What would it look like if the church took seriously the 80,000 hours most people spend at work over a lifetime? In this conversation, host John Terrill sits down with Matt Rusten — pastor-turned-vocational-discipleship-advocate and author of Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work — to explore one of the most neglected dimensions of Christian formation: our everyday work.

Matt shares the story of Tom Nelson — founder of Made to Flourish — who famously confessed to his congregation that he had been "committing pastoral malpractice" by equipping people for a minority of their lives while ignoring where they spent most of their time. That confession became the seedbed for an entire movement, and it shapes every page of Matt's new book.

Together, John and Matt trace the biblical arc from creation to new creation and show why work — far from being a necessary evil — is woven into the fabric of what it means to be human. They discuss four postures Christians take toward workplace engagement (boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage gloves, and work gloves), unpack a powerful framework for pastoral care drawn from the stages of enchantment and disenchantment in Ecclesiastes, and offer practical handles for how sermons, small groups, and outreach ministries can begin integrating a theology of vocation — without creating new programs or hiring a "faith and work pastor."

Whether you are a pastor, a church leader, or simply someone wrestling with purpose in your daily work, this conversation offers both grounding and hope.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• The origin story of Made to Flourish and the "pastoral malpractice" confession that launched a movement
• Why faith and work discipleship is a biblical, historical, and pastoral priority
• A creation–fall–redemption–new creation framework for understanding work
• Four postures for cultural engagement: boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage, and work gloves
• Lessons from Lesslie Newbigin and Tim Keller on mission, vocation, and the local church
• Practical tools for pastors: preaching, small groups, outreach, and vocational formation
• The enchantment–disenchantment–re-enchantment cycle and how the Gospel reframes work
• Made to Flourish's three initiatives: Common Good Magazine, Scatter, and pastoral residencies

GUEST

Matt Rusten — Executive Director of Made to Flourish; author of Pastoring for Monday (IVP, 2026)

LINKS & RESOURCES

Pastoring for Monday (IVP Press)

Made to Flourish

Common Good Magazine

More episodes & podcast offerings — SLBF Studio

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What does it look like when a Jewish New Testament scholar sits down with a Christian host to talk about how two ancient traditions read the same texts — and reach such different conclusions? That's exactly the conversation host Jean Geran has with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine in this wide-ranging episode recorded in Madison, Wisconsin.

AJ Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and one of the most respected voices in Jewish-Christian dialogue today. She recently joined us for our Questions of Faith event in Oshkosh and spent time in Wisconsin as a scholar in residence at First United Methodist Church in Madison.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How growing up Jewish in a Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts led AJ to a lifetime of studying the New Testament
• Why the Torah is said to have "70 faces" — and what that means for how Jews and Christians approach interpretation differently
• What Jews and Christians share in terms of canon, prayer, and Scripture — and where they meaningfully diverge
• AJ's surprisingly practical take on salvation, Torah-observance, and whether Jews worry about getting into heaven
• Why Jesus used parables — and why he rarely explained them
• The difference between Jewish communal identity and Christian individualism, and what each tradition can learn from the other
• Baseball vs. football: a memorable analogy for understanding Jewish and Christian orientations toward time, memory, and the future
• The Hebrew concept of tzaddik (the righteous one) and what it means to bless the city you're in
• Whether shared stories can bridge religious and cultural divides — and AJ's honest, unsentimental answer
• Lament as relationship: what Tevye, the Psalms, and Job have in common, and why arguing with God keeps us in the conversation

GUEST
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science, and the author of numerous books including Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi and The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

This week on The UpWords Podcast, we're bringing you something a little different — and we think you're going to love it.

We're sharing the first episode of a brand-new podcast series from the Lumen Center and SLBF STUDIO: American Evangelicals, A History Podcast. Hosted by historians John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra, this series takes a thoughtful, deep dive into one of the most talked-about religious movements in American history.

In this opening episode, they start with a deceptively simple question: What is an American evangelical? Beginning with the extraordinary story of Nathan Cole, an ordinary Connecticut farmer who rode twelve miles on horseback in 1740 to hear George Whitefield preach, the historians trace the origins of what would become a world-shaping religious movement.

LEARN more about the series - https://slbf.org/americanevangelicalspodcast

Along the way, they discuss:

• The Bebbington Quadrilateral — the four markers historians use to define evangelicalism: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism
• Why the "new birth" or born-again experience is so central to evangelical identity
• George Whitefield's remarkable celebrity and his transatlantic influence
• How evangelicalism was, in its early form, a disruptive and progressive movement challenging established religious authority
• The complex relationship between the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution

If you've ever felt like the word "evangelical" is confusing, contested, or a little loaded, this conversation brings real historical clarity. This is episode one of a three-part introduction to evangelicalism — with much more to come in the series.

