Shifting Culture

In this episode, Merideth Hite Estevez joins me to talk about what happens when a lifetime of chasing excellence quietly empties out the joy that started it all. We dig into the idols hiding inside performance and perfectionism, why she redefines art not as a talent for the gifted few but as something anyone can do out of love, and what it means to create as an act of worship instead of proof of worth. It's a conversation about shame, recovery, and the spiritual thread running through every creative act - whether you call yourself an artist or not.Dr. Merideth Hite Estevez is a coach, educator, oboist, and author of The Artist’s Joy. Through her workshops, her award-winning podcast Artists for Joy, and her one-to-one coaching, she is a spiritual space-maker for artists, leading thousands in various fields to creative recovery. Dr. Estevez has performed with top orchestras and holds degrees in oboe from The Juilliard School and Yale School of Music. Her writing, which Publishers Weekly calls “expansive and joyful,” illuminates the spiritual journey of the artist. Her next book, Art Is How God Loves Us, debuts in July 2026. She hails from Abbeville, SC, but now lives in Metro Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Rev. Dr. Edwin Estevez, and their two children.Merideth's Book:Art is How God Loves UsMerideth's Recommendation:CounterweightsConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

America turns 250 this year, and we'll tell the old story again. But where does it actually start? Daniel Hawk traces our founding back past 1776 to the Doctrine of Discovery that gave Christian powers the right to seize "unclaimed" land, and to a reading of Genesis that turned wilderness into property and the people already here into obstacles. We talk about the myth of innocence: the belief that we are fundamentally good, that the brutal parts didn't happen or didn't count. It let us justify almost anything, and it left violence in our bones. We talk about how Scripture was used to take land and how it reads differently from underneath empire, about Canada and South Africa beginning to face their histories, and about what real repair asks of us - slow, relational, measured in generations. As we mark 250 years, this is an invitation to be honest about the first half of the story before we write the next.L. Daniel Hawk (PhD, Emory University) is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. Aspects of his work on biblical narrative take a postcolonial turn in books such as Joshua in 3-D: A Commentary on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny and as coeditor of Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations.Daniel's Book:Undoing Manifest DestinyConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, I talk with Kristin Lee about what happens when a faith begins to crack, and whether the breaking might be the start of something truer. We get into kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery with gold, what it costs to ask the questions we've been warned against, and what the church on the margins can teach the rest of us about following a marginal Jesus. What emerges is a picture of faith that doesn't hide its fractures but lets them become the places where the light gets in.Kristin T. Lee is a writer whose work has appeared in Christianity Today and Sojourners, and a primary care physician serving Boston's Chinatown community. She writes about faith, culture, books, and solidarity at The Embers. Her passion all the best books you've never heard of (and some that you have) via book reviews and reading groups on Instagram @ktlee.writes. Lee's work is informed by her experiences as an adoptive mother, host to refugees, and friend to those affected by incarceration.Kristin's Book:We Mend With GoldKristin's Recommendation:The Nights Are Quiet in TehranConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, I talk with Kyle Strobel about what's actually happening when God feels distant. Most of us start with passion - prayer comes easy, Scripture comes alive - and then a season arrives where the lights go out and we assume we've failed or been abandoned. Kyle offers a different reading than abandonment: the dryness isn't punishment or absence, but the desert where God weans us off the feeling and teaches us to abide. We get into the moralistic temptation that follows - how we turn disciplines, service, and even devotion into ways of managing God rather than meeting him - and why we have to relearn to live by faith and not by sight.Kyle Strobel is the director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, who writes and teaches in the area of spiritual formation. He is the author of many books, most recently the co-author of the book, When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near (with John Coe). Kyle regularly speaks at conferences, church trainings, and serves on the preaching team at Redeemer Church. He can be found at KyleStrobel.substack.com.Kyle's Book:When God Seems DistantKyle's Recommendation:A Lifting Up for the DowncastConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, Michael Rhodes claims the gospel is inherently political, and "the Lord reigns" was never just a private comfort but a statement about who actually runs the world. We name the two instincts that keep so many of us stuck: retreating into a safe bubble or chasing the halls of power, and why a more holistic approach is necessary. And we get practical: city council meetings, speed bumps, a