WAY STATIONS PODCAST with Steve Bell
A Way Station is a resting place for pilgrim travellers to stop for rest, nourishment, company, and news from other lands.
Steve Bell's vocation as a singer/songwriter takes him all over the world and gives him the opportunity to meet interesting, thoughtful people: artists, authors, social entrepreneurs, activists, theologians, etc. Way Stations Podcast is a simple vehicle to share with you the people he meets and the kinds of conversations those meetings make possible.
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A Political Reading of Mark's Gospel: with Dr. Stephen Backhouse
Season 1 · Episode 6
Thursday, December 4, 2025 • Duration 01:14:04
In this fascinating episode, Steve talks to Dr. Stephen Backhouse about the field of Political Theology, who then demonstrates that discipline by applying it to the Gospel of Mark.
During COVID, Dr. Backhouse released a 31-part podcast series in which he takes listeners through a political reading of the book of Mark. Each episode is 30-40 minutes long and presented in a delightfully casual, accessible manner. Host Steve Bell found the series to be transformative and hopes this conversation will entice some of you to check it out.
Spoiler alert! For Dr. Backhouse, 'political' does not equal 'partisan.' This is not about how one should vote in an election. Backhouse invites listeners to consider that Political Theology is a more fully-orbed contemplation of how we use our power in the world in the light of Biblical revelation... particularly, the life and teachings of Jesus.
We hope to have Stephen Backhouse back in the early new year to discuss his book, Kierkegaard: A Single Life (Zondervan, 2016). From the slip cover: "This new biography introduces Kierkegaard in his many disguises—the thinker, the lover, the recluse, the writer, the controversialist—in prose so compelling it reads like a novel,"
You may want to order and read the book in advance.
Fall In Love: Story & Song - with guest Carolyn Arends
Season 1 · Episode 5
Thursday, November 13, 2025 • Duration 01:08:20
In this podcast, Steve and Carolyn discuss her music career journey as a songwriter and Christian recording artist, along with discussing her latest single "Fall In Love". This compelling conversation will take you behind the scenes of the industry, and will highlight some of her influences along the way and finishes with a lyric video of Carolyn's new song.
Carolyn Arends is an internationally awarded singer/songwriter and author whose work has yielded 14 albums,15 top ten radio singles on the Canadian and US Christian charts, and 3 critically acclaimed books. Carolyn holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Regent College. She is a regular columnist for Christianity Today and serves as an adjunct professor at ACTS Seminary, Pacific Life Bible College, and Columbia Bible College.In addition to her busy touring and speaking schedule, Carolyn is the current Director of Education for Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation.
Carolyn lives in Surrey, BC with her husband, Mark, and their children Benjamin and Bethany.
Websites: https://www.carolynarends.com/
https://renovare.org/institute/overview
Good Grief: Honouring the Passing of Parents - with guest Carolyn Arends
Season 1 · Episode 4
Tuesday, June 13, 2023 • Duration 01:04:14
Good Grief: Honouring the Passing of Parents
The podcast opens with Carolyn explaining her work with Renovaré Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation before she and Steve swap stories, insights and songs about their recent loss of beloved parents, and the songs each wrote in the wake of their grief.
*note: to watch the video of this podcast click HERE…
Carolyn Arends is an internationally awarded singer/songwriter and author whose work has yielded 14 albums,15 top ten radio singles on the Canadian and US Christian charts, and 3 critically acclaimed books.
Carolyn holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Regent College. She is a regular columnist for Christianity Today and serves as an adjunct professor at ACTS Seminary, Pacific Life Bible College, and Columbia Bible College.
John Newton's Amazing Grace: The Man and the Story Behind the Song -with guest Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh
Season 1 · Episode 3
Wednesday, May 24, 2023 • Duration 01:09:44
John Newton's Amazing Grace: The Man and the Story Behind the Song -with guest Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh
Bruce Hindmarsh holds the James M. Houston Chair of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver. He has published and spoken widely to international audiences on the history of early British evangelicalism. His recent book, Amazing Grace: The Life of John Newton and the Surprising Story Behind the Song, co-authored with Craig Borlase, offers a dramatic biography of John Newton, the 18th century slave-trader turned abolitionist who penned the poem, Amazing Grace, that has become the near universal hymn of humanity in the western world.
