,” and teachers in his “dump” of a secondary school told students people like them weren’t worth educating; they’d work with their hands, not their heads.At 14, Steve started attending a Friday‑night youth club at a local Baptist church because he was infatuated with a girl named Mary. One evening her friend walked across the hall to inform him, in front of everyone, that Mary thought he was “ugly.” Crestfallen, he trudged home—only to realize that, whatever Mary thought, the story he was hearing at that little church was radically different from the one he heard at school. There, he was told he’d never amount to much. At church, he heard that he was made by God, that his life had meaning and purpose. On that walk home, he made a decision that would mark the rest of his life: he would keep going to the youth group even if Mary never spoke to him again; he would follow Jesus; he would become a church leader; and when he grew up, he would start a school that was worth going to, a house for kids who had never been loved, and a hospital.In this episode, Steve tells how that teenage vow slowly became reality. After training for ministry at Spurgeon’s College and serving as a youth pastor, he and his new wife Cornelia did something most would call reckless: they left the security of a large church job and, with no money, launched a 501(c)(3)–style charity from scratch. In 1985 they opened a sixteen‑bedroom house for 16–18‑year‑olds who had been abused, neglected, and passed around the care system. Cornelia named it “Oasis,” because that’s what they wanted it to be—a place of shelter and life in a desert of indifference. From that single house, Oasis has grown over four decades into a family of charities employing more than 6,000 staff, educating 35,000 children in some of the UK’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and running churches, youth work, housing projects, and justice initiatives—including work in the criminal justice system and anti‑trafficking efforts.Along the way, Steve has become one of Britain’s most outspoken public Christians: fronting national TV and radio broadcasts, serving as a UN special adviser on human trafficking, launching the STOP THE TRAFFIK coalition, and writing over 40 books that challenge the church on issues like atonement, racism, inclusion, and LGBTQ+ affirmation. In conversation with Wade, he unpacks his conviction that Christian faith is always personal but never private—that the gospel must show up in concrete action for justice, reconciliation, and the common good, or it has betrayed Jesus. He reflects on how his own story of exclusion fuels his passion for radically inclusive communities, why he believes churches must be embedded in their neighborhoods as “hubs” of holistic care, and how theology, sociology, and psychology all have a role in reimagining what it means to love our neighbors.For listeners wondering what it looks like to take Jesus’ call to love the least of these seriously—not just in words but in structures and systems—this episode offers both inspiration and provocation. Steve’s life is a testimony that a 14‑year‑old’s kitchen‑table decision, rooted in the simple belief that every person bears God’s image, can grow—through risk, failure, perseverance, and grace—into an oasis for thousands.

Miroslav Volf’s theology was born not in an ivory tower, but in the cracks of a fractured world. Raised in post–World War II Yugoslavia by a Pentecostal pastor father and a Bible‑soaked mother, he spent his earliest years in a tiny apartment shared with a Serbian nanny, Milica Branković—“the angel of my childhood,” as he calls her. In a country still marked by violence between Croats (largely Catholic) and Serbs (largely Orthodox), that little household quietly embodied a different possibility: people from groups taught to distrust one another living together in love, prayer, and mutual care. It was, in hindsight, a living parable of reconciliation.As a teenager, Volf resisted the weight of his parents’ faith, only to encounter Christ for himself at sixteen—unexpectedly, in a Swedish tent meeting where he barely understood half the sermon. The change was profound enough that when he returned home, his emotionally astute mother simply looked at him and said, “What happened to you? You’re a different person.” From there, his path wound through underground theological study in communist Yugoslavia, philosophy at the University of Zagreb, a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and advanced work in Tübingen, Germany on the deepest questions of God, self, and other. All of it unfolded against the backdrop of a homeland sliding into ethnic war.In this episode, Volf and Wade explore how those experiences gave rise to the themes that now define his work: exclusion and embrace, identity and otherness, and the possibility of a life “worth living” in a deeply divided age. Volf explains why he sees the gospel’s heart not in withdrawal or domination, but in the crucified Christ who absorbs enmity and opens his arms in welcome—a pattern he famously unpacked in Exclusion and Embrace, and has continued to develop through the Yale Center for Faith & Culture’s work on flourishing and public faith. They discuss how theology must be tested in the “laboratory” of real life—war, injustice, politics, and everyday relationships—and why cheap calls to reconciliation that ignore justice are as dangerous as justice pursued without any hope of reconciliation.Drawing on insights from Flourishing and Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Volf invites listeners—believers and skeptics alike—to wrestle with questions modern life often pushes aside: What is a good life? What are we for? How do we live with our enemies, our neighbors, and even ourselves without being consumed by resentment? Throughout, he returns to the conviction that a truly Christian vision of life is both deeply realistic about evil and radically hopeful about God’s power to create a future of joy, justice, and embrace.For anyone struggling to make sense of faith in the face of violence, culture wars, or personal hurt, this conversation offers more than abstract answers. It traces the journey of a man who has seen exclusion up close and still dares to imagine—and work for—a world shaped by reconciliation rather than revenge.