libertarian business owner whose whole politics quietly rearranged once he started hiring single moms. In a moment when faith and politics have collapsed into the culture war, this feels like a third way, or a faithful way - a politics you can practice this week, on your own street, as a small taste of the beauty of the Kingdom of God.Michael J. Rhodes (PhD, Trinity College / University of Aberdeen) is lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of several books, including Reimagining Biblical Politics, Just Discipleship, Formative Feasting,and Practicing the King's Economy (with Robby Holt and Brian Fikkert). Rhodes (an ordained EPC pastor) and his family currently live in South Auckland, where they are part of an intentional community engaged in Christian community development.Michael's Book:Reimagining Biblical PoliticsConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this conversation, Amar Peterman and I get into the slow, local, unglamorous work of becoming neighbors across real difference. We talk about the table as the place where the common good gets built, and why so many of us are far more comfortable playing host than being hosted - flinging our doors open without ever considering who actually walks through them. We get into hospitality as displacement, an accompaniment that refuses to leave, Thomas learning you can't reason your way to resurrection, and an imagination that can see life where everything around us insists there's only division. Here's the challenge: we have to learn to receive before we can ever give, to love people beyond their labels, and to start right where we are, with the one neighbor in front of us.Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century,The Fetzer Institute, The Berkley Forum, and more. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common Life.Amar's Book:Becoming NeighborsAmar's Recommendations:Make Your Home in this Luminous DarkGlimmeringsConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, Ben Norquist and Brian Miller make the case that American Christians have become a placeless, rootless people and that we are shaped by inherited land stories. That our land is exceptional. That property is something to wall off. That the ground exists to be taken and turned into wealth. We dig into where these stories came from, how they affect our faith, and why it matters that Scripture opens with God calling place good. We talk about how to read the place you actually live, whose stories get monuments and whose get erased, and what better land stories, ones shaped more like Jesus, might look like.Dr. Ben Norquist is a writer, researcher, and communications strategist whose work explores how Christian understandings of land shape mora/l imagination and public life. He serves with the Bethlehem Institute for Peace & Justice, engaging American Christians on questions of theology, justice, and the realities in Palestine. He is co-author of Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination (InterVarsity Press, 2026).Brian Miller (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is professor of sociology at Wheaton College and regularly teaches about and publishes on Christian residential and cultural patterns. His books include Sanctifying Suburbia: How the Suburbs Becamethe Promised Land for American Evangelicals and Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures, coauthored with Robert Brenneman.Ben & Brian's Book:Every Somewhere SacredConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode with Aaron Cline Hanbury, we think through how we relate to technology and the things we make. We tackle the question underneath the whole AI moment: not just what it means to be human when machines can do more and more, but what it means to be alive. We get into whether any technology is really neutral, where our attention is going and who's buying it, raising kids in a screen-saturated world, and what it takes to stay awake to wonder.Aaron Cline Hanbury is a writer and editor whose essays and profiles have appeared in various publications, including The Atlantic. He is the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Common Good, and a past editor of RELEVANT magazine. He lives in the metro Atlanta area with his wife, Hannah, and their daughters.Aaron's Book:Wired for WonderAaron's Recommendations:The Science of StorytellingMoby DickConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, Brant Hansen argues that holding onto offense is killing us - spiritually, physically, and relationally. He had to decide whether the offense he experienced as a young person should be held on to or if he should release it. It led him to a simple, uncomfortable conclusion: righteous human anger doesn't exist in scripture, and the anger we carry, however justified it feels, is not what faithful people are called to hold. We talk about forgiveness, hypocrisy in the church, and what Jesus actually intended when he told us to love our enemies.Brant is an author of several bestselling books, including Unoffendable, and a syndicated radio host on more than 200 stations. His podcast, “The Brant and Sherri Oddcast” has more than 20 million downloads. He’s been featured many times on outlets like Focus on the Family, Family Life Today, and Good Morning America.Brant and wife Carolyn live in South Florida. His latest book, Living Unoffended releases June 9.Brant's Book:Living UnoffendedBrant's Recommendation:The Matter With ThingsConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

