Bob Robinson
Bob is the Executive Director of Reintegrate. View his full bio here.
Bob is the Executive Director of Reintegrate. View his full bio here.
We all are fascinated with the End Times. What is our final destiny? This is eschatology. If we were to take a random survey of Christians in North America, we would hear something like this: Our destiny is heaven. When we die, we go off to our home with Jesus, worshiping God for all eternity in an otherworldly existence. We will finally shed this earthly life and live as God wants us to live, with Jesus and away from this earthly life. Most pastors preach that the earth is not our home, that what God has for us is to live forever in another place, Heaven, and that Earth will be no more.
Our guest on this episode is J. Richard Middleton. In his book, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic, 2014), he makes the case that the Bible teaches that the ultimate hope for the believer is not an otherworldly heaven. Instead, it is full-bodied participation in a new heaven and a new earth, brought into fullness through the coming of God’s kingdom. Dr. J. Richard Middleton (Ph.D. (Free University of Amsterdam) is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary.
Our guest is Christian philosopher and apologist Paul Copan, author of Is God a Vindictive Bully?: Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments (Baker, 2022), winner of the Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit in the category of Apologetics and Evangelism.
Dr. Copan takes on some of the most difficult Old Testament challenges and places them in their larger historical and theological contexts. He explores the kindness, patience, and compassion of God in the Old Testament and shows how Jesus in the New Testament reveals both God’s divine kindness and also God’s divine severity. The God of the Old Testament is definitely fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, but it turns out to be the same God.
Does the American evangelical church need a wake-up call? Have we become unaware of our blind spots?
In their book, Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church (InterVarsity Press, 2022), Matthew Soerens and his co-authors suggest that we must listen to the voices of global Christians and the poor who offer significant insights and hope from the margins, and to the ancient church which survived through the ages amid temptations of power and corruption. By learning from the global church and marginalized voices, we can return to our roots of being kingdom-focused – loving our neighbor and giving of ourselves in missional service to the world.
Our guest is Matthew Soerens, the U.S. Director of Church Mobilization for World Relief, where he helps evangelical churches understand the realities of refugees and immigration and to respond in ways guided by biblical values.
For Christians who work in engineering and developing technology, it’s not always clear how their faith and work integrate. How can designing and using technology actually be a way of loving God and our neighbors?
On this episode, we will interview three veteran engineers to understand how that particular vocation can be reintegrated with the mission of God. They are the co-authors of A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers (IVP Academic, 2022).
There is a crisis of knowledge that we are all experiencing. It seems that nobody trusts what anybody else is saying. In politics and in the media, on social networks, there has been an increasing inability to discern truth.
Our guest is Bonnie Kristian, who writes about these issues in her book, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (Brazos Press, 2022), which has won the “Award of Merit” in Christianity Today’s 2023 Book Awards.
You’re not supposed to “let God take control” of your life and work. You’re not supposed to “hear God’s voice in your heart.” And, you’re not supposed to be guided by God’s Holy Spirit by inner feelings of peace, intuitions, or impressions.
These are three things believers have recently come to believe as being essential to being Christian. But according to our guest Phillip Cary, they are not found in the Bible and actually will cause harm – psychologically, morally, and spiritually. Phillip Cary is a Professor of Philosophy and the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Eastern University. Brazos Press has just released the expanded second edition of his best-selling book, Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do.
How do I navigate the work world as a Christian? My work matters but should I get my identity from what I do? How can I live with integrity, doing good work while also being authentic in who I am?
Denise Lee Yohn is a keynote speaker, consultant, and writer on brand leadership. She has led seminars at such places as Facebook, Lexus, the NFL, and more. When she started her professional career, Denise also became a Christ-follower — and ever since then, she’s been passionate about reintegrating faith and work. She is the director of the Faith & Work Journey, a spiritual formation and professional development experience. She is a popular speaker at Christian organizations and conferences, has contributed to The Gospel Coalition and De Pree Center, and has served as an advisor to the Theology of Work Project.
Evangelical Christians often look to Christian celebrities and cultural strongmen for leadership and validation. And we have seen many celebrity pastors, ministry leaders, and cultural icons fall from their lofty celebrity platforms because they didn’t have the needed spiritual maturity or accountability.
Award-winning journalist Katelyn Beaty‘s new book from Brazos Press, Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church. explores the ramifications of this phenomenon.
Dr. Michael F. Bird is an Australian biblical scholar and Anglican priest who writes about the history of early Christianity, theology, and contemporary issues. He is Academic Dean and a lecturer at Ridley College in Melbourne.
He is the author of 30 books, including The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Eerdmans, 2014), Evangelical Theology,(2nd edition published by Zondervan in 2020), The New Testament in its World (with N.T. Wright) (Zondervan, 2019), and his latest, Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew about the Bible (Zondervan, 2021).
How is art an inroad to our experience of God? How does making things give us a more tangible knowledge of the love of God and the joy of being a human in God’s image? What role do imagination and creativity have in a full-orbed theology? Our guest has some profound thoughts on these things. We are deeply honored to have renowned artist Makoto Fujimura on this episode of the Reintegrate Podcast.
Mako Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist in what is called the “slow art” movement. As a Japanese-American, he studied art at Bucknell University and then studied traditional Japanese painting in the doctorate program at the Tokyo University of the Arts. His art is a fusion of fine art and abstract expressionism utilizing the techniques of ancient traditional Japanese art. His art has been featured widely in galleries and museums around the world including collections in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library, and the Tikotin Museum in Israel.
His latest book is Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (Yale University Press, with a foreword by N.T. Wright, 2021).
The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper famously said these words in a speech he gave when he opened a new university:
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
Jessica Joustra and Robert Joustra are the editors of a new book titled Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures (IVP, 2022). It’s a book that features contemporary Christian theologians, historians, scientists, and artists applying to today the concepts Kuyper introduced to America in 1898 in his famous Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. These lectures, reflecting on the role of the Christian faith in a variety of social spheres, emphasized that our Christian faith addresses every aspect of life. This book seeks to bring those concepts into the 21st Century.
According to recent research, our brains go to the path of least resistance when we engage people who are unlike us. We perceive anyone different from us as a threat. In other words, we all have preferences and even prejudices. The Bible says that in our fallenness, we sinfully show partiality toward people who resemble us; we play favorites. According to Rodger Woodworth, overcoming our prejudices and bridging the cultural divide is the result of living out the gospel.
Dr. Rodger Woodworth was the founding pastor of two interracial churches, an adjunct seminary professor, and was the Director of Cross-Cultural Ministries for CCO (Coalition for Christian Outreach). He has a Doctorate of Ministry in Complex Urban Settings, served on the Board of Directors for several Pittsburgh ministries, and is the author of the new book, Playing Favorites: Overcoming Our Prejudices to Bridge the Cultural Divide (Wipf & Stock, 2021).