Explore every episode of the podcast Formation with John Ortberg
Dive into the complete episode list for Formation with John Ortberg. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Title
Pub. Date
Duration
FN001. John Ortberg on Transcendence, the Loss of Enchantment, and Curiosity About God | Tyler Staton
14 Oct 2026
00:40:39
How are we to remain curious about God? John Ortberg and Jackson Lane return to Formation’s debut conversation with Tyler Staton for the first installment of Footnotes, a new post-show where we get to examine John’s thoughts after each episode.
Tyler’s sincerity in Formation episode 001 led John to examine his own life: his relationship with humor, transcendence, and even marriage. Listen for a conversation about keeping wonder alive, what marriage reveals in us, and bringing our real desires and doubts to God.
About this Footnotes Episode:
Footnotes is Formation’s post-show, where John and Jackson revisit the ideas and questions raised in the main podcast. FN001 follows How God Gets Our Attention & the Pace of Formation ft. Tyler Staton | EP001 and includes excerpts from that conversation. Tyler’s reflections provide the starting point; John and Jackson explore what stayed with them and where those ideas lead in ordinary life.
What this Conversation Explores:
How learning can become worship, and why knowing the expected answers about God can crowd out curiosity, openness, and wonder
What Tyler’s black bear encounter reveals about transcendence, and why John connects the loss of that sense of reality with a deeper loss of meaning
Dallas Willard’s understanding of a word as a spiritual entity, and how language allows us to share meaning even when we struggle to name what we experience
Why marriage exposes withdrawal, anger, and defensiveness that other relationships may not, and what John wishes he had learned sooner about serving
The difference between surrendering to God and making ourselves appear more surrendered than we are, especially when a prayer carries disappointment or doubt
Eleanor Stump’s concept of “willed loneliness,” and how avoiding the work of self-awareness can keep us from the connection we want with God and other people
Resources Mentioned:
Loving God with All Your Mind — Neal Plantinga
Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis
A Secular Age — Charles Taylor
Hearing God — Dallas Willard
Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering — Eleanor Stump
Related Episode:
How God Gets Our Attention & the Pace of Formation ft. Tyler Staton | EP001
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped.
Connect with Formation:
Website: www.formationpodcast.com
Newsletter: www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe
Socials: @formationjohn
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
012. The Apple Store Creator on Why the Most Important Thing You Bring to Work Is You ft. Ron Johnson
30 Sep 2026
01:18:08
What if the most important thing you bring to work isn’t your résumé, your expertise, or even your ideas?
Ron Johnson helped transform Target, built the Apple Store alongside Steve Jobs, and later became CEO of JCPenney. Across a career spent reimagining some of the biggest names in retail, he came to believe that your most important contribution at work is something no résumé can capture: your inner voice. It’s the perspective you discover when you get still enough to realize what you actually believe.
In this conversation with John Ortberg, Ron talks about learning to hear that voice beneath all the others, what Steve Jobs taught him about honesty, and how success can make it harder to recognize what is actually driving you. He also reflects on the failure at JCPenney, the question his father asked that he couldn’t shake, and the words from Psalm 23 that met him in a season of isolation.
AMA OPPORTUNITY:
Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com.
One question per person, screenshot required.
WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES:
• Why Ron believes the most important thing you bring to work is your inner voice
• What Steve Jobs taught Ron about telling the truth as a form of kindness
• Why solitude matters when you’re trying to hear what you actually believe beneath all the voices around you
• How a garden changed the way Ron thought about leading people and helping them flourish
• The three-hour interview with Steve Jobs that changed the course of Ron’s life and eventually led to the Apple Store
• The ideas behind the Genius Bar and the Fifth Avenue Apple Store that never sleeps
• Why Ron left Apple for JCPenney, and the question his father asked him: “How much success do you need?”
