Created in the Image of God

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• From Saigon to “Promised Land” with David Truong | Created In The Image of God 260 01.07.2026 1sa 7dk

  Born in Vietnam and forced to flee as a child after the fall of Saigon, David Truong’s life traces a modern Exodus—from war, displacement, and refugee camps to rebuilding in America and discovering a deeper freedom in Christ. After escaping by boat and surviving the uncertainty of camp life, he and his family eventually resettled in the United States, an experience he recounts in his memoir Escape to America, featured on NPR and in regional media.Today David is a husband, father, corporate attorney, and deacon at Dulles Church of Christ, a Bible‑based congregation he helped plant more than 20 years ago. In this episode of Created in the Image of God, he reflects on how God met him in trauma and transition, reshaped his understanding of freedom, duty, and opportunity, and turned a family’s desperate escape into a story of redemptive love and purpose.We talk about memory, migration, and gratitude—what it means to honor the life you narrowly escaped, the life you were given, and the responsibilities that come with both. For anyone wrestling with hardship, origin stories, or the meaning of “promised land” in their own journey, David’s story offers a sober, hope‑filled look at providence, perseverance, and thankfulness. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• From Hustle to Holy Habits with Jason Heinritz | Created In The Image of God 259 29.06.2026 49dk

  Jason Heinritz grew up in a conservative Christian home in Waukesha, Wisconsin—church on Sundays, sports and good grades through the week. But underneath the wholesome exterior, he learned to draw his worth from performance: being liked, being captain, winning. In college, that drive found a perfect outlet in direct sales with Cutco Cutlery, where he quickly became a top producer and then a successful office owner.Through his twenties, Jason lived the classic “work hard, party hard” script: binge‑drinking weekends, achievement‑driven hustle, and a faith life largely reduced to an hour on Sunday. He still called himself a “Jesus guy,” but his real priorities were trips, trophies, and building his own kingdom. The breaking point came when he got engaged in a relationship built on chemistry and convenience more than shared calling—and realized, just months before the wedding, that he couldn’t honestly bring God into a future he was already compromising.In this episode, Jason unpacks that wake‑up call and the year of reset that followed: calling off the wedding, stepping back from dating, diving into Scripture, morning routines, and wholehearted surrender. We trace how God led him from divided loyalties into a life of “holy habits”—launching the Wake Up Jesus People movement, the 40 Forge Challenge, and the journal and practices now helping believers move from hustle to sustainable rhythms with Jesus.If you’re tired of living split between your public success and your private soul, Jason’s story is a practical, hopeful invitation to let God reorder your days—so you can live with deeper peace, purpose, and joy in a noisy, distracted world. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Reading the Bible in Its Historical Context with Gary Rendsburg | Created In The Image of God 258 24.06.2026 1sa 25dk

  Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Oasis & the Half‑Caste Kid with Steve Chalke | Created In The Image of God 257 22.06.2026 55dk

