@ Sea With Justin Mcroberts

One of the most persistent criticisms of religious progressivism is that it is reactive, pushing back on (and sometimes warring against) older, institutional practices deemed out of date, unhelpful, and even unjust. And while there is some good to such a posture, it doesn’t constitute a full enough profile of leadership.  In his book “The […]

It’s one thing to say “we’re in this together.” It’s another thing entirely to practice “belonging” and pay the kind of price required to actually broaden one’s tent; to include people who would just as soon exclude or eliminate you from the socio-cultural mix altogether.  For many years now, Ben McBride has been doing the […]

This episode airs in February of 2020 and gyms all over the country are wrapping up their New Year’s deals to entice newcomers. It’s a poorly kept secret in the fitness world that most gyms (24 hr Fitness, Planet Fitness and the like) harvest the majority of their memberships in January and then.. come February […]

In a recent poll of Australians, 70% of those polled claimed to mistrust religious leaders. Of course, I don’t spend a lot of time searching Australian polling data. I saw this because I pay attention to author and missiologist Michael Frost. Michael,  has spent much the past two decades tilting his ear towards those who live well beyond […]

In his early letters to Jesus followers the Apostle Paul regularly and specifically warned against a religious philosophy called Gnosticism. In short, Gnosticism valued immaterial things and particular devalued the human body.  Over 2000 years later, it seems to me that disembodiment of various kinds continues to pose a threat, not just to a healthy […]

The power of those who identify, translate and communicate current events is truly massive; sometimes frighteningly so.  In 1978, Science fiction writer  Philip K. Dick warned against the power of what he called “the media,” writing…  “I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the […]

World suicide prvention day is Sept 10 this year. If you’ve been around my life or work for any stretch of time, you know that suicide, depression and related realties have played a significant role for me, in the show of my father’s suicide in may of 1998. I can trace back just about all the work I do as an artist and advocate to […]

I met Sarah Thebarge in Houston at a gathering of speakers and artists focused on advocating for children in poverty. I was immediately struck, not only by how articulate she was but by the depth and breadth of her definition of human flourishing. That depth and breadth runs through all her work and every conversation […]

I first met Christena Cleveland across the street from a conference where, later that day, she would speak on issues of race and the long road towards unity among Christians. Her presentation was 3 minutes long. What I left that conference with was’t just what I heard Dr. Cleveland present in her few minutes.. but […]

That songwriting is an art is widely understood. What can be messy or confusing is what becomes of any art, and particularly songwriting, when it becomes a job, a business or an industry. And then, what becomes of the people who identified as professional artists when the season changes and the industry evolves?  Part of […]

For a season, Aaron Niequist worked at a church called Willow Creek in the Chicago area; a church that functioned as a kind of flagship for mainline christian Chruch practice. He also served at Mars Hill in Grant Rapids Michigan, a church whose culture was often seen as a next step away from (if not […]

Welcome to Season 4! And what a way to kick it off! In the fall of 2018, I got to spend a few weeks on the road with Jen Hatmaker and Nichole Nordeman on their Moxie Matters tour. For 15 nights, I got to play songs and then watch  rooms full of women (and a […]

Take a brief tour through some of the key moments in conversations that defined Season 3 of the podcast. My guests: – Dominique Dubois Gillard   – Sandra McCracken   – Carlos Whittaker   – Jeremy Cowart   – Michael Mcbride   – Matt Shotwell   – Scott Erickson   – Jonathan Merritt   – […]

On March 25, 2018, women, men and children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador began walking north toward the US border. As weeks passed, their numbers grew… and their story began to move toward the stoplight of major American News sources. Of course, the tint of that spotlight varied in shade depending on its source. […]

Earlier this month, John Allen Chau was killed by members of one of the most isolated peoples on earth. According to his own journal, Chau was committed to sharing what he knew of Jesus with the Sentinelese people…  and even after being forcefully deterred several times prior, returned the island of North Sentinel on Nov […]

In her landmark book “Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies” Marylin McEntyre writes… “If language is to retain its power to nourish and sustain our common life, we have to care for it in something like the way good farmers care for the life of the soil, knowing nothing worth eating can be […]

This is part two of my interview with visual artist and storyteller Scott Erickson. If you haven’t had the chance to check out part one, it’s not necessary to hear it first .. but… it might be helpful.. and it’s a great conversation. The second half of our conversation turns more specifically to the role […]

My guest on this episode is long-time friend and co-creator Scott Erickson. He and I created and released the book “Prayer: 40 Days of Practice” a few years ago and his partnership has been not only enjoyable but enriching and transformative. Scott’s work as a visual artist and storyteller comes from and carves out what […]

Jan 1 2018 was a landmark day for marijuana legalization in CA. For many, the moment was another stumbling misstep towards even more compromised societal norms. For others, including my guest, it was a hard-fought-for moment emblematic of a culture coming to its senses and embracing a kind of inevitable tide. Either way, It was […]

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. – Amos 8:11 You may have noticed a bit of a lag between episodes of this podcast. If you’ll allow… that lag […]