• How failure, isolation, and “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” changed Ron’s relationship with ambition
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
• Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius — Ron Johnson and Zander Nethercutt
• A Return to Love — Marianne Williamson
• The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace — M. Scott Peck
• When We Are Seen: How to Come Into Your Power–and Empower Others Along the Way — Denise Young
• My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir — Lewis Smedes
ABOUT FORMATION:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
CONNECT WITH FORMATION:
Website: www.formationpodcast.com
Newsletter: www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe
Socials: @formationjohn
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we’d be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
011. This Ancient Creed Can Rescue Us From Spiritual Homelessness ft. Glenn Packiam | 011
16 Sep 2026
01:15:55
This year the Nicene Creed turns 1,700 years old, and Glenn Packiam thinks it might be the most important thing the modern church has forgotten how to use. In this conversation, John and Glenn talk about the difference between hope and comfort, how the ancient world considered hope a weakness, and why the Creed's insistence on saying "we believe" instead of "I believe" might be the most countercultural thing a Christian can do today.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Glenn Packiam is the Lead Pastor of Rockharbor Church in Costa Mesa, California, and a Senior Fellow at Barna Group. He is the author of several books, including his newest, What's a Christian, Anyway?, which explores how the Nicene Creed can guide a confused and fractured church back home.Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES
Why the ancient Stoics considered hope a moral weakness, and why the resurrection flips that on its headThe difference between hope and comfort, and why John and Glenn think the church has confused the twoWhat the boat metaphor for faith reveals about setting down your oars without losing your place in the crewWhy the Creed says "we believe" instead of "I believe," and what that costs a culture built around personal validationWhy only 48 percent of people say they trust pastors, and how Glenn thinks the church should respondThe King Charles coronation story that reframes what it means to swear allegiance to JesusWhy "deconstruction" isn't really about doctrine, but about a whole story and communityGlenn's answer to the question, "What does Jesus see about the church that you don't?"
RESOURCES MENTIONED
What’s a Christian, Anyway? — Glenn Packiam
This Is Not the End — Glenn Packiam
The Intentional Year — Glenn and Holly Packiam
The Intentional Year Journal — Glenn and Holly Packiam
The Divine Conspiracy — Dallas Willard
The Denial of Death — Ernest Becker
Reflections on the Psalms — C. S. Lewis
Salvation by Allegiance Alone — Matthew Bates
Tell It Slant — Eugene Peterson
On Bullshit — Harry Frankfurt
The Adult Hope Scale — C. R. Snyder
CONNECT WITH GLENN glennpackiam.com
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Formation at formationpodcast.com and @formationjohn.Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
010. A Systems Theory Expert on the Anxiety Running Your Team ft. Steve Cuss
02 Sep 2026
01:33:29
What happens when the person managing everyone else's anxiety is the most anxious one in the room?
Steve Cuss joins John for a conversation that starts in a childhood home in Western Australia and ends up inside the emotional wiring of every leader, marriage, and church staff meeting. Steve talks candidly about growing up in a household run by unpredictable anger, the confidence he built on a foundation of fear, and the hospital chaplaincy that stripped all of it away.
What emerges is a working theology of anxiety: how false needs hijack good intentions, how reactivity spreads through a room sometimes before it's even known, and why the most important thing any leader can offer their people is a well self.
What this conversation explores
• How Steve's childhood shaped a lifelong pattern of enmeshment, and how confidence can be built entirely on top of fear • What hospital chaplaincy taught Steve about false needs, and why the ones that feel most real in the moment are the most dangerous • The difference between reactivity and response, and how to take your own pulse before walking into a hard room • Edwin Friedman's idea of a differentiated self, and what it looks like to be close to someone without absorbing their anxiety • Why every false need has its own gospel, and why none of them can ever deliver freedom, peace, or love • How churches and leaders can offer differentiation instead of certainty in a polarized culture • Why Steve calls a well self the greatest gift any Christian leader can offer
Resources mentioned
• Managing Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss • The Expectation Gap by Steve Cuss • A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman • Thomas Wingfold, Curate by George MacDonald • Formation Podcast episode with Gary Haugen, referenced by Steve as a formative conversation
About Steve Cuss
Steve Cuss is a pastor and the founder of Capable Life, where he trains leaders to manage stress and improve relationships. He is also the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and The Expectation Gap.
https://stevecusswords.com
AMA opportunity
Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person, screenshot required.