  If you ask Steve Chalke why Oasis exists—a network of churches, schools, housing projects, youth work, anti‑trafficking initiatives, and community hubs serving tens of thousands across the UK—he’ll take you back to a teenage boy walking home in South London. The son of a South Indian railway worker and a white English mother, Steve grew up in poverty, watching his father passed over for jobs and literally watched people cross the street to avoid him. At school his nickname was “half‑caste,” and teachers in his “dump” of a secondary school told students people like them weren’t worth educating; they’d work with their hands, not their heads.At 14, Steve started attending a Friday‑night youth club at a local Baptist church because he was infatuated with a girl named Mary. One evening her friend walked across the hall to inform him, in front of everyone, that Mary thought he was “ugly.” Crestfallen, he trudged home—only to realize that, whatever Mary thought, the story he was hearing at that little church was radically different from the one he heard at school. There, he was told he’d never amount to much. At church, he heard that he was made by God, that his life had meaning and purpose. On that walk home, he made a decision that would mark the rest of his life: he would keep going to the youth group even if Mary never spoke to him again; he would follow Jesus; he would become a church leader; and when he grew up, he would start a school that was worth going to, a house for kids who had never been loved, and a hospital.In this episode, Steve tells how that teenage vow slowly became reality. After training for ministry at Spurgeon’s College and serving as a youth pastor, he and his new wife Cornelia did something most would call reckless: they left the security of a large church job and, with no money, launched a 501(c)(3)–style charity from scratch. In 1985 they opened a sixteen‑bedroom house for 16–18‑year‑olds who had been abused, neglected, and passed around the care system. Cornelia named it “Oasis,” because that’s what they wanted it to be—a place of shelter and life in a desert of indifference. From that single house, Oasis has grown over four decades into a family of charities employing more than 6,000 staff, educating 35,000 children in some of the UK’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and running churches, youth work, housing projects, and justice initiatives—including work in the criminal justice system and anti‑trafficking efforts.Along the way, Steve has become one of Britain’s most outspoken public Christians: fronting national TV and radio broadcasts, serving as a UN special adviser on human trafficking, launching the STOP THE TRAFFIK coalition, and writing over 40 books that challenge the church on issues like atonement, racism, inclusion, and LGBTQ+ affirmation. In conversation with Wade, he unpacks his conviction that Christian faith is always personal but never private—that the gospel must show up in concrete action for justice, reconciliation, and the common good, or it has betrayed Jesus. He reflects on how his own story of exclusion fuels his passion for radically inclusive communities, why he believes churches must be embedded in their neighborhoods as “hubs” of holistic care, and how theology, sociology, and psychology all have a role in reimagining what it means to love our neighbors.For listeners wondering what it looks like to take Jesus’ call to love the least of these seriously—not just in words but in structures and systems—this episode offers both inspiration and provocation. Steve’s life is a testimony that a 14‑year‑old’s kitchen‑table decision, rooted in the simple belief that every person bears God’s image, can grow—through risk, failure, perseverance, and grace—into an oasis for thousands. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Life Worth Living with Miroslav Volf | Created In The Image of God 256 18.06.2026 52dk

  Miroslav Volf’s theology was born not in an ivory tower, but in the cracks of a fractured world. Raised in post–World War II Yugoslavia by a Pentecostal pastor father and a Bible‑soaked mother, he spent his earliest years in a tiny apartment shared with a Serbian nanny, Milica Branković—“the angel of my childhood,” as he calls her. In a country still marked by violence between Croats (largely Catholic) and Serbs (largely Orthodox), that little household quietly embodied a different possibility: people from groups taught to distrust one another living together in love, prayer, and mutual care. It was, in hindsight, a living parable of reconciliation.As a teenager, Volf resisted the weight of his parents’ faith, only to encounter Christ for himself at sixteen—unexpectedly, in a Swedish tent meeting where he barely understood half the sermon. The change was profound enough that when he returned home, his emotionally astute mother simply looked at him and said, “What happened to you? You’re a different person.” From there, his path wound through underground theological study in communist Yugoslavia, philosophy at the University of Zagreb, a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and advanced work in Tübingen, Germany on the deepest questions of God, self, and other. All of it unfolded against the backdrop of a homeland sliding into ethnic war.In this episode, Volf and Wade explore how those experiences gave rise to the themes that now define his work: exclusion and embrace, identity and otherness, and the possibility of a life “worth living” in a deeply divided age. Volf explains why he sees the gospel’s heart not in withdrawal or domination, but in the crucified Christ who absorbs enmity and opens his arms in welcome—a pattern he famously unpacked in Exclusion and Embrace, and has continued to develop through the Yale Center for Faith & Culture’s work on flourishing and public faith. They discuss how theology must be tested in the “laboratory” of real life—war, injustice, politics, and everyday relationships—and why cheap calls to reconciliation that ignore justice are as dangerous as justice pursued without any hope of reconciliation.Drawing on insights from Flourishing and Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Volf invites listeners—believers and skeptics alike—to wrestle with questions modern life often pushes aside: What is a good life? What are we for? How do we live with our enemies, our neighbors, and even ourselves without being consumed by resentment? Throughout, he returns to the conviction that a truly Christian vision of life is both deeply realistic about evil and radically hopeful about God’s power to create a future of joy, justice, and embrace.For anyone struggling to make sense of faith in the face of violence, culture wars, or personal hurt, this conversation offers more than abstract answers. It traces the journey of a man who has seen exclusion up close and still dares to imagine—and work for—a world shaped by reconciliation rather than revenge. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• You’re Only Human with Kelly Kapic | Created In The Image of God 255 15.06.2026 51dk