Many Christians live with a quiet, relentless pressure: be everywhere, know everything, do it all—then feel guilty when they can’t. Kelly Kapic has spent much of his life gently dismantling that lie. A theologian and long‑time professor at Covenant College in Georgia, Kelly was raised in a Catholic home in northern California, drifted from church as a kid, and then came to a lively faith through a Baptist youth group. Over the years his path took him from Wheaton College to seminary, then to doctoral work in London on the 17th‑century theologian John Owen and the doctrine of the Trinity. Since 2001 he has taught courses in doctrine, the Trinity, Christology, and faith and suffering, helping students see that theology is not an abstract hobby but a way of understanding how to live well before God.In this episode, Kelly and Wade explore themes from his books You’re Only Human, Embodied Hope, and Christian Life: what it really means that God is God and we are not. Kelly points out that when Scripture calls us to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” the word “perfect” has more to do with fullness and maturity than sinless performance. Hebrews can say that Jesus “was made perfect” through suffering—not because He was ever sinful, but because, as truly human, He entered the full range of human experience, including pain, loss, and obedience under pressure. That same passage opens up the mystery of a God who, in Christ, doesn’t just know our temptations in theory, but has borne them experientially from the human side.From there, the conversation turns practical: How do we distinguish God’s attributes—omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence—from our own calling as limited creatures? What happens to our souls when we try to imitate the wrong things about God, living as if we, too, must be everywhere, know everything, and fix everyone? Drawing on his work with college students and his collaborations with psychologists and pastors, Kelly argues that learning to accept our finitude—our need for sleep, our local bodies, our incomplete knowledge—is not a lack of faith but an act of trust. It frees us from frantic busyness and perfectionism, and it changes how we respond to suffering: not as a glitch in an otherwise “normal” life, but as a place where God meets us, matures us, and knits us into community.Throughout the episode, Kelly keeps theology tethered to everyday reality: burnout, family expectations, church life, and the quiet shame many believers carry about their limitations. He and Wade also touch on ritual and practice—why even informal churches are full of habits and “liturgies,” and how those can either help or hinder real intimacy with God.For anyone who feels crushed by spiritual to‑do lists, confused about how a perfect God relates to imperfect people, or hungry for a more humane vision of the Christian life, this conversation offers both clarity and relief. Kelly’s message is simple and liberating: you were never meant to do it all—and your limits, received in faith, can become places where grace, joy, and genuine holiness take root.

Peter Greer grew up on a historic street in Concord, Massachusetts—home of the “shot heard round the world”—in a house where faith, hospitality, and global curiosity were simply normal. His dad pastored a local church, his mom served in the schools, and Sunday lunch almost always included an extra guest at the table. Those early lessons in welcoming the stranger and learning from other cultures became the quiet foundation for a very public vocation.In this episode, Peter shares the pivot moment that shaped his life’s work: a college trip studying international business across Europe and the former Soviet Union, capped by a lunch in Moscow with a man doing economic development as Christian mission. In that conversation, faith, global poverty, and business snapped into a single calling. From there, Peter went on to serve with World Relief in Cambodia, lead a microfinance institution in post‑genocide Rwanda, wrestle with hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and eventually become CEO of HOPE International, a global ministry that equips families in poverty to start and grow businesses.Together we explore how to rethink charity, why dignity and partnership matter, and what it looks like to hold together Jesus’ warnings about “serving two masters” with a robust, hopeful vision of business and entrepreneurship as tools for justice, restoration, and honoring the image of God in the poor.

Before he was writing fantasy novels, founding the Rabbit Room, or penning modern hymns, Andrew Peterson was a pastor’s kid who felt like he didn’t belong. Born in Illinois while his Southern parents were in seminary, his early years looked like a Norman Rockwell painting: John Deere tractors, cornfields, and an Andy‑Griffith innocence. At seven, everything shifted. His family moved “home” to North Florida—a place he describes as “like South Georgia, but weirder”—and the cultural whiplash left him feeling like an outsider overnight. In a town where everyone belonged to one of a few extended families, the kid with the non‑Southern accent was “the yankee,” and a low‑grade ache to find home settled in.Through all of it, stories and songs were his refuge. He devoured comic books (especially Batman), drew constantly, and soaked up everything from hair‑metal ballads to Jim Croce, Pink Floyd, and the quiet singer‑songwriters his dad piped in through the easy‑listening station: James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Van Morrison. He believed God was real—but in the Southern church world he knew, the gospel felt mostly like bad news. God existed, but He was mostly angry and disappointed. Heaven seemed reserved for the people who behaved; Andrew knew he wasn’t one of them.Everything began to change when he stumbled into the music of Rich Mullins. Learning “If I Stand” for a friend cracked open a door he didn’t know was there. Here was someone writing honestly about doubt, sin, grace, and a Jesus who actually loved people like him. Rich’s wonder‑soaked lyrics gave Andrew permission to see the created world—not as disposable fuel for the end times—but as his Father’s world, pulsing with God’s presence and goodness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the God who’d felt cold and condemning began to look more like the God revealed in Jesus: holy, yes, but also kind, patient, and full of affection.In this episode, Andrew and Wade wander through that journey—the dislocation of childhood, the haunted beauty of the South, early bands and batman sketches, and the slow healing of his imagination. They touch on how those experiences eventually gave rise to the Wingfeather Saga, Adorning the Dark, The God of the Garden, and the Rabbit Room community: all born from a desire to help others see that faith and art aren’t enemies; that stories can carry truth in ways arguments can’t; and that our longing to belong is, at its core, a longing for Christ.For anyone who grew up in church afraid of God, for artists wondering how their gifts fit in the Kingdom, or for those who quietly feel like they’ve never quite belonged anywhere, this conversation offers gentle, grounded hope. Andrew’s story is a reminder that God often meets us in the very places we feel most out of place—through songs, stories, and the slow realization that the world, and our lives, are more haunted by grace than we ever imagined.

