In this episode, Mark speaks to Worldview Academy co-founder Jeff Baldwin about work, risk, and the sense of calling. A longtime friend, Jeff takes a unique approach to risk, and as provost of Worldview at the Abbey, he’s counseled many young people at the start of their professional lives on how to pursue excellence and faithfulness in their work. Mark asks about the role of providence and not hedging your bets, as well as the virtue of endurance.
When he was invited to a chapel service at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Mark spoke on 1 John 2.28-3.3. Between the text and some reminiscences about grad school days, he explored the relationship between how God names things and what they are. In this episode, we share that talk, titled “And So We Are.”
Cameron and his wife Jenny are new parents, and in this episode they talk to Mark about the challenges and the rewards of their journey through infertility to adoption. Sometimes hardship opens our eyes to the struggles of people all around us. It also compels us to rely on God when we have no power over our circumstances. If you’ve ever struggled with the unfulfilled longing, or the need to discern a new path forward, you’ll find encouragement in this conversation.
If you’d asked at any point over the past few years what the greatest need of our church was, one of the top answers would have been room to grow. We’ve needed a larger space to meet, and now we have one. Grace has only been in the new digs for a little over a month, but already we have seen both the benefits and the questions. In this episode, Mark and Cameron chat about the blessings and challenges of the move.
The Commentary is back after our summer break, and Mark and Cameron tackle an essential topic inspired by Grace’s study of Matthew 18: the challenge of forming a forgiving church. For individual believers to practice the forgiveness we’re called to, we need a community that supports this Christ-like impulse. But culture doesn’t just happen. It has to be cultivated. What are we doing to make our church a place where forgiveness is not just talked about but practiced?
In this episode, Mark checks in with Grace’s new associate pastor Dan Reed to hear about the back-to-back experience of graduating from seminary one day and being ordained and installed as a teaching elder the next. Then he joins Cameron in the studio to talk about the passing of Tim Keller, and the lasting legacy of his example of faithfulness.
As people of the book, Christians have a special relationship to the art of reading. In this episode, Cameron quizzes Mark with a lightning round of questions about whether audiobooks count as reading, if it’s okay not to finish books you’ve started, and what to use when you need a makeshift bookmark. There are some more serious questions in the mix, too, concerning the purpose and benefits of reading.
“Young people are longing for transcendence.” Are they, though? And what exactly does transcendence mean? In this episode, Mark and Cameron take a shot at naming the longing that drives so many people to search for deeper, more historically grounded experiences of the Christian faith. A lot of us feel that something’s missing, and that we’re looking for it in the wrong places. This conversation directs that longing toward its proper end.
In this special episode, the first of Mark’s five VISION TALKS are collected in a single recording. These live recordings focus on the building blocks of Grace’s vision: the centrality of worship, church-planting, our unique DNA (longing for more grace, more depth, and more community), why our culture has to be as gracious as our theology, and why historic Christianity is our goal.
Inspired by Cameron’s re-reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship, this episode revisits the concept of “cheap grace.” If we’re saved by grace apart from works, it’s tempting to think that what we do is, at best, of secondary importance — and, at worst, of no importance at all. But the call to salvation is also a call to sacrifice, which means that while it may be free, grace is anything but cheap.
The crime of Christianity, in Nietzsche’s view, was its renunciation of life. He declared God dead and sought to sweep away the continuing influence of Christian morality. But as Cameron argues in a recent essay published on his site Conversant, the resurrection offers a powerful response to this criticism. As Easter approaches, Mark asks Cameron to share how the theological and philosophical implications of the resurrection come to our aid in answering Nietzsche, and what we still might have to learn from his critique.
If you’ve ever wondered how pastors get from a text in Scripture to a finished sermon, this one’s for you. Part spiritual discipline and part stewardship, the process of understanding and then proclaiming the message of Scripture is much more involved than an introductory class on homiletics might suggest. Special guest and “friend of the pod” Luke Le Duc joins Mark in the studio to explore the secrets of sermon prep.
They haven’t read much farther than the introduction, but that doesn’t stop Mark and Cameron from discussing the new book Biblical Critical Theory, by Christopher Watkin. In this episode, they walk through some of the introductory concepts that make this such a promising text, and discuss how it might redeem critical theory and refresh worldview studies all at once.
Cameron has read Eugene Vodolazkin’s novel Laurus twice already, while Mark hasn’t managed to get past the first fifty pages. In this episode, they compare notes on the book, sharing what resonated (and what didn’t). They also discuss the relationship of a writer’s theology to his fiction, and talk about how reading someone else’s attempt to theologize in prose can shape one’s own efforts.
History is all too often one of those subjects we either ignore, or twist to support our culture war objectives. In this episode, Mark and Cameron ask whether there is a third option. How can the study of history help in our formation as thinkers — and yes, as believers. Is the past a trap we can never escape, or does it point a way forward if only we pay better attention?
As “good things run wild” at Grace, we’re faced with some welcome challenges, including the need to be good stewards of growth. In this episode, Cameron quizzes Mark about the vision of Grace and its practical application when it comes to finding solutions to our need for more space to worship. While we cannot always realize our vision immediately, it helps to have the end in mind as we figure out strategies to get there.
Due to blizzard conditions, Grace has been forced to cancel our Ash Wednesday service. But we’ve learned that when life gives you lemons, you can squeeze out a podcast. In this episode, Mark is joined by Rev. Luke Le Duc for a discussion of Grace’s Ash Wednesday liturgy. They also talk about the different between Advent longing and the “bright sadness” of the season of Lent. We hope this conversation will make for a helpful start to the season.
While Cameron vacations on the beaches of Florida, Mark soldiers on! This time, he’s joined by Delta David Gier, music director of what Alex Ross in The New Yorker called “one of America’s boldest orchestras,” the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. Mark asks David about faith and music, and they talk about the work of Crescendo North America, a professional organization for Christian classical and jazz musicians.
Picking up from last week’s discussion of parables, this episode takes on the question of narrative, storytelling, and fiction. Does the fact that Jesus teaches in parables tell us anything about the value of literature? Should we avoid reading made-up stories in favor of factual books, or are there truths that can only be grasped by way of fiction? Mark and Cameron tackle these questions and more.