  Many Christians live with a quiet, relentless pressure: be everywhere, know everything, do it all—then feel guilty when they can’t. Kelly Kapic has spent much of his life gently dismantling that lie. A theologian and long‑time professor at Covenant College in Georgia, Kelly was raised in a Catholic home in northern California, drifted from church as a kid, and then came to a lively faith through a Baptist youth group. Over the years his path took him from Wheaton College to seminary, then to doctoral work in London on the 17th‑century theologian John Owen and the doctrine of the Trinity. Since 2001 he has taught courses in doctrine, the Trinity, Christology, and faith and suffering, helping students see that theology is not an abstract hobby but a way of understanding how to live well before God.In this episode, Kelly and Wade explore themes from his books You’re Only Human, Embodied Hope, and Christian Life: what it really means that God is God and we are not. Kelly points out that when Scripture calls us to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” the word “perfect” has more to do with fullness and maturity than sinless performance. Hebrews can say that Jesus “was made perfect” through suffering—not because He was ever sinful, but because, as truly human, He entered the full range of human experience, including pain, loss, and obedience under pressure. That same passage opens up the mystery of a God who, in Christ, doesn’t just know our temptations in theory, but has borne them experientially from the human side.From there, the conversation turns practical: How do we distinguish God’s attributes—omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence—from our own calling as limited creatures? What happens to our souls when we try to imitate the wrong things about God, living as if we, too, must be everywhere, know everything, and fix everyone? Drawing on his work with college students and his collaborations with psychologists and pastors, Kelly argues that learning to accept our finitude—our need for sleep, our local bodies, our incomplete knowledge—is not a lack of faith but an act of trust. It frees us from frantic busyness and perfectionism, and it changes how we respond to suffering: not as a glitch in an otherwise “normal” life, but as a place where God meets us, matures us, and knits us into community.Throughout the episode, Kelly keeps theology tethered to everyday reality: burnout, family expectations, church life, and the quiet shame many believers carry about their limitations. He and Wade also touch on ritual and practice—why even informal churches are full of habits and “liturgies,” and how those can either help or hinder real intimacy with God.For anyone who feels crushed by spiritual to‑do lists, confused about how a perfect God relates to imperfect people, or hungry for a more humane vision of the Christian life, this conversation offers both clarity and relief. Kelly’s message is simple and liberating: you were never meant to do it all—and your limits, received in faith, can become places where grace, joy, and genuine holiness take root. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Serving Two Masters? Faith, Business & the Poor with Peter Greer | Created In The Image of God 254 10.06.2026 50dk

  Peter Greer grew up on a historic street in Concord, Massachusetts—home of the “shot heard round the world”—in a house where faith, hospitality, and global curiosity were simply normal. His dad pastored a local church, his mom served in the schools, and Sunday lunch almost always included an extra guest at the table. Those early lessons in welcoming the stranger and learning from other cultures became the quiet foundation for a very public vocation.In this episode, Peter shares the pivot moment that shaped his life’s work: a college trip studying international business across Europe and the former Soviet Union, capped by a lunch in Moscow with a man doing economic development as Christian mission. In that conversation, faith, global poverty, and business snapped into a single calling. From there, Peter went on to serve with World Relief in Cambodia, lead a microfinance institution in post‑genocide Rwanda, wrestle with hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and eventually become CEO of HOPE International, a global ministry that equips families in poverty to start and grow businesses.Together we explore how to rethink charity, why dignity and partnership matter, and what it looks like to hold together Jesus’ warnings about “serving two masters” with a robust, hopeful vision of business and entrepreneurship as tools for justice, restoration, and honoring the image of God in the poor. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Songs, Stories & a Kinder God with Andrew Peterson | Created In The Image of God 253 08.06.2026 54dk