SUBSCRIBE to the podcast in your favorite podcast app - https://americanevangelicalsahistorypodcast.buzzsprout.com

And if this episode resonates, share it with someone who wants a deeper, more nuanced understanding of American evangelical history.

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

STUDIO at the SL Brown Foundation is launching a brand new podcast, and we wanted to share it with our faithful listeners of The UpWords Podcast.

If you like what you hear, click the links below to subscribe or follow the show:

Listen on the web = https://americanevangelicalsahistorypodcast.buzzsprout.com

Apple Podcasts = https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-evangelicals-a-history-podcast/id1893672281

Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/show/1xxlIG0bcGbK8arTbYTCxF?si=7a70e3973cec47e5

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What if picking up a book could become a form of prayer? In this conversation, host John Terrill sits down with Jeff Crosby — publisher, author, and lifelong champion of the written word — to talk about his book World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading (Paraclete Press, 2025).

Jeff brings more than four decades in bookselling and publishing to a deeply personal question: why should we read? His own reading life began with Sunday comics in the Indianapolis Star and baseball biographies, until one book — The Admiral’s Daughter, heard about on Good Morning America — “flipped a switch” and opened, in his words, “this idea of a world of wonder.” From there, a career took shape: 13 years as a bookseller, 24 years at InterVarsity Press (ultimately as its publisher), and now as president of ECPA, the trade association of Christian publishing.

In this episode, John and Jeff discuss:

How a liturgy before reading — drawn from Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy — can transform how we approach any book

Why reading diverse voices (across gender, ethnicity, and genre) is a pathway toward becoming more human and more Christlike

The practice of rereading: how books like Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld and Kent Haruf’s novels serve as lifelong companions

Three practical strategies for becoming a wiser reader — including the one question Jeff asks almost everyone he meets

Why Jeff’s bookstore friend was counseled to fast from books — and what that revealed about his relationship to scripture

How reading together (from team check-ins at ECPA to hosting 75–100 person “Books in Nature” dinners) transforms community

Jeff’s next book: The Spirit in the Sky — on music, spirituality, and 17 artists from Paul Simon to Marvin Gaye (Bloomsbury, October 2025)

Jeff recorded this conversation the day before his mother’s memorial service, turning to the Psalms and a poetry collection called Joy (edited by Christian Wiman, Yale University Press) as companions in grief. His witness here is as much lived as written.

Guest Bio

Jeff Crosby is the president and CEO of ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) and has worked in bookselling and publishing for more than 40 years — from running a Lagos bookstore near Indiana University to 24 years at InterVarsity Press to leading the trade association of Christian publishing. He is the author of World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading (Paraclete Press, 2025) and The Language of the Soul. His writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Books & Culture, CRUX Journal, and other publications. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife, author Cindy Crosby.

Resources Mentioned

• Jeff’s website: jeffreycrosby.net
• World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading — Jeff Crosby (Paraclete Press, 2025)
• The Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music and Our Search for Graceland — Jeff Crosby (Bloomsbury, October 2025)
• Every Moment Holy — Douglas McKelvey
• Markings — Dag Hammarskjöld
• Reading for the Love of God — Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press)
• Joy (poetry anthology) — edited by Christian Wiman (Yale University Press)
• The Meaning of Your Life — Arthur C. Brooks

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What does it look like to be a faithful Christian in the public square without losing your soul in the process? In this conversation, host Rebecca Cooks sits down with Justin Giboney — attorney, ordained minister, political strategist, and co-founder of the AND Campaign — for a candid, thought-provoking dialogue on faith, politics, and moral imagination.

Drawing from his book Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around, Giboney challenges Christians to move beyond partisan tribalism, recover the bold example of the Civil Rights generation, and engage culture with truth, justice, and the transforming power of the gospel.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How Giboney went from knocking on doors in Southwest Atlanta to running campaigns — and what he learned along the way
• What a “culture war” actually is, where it started, and why the Black church refused to be defined by it
• Why fighting against evil doesn’t automatically make you good — and what the Civil Rights generation understood that we’ve largely forgotten
• What “moral imagination” means: the ability to see not just what is, but what ought to be based on God’s character and promises
• Practical advice for Christians who feel stuck between candidates — including Giboney’s framework for values-based voting
• How to stay engaged when politics feels exhausting — and when it’s actually okay to step back
• The Shirley Chisholm story: what moral imagination looks like in action, and why it still has the power to change people

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Justin E. Giboney (JD, Vanderbilt) is the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization that equips Christians to engage in politics with the love and truth of Jesus Christ. He is an ordained minister, attorney, and political strategist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Christianity Today. He is the author of Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around (IVP, 2025) and co-author of Compassion (&) Conviction (IVP, 2020).

