Rhett Smith Podcast

As I say in the introduction of this podcast, Wess Daniels is one of the smartest guys that I know. I first met Wess about ten years ago or more when I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary and pastoring at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. I started hanging out with Wess when he was teaching me some tech hacks in creating my Apple HTML email signature (I know, sounds pretty exciting). But over the years as my friendship with Wess has deepened, I've always been impressed with not only his intellect, and the topics is spans, but his sense of humility.Wess received his Ph.D from Fuller Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies. Wess is especially interested in Quaker renewal and participatory culture. At the time of this interview he was a Quaker pastor at Camas Friends church in Washington....but last week he was named the Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies at Guilford College.Wess is also the author of A Convergent Model of Renewal: Remixing the Quaker Tradition in a Participatory Culture. Besid

 This was a really fun podcast episode to record. I drove down to Dallas a couple of weeks ago to spend a couple of hours with Innovation 360's Executive Director Kevin Gilliland, and Director of Marketing Lauren Barnett. I first came across the work of Innovation 360 when I met up with Lauren and another colleague over coffee one morning. And in the last 3 years I have been continually impressed not only with Lauren and Kevin, but the whole team at Innovation 360. I love their all encompassing approach to mental health, which involves caring for the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual lives of those they come alongside of.Not only our Kevin and Lauren involved in mental health, but they are avid triathletes. And when I say avid, I mean Lauren is professionally sponsored, and not only won first place in her first , but she has been on the podium ever since. And Kevin competes regularly in triathlons, completing two races. These two are people who strive to take care of themselves physically, emotionally

About two years ago I came across Sarah Stanley online which led to a few email exchanges about running and health. And over the course of the last two years I have been both continually impressed and encouraged as I have watched her explore the outer limits of her abilities (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually) through her ulta-running, all the while being fueled on a plant based diet.  And her running resume is impressive: 26 marathons, Boston qualifying, 7 50 mile races, and 4 100 mile races...and on and on and on. The intersection of running and food has been resonating with me the last couple of years and is the reason why I wanted to sit down with Sarah and interview her on my podcast. As you will be able to tell from this interview, Sarah is full of life, and is passionate about so many things. I love that excitement and I love the message she brings at the intersection of our fitness, food and faith.     In this podcast we will explore: being born and growing up on one of the first cert

My dad is an amazing guy. Besides being my father he has taken on many roles over the course of his life such as church planter, pastor, professor, prison chaplain, hospice chaplain, writer, teacher, speaker, spiritual director, radio show host...and co-founder of Water from Rock which is a non-profit ministry based in Scottsdale, AZ, and which provides weekly classes, workshops, retreats, Lenten and Advent devotionals and much, much more. So all that to say, my dad is incredibly wise and has a lot of important insight into some of the issues that we all at times find ourselves struggling with.In this episode, my dad sits down with a couple of weeks after my 40th birthday as we explore the importance of how we navigate significant life transitions; what it means to discover our passion and how we can go about exploring that; as well as looking at the role of "letting go" in our journey through life so that we may more fully embrace the work of God in our lives.We talk about and cover all kinds of topics in th

What can I say about Marc Payan? He is someone who is hard to sum up in just a few words. I first came across Marc in the online marriage and relationship space. Though we first met online I began to occasionally see Marc in person and I have really been inspired by him.Marc is probably best known now as the founder of Payan X which began with him helping a few people get in shape in his garage, and which now is a "movement" of thousands of people. Though it primarily involves fitness, it is more than that. It's about life transformation in many areas such as leadership, relationships and community....and fitness is just one aspect of that. But all of this began with Marc's own personal transformation of losing close to 110lbs, becoming physically fit, and then leading a "tribe" of "warriors" that began with a few in his garage...and who are now helping transform the communities around them.Marc has some great insight into about the importance of "working it out", rather than working out. And about "what's ea

I have been dreaming and thinking about starting a podcast for about two years, but just never got around to it. As much as I wanted to start it, life just got in the way. Work has been busy in my private practice, as well as speaking and writing. And then there is family life and all the things that come with that as well. Trying to balance out work, family life, as well as my own personal stuff has become a huge challenge over the years...and so the podcast just took a backseat.So that's why I thought it so important to start my podcast journey off talking about the intersection of self-care and relationships. What I have learned over the years is that when I'm not taking care of myself, I'm just not any good to the relationships around me. My ability to take care of myself directly impacts the relationships that I'm in.My desire is to be someone who is life-giving, and to breathe life into the relationships around me, rather than suck the life out of them.So in this episode I explore: --what self-care is -