Some people talk about spiritual warfare in theory. Eric Davis had to live it. A lifelong lover of antiques and old homes, he visited a plantation in South Carolina, fell in love with the idea, and asked God for one of his own. In 2016, that prayer seemed to be answered when he acquired Springhill Plantation. The joy didn’t last long. Almost immediately after moving in, Eric and his family began to encounter unnerving phenomena: strange noises, flashes of light, and, most chillingly, a fog‑like form taking shape outside that carried a palpable sense of evil. The house, they realized, was haunted.In this episode, Eric recounts how what began as a dream quickly became a test of faith. He could have run. Instead, he stayed—and discovered that survival would require more than casual Christianity. He talks about the escalating oppression, the fear that pressed in on his family, and the ways he initially responded that, in hindsight, left doors open to the enemy. Then, step by step, he describes how God began to teach him his true identity in Christ and the authority believers have in Jesus’ name. Over the course of several years, through prayer, repentance, wise counsel, and persistent spiritual warfare, Eric learned to stand his ground, confront the entities in the house, and see his home and family set free.With humility and raw honesty, Eric doesn’t just tell ghost stories; he unpacks the spiritual lessons behind them—how bitterness, occult curiosity, generational sin, or unexamined compromises can create footholds for darkness, and how the cross and resurrection of Jesus provide real power to close those doors. For anyone battling unexplained fear, oppression, or a sense that “something is wrong” they can’t quite name, this conversation offers both sober discernment and solid hope. Eric’s story is a reminder that the unseen battle is real—but so is the authority of Christ to bring peace, protection, and freedom.

Jocelyn J. Jones grew up in Catholic school, watching her mom convert so the kids wouldn’t be left out—and quietly learning how to perform faith without ever really meeting God. She remembers sitting bored in Mass, inventing sins for confession, and treating church as ritual rather than relationship. That began to shift at a Kairos retreat in high school, but the real turning point came in college, when a friend invited her to a women’s Bible study and a worn VHS tape—Juanita Bynum’s “No More Sheets”—brought soul ties and sexual trauma into the light.In this episode, Jocelyn shares how God met her in that “ugly cry” on the living room floor, walked with her through years of wrestling, and eventually led her from journalism and TV into full‑time ministry at 23. Today she’s an ordained minister, author of Breaking the Power of the Mask, founder of Faith on the Journey Counseling, and a Master Facilitator with the Trauma Healing Institute, helping people heal from trauma, grief, and shame through a Christ‑centered lens.Together we talk about religion versus relationship, judgment versus love, and why taking off the mask is the first step toward emotional freedom and a life of purpose in Christ.

R. J. Snell likes to say he’s a farm boy from nowhere. Growing up in Carbon, Alberta—a town of about 360 people—he learned early what it meant to belong to a place where everyone showed up for your little league game and honked the horn, regardless of which church they attended or whether they believed at all. When his parents suggested he probably wasn’t cut out to be a farmer and should “keep going to school,” they set him on a path that would eventually lead through philosophy, teaching, and into his role today as Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton and editor‑in‑chief of Public Discourse.In this episode, Snell reflects on how those small‑town lessons—rootedness, responsibility, and community—shape his work with students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. He points out that while places like Princeton excel at technical excellence, they often hesitate to ask the deepest normative questions: What is the purpose of life? What is a human person for? What may we reasonably hope in? That’s where his work with Witherspoon comes in. Just off campus, he gathers students into seminars and reading groups designed to make space for those questions, and to model what he calls “intellectual friendship”: a community where people with differing beliefs can pursue truth together without collapsing into either relativism or rage.Snell describes his approach as putting the emphasis not on having the cleverest answers, but on learning to ask better, more honest questions—and sustaining a culture where that is valued. He talks about helping young adults navigate a fragmented age without losing their capacity for wonder or moral seriousness, and about how real community can “turn down the boil” in a society where every disagreement feels like a crisis. Along the way, he draws on decades of teaching, writing, and lecturing across North America and Europe, unpacking why philosophy, ethics, and a rich understanding of the human person still matter in a world dominated by technology and speed.For parents uneasy about sending their kids into today’s campus climate, students longing for deeper conversation, or anyone hungry for a more sane, humane way to think and live, this episode offers a grounded vision: that friendship, truth, and responsibility to a particular place and people are not luxuries, but the very conditions for flourishing in our time.

When wars are told in history books, the focus is usually on generals, presidents, and borders. Chinyere Emmanuel Egbe insists the real story lies elsewhere. A Nigerian‑born economist and long‑time CUNY professor who has spent decades teaching statistics and finance in Brooklyn, Dr. Egbe is also the author of Elephants, the Grass and the Teacher, a memoir of growing up during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). In it, he uses a simple image to describe what he saw: the “elephants” — ruling establishments and military elites — decide when wars start and end, but it is the “grass,” the masses of ordinary people and low‑ranking soldiers, that is trampled.In this episode, Dr. Egbe walks through his early life under British colonial rule, the disciplined, justice‑oriented home shaped by his London‑educated teacher father and deeply prayerful mother, and the way that upbringing gave him a rigid sense of right and wrong. He then traces how Nigeria’s negotiated independence in 1960, followed by flawed elections and political crises in the mid‑1960s, spiraled into a military coup and eventually civil war. From his vantage point as a boy in Eastern Nigeria, he witnessed firsthand how decisions made by distant leaders translated into hunger, fear, displacement, and death on the ground.Along the way, he returns again and again to what he calls “divine interventions”: the improbable escapes and narrow misses that kept his family alive when, as a statistician, he now sees the odds should have gone the other way. He reflects on ancient voices like Plutarch and reformers in Rome who also saw commanders treating soldiers like expendable coins, and connects that insight to Paul’s blunt question in the New Testament: “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” For Dr. Egbe, the answer is clear — greed and the struggle of powerful “elephants” over resources God has already provided in sufficient measure for all.The conversation then bridges to his later work: why those wartime experiences drove him toward economics, why he believes education is a moral calling, and how his efforts in Central Brooklyn — from launching degree programs in financial economics to creating a Wall Street‑style trading lab and leading HUD‑funded community projects — are part of the same lifelong response to injustice he first sensed as a child.For listeners who have only known war through headlines, or who wonder what faith and justice look like when you’ve seen conflict up close, this episode offers a rare combination: rigorous economic insight, vivid personal story, and a clear-eyed moral critique of power that still leaves room for gratitude, purpose, and hope.