RESOURCES

• Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around by Justin Giboney — ivpress.com
• The AND Campaign — andcampaign.org

Send us Fan Mail

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Dallas Willard believed that the aim of God in human history is the formation of a community of loving persons — people apprenticed to Jesus, shaped by his character, and prepared to co-reign with him in eternity. In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Dan Hummel sits down with Keas Keasler, author of the first comprehensive academic study of Willard’s theology. Together they trace Willard’s life from Depression-era Missouri to the halls of USC, unpack the philosophical roots of his spiritual formation theology, and ask why his vision for discipleship feels especially urgent in the church today.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Why Keas Keasler spent seven years researching Dallas Willard — and what he discovered that surprised him
• The key biographical facts of Willard’s life: a broken childhood, a pivotal choice between philosophy and seminary, and 47 years at USC
• How Willard’s friendship with Richard Foster and a small Quaker church in Southern California helped birth the modern spiritual formation movement
• Why Willard chose phenomenology — the study of consciousness — and how it shaped his theology of transformation
• What it means that Willard was a committed metaphysical and epistemic realist — and why that grounds everything he taught
• Willard’s vision of humans as co-rulers with God: what it means, what the parable of the pounds has to do with it, and why formation is training for that calling
• The famous Willard line: “Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning” — and the sophisticated theology behind it
• The Golden Triangle of spiritual formation: the Holy Spirit, the spiritual disciplines, and the ordinary decisions of daily life
• The “sanctification gap” that Richard Lovelace identified in the 1970s — and why it has only widened since
• Why there is a crisis of character in the church today, and what Willard’s vision offers as a remedy

GUEST BIO

Keas Keasler (PhD, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology at Friends University, where he also serves as Program Director of the MA in Christian Spiritual Formation and Leadership. He is a Research Affiliate of the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center at Westmont College. An ordained Baptist minister, Keasler has traveled to over forty countries and preached on six continents.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Kingdom Apprenticeship by Keas Keasler (IVP Academic)
• Hearing God by Dallas Willard (IVP)
• Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard
• The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
• Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard
• Becoming Dallas Willard by Gary Moon
• The Kingdom Among Us by Michael Stewart Robb
• Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
• Conversatio.org – Dallas W

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Artificial intelligence is everywhere — but what does it mean for us as humans, as embodied creatures, and as people of faith? In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Dan Johnson sits down with Noreen Herzfeld, a computer scientist turned theologian who has been thinking seriously about AI and humanity since the 1980s. Together they explore why we are driven to create AI in our own image, what Christian theology says about embodiment and relationship, and why the church should be cautious about AI.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Why humans are compelled to create AI in their own image — and what that reveals about us
• How the Imago Dei (image of God) shifts from intellect to relationship in 20th-century theology — and why it matters for AI
• What Christianity's strong theology of embodiment means in a world increasingly dominated by language and the cloud
• Why AI chatbot "relationships" are fundamentally different from — and inferior to — human relationships
• Where AI has real, appropriate uses (narrow, domain-specific tools like AlphaFold) and where it falls dangerously short
• Why Noreen sees limited good use for AI in ministry — and significant risks in pastoral care and counseling settings
• How large language models differ fundamentally from earlier AI — and why they hallucinate
• The collision course between AI energy consumption and climate change
• Why Noreen would advise most people: don't use it at all

GUEST BIO

Noreen Herzfeld is one of the rare scholars who holds advanced degrees in both computer science and Christian theology. She earned her M.S. and M.A. from Penn State, took a sabbatical to study why humans want to build AI in our image, and ended up earning a Ph.D. in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley. She has been teaching and writing at the intersection of technology and faith for over two decades. Her books include In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit (Fortress, 2002), Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World (Templeton, 2009), and The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic World (Fortress, 2023). She also directs the Benedictine Spirituality and Ecotheology Program at St. John's School of Theology and Seminary and is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies in Koper, Slovenia.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Noreen Herzfeld's faculty page: csbsju.edu/sot/person/noreen-herzfeld/
• In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit — (Fortress Press, 2002)
• Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World — (Templeton, 2009)
• The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic World — (Fortress, 2023)
• AlphaFold (DeepMind protein folding AI) — deepmind.google/technologies/alphafold
• Sherry Turkle, MIT sociologist — referenced in discussion of chatbot relationships

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour