A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

Епизоде

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  Live Laugh Love 11.09.2026 1ч 37мин

  Text us your questions! We sit down with Kristin Kobes Du Mez to talk about her new book Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. We discuss how what looks like consumer fluff often hides a dense system of theology, discipline, and power. If you grew up around evangelical culture, charismatic spirituality, Christian bookstores, or influencer Christianity--especially if you're a woman--a lot of this will probably feel uncomfortably familiar. ...
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  Faith and Unbelief 23.08.2026 1ч 14мин

  Text us your questions! Randy and Kyle get brutally honest about the moment doubt stops feeling like “questions” and starts feeling like unbelief, including what it’s like to say that out loud when you’re a pastor with a church, a family, and a job that takes for granted that you believe in God. We dig into the philosophy and the lived spirituality behind the words we toss around too easily: belief, disbelief, doubt, and faith. Kyle unpacks the senses in which belief is (and isn't) an attitu...
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  Prayer After Certainty 06.08.2026 49мин

  Text us your questions! Prayer can fall apart slowly. One day you are sure your words move heaven, and eventually you can't tell if you're talking to anyone at all. We return to the topic of prayer to discuss what happens when it stops feeling natural, when the old charismatic certainty no longer fits, and when trying to pray the way you used to would feel performative instead of real. We dig into how Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity formed us with beautiful gifts as well as disappoi...
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  Sacred Play: Exploring Music, Sports, and Spirituality with David Gungor 19.07.2026 58мин

  Text us your questions! We wanted something different from our usual fare, so we invited musician David Gungor to help us see spirituality through an artist’s eyes: beauty, story, woundedness, and play. What starts as a talk about music becomes an exploration of navigating Christian deconstruction, church hurt, and the fear that life’s best days might already be gone. David shares his pastor’s kid upbringing, the family fallout that reshaped his world, and how his songwriting moved from evan...
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  Republicans Want to Win. Democrats Want to Be Right. 03.07.2026 55мин

  Text us your questions! Democrats can pass huge bills and still lose the argument with the people those bills are meant to help. That’s the tension we dig into with Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic strategist, Bernie Sanders alum, and proud “Mexican redneck” from East Texas who learned politics through factory work and union life. He comes in hot on one theme: voters don’t just weigh policies, they decide whether they trust you, whether they feel seen, and whether your message fits their wo...
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  Pastor As Gardener (Part 2) 12.06.2026 52мин

  Text us your questions! We continue our conversation with pastor and author Matt Erickson of Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee. The job of many pastors feels like that of a CEO, with a focus on leadership strategy and the "three Bs": buildings, budgets, and butts in seats. This conversation offers a slower, deeper, and more hopeful way to think about church health, discipleship, and long-term spiritual formation. We dig into the sequoia metaphor: doing work you may never see mature, trusting God...
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  Is Pastoring More Like a Startup or a Garden? 29.05.2026 42мин

  Text us your questions! Randy and Kyle sit down with Milwaukee pastor and author Matt Erickson to explore a different vision of pastoral ministry: not the pastor as CEO, brand manager, or religious expert, but the pastor as gardener. Matt’s book, The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry, grows out of real ministry pressure, including moral failures, church decline, the pandemic, and the strain of navigating racial justice and polarization in a multiracial congregation. We dig in...
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  Why Preston Sprinkle Changed His Mind On Women Pastors 15.05.2026 1ч 8мин

  Text us your questions! We talk with Preston Sprinkle about his book From Genesis to Junia and the long road from a John MacArthur shaped complementarian framework to an egalitarian view that affirms women teaching, preaching, and leading in the church. We dig into the passages that always show up in this debate (especially 1 Timothy 2, along with Paul’s wider world), but we keep pulling the camera back to ask harder questions about biblical interpretation and hermeneutics. Is the Bible a bl...
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  Trump, Iran, and Where This All Might Be Headed: A Conversation With Mike Madrid 01.05.2026 1ч 26мин

  Text us your questions! The news cycle is moving so fast it’s training us to forget. We invited Mike Madrid, a longtime classical conservative political strategist, commentator, and Lincoln Project cofounder, back on the show to help us slow down and put the recent chaos into perspective. We start with crisis fatigue and the “flood the zone” feeling, then get concrete with the Minneapolis ICE crackdown and why masked, militarized enforcement collides with the conservative case for due proces...
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  Thinking About Nature With Brian McLaren 17.04.2026 1ч 23мин

  Text us your questions! Prayer doesn’t always happen in a church. Sometimes it happens under streetlights or beside old trees. We open with Randy’s simple practice of late night walks and how nature has slowly become the place where his spirituality feels dynamic again. That shift also brings a collision with old religious instincts: the inner voice that says connection is dangerous, that wonder is “worship,” that the world exists mainly to serve us. Brian McLaren joins us to widen the frame...
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  Bart Ehrman: Is Jesus Responsible for Our Moral Common Sense? 03.04.2026 1ч 27мин

  Text us your questions! Bart Ehrman, an atheist New Testament scholar with a penchant for annoying evangelicals, now claims that the teachings of Jesus determined the moral instincts of the West. Bart joins us to talk about his new book Love Thy Stranger and why acts of care for immigrants, refugees, and people outside “our tribe” may be downstream of Jesus, even when the people doing the caring don’t believe in him. We get into what makes Jesus’ ethics so hard to swallow when you read them ...
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  Human Is The New Vinyl: Micah Voraritskul 20.03.2026 1ч 20мин

  Text us your questions! AI can now generate essays, photos, songs, and video that look real enough to fool experts. This impacts how and whether humans can trust one another, and it’s already reshaping how we learn, create, and relate to each other. Kyle sits down with Micah Voraritskul, author of Human Is the New Vinyl: Why Human Creativity Still Wins in the AI Revolution, to unpack why the vinyl comeback is more than nostalgia. Vinyl is inconvenient, physical, and slow, and that’s exactly ...
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  A Live Conversation on the Church, Healing, and Truth-Telling With David Gushee and Keri Ladouceur 15.03.2026 1ч

  Text us your questions! We recorded this live gathering in Chicago with the Post Evangelical Collective, and it still feels uncomfortably current. Alongside Dr. David Gushee and Keri Ladouceur (director of the PEC), we sit with a question that haunts a lot of post-evangelical and progressive Christian spaces: how do you keep loving the church after trauma, public rejection, and the weaponizing of God-language against vulnerable people? From there, we shift to the political and spiritual cris...
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  Backyard Update 11.02.2026 2мин

  Text us your questions! We're still here! Stay tuned. ===== Want to support us? The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount. If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal. Other important info: Rate & review us on Apple & SpotifyFollow us on social media at @PPWBPodcastWatch & comment on YouTubeEmail us at [email protected]!
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  Power, Love, and What God Can’t Do: More on Omnipotence With Tom Oord and Chris Lilley 12.12.2025 1ч 18мин

  Text us your questions! What kind of God is worth trusting when life falls apart? We pull up a chair with Thomas Jay Oord and guest Chris Lilley for a spirited, vulnerable conversation about omnipotence, evil, and why love may be the only measure of divine power that doesn’t betray our moral core. The stakes are high: beliefs about God’s power shape how we face suffering, talk to our kids about hope, and decide whether prayer is protest, surrender, or both. If you haven't heard our first conv...
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  Motives, Meaning, and the Enneagram with Jeff Cook 28.11.2025 1ч 28мин

  Text us your questions! Our friend Jeff Cook—writer, podcaster, and Enneagram systems thinker—is back with us to discuss his recent book (volume 1 of a series because of course it is): about the Enneagram. (See our first conversation from S03E26 here.) Jeff explains how the Enneagram names the “why” beneath our choices, conflicts, faith, and love. Randy shares how the framework has sharpened his self-awareness and softened his edges. And Kyle characteristically pushes back a bit on evidence, ...
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  Miroslav Volf: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse 14.11.2025 58мин

  Text us your questions! Is the drive to be better than others making us worse? We talk with theologian Miroslav Volf about his book The Cost of Ambition and explore why comparison-based striving saturates our schools, churches, workplaces, and politics. Volf separates healthy aspiration from superiority-seeking and makes a compelling case for excellence without domination, rooted in agape, i.e., unconditional love that affirms people beyond performance. We dig into the Christ hymn of Philipp...
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  How Latino Voters Are Reshaping American Politics 31.10.2025 1ч 15мин

  Text us your questions! We talk with political strategist, author, and Lincoln Project member Mike Madrid about data, culture, and why both parties keep getting the Latino vote wrong. Mike takes us inside the Lincoln Project’s 2020 strategy and the personal costs of resisting Trumpism, then draws a sharp line between principled conservatism and punitive nationalist populism. From energy policy to border security to employee ownership, we explore how Democrats ended up carrying a slate of cla...
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  What Conservative LGBTQ+ Christians Can Teach Us About Love 28.09.2025 1ч 23мин

  Text us your questions! Dawne Moon and Theresa Tobin are back to discuss their book Choosing Love, which represents the culmination of their research over the last several years into the community of conservative LGBTQ+ Christians. This book expands on many of the topics we covered in our first conversation while adding insightful material on the varied ways this community understands their conservative Christian identity, how it intersects with other aspects of their identities, how they und...
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  Deconstructing the Culture Wars with Laurie Johnson 14.09.2025 1ч 22мин

  Text us your questions! What happens when political labels lose their meaning? Dr. Laurie Johnson, political philosopher and president of the Maurin Academy, joins us to unpack the tangled roots of America's culture wars and explore pathways toward overcoming our divisions. We discuss her book The Gap in God's Country: A Longer View on Our Culture Wars. The conversation begins with a clarification of political terminology. Laurie explains how American understandings of "liberal" and "conserva...