About Formation
Formation explores the science and soul of spiritual formation, bringing together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week.
https://formationpodcast.com
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
AMA01. Predestination, Soul Care, Navigating Church Hurt, and Healing Childhood Wounds
19 Aug 2026
00:40:52
Since Formation launched, we've talked about giving our listeners the chance to have their questions answered by John. This is that episode. No guest this time, just John and Creative Director, Jackson, working through the questions you sent in when you left a review, on everything from predestination to spiritual abuse to what AI is doing to his own attention span.
Want your question answered for the next one? Leave us a review for a chance to ask John anything about spiritual formation or life with God. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES
How John reconciles predestination in Romans and Ephesians with passages that affirm God's desire for all to be saved
Why God's omniscience doesn't mean God always chooses to know everything, and what that has to do with honoring our agency
What historic Christian writers understood about the unconscious mind long before Freud made it popular
Why the language of "spiritual formation" replaced "Christian education," and what that shift says about how people actually change
The anxiety John has noticed in himself as AI makes more and more instantly possible
What spiritual abuse actually looks like, and the difference between confession as a healthy spiritual practice and confession used as a tool of coercion
How to keep trusting God when you can't control what happens to the people you love most
John's advice for Christians who feel politically alienated from their own church
Why John believes the local church and parachurch ministries cannot survive without each other
A first look at John's next book, on living beyond a culture of contempt
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Dynamics of Spiritual Formation, Richard Lovelace
Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke
The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Agnes Sanford
Leanne Payne
Tyler VanderWeele and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Formation at formationpodcast.com and @formationjohn.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
009. Everything You Need to Know About the Next Generation ft. Kara Powell
05 Aug 2026
01:21:19
About the Guest
Kara Powell leads the Fuller Youth Institute as its Executive Director, where for more than twenty years her team has tracked how young people are changing across three generational cohorts, from Millennials to Gen Z to Gen Alpha. She holds a PhD in Practical Theology and has helped shape some of the most widely used research on the next generation.
AMA Opportunity
Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person, screenshot required.
What This Conversation Explores
What has mostly stayed the same about young people across two decades of research, and what's vastly different
What Gen Alpha needs from adults, and how their faith formation is taking shape
Whether the data points to a genuine revival among young people, or something more nuanced
Screen time and what it’s doing to our kids
Whether teens today take fewer risks than past generations
What kind of intergenerational relationships Gen Alpha is actually looking for and how they’re a benefit to all
How to have more formative conversations with the young people in your life (and the scripts to get you there)
What it's like to study faith formation for a living, and how it has shaped Kara's own spiritual life
Whether some of the anxiety adults feel about this generation is really about the adults' own viewpoints
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Connect with Formation
formationpodcast.com @formationjohn
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
008. As the World Gets More Synthetic, the Church Must Get More Human ft. Carey Nieuwhof
22 Jul 2026
01:16:21
In this episode of Formation, John Ortberg sits down with Carey Nieuwhof to talk leadership, fame, faith, and what it means for the church to stay human as the world turns synthetic.
Carey Nieuwhof has spent the last decade in a chair few people occupy: hundreds of conversations a year with pastors, CEOs, authors, and public thinkers, watching up close what success does to a person's character. In this conversation with John Ortberg, recorded in the redwoods of Northern California, that vantage point turns into something more personal, a wide-ranging talk about leadership, fame, faith, and the strange new terrain of artificial intelligence.
The two friends trade stories before they trade ideas: a Wendell Berry "fan email" that turned out to be an AI scam, the surreal experience of gifting Scott Galloway a Bible after an emotional conversation about faith, and what it was like for Carey to sit across from Tim Keller weeks before the world shut down in 2020. From there the conversation opens into Carey's real preoccupations: why dogmatism is usually fear in disguise, why nobody at the top actually has it figured out, and why he worries that platforms now grow faster than character can keep up.