Bruce joins Steve to talk about this page-turner of a dramatic biography which will also yield a feature-length documentary in 2024.
Newton's story is shocking, and Amazing Grace does not try to airbrush or excuse his faults. There are glaring contradictions in the life of a ship's Captain who retreats to his cabin to study his Bible and write tender love letters to his wife while hundreds of slaves lie in chains in the hold below.
The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism sheds new light on the nature of evangelical religion by locating its rise with reference to major movements of the 18th century, including Modernity, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. Hindmarsh draws on a wide range of sources to make meaningful connections between the evangelical awakening and the history of science, law, art, and literature.
AN INVITATION TO AN INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEW - with guest Reverend Dr. Randy Woodley
Season 1 · Episode 2
Thursday, March 2, 2023 • Duration 01:03:51
AN INVITATION TO AN INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEW - with guest Reverend Dr. Randy Woodley
Randy outlines a traditional North American Indigenous worldview (Harmony Way) of caretaking, co-operation and community as opposed to the Western worldview of conquest, exploitation, and individualism. He argues that the former is akin to the ancient Hebrew vision of shalom, and vital for healing and maintaining the Creator's "community of creation."
Reverend Dr. Randy Woodley (Keetoowah Cherokee) is a prolific author, and recognized activist, leader and teacher in the fields of Indigenous and intercultural studies, theology, ecology and missiology.
Woodley and his wife, Edith, are co-sustainers of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm and Seeds.
Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice:www.eloheh.org Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice focuses on developing, implementing and teaching sustainable and regenerative earth practices.
"Eloheh" (pronounced Ay-luh-hay) is a Cherokee Indian word meaning harmony, wholeness, abundance and peace.
Eloheh Farm and Seeds:www.elohehseeds.com "We now have our own seed company, and we are trying to preserve open-pollinated organic seeds, many native species, and heirloom seeds... and that's all very important to us... I would say every bit as important as our theological work because I don't see a difference between them." - Randy Woodley
This Sacred Life: Engaging creation as the embodiment of God's Love - with guest Norman Wirzba
Season 1 · Episode 1
Friday, January 13, 2023 • Duration 01:05:42
Drawing on his recent books, This Sacred Life (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and Agrarian Spirit (Notre Dame Press,2022), eco-theologian/philosopher Norman Wirzba discusses Christian faith, hope and love in the Anthropocene.
An.thro.po.cene: denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
"Everything that comes out of creation is beloved by God. And that's a game changer, because you're not now stuck by yourself, wondering, is God going to find me or is he going to be angry with me? Because you're immersed in this whole world of creation that God has always, only ever loved... and you're the effect of that love."
Dark Night of the Soul - St. John of the Cross: with Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh
Season 1 · Episode 7
Thursday, December 11, 2025 • Duration 59:24
*Originally aired in 2021: Re-released in Way Stations Format for Podcast
Join Steve as he interviews Bruce Hindmarsh (Professor of Spirituality and Christian History | Regent College), about "Dark Night of the Soul", a poem written by St. John of the Cross which inspired Steve to write the song.