Gregory Coles is a writer, speaker, and language scholar whose life sits at the crossroads of faith, identity, and words. The author of Single, Gay, Christian, No Longer Strangers, The Limits of My World, and the forthcoming Sexuality Beyond Sex (IVP, 2026), Greg has spent years asking what it means to follow Jesus as a single, gay Christian who loves the church and takes Scripture seriously.In this episode, we talk about why language matters so much—how the labels we choose can shape our sense of self, our expectations of God, and even who feels welcome in the body of Christ. Greg shares how his own story has been formed by Scripture, prayer, and community, and why surrendering our desires and identities to God doesn’t mean pretending our questions or longings don’t exist.From memoir to theology to literary scholarship, this conversation invites us into a more honest, nuanced way of talking about sexuality, discipleship, and the image of God in every person—especially those who don’t fit our assumptions.

On paper, Steven Ferrara had the kind of life many people dream about. Born into a poor but tightly knit Italian family in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood, he grew up surrounded by Sunday dinners, grandparents in the basement kitchen, and a home full of love. A spiritual seeker from his teens—studying universal principles, practicing Transcendental Meditation, and devouring teachings on consciousness—he went straight into business at 18, eventually building one of the largest privately held financial services firms in the Northeast. By mid‑life he had a thriving career, a beautiful home, a loving wife, and three children.Then, in 2004, his world collapsed. His 23‑year‑old son Christopher, with whom he shared an unusually deep bond as both father and business partner, died suddenly in a car accident. Five years later, his wife—the emotional cornerstone of their family—was diagnosed with a rapid illness and passed away within weeks. Despite decades of spiritual practice, Steven found himself undone: running through his neighborhood shouting at God, questioning everything he had ever believed, and wondering how life could possibly go on.In this episode, Steven shares how his long habit of journaling—begun the day after his son’s death and continued for twenty years—became the unlikely container for his healing. Only after retiring and handing his firm to a successor team did he begin to reread the shelves of journals he had filled. As he did, he started to see the quiet “life lessons” that had been forming in the middle of his pain: invitations to accept what he could not control, to see death through a different lens, and to discover that gratitude and grief can coexist. Those insights eventually became his book From Grief to Gratitude: A New Paradigm on Death, a roadmap for others walking through loss.Drawing on spiritual influences from his Catholic childhood to universalist teachings, contemplative authors, and his own direct experience with God, Steven talks about what it has meant to move beyond fear, anger, and guilt into a genuine, hard‑earned gratitude—for his parents, his children, his late wife, and even the “curve balls” he would never have chosen. He speaks candidly about parenting his daughters through the loss of their mother, the ongoing nature of grief, and how he now understands death not as the end of relationship, but as a change of form within a larger, loving reality.For anyone who has lost a child, a spouse, or simply finds themselves afraid of death and undone by sorrow, this conversation offers no clichés—only the voice of someone who has lived through the fire and found a deeper peace on the other side. Steven’s story is an invitation to consider that even in life’s hardest seasons, a grateful heart is still possible.

For years, many knew Michael Gungor as a worship leader and the creative force behind the band Gungor. Today, he’s just as likely to call himself a “creative mystic,” experimenting with ambient soundscapes, podcasts, and a forthcoming book, The Shape of Things. Underneath the changing forms, one question has stayed constant: What is the real shape of reality—and how do you live in tune with it?In this episode, Michael reflects on a theme he sees running through Jesus’ teaching and the wider mystical tradition: “You’ve seen it this way, but it’s actually upside down.” For him, the shape of things is bent toward love, being, and a deep “yes” at the heart of existence, not the anxiety, division, or fear we often assume is normal. He uses the image of a bonsai artist working with a tree’s natural growth—observing the flow of life and then gently cooperating with it—as a picture of what he’s trying to do with music, words, and art.The conversation also touches the “tortured artist” stereotype. Michael talks about the real tension and pain that can come with creating—birth pangs, dissonance, the gap between what exists and what you sense is possible—while questioning whether suffering has to come from isolation and ego. He explores a both/and path where creating is simultaneously for the joy of others and for his own joy, collapsing the false divide between giving and receiving. Throughout, he and Wade circle around the trees in Genesis, non‑dual spirituality, and how art can carry spiritual insight without being trapped in old religious boxes or in shallow self‑expression.For listeners who have deconstructed, feel caught between faith and doubt, or simply sense there is “more” than the usual religious arguments, this episode offers an honest, imaginative window into one artist’s attempt to cooperate with the shape of love at the center of things.

Public debates about Islam and Muslims in America are usually loud, shallow, and short on facts. Dalia Mogahed has spent much of her life trying to change that. Born in Cairo and raised in the United States, she grew up in a family where high-level scholarship and deep devotion were normal: a grandfather who taught at Al‑Azhar—the “Harvard” of the Muslim world—training women in theology, and a mother who was the only woman in her rocket‑engineering class at Cairo University. As a child, Dalia spent weekdays sleeping at her grandparents’ home while her mother commuted two hours each way to teach, absorbing the Qur’an as the literal “soundtrack” of her days as her grandfather recited whenever he was home.At five, her life shifted dramatically when her parents moved to Madison, Wisconsin on a peace‑grant scholarship that was itself a little‑known clause in the Camp David accords. Suddenly the little girl steeped in Cairo’s rhythms was learning English, trying to fit in, and navigating public schools. In elementary school, international backgrounds were celebrated; by middle and high school, “foreign” started to feel like “other.” The pivot came at fifteen, when she stumbled across The Autobiography of Malcolm X in her school library. Reading it, she discovered that Islam was not an alien presence in America but had helped shape its story, that Muslims had been here since the nation’s beginning, and that there was such a thing as being American Muslim. Malcolm gave her language for an identity she’d been living but couldn’t yet name.From that foundation, Dalia went on to combine her love of faith with a talent for data. As executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co‑author of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, she helped bring rigorous polling and analysis to a conversation too often driven by fear and speculation. Today, as head of Mogahed Consulting and a scholar with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, she advises governments, media, and corporations on Muslim communities and religion in public life—work that has taken her from the Obama White House to testimony before the U.S. Senate and countless media appearances.In this episode, she and Wade return to her story as a lens on bigger questions: how American Muslims actually see themselves; why it matters that Islam has a long history of coexistence with Jews and Christians; how policies, prejudice, and global events have shaped Muslim experience in the U.S.; and what it means, in Islam, to surrender to God’s will while engaging fully in a democratic, pluralistic society. Throughout, Dalia brings the same combination of personal warmth, scholarly depth, and moral clarity that has made her one of the most trusted voices on these issues.For listeners confused by headlines, curious about their Muslim neighbors, or wrestling with how faith fits into a divided public square, this conversation offers something rare: careful facts, lived experience, and a vision of pluralism rooted not in vague tolerance, but in genuine understanding and shared responsibility before God.