The back half is Carey's sharpest territory: the book he's been living inside for two years, on AI and the church. He lays out both the utopian and the dystopian cases, from cured diseases to a possible "white-collar bloodbath," and lands on a single, disarming thesis. As the world becomes more synthetic, the church's job gets simpler, not harder. It has to become more human. Along the way, he and John wrestle with AI companionship, AI grief, and what happens to resurrection, prayer, and preaching when a chatbot never has a bad day and never runs out of answers.
Resources Mentioned
Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Range by David Epstein
The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway
Tides of Mind by David Gelernter
If Anyone Builds This, Everyone Dies (on artificial superintelligence risk)
Her (2013, dir. Spike Jonze), the AI-companionship film Carey calls prescient
Sermon Central, the sermon-sharing platform discussed in the context of AI-era plagiarism
About Carey Nieuwhof Carey Nieuwhof is a former lawyer and pastor who now hosts one of the most-downloaded leadership podcasts for church leaders, with over 800 episodes and 40 million-plus downloads. He is writing a forthcoming book on AI and the church.
Formation is hosted by John Ortberg. New episodes at https://www.formationpodcast.com
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
007. Quadriplegia, Despair, and Learning to Truly Live ft. Joni Eareckson Tada
08 Jul 2026
01:13:37
Joni Eareckson Tada became a quadriplegic at seventeen after a diving accident that severed her spinal cord. In the nearly six decades since, she has written dozens of books, founded a global disability ministry, survived two bouts of cancer, and woken up every single morning asking Jesus to get her through the day.
This is a conversation about what it means to receive suffering with both hands: the anger, the prayers that didn't get answered the way she hoped, the agony, and what gets faithfully built through it all.
About the Guest
Joni Eareckson Tada became a quadriplegic at seventeen after a diving accident that severed her spinal cord. In the decades since, she has become one of the most recognized voices on suffering, disability, and faith in the world. She is the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends, a global ministry serving people with disabilities in over 100 countries. Her memoir, Joni, has sold more than five million copies. She is an artist, author, and speaker who has shared platforms with Billy Graham and appeared on programs from the Today Show to venues around the world. She and her husband, Ken, live in California.
AMA Opportunity:
Enter for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. All you need to do is follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to connect@becomenew.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
What This Conversation Explores
The diving accident, the hospital room, and the slow realization that nothing was going to change
What it took to move from wanting to die to learning to give thanks
A 17-year-old boy with a Bible and a verse from 1 Thessalonians and how he changed everything
How a passage in Mark 1 reframed what Jesus actually came to do
What Joni discovered about sin that she couldn't have learned on her feet
The prayer she prayed three months before her accident and what she makes of it now
What the cross has to do with finding God in suffering
Joni and Friends: wheelchairs, Bibles, and changing the disability culture of entire countries
Disability ministry as disability discipleship
Two bouts with cancer, a radiation machine named after Jael, and what it means to press into Christ
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)
006. A Silicon Valley Pastor on the Spiritual Cost of a Distracted Life ft. Jay Kim
24 Jun 2026
01:20:13
What does it take to find peace in a culture engineered for distraction? In this episode of Formation, John Ortberg sits down with a Silicon Valley pastor whose pursuit of attention, rest, and spiritual formation was interrupted by a panic attack — and reshaped by an ancient prayer practice, the problem with multitasking, and the rise of AI.
Jay Kim is a pastor, author, and podcaster who serves at WestGate Church in the heart of Silicon Valley. He's thought deeply about what it means to pursue spiritual formation in one of the most distracted, driven, and technologically saturated cultures in the world. And a few years ago, sitting in his car in a strip-mall parking lot after dropping his kids at school, a panic attack made all of that very personal.
That moment became an invitation to stop striving, to examine his life more honestly, and to rediscover an ancient practice that has become one of the most formative disciplines of his days. It's the heart of his latest book, The Pace of Peace, and the heart of this conversation.
A note for listeners: this episode includes a personal account of a panic attack and references to anxiety and mental health. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a mental health professional.