There's no shortage of voices telling men who they should be right now and most of them are answering the wrong question. In this conversation with Zachary Wagner, author of Men of Virtue, we get underneath the culture war noise around masculinity and into something more substantive: the four concrete crises facing men and boys today, why virtue formation is better than role definition as a response, and how the fruit of the Spirit offers a more deeply human, and more countercultural, vision of manhood than anything the manosphere or the stoics are selling. This is a conversation about character, embodiment, fatherlessness, meaning, and what it might look like for men to be formed into something more Christ-like.Zachary is an author, ordained minister, and New Testament scholar.He grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago in a homeschooling family as the fourth of six siblings, an environment that sparked his lifelong love of languages, ideas, and reading.After completing degrees from the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College. Zachary and his family moved to Oxford, England, in 2020 for him to pursue a DPhil (PhD) in New Testament studies. His research focused on the theme of reward in the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Matthew, and he successfully defended his thesis in 2025.He published his first book, Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality, in 2023 with InterVarsity Press. His second book, Men of Virtue: How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World, will release from Brazos Press in May 2026. He is currently pursuing publication for his DPhil thesis, as well as a further writing and research projects on Christianity and Stoicism.Zachary was ordained for gospel ministry in 2022 and has over a decade of nonprofit leadership experience. He currently serves as the director of programs at the Center for Pastor Theologians, where he also co-hosts the Pastor Theologians Podcast.He lives just outside Chicago in an intentional community with his wife, three kids, and two additional housemates.Zachary's Book:Men of VirtueZachary's Recommendations:Against the MachineBabelConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, Fr. John Dear joins me to explore his latest book, Universal Love: Surrendering to the God of Peace and one of the core convictions at the center of it: genuine peacemaking begins not with better strategy or more effort, but with total surrender to the God of peace, to the will of God. We talk about what it looks like to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, why following the non-violent Jesus is the way, and how the daily practice of "not my will, but yours" carries not only inner transformation, but political implications that go all the way to the streets.Fr. John Dear is an American peace activist, lecturer, author and Catholic priest residing in the Diocese of Monterey in California. Dear has written 40 books on Jesus, peace and nonviolence, and has been arrested 85 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice, poverty, racism, executions, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction. He is the founder and director of the Beatitudes Center, where he offers the "Nonviolent Jesus Podcast". Fr. John's Book:Universal LoveConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

What are you actually doing when you read the Bible? Interpretation. Every time we open the text, we're already choosing which questions to ask, which lenses to bring, and whose interests get served by the answers we land on. In this episode, I sit down with Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and Aaron Higashi, authors of Serving Up Scripture, to talk about what responsible interpretation looks like, why certainty works against it, and how the same passages have been used both to enslave and to liberate. We also walk through different types of questions to ask while reading scripture.Jennifer Garcia Bashaw is a professor at Campbell University and an ordained Baptist minister. She has a PhD in New Testament from Fuller Seminary and is the author of Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims and John for Normal People: A Guide through the Drama and Depth of the Fourth Gospel.Aaron Higashi is a public Bible scholar with a PhD in biblical interpretation from Chicago Theological Seminary. He writes Bible commentaries, including 1 & 2 Samuel for Normal People: A Guide to Prophets, Kings, and Some Pretty Terrible Men, and answers Bible questions on Instagram at @abhigashi.Jennifer and Aaron's Book:Serving Up ScriptureJennifer's Recommendation:Reading the Women of the BibleConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

What does joy look like in the midst of pain and grief? K.J. Ramsey's memoir, The Place Between Our Pains, was written while she was fighting for her life - and in this conversation, she talks about what that actually means. We get into how dependence on others opens us to love in ways independence never could, why grief is a gate into aliveness rather than a place to get stuck, and what it looked like to launch a book about joy while facing a tumor diagnosis and an IV drip on launch day. This is a conversation about the kind of joy that doesn't require a tidy resolution and why that might be the kind we're searching for.K.J. Ramsey is an increasingly feral mystic who is utterly devoted to the joy of being alive. She is a body-centered licensed professional counselor specialized in trauma recovery and an acclaimed author of prose and poetry, including The Book of Common Courage, The Lord Is My Courage, and This Too Shall Last, as well as the bestselling essay Substack Embodied. KJ advocates for fellow autoimmune patients and lives in Colorado with her husband Ryan, a hospice chaplain, and their two velcro dogs.K.J.'s Book:The Place Between Our PainsK.J.'s Recommendation:Project Hail MaryConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this conversation, Tim opens up about the wound that shaped his early life, the silence that followed, and what the long road toward healing has actually required. We get into what secrets do to the body, the difference between vertical confession and horizontal healing, why accountability that feels like parole isn't really accountability, what grief work demands and what gets stuck when we skip it, and what it looks like to stop letting a younger, wounded version of yourself run the show.Tim Ross, bestselling author and host of the popular podcasts The Basement and Wide Open, was born in Inglewood, California, and went to college to study administration of justice to become a law enforcement officer. But God had other plans and Tim gave his life to Jesus Christ on January 14, 1996, and he started preaching on February 25, 1996. He's been walking with Jesus ever since. In June of 1997, he moved to Dallas, and in the time he's spent in the great state of Texas, Tim served in several ministry capacities, including youth evangelist, young adult pastor, director of student ministries, associate campus pastor, executive pastor of Apostolic Ministries, and lead pastor. Tim now occupies his time as a podcaster, social media influencer, bestselling author, and preacher.Tim's Book:The Missing PeaceConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this conversation with Richard Beck, author of The Book of Love, we explore what it actually means to read Scripture through the hermeneutic of love. Richard helps us see that we have to reckon with our attachment to God - whether we actually believe he's for us - because that fear or security shapes everything about how we read. We get into the violent texts of the Old Testament, why both conservatives and progressives have their own blind spots, how the Bible raises hard questions, and what seeing the cross through a hermeneutic of love looks like.Richard Beck is professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, where he also lives. He is a popular blogger and speaker and the author of several books, most recently The Shape of Joy and The Book of Love. His published research also covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity and why Christian bookstore art is so bad. Beck leads a Bible study each week for inmates at a maximum-security prison.Richard's Book:The Book of LoveRichard's Recommendations:What it Means to be ProtestantConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