Music Video/Song: Dark Night of the Soul Music and Lyrics by Steve Bell *Adapted from the poem by St. John of the Cross (circa 1577)
Orchestral arrangement by Mike Janzen Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rei Hotoda
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There's a lump in my throat There's a knot in my chest I am tired to the bone But I cannot rest But it's only right To feel like I do Cause it is my honour To cry for you
All the memories come back Like the tide rolling in And the current is strong I go under again So I hold my breath What else can I do? Cause it is my honour To cry for you
Blessed are the ones who weep Cause every tear is proof Of ties that bind so strong and deep That death cannot undo
So it is my honour To cry for you
I've got more than a hunch That you're somehwere so good It'd be wrong to come back Even if you could I will see you again But until I do It is my honour To cry for you
Blessed are the ones who weep Cause every tear is proof Of ties that bind so strong and deep That death cannot undo So it is my honour To cry for you
There's a lump in my throat There's a knot in my chest But the ache in my soul Tells me I am blessed Cause when the sorrow is great The love is too And it is my honour To cry for you
I guess grief is the work That love must do So it is my honour To cry for you
Fresh tendernesses burgeoned with the dying of my dad I love him all the more for it He lived his life for others' gain His death, he gave away the same And I love him all the more for it
This son was fiercely fashioned By his father's dappled life The way he loved his children The way he loved his wife My dad was hardly perfect But I hardly give a rip I loved him all the more for it
Not scandalized by brokenness Not scandalized by pain But Dad could not abide the curse And hellishness of shame He'd absorb another's failures And return them as a gift We loved him all the more for it
My father was a trumpeter Those days have long since passed He passed along his passion to me Eager as I was We'd sit for hours and listen To the Tijuana Brass I loved him all the more for it
I tenderly remember When a beauty left me rent I was too young to consider then That love is never spent He told me pain would linger And would likely leave a dent I loved him all the more for it
My dad was a believer He believed that God is good He was certain Jesus lived To show how everybody could And that all our earthly sorrows Couldn't be the final writ I loved him all the more for it
My father was a fortress For my two sisters and I And more-so for our mom Who suffered so much of her life He taught us how to live And then he taught us how to die We loved him all the more for it
Fresh tendernesses burgeoned With the dying of my dad I love him all the more for it
Dr. Hindmarsh presents the need for intellectual and spiritual integrity as essential to paradosis, the transmission of a living faith to the next generation, while Dr. Houston provides a compelling case for a fulsome theological understanding of the person in Christ as intrinsic to an authentic Christian education that avoids the reductionism of secular viewpoints.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of ordinary women and men experienced evangelical conversion and turned to a certain form of spiritual autobiography to make sense of their lives. This book traces the rise and progress of conversion narrative as a unique form of spiritual autobiography in early modern England.
Dr. Hindmarsh draws upon extensive archival and antiquarian sources to provide a serious, scholarly consideration of the life and religious thought of John Newton (1725-1807). In addition, he uses the theme of Newton as a 'sort of middle man' to explore the religious understanding of a whole generation who knew themselves as 'evangelical' although this was different from those who later adopted the term as a badge of partisan loyalty.
In 2021 Steve released a independant vodcast with Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh discussing the life of St. John of The Cross and his poem "Dark Night of the Soul" which is the inspiration for Steve's song of the same name.
The vodcast includes a performance video of the song at the end of the conversation.
Randy critiques the worldview that undergirds the North American church by dismantling assumptions regarding early North American histories and civilizations, offering a comparative analysis of worldviews, and demonstrating a decolonized approach to Christian theology.
Creation is always teaching us. Our task is to look, and to listen, and to live well. Through meditations and ideas for reflection and action, Randy guides the reader on a one-hundred-day journey to reconnect with creation and Creator.
Wouldn't You Love to Know? Music and Lyrics by Steve Bell | Signpost Music (performance video)
"Robin Wall Kimmerer says this beautifully in one of her books, Braiding Sweetgrass, she says people actually need to feel the land as a place of blessing, the land as a place that nurtures your body and doesn't just nurture your body, but loves and welcomes your presence in the world."
"Your life isn't just some big accident...it's part of a larger world which is beautiful and fragrant and sometimes delicious."
"The desire to control the world, have mastery over the world...what that actually does is it destroys the possibility of having a relationship with the world."
"We call it the Anthropocene because human beings (Greek: Anthropos), through their developed economies, their agricultural practices, their technological innovation—what they have done now is they've really taken control of the world, meaning that there isn't an ecosystem process, a bio, geophysical, chemical process that isn't affected by human power, human technology."
"Human engineering, has made it possible for us to do all kinds of interventions in plant and animal life so that where you look—from the cell, all the way to the atmosphere and everywhere in between¬¬¬–we can't talk about something being natural anymore because the whole concept of nature has been super seeded by this power of human beings to re-engineer, remake the world in ways that are satisfying to them."
"What's important is to recognize that human beings have learned to exercise the kind of power that now will determine the future of the whole planet in all of its life forms."
"This power has somehow gone renegade and is now become a force that threatens to actually undo the human race? When you think about the amount of climate refugee migration there's going to be, I mean, there's just so many things coming down the road that are truly frightening because we're talking about food insecurity, civil instability, all kinds of things."
"If we're going to talk about anything that relates to a genuinely human life, we have to understand that human life is always rooted life because we need nurture from the ground... literally."
"A tremendous spiritual awakening happens when you realize that you're not some isolated bit cut off from the world, but you're actually deeply enmeshed or entangled within the world."