  Before he was writing fantasy novels, founding the Rabbit Room, or penning modern hymns, Andrew Peterson was a pastor’s kid who felt like he didn’t belong. Born in Illinois while his Southern parents were in seminary, his early years looked like a Norman Rockwell painting: John Deere tractors, cornfields, and an Andy‑Griffith innocence. At seven, everything shifted. His family moved “home” to North Florida—a place he describes as “like South Georgia, but weirder”—and the cultural whiplash left him feeling like an outsider overnight. In a town where everyone belonged to one of a few extended families, the kid with the non‑Southern accent was “the yankee,” and a low‑grade ache to find home settled in.Through all of it, stories and songs were his refuge. He devoured comic books (especially Batman), drew constantly, and soaked up everything from hair‑metal ballads to Jim Croce, Pink Floyd, and the quiet singer‑songwriters his dad piped in through the easy‑listening station: James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Van Morrison. He believed God was real—but in the Southern church world he knew, the gospel felt mostly like bad news. God existed, but He was mostly angry and disappointed. Heaven seemed reserved for the people who behaved; Andrew knew he wasn’t one of them.Everything began to change when he stumbled into the music of Rich Mullins. Learning “If I Stand” for a friend cracked open a door he didn’t know was there. Here was someone writing honestly about doubt, sin, grace, and a Jesus who actually loved people like him. Rich’s wonder‑soaked lyrics gave Andrew permission to see the created world—not as disposable fuel for the end times—but as his Father’s world, pulsing with God’s presence and goodness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the God who’d felt cold and condemning began to look more like the God revealed in Jesus: holy, yes, but also kind, patient, and full of affection.In this episode, Andrew and Wade wander through that journey—the dislocation of childhood, the haunted beauty of the South, early bands and batman sketches, and the slow healing of his imagination. They touch on how those experiences eventually gave rise to the Wingfeather Saga, Adorning the Dark, The God of the Garden, and the Rabbit Room community: all born from a desire to help others see that faith and art aren’t enemies; that stories can carry truth in ways arguments can’t; and that our longing to belong is, at its core, a longing for Christ.For anyone who grew up in church afraid of God, for artists wondering how their gifts fit in the Kingdom, or for those who quietly feel like they’ve never quite belonged anywhere, this conversation offers gentle, grounded hope. Andrew’s story is a reminder that God often meets us in the very places we feel most out of place—through songs, stories, and the slow realization that the world, and our lives, are more haunted by grace than we ever imagined. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Haunted Plantation, Holy Authority with Eric Davis | Created In The Image of God 252 03.06.2026 1sa 2dk

  Some people talk about spiritual warfare in theory. Eric Davis had to live it. A lifelong lover of antiques and old homes, he visited a plantation in South Carolina, fell in love with the idea, and asked God for one of his own. In 2016, that prayer seemed to be answered when he acquired Springhill Plantation. The joy didn’t last long. Almost immediately after moving in, Eric and his family began to encounter unnerving phenomena: strange noises, flashes of light, and, most chillingly, a fog‑like form taking shape outside that carried a palpable sense of evil. The house, they realized, was haunted.In this episode, Eric recounts how what began as a dream quickly became a test of faith. He could have run. Instead, he stayed—and discovered that survival would require more than casual Christianity. He talks about the escalating oppression, the fear that pressed in on his family, and the ways he initially responded that, in hindsight, left doors open to the enemy. Then, step by step, he describes how God began to teach him his true identity in Christ and the authority believers have in Jesus’ name. Over the course of several years, through prayer, repentance, wise counsel, and persistent spiritual warfare, Eric learned to stand his ground, confront the entities in the house, and see his home and family set free.With humility and raw honesty, Eric doesn’t just tell ghost stories; he unpacks the spiritual lessons behind them—how bitterness, occult curiosity, generational sin, or unexamined compromises can create footholds for darkness, and how the cross and resurrection of Jesus provide real power to close those doors. For anyone battling unexplained fear, oppression, or a sense that “something is wrong” they can’t quite name, this conversation offers both sober discernment and solid hope. Eric’s story is a reminder that the unseen battle is real—but so is the authority of Christ to bring peace, protection, and freedom. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Breaking the Power of the Mask with Jocelyn J. Jones | Created In The Image of God 251 02.06.2026 48dk

