vocational channels archives

Christians are struggling with how to live like Jesus in a violent world. Influencers, politicians, and political pundits are telling us that we need to fight to take America back. When, in the midst of an ever-increasing culture war, we hear that Jesus advocates for radical change not through waging war but by waging peace, many of us roll our eyes and think, “Pie in the sky thinking.”

Easter week is the culmination of the earthly ministry of Jesus. Our guest, Jason Porterfield, has written a book about Holy Week that will shake us out of our lethargy about hoping for peace. He is the author of a fantastic book, titled, Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace throughout Holy Week (Herald Press, 2022), an award-winning book that equips readers with practical peacemaking skills as it examines how Jesus waged peace on each day of Holy Week.

Listen here.

N. T. Wright is perhaps the most influential New Testament scholar of our generation. Bishop Wright is the author of over seventy books, many of which are highly regarded as top academic scholarship. Of course, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. In that groundbreaking book, Tom Wright dismantled the narrative we all assumed was the gospel story: that we are saved in order to go to heaven. He wrote that our hope for the future is our physical resurrection to live with God in the New Heavens and New Earth.

This new book, God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal (HarperOne, 2025), almost serves as a sequel to that. He returns to the grand narrative of the Bible and explains that God’s promise has always been that he would dwell with humans in a renewed creation. God’s home has been, and always will be, with us.

Listen here. 

Many of us find the Old Testament difficult to understand. Some find it incomprehensible, and some find it difficult to square with our modern sensibilities. We wonder if the Old Testament is irrelevant. Or we try to understand it and find it so confusing that we give up trying to read it.

Our guest is one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of this generation. John Walton has spent his career engaging deeply with the Old Testament’s text and understands the ancient context in which it was written. His latest book is Old Testament Theology for Christians: From Ancient Context to Enduring Belief (InterVarsity Press, 2025). In it, he invites us to leave our modern, and even our inherited Christian, preconceptions at the threshold as we enter the world of the Old Testament.

Listen here. 

Whether you’re single or married, young or old, finding and keeping meaningful and genuine personal relationships is what we all desire.

College chaplain Erin Moniz is deeply attuned to the questions and concerns of today’s emerging adults. We discuss the issues and practical insights that she writes about in her new book, Knowing and Being Known: Hope for All Our Intimate Relationships (IVP, 2025). We explore the essential elements of healthy relationships, addressing the complexities of intimacy, and shining a light on the barriers that can impede genuine connection.

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How do we get beyond the competition we often see among different Christian ministries and work together for God’s glory and Kingdom? Dr. Angie Ward is professor of leadership and ministry at Denver Seminary. She is a leadership author and teacher with nearly 30 years of experience in church, parachurch, and Christian higher education ministry. Her new book is Beyond Church and Parachurch: From Competition to Missional Extension (InterVarsity Press, 2025).

In our discussion, Dr. Ward provides a comprehensive definition of “church.” She explains why it is essential that we see the church in terms of the people of God united to participate in God’s mission in a variety of ways. She provides a new paradigm: “Missional Extensions.” This terminology helps us understand how various Christian ministries function and interact. And she provides practical ideas for ministries to cease competing and to start collaborating.

Listen here.

God did not create work to be drudgery, but due to the effects of the Fall and our sinfulness, work can definitely not be what it should be. But that does not mean that work is all bad.

In fact, work is where we often find purpose and joy.

Dr. Chip Roper is the Founder and President of the VOCA Center. The VOCA Center is a faith-based organization that brings God’s wisdom to your work through teaching, coaching, and leadership development. It recently partnered with the Barna Group to conduct a research survey to discover what brings joy and what brings challenges in the contemporary workplace.

Listen here. 

We are constantly colliding with our limitations. Have you ever thought to yourself, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get more done?” We think that it is because we are fallen, sinful people. But what if our limitations are a gift from God, that this is part of the very good part of being a created being? What if we are not supposed to carry the burden of trying to be something we are not and cannot be?

Our guest on this episode is theologian Dr. Kelly M. Kapic. He has written a book that addresses the guilt we all experience when we feel that we should always be doing one more thing. Its title is You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why that’s Good News (Brazos, 2022).

Listen on your favorite podcast app or at Substack.

We are experiencing increased suspicion and animosity in our churches, our workplaces, and even our families. It has also led to a false sense that our options are limited to choosing only one side. When we look around us, we see people so extremely confident that they are absolutely right and that the opposition is not only absolutely wrong, but downright evil.

Is there a better way? Are Christians called to be peacemakers and bridgebuilders? And can they do that without jettisoning our core convictions? Into the fray comes Dr. Shirley Mullen and her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future (Baker Academic, 2024).

Listen on Substack.

Do you feel that our isolating individualism, nonstop injustices, consumerist lifestyles, or everyday monotony are suffocating your soul? Our guest, Wesley Vander Lugt, believes what breathes life into us is something that we can easily miss or dismiss: BEAUTY.

His book is Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith That Breathes (Eerdmans, 2024). Here is not your ivory-tower theologian; his PhD is in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. Wes shows how beauty can break us out of self-centered malaise, promote healing and hope for our broken world, and re-enchant our lives. Wes believes that Beauty is as essential to our souls as oxygen is to our bodies.

Listen on Substack or your favorite podcast app.

On this episode, we welcome back our friend, Erica Reitz, who has been helping young men and women transition out of college for several years. The transitions that 20-somethings experience in the years after college are some of the most stressful, unstable, and uncertain times we can ever experience.

Erica Young Reitz is the author of After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships, and Faith (InterVarsity Press, Revised Edition, 2025). It has been republished in a revised edition this year by InterVarsity Press. No book on the market deals with the after-college years so thoroughly and so practically.

Listen on Substack or your favorite podcast app.

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor, a leading voice in the faith-and-work movement.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You’re Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

On the podcast, we often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

We know that quiet is an essential aspect of the spiritual life, that we need to leave the craziness of our hurried and frenzied lives and find the deep peace of being in God’s presence. But in our busy lives of deadlines and distractions, of screens at work and at play, this seems abstract and impossible.

David Loughney and Bob Robinson welcome Sarah Clarkson to the podcast. She writes regularly about literature, faith, and beauty. Her latest book is Reclaiming Quiet: Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention (Baker, 2024). In it, she tells her story of trying to overcome anxiety and hurry by cultivating a life of holy attention, an inner quiet of paying attention to God in the everyday aspects of life.

Listen on Substack.