Most people hear “Christianity” and think of their own congregation, country, or a handful of familiar headlines. Gina Zurlo spends her days looking at the whole picture. A Senior Researcher and Lecturer in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, editor of the World Christian Database, and co‑editor of the third edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia (which she personally presented to Pope Francis), she tracks how religious and non‑religious affiliation is changing in every country on earth—past, present, and projected into the future.In this episode, Gina pulls back the curtain on how that work is done. She describes what it means to maintain a database that follows nearly every world religion and tens of thousands of Christian denominations, why she might be working on Burkina Faso one day and Brazil the next, and how raw numbers get turned into a coherent story. Along the way, she tackles common misunderstandings about “the rise of the non‑religious,” the shifting center of gravity of Christianity toward the Global South, and the surprisingly important role that gender plays in global religious life.One of Gina’s central passions is what she calls the “female future” of faith—the fact that women make up the majority of Christian believers worldwide, yet are often underrepresented in leadership and in how we tell the story of the church. Drawing on her background in history, sociology, and demography, she explains why paying attention to women’s religious lives is key to understanding where Christianity is actually headed. Throughout the conversation, she keeps bringing the data back to everyday questions: What does this mean for local churches? For mission and evangelism? For how believers relate to their secular neighbors?For anyone curious about what Christianity really looks like beyond their own country—or wondering how numbers and faith can speak to each other without flattening the mystery—this episode offers a clear, accessible guide. Gina’s work invites listeners to see global Christianity as a living, changing mosaic—and to consider their own place within it.

Many people are raised on a simple script: work hard, get a stable job, stay loyal to one institution, and security will follow. For Lela Tuhtan, that script shaped her early life and career—and then became the very story she had to unlearn. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by second‑generation immigrant parents—an electrician father and a teacher mother—she grew up in a home where diligence, sacrifice, and external security were non‑negotiables. You found a job, ideally in a union, and you stayed. That was the American dream.Yet even as those values took root, something else was happening. At ten, Lela was hit head‑on by a car while riding her bike. She survived with a fractured skull, broken bones, and months of rehab. When she finally returned to school, she was met not with compassion but mockery; classmates held up the newspaper photo of her injured face and called her ugly. In that moment, Lela describes feeling a physical fork in the road: she could let their words become her identity, or she could transmute the pain into something else. Without having the language for it yet, she chose to “compost” the trauma—turning it into the raw material for resilience and a different kind of self‑story.For years, she still followed the expected path, earning degrees (including a master’s from Columbia), teaching in classrooms, and pursuing the kind of career her parents could easily understand. But around 2018–2019, right before COVID, a quiet dissonance grew too loud to ignore. Training in Co‑Active Coaching and eco‑psychology opened her eyes to a different way of working—one that honored her love for literature, story, and the inner lives of people. She began coaching other educators and high‑impact professionals, realizing she was, as she puts it, the “black sheep” in her family: wired not for one institution and a retirement watch, but for entrepreneurial, narrative‑driven work that helps others reclaim their own agency.In this episode, Lela and Wade explore what it means to move from survival‑based scripts to sovereignty—without abandoning community or responsibility. They talk about how stories we inherit about safety, success, and belonging can quietly imprison us, why so many people have outsourced security to institutions that no longer feel trustworthy, and how practices as simple as gardening—literally getting your hands in the soil—can reconnect a person to their own capacity, creativity, and interdependence with others. Lela shares practical examples from her coaching: how she helps clients notice the “second arrow” of self‑judgment after hardship, reframe limiting beliefs, and build lives and businesses that are both aligned and generous, rooted in mutual support rather than isolation.For anyone sensing that the life they’re living doesn’t match who they really are—or who feels torn between the stability their family prized and the freedom their soul longs for—this conversation offers both clarity and encouragement. Lela’s story is a living illustration that you can honor where you come from, compost what has harmed you, and still grow into a life that feels deeply, authentically your own.