Brian Zahnd joins me to talk about his new book Unseen Existences — and we get into why modern Western people suffer a kind of spiritual homelessness, how philosophical materialism has convinced us the spiritual world isn't real, and what it looks like to recover a sense that heaven and earth actually overlap. We also dig into the Incarnation as a doorway into mystery, wonder and awe as non-negotiables for living faith, and what it means to hold onto a God who intervenes without turning prayer into a transaction.Brian Zahnd is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Known for his theologically informed preaching and his embrace of the deep and long history of the church, Zahnd is a frequent speaker at conferences, universities, and seminaries around the world. As a pastor-theologian, he is the author of numerous titles, including The Wood Between the Worlds, When Everything's on Fire, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, A Farewell to Mars, and Beauty Will Save the World.Brian's Book:Unseen ExistencesBrian's Recommendation:Wendell BerryConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

Elizabeth Berget joins the podcast to explore the maternal heart of God — tracing how the Hebrew word rakum, often translated simply as "compassionate," is linguistically rooted in the word for womb, and what it means that God reaches for that word first when describing himself to Israel. The conversation moves through pregnancy, labor, and the crucifixion, the theology of secure attachment, what scripture's birth language reveals about salvation, and why expanding our image of God isn't a departure from orthodox Christianity but a return to something ancient that's largely been lost in translation.ELIZABETH BERGET is a speaker and author of Love like a Mother: How the Sacred Work of Motherhood Reveals the Maternal Heart of God. Her work has appeared in Christianity Today, Coffee + Crumbs, Mothering Spirit, and other online spaces where mothers gather to find meaning in the mundane. She shares her thoughts in her Substack newsletter, Back of the Flock, where she explores the image of God in the everyday work of motherhood. Berget has lived in Africa and Asia but now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, three kids, and one mischievous dog. And yes, she'd love to hold your baby.Elizabeth's Book:Love Like a MotherElizabeth's Recommendations:Nervous SystemsLiving EasterConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

Light is a language, and learning to read it - in a darkened theater, in the stories of your neighbors, in the films you were told to avoid - helps us see clearly. In this conversation, Jeffrey Overstreet and I talk about cinema as a spiritual practice, what it looks like to love your neighbor by actually watching their films, why the filmmakers he was told to fear have shaped his faith far more than he was told they would, and why pursuing truth and beauty on the big screen has a way of leading us back to Jesus.Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of two film-focused memoirs—Through a Screen Darkly (2007) and Lost and Found in the Cathedral of Cinema (2026)—and the four-volume fantasy series The Auralia Thread. He has served as Senior Film Critic at Christianity Today, a film columnist for the literary arts journal Image, and has been published at Paste and Bright Wall/Dark Room. In 2024, students at Seattle Pacific University voted him Undergraduate Professor of the Year for his work teaching creative writing and film studies. You can find more than 25 years of his writing on film, music, and faith at JeffreyOverstreet.comJeffrey's Book:Lost and Found in the Cathedral of CinemaJeffrey's Recommendations:Scott CairnsTania RunyanDelicate Machinery SuspendedConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