Also in This Episode
• Why the word "multitasking" was coined to sell mainframe computers • How the engineers building today's most advanced AI openly admit they don't actually know how it works • Why the ancient church called distraction demonic and why a Silicon Valley pastor thinks they were right
A Few Lines Worth Sitting With
"There is no multitasking human."
"I do not have my finger very accurately on the pulse of my inner life most of the time."
"Peace actually ushers you into the fray."
About Jay Kim
Jay Y. Kim is the lead pastor of WestGate Church in Silicon Valley, a Fuller Seminary graduate, and the author of Analog Church (winner of The Gospel Coalition's First-Time Author Award), Analog Christian, Listen, Listen, Speak, and his latest, The Pace of Peace — the book at the heart of this conversation. He hosts the Digital Examen podcast and co-hosts the ReGeneration Podcast. He has pastored for over 20 years, all in the Bay Area, and lives with his wife Jenny and their two young children.
Resources Mentioned
• Domestic Monastery — Ronald Rolheiser • Soul Feast — Marjorie Thompson • Letters by a Modern Mystic — Frank Laubach • Against the Machine — Paul Kingsnorth • Jonathan Haidt — research on social media and adolescent mental health • Gloria Mark — neuroscience research on multitasking and attention • Curt Thompson — work on shame and confession • Steve Cuss — Managing Leadership Anxiety and writing on pastoral anxiety • Rankin Wilbourne — Broom Tree ministry for pastors in difficulty • The Daily Examen — Ignatian spirituality • The hedonic treadmill — concept from Brickman & Campbell (1971)
About Formation
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Connect with Formation
www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe @formationjohn
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
005. The Hidden Spiritual Cost of How We Work ft. Gary Hamel
10 Jun 2026
01:25:02
What does it mean to treat people as ends in themselves rather than instruments to get things done? Gary Hamel joins John for a conversation about work, dignity, and the quiet crisis inside most organizations. One of the world's most influential business thinkers, Gary has spent decades asking why so few workplaces actually unleash the people inside them, and what it would look like if they did. This is a conversation about agency, meaning, and why the biblical vision of every human being made to reign with God has profound implications for how we build institutions.
About Gary Hamel
Gary Hamel is one of the world's most influential and iconoclastic business thinkers. He has worked with leading companies across the globe and is a dynamic and sought-after management speaker. Hamel has been on the faculty of the London Business School for more than 30 years and is the director of the Management Lab.
AMA Opportunity
Leave us a review ahead of our launch for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. Here's how: follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. We'll answer selected questions in a future episode. One question per person; screenshot required.
What this Conversation Explores
Why most organizations treat people as semi-programmable robots and what we stand to lose if we don't change that
The only three reasons someone actually needs to be managed, and why none of them require layers of hierarchy to solve
What a 16,000-person Dutch healthcare company with almost no managers can teach us about trust, accountability, and human potential
The biblical vision of dominion and kingdom, and why John argues it is the deepest possible framework for thinking about work and dignity
Why the question is not how to outperform your peers but how to outperform expectations, and what that shift does to a person over time
The four force multipliers Gary has observed in ordinary people who do extraordinary things: courage, contrarianism, community, and compassion
Dallas Willard's vision of job discipleship, and what it looks like to do your work together with Jesus rather than merely alongside him
How Gary thinks about faith, suffering, and the preponderance of evidence for belief in a world that has grown increasingly nihilistic
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
If this conversation gave you something to sit with, we would be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
004. How Politics Shapes Our Spiritual Formation ft. Michael Wear
20 May 2026
01:34:47
What does it look like to follow Jesus when the culture insists that everything depends on the next election? Michael Wear joins John for a conversation about politics, allegiance, and the slow work of keeping ultimate things ultimate. A former White House staffer who came to faith as a teenager in a Wegmans grocery store, Michael has spent his career arguing that Christian knowledge is not just privately meaningful but publicly useful, and that the church has handed political parties a power that was never theirs to hold. This is a conversation about anger, constituency, and why the word of God does not change every four years.