"We're rooted beings, enmeshed beings, meaning that the world we live in always depends upon us being connected in visceral ways. Not just in optional voluntary ways, but in visceral ways with the lives of plants and animals and insects and bugs and microbes and soil processes, hydrological cycles, atmospheric processes. All of it is absolutely crucial to our bodies being able to do what we do."
"Whenever we see a living being, another person, we don't just see that person. We see a whole world that is making that person that being possible."
"What's going to make it possible for people to still live, in a way that honors the dignity of persons and places, is if we can figure out how to love persons and places and love ourselves and see the beauty in a world that even as it's being marred and destroyed or degraded, it's still worth cherishing."
"Instead of asking 'what gives you hope?' ask, 'what are you prepared to love?' Because If we can figure out what we're going to love and then learn how to activate that love within each other, then we can face whatever bad stuff is going to come in a way that we couldn't if we were alone or just totally despairing about the world."
"Learn to nurture the place that nurtures you. That's the fundamental agrarian commitment."
"An agrarian is going to ask, 'How do we learn to love where we are?' Because when we love where we are, we also love all the beings that make their home there. And we can't live a good life, we can't live a hopeful life if we feel that the places that make our living possible are either being mined or degraded or abandoned."
"So, an agrarian spirit is really about how do we develop the kinds of spiritual practices or exercises that will draw us more closely into life with each other in life, with our places, through our places, so that what we see is, instead of an escape from the world, a deeper immersion into the world, so that we can see how where we are is a place of blessing, but also a place that calls us to certain kinds of responsibilities of care and respect."
"We've commodified land, we've commodified creatures, plants, animals, but also workers, so that every place, every creature, including human workers or units of production, that's how we see them."
"From a Christian point of view, or a spiritual point of view, we could never say that another human being, or another creature, is simply a unit of production, because from a theological or a scriptural point of view, the first thing to say about you or about any place is: you are the embodiment of God's love."
"[The agrarian spirit is]a way of coming to see the world not as a commodity, but as a gift. A gift that is sacred because it's the embodied expression of a loving, divine intention; that its goodness is part of it being from the beginning."
We have to think about how to grow our food in a way that honors the life of the food, the life of the animals, the life of the agricultural worker? How are we going to source energy that doesn't depend upon massive pollution, or the blowing up of mountains to get their coal? And how are we going to make clothing in a way that honors cotton, for instance, or flax or whatever elements you use to make the things that you wear?
"If we have in mind the question, How can we honor the life that makes our living possible?, we're going to do a much better job living together. We'll find that we are much happier. We're much healthier people. It's not to say there won't be sadness or that there won't be tragedy because there will. But at least we're going to be living in a world that we perceived to be worthy of our effort, worthy of our cherishing."
"It's not enough to reduce the work we need to do to personal virtue or vice. It's not about us saying, okay, I'm going to be vegan or I'm going to change my light bulbs or I'm going to get Fairtrade coffee...if that's enough. We do have to talk about systems. We've got to talk about built environments. How are we going to put in better economies that will enable people to do the right thing? We need to do all those things. But I think what agrarian spirit is saying is that we're not going to be able to do those things apart from certain kinds of practices in which we, first of all, come to feel our entanglement within the lives of others and see that entanglement not as a restriction on our freedom, but as an ability to nurture a fullness of life that we couldn't have had alone."
"This is where we're songwriters and music can play such an important role because, you know, music is about listening. It's about hearing other notes going through other notes, and notes coming together in particular sorts of ways to create something harmonious and symphonic and beautiful. And what I really would love is to see that people could imagine their bodies, not just as physical lumps moving around other lumps, but as a kind of acoustical phenomenon in which you can hear the vibrations of the world vibrating through your own body, whether through your singing or through your activism that you feel that it's not just you anymore, that you are, in your embodied living and acting, giving voice to a world much greater, much bigger, much more complex than yourself."
"People are at their happiest when they feel that they're in the flow of what's happening... I describe creativity as our participation, our improvisational participation, in the world's unfolding of itself. And, you know, we can give lots of variations on that theme because we can be participating in the unfolding of a family's life, or in a neighborhood's life, or a farm field's life, or a classroom's life. I mean, all these ways of entering into the flow are available to us. And when we give ourselves to what's potentially there, beauties are waiting there to be uncovered."