  Jocelyn J. Jones grew up in Catholic school, watching her mom convert so the kids wouldn’t be left out—and quietly learning how to perform faith without ever really meeting God. She remembers sitting bored in Mass, inventing sins for confession, and treating church as ritual rather than relationship. That began to shift at a Kairos retreat in high school, but the real turning point came in college, when a friend invited her to a women’s Bible study and a worn VHS tape—Juanita Bynum’s “No More Sheets”—brought soul ties and sexual trauma into the light.In this episode, Jocelyn shares how God met her in that “ugly cry” on the living room floor, walked with her through years of wrestling, and eventually led her from journalism and TV into full‑time ministry at 23. Today she’s an ordained minister, author of Breaking the Power of the Mask, founder of Faith on the Journey Counseling, and a Master Facilitator with the Trauma Healing Institute, helping people heal from trauma, grief, and shame through a Christ‑centered lens.Together we talk about religion versus relationship, judgment versus love, and why taking off the mask is the first step toward emotional freedom and a life of purpose in Christ. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Intellectual Friendship with R. J. Snell | Created In The Image of God 250 27.05.2026 1sa 13dk

  R. J. Snell likes to say he’s a farm boy from nowhere. Growing up in Carbon, Alberta—a town of about 360 people—he learned early what it meant to belong to a place where everyone showed up for your little league game and honked the horn, regardless of which church they attended or whether they believed at all. When his parents suggested he probably wasn’t cut out to be a farmer and should “keep going to school,” they set him on a path that would eventually lead through philosophy, teaching, and into his role today as Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton and editor‑in‑chief of Public Discourse.In this episode, Snell reflects on how those small‑town lessons—rootedness, responsibility, and community—shape his work with students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. He points out that while places like Princeton excel at technical excellence, they often hesitate to ask the deepest normative questions: What is the purpose of life? What is a human person for? What may we reasonably hope in? That’s where his work with Witherspoon comes in. Just off campus, he gathers students into seminars and reading groups designed to make space for those questions, and to model what he calls “intellectual friendship”: a community where people with differing beliefs can pursue truth together without collapsing into either relativism or rage.Snell describes his approach as putting the emphasis not on having the cleverest answers, but on learning to ask better, more honest questions—and sustaining a culture where that is valued. He talks about helping young adults navigate a fragmented age without losing their capacity for wonder or moral seriousness, and about how real community can “turn down the boil” in a society where every disagreement feels like a crisis. Along the way, he draws on decades of teaching, writing, and lecturing across North America and Europe, unpacking why philosophy, ethics, and a rich understanding of the human person still matter in a world dominated by technology and speed.For parents uneasy about sending their kids into today’s campus climate, students longing for deeper conversation, or anyone hungry for a more sane, humane way to think and live, this episode offers a grounded vision: that friendship, truth, and responsibility to a particular place and people are not luxuries, but the very conditions for flourishing in our time. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Elephants, the Grass & the Teacher with Chinyere Egbe | Created In The Image of God 249 25.05.2026 54dk

  When wars are told in history books, the focus is usually on generals, presidents, and borders. Chinyere Emmanuel Egbe insists the real story lies elsewhere. A Nigerian‑born economist and long‑time CUNY professor who has spent decades teaching statistics and finance in Brooklyn, Dr. Egbe is also the author of Elephants, the Grass and the Teacher, a memoir of growing up during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). In it, he uses a simple image to describe what he saw: the “elephants” — ruling establishments and military elites — decide when wars start and end, but it is the “grass,” the masses of ordinary people and low‑ranking soldiers, that is trampled.In this episode, Dr. Egbe walks through his early life under British colonial rule, the disciplined, justice‑oriented home shaped by his London‑educated teacher father and deeply prayerful mother, and the way that upbringing gave him a rigid sense of right and wrong. He then traces how Nigeria’s negotiated independence in 1960, followed by flawed elections and political crises in the mid‑1960s, spiraled into a military coup and eventually civil war. From his vantage point as a boy in Eastern Nigeria, he witnessed firsthand how decisions made by distant leaders translated into hunger, fear, displacement, and death on the ground.Along the way, he returns again and again to what he calls “divine interventions”: the improbable escapes and narrow misses that kept his family alive when, as a statistician, he now sees the odds should have gone the other way. He reflects on ancient voices like Plutarch and reformers in Rome who also saw commanders treating soldiers like expendable coins, and connects that insight to Paul’s blunt question in the New Testament: “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” For Dr. Egbe, the answer is clear — greed and the struggle of powerful “elephants” over resources God has already provided in sufficient measure for all.The conversation then bridges to his later work: why those wartime experiences drove him toward economics, why he believes education is a moral calling, and how his efforts in Central Brooklyn — from launching degree programs in financial economics to creating a Wall Street‑style trading lab and leading HUD‑funded community projects — are part of the same lifelong response to injustice he first sensed as a child.For listeners who have only known war through headlines, or who wonder what faith and justice look like when you’ve seen conflict up close, this episode offers a rare combination: rigorous economic insight, vivid personal story, and a clear-eyed moral critique of power that still leaves room for gratitude, purpose, and hope. Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• The Stories Our Words Tell with Gregory Coles | Created In The Image of God 248 20.05.2026 1sa 26dk