Abdu Murray grew up certain Islam was true. The son of Lebanese immigrants in southeast Michigan, he was raised in a serious Shia Muslim home where faith wasn’t just cultural; it shaped his identity and his arguments. From an early age he absorbed both apologetics (why Islam is true) and polemics (why Christianity is false), and in 1980s–90s America—when it was fashionable to call yourself “Christian” with little thought—he found Christians easy targets. He would ask classmates why they were Christians and usually got answers like “tradition” or “we go to church on Christmas and Easter.” For Abdu, that wasn’t good enough. “Why,” he’d ask, “would you trust the destiny of your eternal soul to a system of belief someone else thought through?”Underneath the jock exterior (a 6'7"" athlete who played Division I basketball and trained in martial arts), Abdu was a natural advocate. He loved philosophy, logic, and evidence, studied psychology in college, and later earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. Questions about truth weren’t abstract; they were everything. He believed that what is true excludes its opposite, and that relativism—“what’s true for you is true for you, what’s true for me is true for me”—simply didn’t work. Islam, he thought, was that truth, and Christianity was a corrupted, lower‑grade version of original revelation. Like many Muslims, he saw Islam as “college” to Judaism’s “grade school” and Christianity’s “high school.”In this episode, Abdu tells the story of how that certainty was slowly unsettled. What began as an effort to “knock over” other people’s faiths turned into a nearly decade‑long investigation of Christianity’s historical, philosophical, theological, and scientific claims. Along the way he had to grapple with uncomfortable questions: Why does the Qur’an speak positively about the Torah and the Gospel in the present tense, yet deny the central claims those texts make about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection? If Jesus didn’t die on a cross and rise from the dead, what do His own words about giving His life “as a ransom for many” mean? Is Christianity really a regression from pure monotheism—or the fulfillment of the story the Hebrew Scriptures have been telling from the beginning?Abdu describes the moment he realized the faith he was trying so hard not to have was the one he desperately needed—that the Trinity, the incarnation, and the cross were not insults to God’s greatness but the clearest demonstrations of it. He also talks about how his twin loves—understanding how people think (psychology) and how to marshal evidence (law)—shaped his calling as a Christian apologist and evangelist. Now president of Embrace the Truth and author of books like Saving Truth, More Than a White Man’s Religion, and his latest, Fake ID: How A.I. and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality—And What to Do About It, he spends his life helping people see that questions need more than slogans, and that real freedom requires real truth.The conversation ranges from Islam and Christianity’s different views of revelation, to how identity politics and artificial intelligence are distorting our sense of what’s real, to why arguments should always be aimed at people, not just positions. For anyone wrestling with doubt, curious about Islam and Christianity, or simply feeling disoriented in a world where reality itself seems up for grabs, this episode offers both intellectual rigor and pastoral warmth—an invitation to test the big claims and, in the process, meet the One who calls Himself “the way, the truth, and the life.

From the outside, Steve Rotermund checked all the Christian boxes. He’d gone from a powerful Promise Keepers experience to volunteering, sensing a call to ministry, and eventually stepping into pastoral leadership. He served as a children’s pastor over 150 kids, directed Awana and Celebrate Recovery, planted a church, and even hosted a radio ministry. But behind the scenes, a different story was unfolding: a marriage shaken by his wife’s secret addiction to pain medication, a home full of fear and shame, and a deep anger at God for not “fixing” her while Steve worked full-time for Him.In this episode, Steve goes back further—to the soil all of that grew out of. He describes a childhood dominated by abandonment and trauma: a mother who left when he was four and disappeared until he was eighteen, a father who cycled in and out of alcoholism and told him he’d never amount to anything, and sexual abuse at age six that he carried in silence into his forties. Those early wounds left him convinced he was fundamentally unworthy, even as he “sold Jesus” to others from the pulpit. Ministry became a stage where codependency thrived: needing to be needed, feeling important, and trying desperately to control what was broken at home.When his wife began passing out on the front row of church, the shame and exhaustion finally broke him. Steve handed his congregation to another pastor, walked away from ministry, and walked away from God. The next two years were, as he puts it, “hell”—a codependent husband trying to fix an addict he couldn’t control. A trusted friend finally pushed him to see a Christian counselor. Within fifteen minutes of their first session, the counselor told him, “You’re part of the problem.” That blunt diagnosis of codependency—and the later challenge to move from “adopted son tolerated by God” to full sonship in Christ—became the turning point.Steve describes how, through years of counseling and a fresh encounter with John 14:20 (“I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”), his identity shifted from shame and performance to union with Jesus. The journey wasn’t neat: he still had to make the painful decision to divorce in order to protect his kids, rebuild his own life, and slowly reengage with church. But out of that wreckage came a renewed call to ministry and the birth of Walk Right Ministries—a Christ-centered 12-step recovery community where he now walks with others through trauma, addiction, and codependency. His book, God’s Imperfect Plan—Is Perfect, invites readers to see that God can weave purpose even through what feels like failure.For anyone carrying hidden wounds, trapped in someone else’s addiction, or burned out on a version of faith built on performance and control, this conversation offers both honesty and real hope. Steve’s story is a living reminder that God doesn’t just rescue us from our circumstances; He meets us in them, heals the heart beneath the behavior, and invites us into a freedom where our worth is no longer on trial.

Most conversations about peace stay either abstract and idealistic, or narrowly focused on the latest crisis. Robert Atkinson’s work refuses that split. An award‑winning author, developmental psychologist, and pioneer in life storytelling, he has spent decades helping people understand their own journeys as part of a much larger story — one in which human oneness is not a wishful slogan, but the deeper reality we are slowly waking up to. In The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace, he brings that vision into sharp focus, asking what kind of religion and spirituality our time truly requires.In this episode, Robert explains how the original sense of religio — to bind together — offers a corrective to the fragmented way faith often functions today. Drawing on themes from The Story of Our Time and A New Story of Wholeness, he outlines a “way of knowing, being, and doing” in which religion, spirituality, social action, community building, and peacebuilding are not separate projects but facets of the same calling. Unity, in his view, must be cultivated on multiple levels: within the self, between people and communities, and across nations — especially in moments of acute tension, like the current conflicts in the Middle East.Robert also shares how his work with initiatives such as One Planet Peace Forum and StoryCommons, and his involvement with the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, have convinced him that we are living through a critical transition point. Old stories of separation are breaking down, while new, more inclusive narratives are emerging — if we are willing to embrace them. Throughout the conversation, he invites listeners to see their own lives as threads in a much larger tapestry of oneness and responsibility, and to consider what it might mean to practice a “religion for our time” that truly binds rather than divides.For anyone wrestling with polarization, longing for a faith that heals instead of harms, or simply trying to locate their personal story within a hopeful future, this episode offers a thoughtful, grounded guide into the way of unity.