AMA Opportunity:
Leave us a review ahead of our launch for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. Follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to connect@becomenew.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
About Michael Wear:
Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, an organization he built around a 30-year vision to contend for the credibility of Christian resources for the public good. He previously served in the Obama White House, where as a young staffer he helped move the issue of human trafficking onto the president's agenda after connecting a senior advisor to the 60,000 students who had gathered at the Passion Conference in Atlanta to worship and give. He is also the author of Reclaiming Hope (2017). Michael came to faith as a teenager, shaped significantly by his sister's conversion and a conversation on the Romans road in the middle of a grocery store. He has said that coming to faith immediately raised a question for him: if this is true, what does it mean for the whole of life?
What this Conversation Explores:
What Michael means by "Christian knowledge" and why he insists it is publicly available, not merely privately held
Why Dallas Willard believed politics has a unique capacity to create a pseudo-reality, and what Christians lose when they forget it
The danger of going to politics to get spiritual needs met, and what it feels like when the results of an election shift the color of the sky
What MLK's famous quote about the law gets right and how both the left and the right misuse it
Why Christians should not be so quick to desire a constituency, and what it means to remember who sent them
Anger in political life: when it is signal, when it becomes sin, and the question every Christian should ask before indulging it
How politics is actually a healthy arena for spiritual formation, and why the person who cannot be kind in a political disagreement should ask where else they are rationalizing their way out
Resources Mentioned:
Reclaiming Hope — Michael Wear
Exuberance: The Passion for Life — Kay Redfield Jamison
About Formation: Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
003. Facing Humanity's Hidden Capacity for Evil ft. Gary Haugen
06 May 2026
01:18:12
What does it take to do hard things for a long time without being broken by them? Gary Haugen is the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, a global organization that protects the poor from violence throughout the developing world. He joins John for a conversation about evil, the human capacity for violence, and why the people most serious about changing the world may be the ones most in need of spiritual formation.
AMA Opportunity:
Leave us a review ahead of our launch for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. Follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to connect@becomenew.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
About Gary Haugen:
Gary Haugen is the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, which has secured the release of nearly 50,000 people from violence and forced labor across more than 30 countries. Before founding IJM, he directed the United Nations' genocide investigation in Rwanda in 1994. He is the author of The Locust Effect and Good News About Injustice.
What this Conversation Explores:
What Gary witnessed in Rwanda and what it revealed about the human capacity for evil and the reality of a fallen nature
The four conditions that open ordinary people to violence, and what this means for how we understand sin and formation
How IJM became a community of spiritual formation and what that looks like in an organization of 1,500 people
The practice Gary calls "prayerless striving" and the daily rhythms IJM built to resist it
What Dallas Willard's work on humility and careful reflection has meant for Gary's own formation
Resources Mentioned:
The Locust Effect — Gary Haugen
Good News About Injustice — Gary Haugen
Renovation of the Heart — Dallas Willard
Ordinary Men — Christopher Browning
Explaining Hitler — Ron Rosenbaum
International Justice Mission — ijm.org
About Formation:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
The conversation doesn't have to stop here.
Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
002. How to Read the Old Testament (and Still Have Faith) ft. Tremper Longman
22 Apr 2026
01:11:56
What do we do with a God who commands violence, permits slavery, and seems to change his mind? Tremper Longman III — one of the most prolific and trusted Old Testament scholars of his generation — joins John for a conversation about the parts of Scripture that trouble us most, and why sitting with that trouble might be more formative than explaining it away.
AMA Opportunity:
Leave us a review ahead of our launch for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. Here's how: follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to connect@becomenew.com. We'll answer selected questions in a future episode. One question per person; screenshot required.
About Tremper Longman III:
Tremper Longman III is Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Westmont College, and one of the most widely read Old Testament scholars in the evangelical world. He holds a PhD from Yale University and has written or edited more than 35 books — on Genesis, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the theology of God as warrior, among much else. He has served as a consultant on major Bible translation projects and scholarly initiatives including BioLogos, which explores the relationship between science and faith.