  Gregory Coles is a writer, speaker, and language scholar whose life sits at the crossroads of faith, identity, and words. The author of Single, Gay, Christian, No Longer Strangers, The Limits of My World, and the forthcoming Sexuality Beyond Sex (IVP, 2026), Greg has spent years asking what it means to follow Jesus as a single, gay Christian who loves the church and takes Scripture seriously.In this episode, we talk about why language matters so much—how the labels we choose can shape our sense of self, our expectations of God, and even who feels welcome in the body of Christ. Greg shares how his own story has been formed by Scripture, prayer, and community, and why surrendering our desires and identities to God doesn’t mean pretending our questions or longings don’t exist.From memoir to theology to literary scholarship, this conversation invites us into a more honest, nuanced way of talking about sexuality, discipleship, and the image of God in every person—especially those who don’t fit our assumptions. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• From Grief to Gratitude with Steven Ferrara | Created In The Image of God 247 18.05.2026 47dk

  On paper, Steven Ferrara had the kind of life many people dream about. Born into a poor but tightly knit Italian family in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood, he grew up surrounded by Sunday dinners, grandparents in the basement kitchen, and a home full of love. A spiritual seeker from his teens—studying universal principles, practicing Transcendental Meditation, and devouring teachings on consciousness—he went straight into business at 18, eventually building one of the largest privately held financial services firms in the Northeast. By mid‑life he had a thriving career, a beautiful home, a loving wife, and three children.Then, in 2004, his world collapsed. His 23‑year‑old son Christopher, with whom he shared an unusually deep bond as both father and business partner, died suddenly in a car accident. Five years later, his wife—the emotional cornerstone of their family—was diagnosed with a rapid illness and passed away within weeks. Despite decades of spiritual practice, Steven found himself undone: running through his neighborhood shouting at God, questioning everything he had ever believed, and wondering how life could possibly go on.In this episode, Steven shares how his long habit of journaling—begun the day after his son’s death and continued for twenty years—became the unlikely container for his healing. Only after retiring and handing his firm to a successor team did he begin to reread the shelves of journals he had filled. As he did, he started to see the quiet “life lessons” that had been forming in the middle of his pain: invitations to accept what he could not control, to see death through a different lens, and to discover that gratitude and grief can coexist. Those insights eventually became his book From Grief to Gratitude: A New Paradigm on Death, a roadmap for others walking through loss.Drawing on spiritual influences from his Catholic childhood to universalist teachings, contemplative authors, and his own direct experience with God, Steven talks about what it has meant to move beyond fear, anger, and guilt into a genuine, hard‑earned gratitude—for his parents, his children, his late wife, and even the “curve balls” he would never have chosen. He speaks candidly about parenting his daughters through the loss of their mother, the ongoing nature of grief, and how he now understands death not as the end of relationship, but as a change of form within a larger, loving reality.For anyone who has lost a child, a spouse, or simply finds themselves afraid of death and undone by sorrow, this conversation offers no clichés—only the voice of someone who has lived through the fire and found a deeper peace on the other side. Steven’s story is an invitation to consider that even in life’s hardest seasons, a grateful heart is still possible. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Shapes of Love with Michael Gungor | Created In The Image of God 246 13.05.2026 1sa 14dk