Some dads pass on a lifetime of memories; John Fela’s father handed him two words: “Don’t panic.” Growing up on the north side of Chicago in a stereotypical blue‑collar Catholic home—with a truck‑driver dad who drank every day and a mom holding the family together—John watched a man he loved slowly check out of his own life, yet still show up for work and provide. As a teenager, he wrote his father off as “a drunken fool,” only to realize years later that those two words would become some of the best advice he’d ever received—especially once he became the dad of a son with severe autism.In this episode, John traces how his parents’ messy faithfulness gave him the fortitude he needed for his own journey. He talks candidly about growing up around alcoholism, late‑night medical crises, and parents who could stay strangely calm when everything was on the line. Those experiences, he says, trained him to handle big emergencies even if the “little things” still get under his skin. When his son Chris was born and later diagnosed with nonverbal autism, that training—and a later‑in‑life encounter with Christ—shaped how he chose to show up: not panicking, not walking away, but learning to love and advocate with persistence.Out of that has come John’s work as a “Swiss Army knife of disability advocacy,” with a Master’s in Education, years in the classroom, and national advocacy roles, including time with Joni and Friends. Drawing from his book Faith Like My Father, he shares what he’s learned about co‑parenting after divorce, supporting special‑needs families in the church, and helping dads move beyond shame or helplessness into real engagement with their kids. Through it all, he circles back to a simple conviction: you don’t give up on the people you love—and you learn to trust a Father whose plan is bigger than your pain.For parents raising kids with disabilities, pastors wondering how to do more than “mention inclusion,” or anyone still sorting out a complicated relationship with their own dad, this conversation offers honesty, hard‑won wisdom, and hope grounded in a God who never panics and never walks away.

Healthcare conversations easily drift into policy, budgets, and systems. Constantine “Kosti” Psimopoulos insists the place to begin is with a wounded traveler on the side of the road. An Orthodox Christian, Harvard‑trained kinesiologist, and bioethicist, Kosti works at the intersection of medicine, spirituality, disability, and ethics—shaping training for scientists and clinicians at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and directing the Division of Bioethics at the Orthodox Academy of Crete. For him, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is not just a Sunday‑school story; it’s a template for reimagining what medicine and public health are for.In this episode, Kosti unpacks why that parable is, in his words, “the crux of all medicine and healthcare.” Jesus answers the question “Who is my neighbor?” by centering the one who stops, sees, and attends to the injured man’s full humanity—body and soul—at personal cost. Kosti contrasts this with modern tendencies to reduce patients to data points, time slots, or cost–effectiveness calculations. Drawing on the legacy of his mentor, the late Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners In Health, he argues that any ethic of care that does not begin with the person in front of us—especially the poorest and most vulnerable—is already off course, no matter how efficient it looks on paper.From there, the conversation widens to global questions of access, AI in medicine, and how disability justice reshapes the way we think about “flourishing.” As a disability advocate and director on the board of the Harvard Alumni Disability Alliance, Kosti emphasizes the principle “nothing about us without us,” insisting that those most affected by medical and technological decisions must have a voice in shaping them. Throughout, he returns to a simple, demanding conviction: if every human being is created in the image (and, in Orthodox language, called to the likeness) of God, then bioethics cannot remain an abstract discipline. It must become a lived, hopeful vision of care that honors dignity, resists dehumanizing systems, and takes seriously Jesus’ call to love our neighbor—whoever is in front of us—well.

Before she held titles like “executive director,” “chair,” or “professor,” Najeeba Syeed was a little Muslim girl on a school bus in southern Indiana whose family simply needed halal meat. Her father, a grad student at Indiana University, struck up an unlikely partnership with her Christian bus driver, Mrs. Anderson, who invited him to her farm so he could perform ritual slaughter in line with Islamic dietary law. For Najeeba, that story has become a lens on what real interfaith life often looks like: not lofty dialogue in conference halls, but neighbors quietly meeting each other’s needs out of ordinary kindness.In this episode, Najeeba traces the deeper roots of her peacemaking vocation—from being naturalized as an American and raised to see this country as a place “welcoming to all religions,” to the first time she returned to Kashmir as a teenager. Stepping off the plane in Srinagar, she wept as she recognized her mother’s features in a relative’s arms for the first time—only to notice, moments later, armed soldiers posted every few dozen feet along the road. Confronted with the beauty of belonging and the reality of militarized conflict, she found herself praying that her Muslim faith would make her an agent of peace. That prayer eventually led her to choose a Quaker college, drawn by a tradition known for its consistent witness against violence and its role in movements for abolition, human rights, and reconciliation.From there, Najeeba’s path has woven together scholarship, mediation, and grassroots practice. As a professor and as the inaugural El‑Hibri Endowed Chair and Executive Director of Interfaith at Augsburg University, she has designed and led initiatives that reduce school violence, address interracial and gang conflict, and strengthen Muslim–Christian partnerships. Yet throughout the conversation, she keeps returning to the same core: neighborliness, courageous listening, and a refusal to let any one community’s story stand alone. For listeners weary of polarization but unsure what peacemaking looks like beyond slogans, this episode offers a grounded, hopeful picture of justice‑rooted interfaith work—born not in theory, but in the everyday crossings of real lives.