What this conversation explores:
Why the New Testament is nearly incomprehensible without the Old, and what we lose by skipping the first two-thirds of the story
How genre shapes the way we read Genesis: what it means that it is history, and what it doesn't mean, and why Augustine and Origen were already asking these questions long before Darwin
The five phases of God as divine warrior from the conquest narratives through the cross to the final judgment, and why that arc matters for how we hold the violence in Joshua
What honest scholarship looks like when the text still troubles you: Tremper names what he cannot yet resolve about the commanded destruction of women and children, without flinching and without fixing it
How the Psalms of lament (and Psalm 77 in particular) gave Tremper language for his own seasons of grief, confusion, and anger toward God
What the Old Testament actually says about Israel, chosenness, and the current conflict in the Middle East and why "Israel right or wrong" is a hermeneutical error
Resources Mentioned:
Confronting Old Testament Controversies — Tremper Longman III
Breaking the Idols of Your Heart — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
Bold Love — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
Cry of the Soul — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
Is God a Moral Monster? — Paul Copan
Jacob I Loved — Joel Kaminsky
The Late Great Planet Earth — Hal Lindsey
The Story of God Bible Commentary Series — Tremper Longman III & Scot McKnight
Texts in Context: The Old Testament (forthcoming) — Tremper Longman III
The Book of Job
About Formation:
Formation is a podcast produced by Become New that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Connect with Formation:
Website: [www.formationpodcast.com]
Newsletter: [www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe]
Socials: [@formationjohn]
The conversation doesn't have to stop here. Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually... one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
001. How God Gets Our Attention and the Pace of Formation ft. Tyler Staton
22 Apr 2026
01:18:27
What does it mean to know God, not as a doctrine held, but as a presence inhabited? Tyler Staton joins John for the first conversation in Formation's history: an unhurried exploration of how the Holy Spirit forms us, why prayer is less about technique than attention, and what it looks like to discover God not only in the sanctuary but in the chaos of a basketball sideline, a marriage, and a cancer diagnosis. This is a conversation about the ancient and the empirical, and how sometimes we may look for formation in all the wrong places.
AMA Opportunity
Leave us a review ahead of our launch for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. Here's how: follow the podcast, leave a review, take a screenshot, and email it with your question to connect@becomenew.com. We'll answer selected questions in a future episode. One question per person; screenshot required.
About Tyler Staton:
Tyler Staton is the lead pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon, and the national director of 24-7 Prayer USA. He is the author of two books — Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools and The Familiar Stranger — both of which take seriously the gap between what Christians say they believe about God and what they actually experience in daily life. Tyler studied at Southeastern University and has spent much of his ministry in New York and Portland, two cities that have sharpened his theology as much as any classroom.
What this conversation explores:
Why the Holy Spirit is the most neglected and most contested person of the Trinity and what a more integrated pneumatology might actually look like in ordinary life
Dallas Willard's "golden triangle" of spiritual formation: practices, movements of the Spirit, and suffering, and why removing any one of the three is detrimental
The difference between discernment and miracle-seeking, and why Tyler believes the deeper invitation of the Spirit is often hidden inside what we're most eager to escape
What it means to "find yourself in the story" — Tyler's practice of praying through Scripture in seasons of doubt, loss, and confusion
How family life and marriage in particular function as formation's most honest classroom
Resources mentioned:
Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools — Tyler Staton
The Familiar Stranger — Tyler Staton
Renovation of the Heart — Dallas Willard
Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired and Empowered Life — Jack Levison
Miracles — C.S. Lewis
Ministry and the Miraculous — Lewis Smedes
The Protestant Spiritual Formation Movement — Todd Keesler
The Examen
Connect with Tyler Staton:
Website: bridgetown.church Instagram: @tylerstaton Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, available wherever books are sold The Familiar Stranger, available wherever books are sold
About Formation:
Formation is a podcast produced by Become New that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Connect with Formation: Website: [www.formationpodcast.com] Newsletter: [www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe] Socials: [@formationjohn]
The conversation doesn't have to stop here. Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually... one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Your Chance to Ask John a Question
08 Apr 2026
00:01:36
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The conversation doesn't have to stop here. Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually... one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.