Paul wasn't just helping people get to heaven. Nijay Gupta joins me to make the case that Paul's letters were written for people trying to figure out how to live, not how to escape. Drawing from his new book Paul for the World, Nijay walks through the Greco-Roman world Paul was writing into - its economic disparity, its philosophies, its hunger for meaning - and shows how we can see our world similarly. The conversation moves through economics, the arts, the Stoics, and the resurrection to land on a grounded, new creation vision of the Christian life. This is a conversation about meaning, hope, and what it looks like to be fully alive in the world God hasn't given up on.Nijay K. Gupta (PhD, Durham University) is Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He is the coauthor (with A. J. Swoboda) of the book Slow Theology, cohost of the Slow Theology podcast, and founder of the popular Substack newsletter Engaging Scripture. Gupta is an award-winning author of numerous books, including Tell Her Story, Strange Religion, and commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He is also a senior translator for the New Living Translation. Gupta lives in Portland, Oregon.Nijay's Book:Paul for the WorldNijay's Recommendation:God's HomecomingConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, Tia Levings returns to talk about her new book I Belong to Me - a guide to healing and recovery after high-control religion and other controlling environments. Tia walks through what she calls the steps before the steps: the audacity, the centrality, the willingness to want something different before you're even ready to name what happened to you. We talk about why language can free you and trap you at the same time, how cult-hopping happens and why, what developmental stages get stolen in high-control systems, and how somatic and body-based modalities opened up healing that talk therapy alone couldn't reach. This is a grounded, honest conversation about what it looks like to start to become the protagonist of your own story.Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy and I Belong to Me: A Survivor’s Guide to Recovery and Hope after Religious Trauma. She writes about the realities of religious trauma, evangelical patriarchy, and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, Newsweek, and the HuffingtonPost. She is an experienced interviewee, speaker, and podcast guest, and has appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter.Tia's Book:I Belong to MeTia's Recommendation:Heart the LoverEverything in ColorConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

What do you do when the fire won't start - when life is full but God feels distant, when faith is intact but the soul is running on empty? In this conversation, I sit down with Tish Harrison Warren, who draws on her new book, What Grows in Weary Lands, to explore acedia, the ancient concept usually translated as sloth but better understood as a sadness that the good is difficult. We trace how the desert fathers and mothers were grappling with the same exhaustion and spiritual languishing that defines our moment and what their practices have to teach us about endurance, formation, and encounter with the living God.Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and an Anglican priest. She is the author of several books, including Liturgy of the Ordinary, which won Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night, which won Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, which focused on faith in public discourse and private life. She was also a columnist at Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Comment Magazine, the The Point Magazine, Religion News Service, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for The Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. She is a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three children.Tish's Book:What Grows in Weary LandsTish's Recommendation:Liturgies of the WildConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, I sit down with Eric Clayton to explore the spirituality of Star Wars and why these stories still shape how we see ourselves and the world. We talk about the cave on Dagobah, the pull of the dark side, nonviolence, discernment, and how stories can become spaces where God meets us and forms us - if we’re paying attention. We get into holy indifference, the tension between action and waiting, and what it means to choose a different way in the middle of chaos. This conversation is about learning to notice what’s stirring in us and to embody a better story in our everyday lives.Eric Clayton is an award-winning author and the deputy director for communications at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. His books include, Finding Peace Here and Now: How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness, My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars, and more. His writing has appeared in America Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, US Catholic, among others, and he is a frequent contributor to Give Us This Day and IgnatianSpirituality.com. Eric lives outside of Baltimore, Maryland, with his family. Learn more at ericclaytonwrites.com.Eric's Book:My Life with the JediConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show

In this episode, I talk with Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson about their new book Traumatized Church, and what it looks like to read Paul, and our congregations, through a trauma-informed lens. We explore what trauma actually is, how it lives in the body, and why so many people are being quietly re-traumatized in the very communities meant to heal them. The conversation moves between Paul's raw letter in 2 Corinthians and the practical work of building churches that are safe, full of mutuality, and honest about the pain in the room.Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham) has been a Professor of New Testament for more than four decades. He is the author of more than ninety books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed as well as The King Jesus Gospel, A Fellowship of Differents, One.Life, The Blue Parakeet, Revelation for the Rest of Us, and Kingdom Conspiracy.Adrienne Gibson is a licensed professional counselor (LPC), clinical supervisor for the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners (AZBBHE), and the owner of Valor Counseling. She has been licensed for over two decades, working with children, families, and adults, and has served as a clinical supervisor and clinical director for two large community based mental health agencies in Arizona and Oregon. She has master’s degrees in counseling and New Testament. She regularly speaks on the topic of trauma and healing and consults with denominations on implementing trauma-informed care practices.Scot & Adrienne's Book:Traumatized ChurchScot's Recommendation:Complicity in the HolocaustAdrienne's Recommendation:The Boy Who Was Raised As a DogConnect with Joshua: [email protected] to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowBring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingcultureGo to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books Support the show