For many Christians, Purim is a minor feast attached to a familiar children’s story about Esther. For Jennifer Rosner—and for Jewish communities around the world this year—it became something far more immediate. As Jews read again about a plot to annihilate their people in ancient Persia, they did so while watching breaking news from modern‑day Iran: the Ayatollah, a declared enemy of Israel, killed just days before the holiday. The overlap was hard to ignore. Jen, a theologian who has spent years studying and teaching at the intersection of Judaism and Christianity, helps make sense of that convergence.In this episode, she walks through the story of Esther as Jews experience it: not only as history, but as a pattern of threat, vulnerability, and unexpected deliverance that has replayed across centuries. She explains how Purim invites Jews to “remember and relive” God’s hidden work on their behalf—and why, this year, many saw eerie parallels between Haman’s ancient plot in Persia and the rhetoric and ambitions of modern leaders in the same region. From there, Jen widens the lens, showing how these connections highlight the ongoing relationship between the Jewish people, the state of Israel, and the Christian church watching from a distance, often with incomplete understanding.Drawing on her time living in Jerusalem and her work in both seminaries and Messianic Jewish contexts, Jen invites Christians to recover the Jewish roots of their own faith and to read Scripture with fresh attentiveness to Israel’s story. Rather than reducing current events to simple fulfillments of prophecy or ideological talking points, she encourages listeners to see them through the lived experience of a people whose holidays, like Purim, sit at the intersection of memory, identity, and survival. For anyone trying to connect the Bible’s ancient narratives with today’s headlines—and to understand how Jews and Christians might move toward deeper dialogue and reconciliation—this conversation offers nuance, humility, and a grounded, Jewish‑aware perspective.

Dan Nichols has lived both sides of the modern church story. On one hand, he planted Restored Church in Wilkes‑Barre, PA from the ground up, started the Northeast Leadership Summit, and launched the Northeast Collaborative to equip churches across a region often described as “spiritually hard soil.” On the other, he now serves as pastor of Grace Christian Fellowship in Cortland, NY—a 225‑year‑old church founded when Thomas Jefferson was president. Moving from entrepreneurial church planting to shepherding a historic congregation has given him a rare view of how Jesus can stay at the center across wildly different eras and expectations.In this episode, Dan talks about that journey and the deeper story underneath it: his family’s walk through their son Landon’s life‑threatening heart condition. Landon has now survived three open‑heart surgeries, and through those years Dan and his wife Joy learned, in their words, that “God’s grace is never premature”—it arrives exactly when it is needed, even if it doesn’t come early or in the ways they would choose. When Landon later began wrestling with his own faith at just eight years old, asking honest questions about God, Scripture, and what he truly believed, those conversations became the seed of the Making Scripture Simple series—books designed to help upper‑elementary kids understand the Bible for themselves.Dan shares how that project, together with his “hope dealer” work through preaching, podcasting, and networking, flows from a single desire: to point people to Jesus and make God’s Word clear, not complicated. He speaks candidly about ministry, marriage, parenting through pain, and following Jesus in a changing church landscape—where historic institutions and new plants alike are being called back to the same center. For anyone spending Easter in a place of questions, transition, or quiet discouragement, this conversation offers a grounded reminder that the risen Christ still meets people on the road—and that Scripture, handled simply and honestly, can be a living guide for children and adults alike.

What happens when the life you built around love, faith, and routine suddenly falls apart—and the country outside your front door feels just as fractured? In The Salt and Light Express, Lee Ann Walling follows an older woman who sets out alone in a small RV after the death of her long‑time partner. The journey takes her through the physical landscape of a divided America and the inner terrain of grief, anger, and spiritual disorientation. Along the way, she revisits Episcopal congregations from her past, lands in the hill country of Texas with an evangelical family unsure she should even be a Christian, and finds herself unexpectedly in conversation with a Baptist preacher whose kindness doesn’t fit her assumptions.In this episode, Lee Ann shares how the novel emerged during her MFA program at Drexel—nothing like the book she first imagined, yet deeply rooted in her own path through Methodism, Baptism, atheism, and an eventual home in the Episcopal Church. She describes her protagonist’s sharp, sometimes elitist judgments softening as she encounters ordinary people who complicate the culture‑war caricatures: a pastor willing to risk his position by preaching from Matthew 22 about loving God and neighbor in a hostile climate, relatives who wound and yet reveal their own fears, and strangers whose small acts of grace reopen the possibility of faith. Threaded through is a quiet attempt to strip religion back to “the teachings of Jesus” and ask what a simple, lived‑out faith might look like for someone who has lost trust in institutions but still longs for God.More than a theological treatise, The Salt and Light Express is a road story, a love story, and a meditation on aging, loneliness, and belonging. For readers and listeners—older women, spiritual seekers, LGBTQ believers, or anyone who has gone “to look for America” and found more division than unity—this conversation offers a tender, honest look at how stories can help us keep traveling toward meaning, reconciliation, and a faith that is both humble and real.

For many believers, “church” has become the measure of spiritual life: the services attended, the prayers repeated, the doctrines affirmed. Don Britton’s story cuts across that assumption. After decades as a businessman and church‑going Christian, his life fell apart when adultery led to the end of his second marriage. Broken and out of answers, he turned to God not for another religious routine, but with a desperate question: what does Scripture actually require of me? That search led him and his wife into nearly half a century of intensive Bible study outside denominational structures, and eventually to his books The Great Deception of American Christianity Without Christ and Quit Church, Now What?In this episode, Don lays out the core concerns that emerged from that long journey. He challenges popular teachings around “worship services” that never become a way of life, a sinner’s prayer that appears nowhere in Scripture, and a view of grace that erases any call to works of righteousness. Most urgently, he warns against the comfort of unconditional eternal security in the face of a Bible filled with conditions and warnings about the narrow way. Yet behind the strong language is not a desire to condemn, but to invite: away from borrowed assurance and toward a personal, intimate, wholehearted relationship with God that brings real peace and hope.The conversation is frank and sobering, but also deeply focused on love—God’s love for people, and the love that leads to repentance, self‑denial, and genuine discipleship. For anyone uneasy with “easy believism” or sensing a gap between church culture and Jesus’ own words about sin and salvation, this episode offers a serious, scripture‑saturated call to return to Christ Himself.