  For years, many knew Michael Gungor as a worship leader and the creative force behind the band Gungor. Today, he’s just as likely to call himself a “creative mystic,” experimenting with ambient soundscapes, podcasts, and a forthcoming book, The Shape of Things. Underneath the changing forms, one question has stayed constant: What is the real shape of reality—and how do you live in tune with it?In this episode, Michael reflects on a theme he sees running through Jesus’ teaching and the wider mystical tradition: “You’ve seen it this way, but it’s actually upside down.” For him, the shape of things is bent toward love, being, and a deep “yes” at the heart of existence, not the anxiety, division, or fear we often assume is normal. He uses the image of a bonsai artist working with a tree’s natural growth—observing the flow of life and then gently cooperating with it—as a picture of what he’s trying to do with music, words, and art.The conversation also touches the “tortured artist” stereotype. Michael talks about the real tension and pain that can come with creating—birth pangs, dissonance, the gap between what exists and what you sense is possible—while questioning whether suffering has to come from isolation and ego. He explores a both/and path where creating is simultaneously for the joy of others and for his own joy, collapsing the false divide between giving and receiving. Throughout, he and Wade circle around the trees in Genesis, non‑dual spirituality, and how art can carry spiritual insight without being trapped in old religious boxes or in shallow self‑expression.For listeners who have deconstructed, feel caught between faith and doubt, or simply sense there is “more” than the usual religious arguments, this episode offers an honest, imaginative window into one artist’s attempt to cooperate with the shape of love at the center of things. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Faith, Data & Being American Muslim with Dalia Mogahed | Created In The Image of God 245 13.05.2026 1sa 12dk

  Public debates about Islam and Muslims in America are usually loud, shallow, and short on facts. Dalia Mogahed has spent much of her life trying to change that. Born in Cairo and raised in the United States, she grew up in a family where high-level scholarship and deep devotion were normal: a grandfather who taught at Al‑Azhar—the “Harvard” of the Muslim world—training women in theology, and a mother who was the only woman in her rocket‑engineering class at Cairo University. As a child, Dalia spent weekdays sleeping at her grandparents’ home while her mother commuted two hours each way to teach, absorbing the Qur’an as the literal “soundtrack” of her days as her grandfather recited whenever he was home.At five, her life shifted dramatically when her parents moved to Madison, Wisconsin on a peace‑grant scholarship that was itself a little‑known clause in the Camp David accords. Suddenly the little girl steeped in Cairo’s rhythms was learning English, trying to fit in, and navigating public schools. In elementary school, international backgrounds were celebrated; by middle and high school, “foreign” started to feel like “other.” The pivot came at fifteen, when she stumbled across The Autobiography of Malcolm X in her school library. Reading it, she discovered that Islam was not an alien presence in America but had helped shape its story, that Muslims had been here since the nation’s beginning, and that there was such a thing as being American Muslim. Malcolm gave her language for an identity she’d been living but couldn’t yet name.From that foundation, Dalia went on to combine her love of faith with a talent for data. As executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co‑author of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, she helped bring rigorous polling and analysis to a conversation too often driven by fear and speculation. Today, as head of Mogahed Consulting and a scholar with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, she advises governments, media, and corporations on Muslim communities and religion in public life—work that has taken her from the Obama White House to testimony before the U.S. Senate and countless media appearances.In this episode, she and Wade return to her story as a lens on bigger questions: how American Muslims actually see themselves; why it matters that Islam has a long history of coexistence with Jews and Christians; how policies, prejudice, and global events have shaped Muslim experience in the U.S.; and what it means, in Islam, to surrender to God’s will while engaging fully in a democratic, pluralistic society. Throughout, Dalia brings the same combination of personal warmth, scholarly depth, and moral clarity that has made her one of the most trusted voices on these issues.For listeners confused by headlines, curious about their Muslim neighbors, or wrestling with how faith fits into a divided public square, this conversation offers something rare: careful facts, lived experience, and a vision of pluralism rooted not in vague tolerance, but in genuine understanding and shared responsibility before God. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Female Future of Faith with Gina Zurlo | Created In The Image of God 244 06.05.2026 1sa 6dk

  Most people hear “Christianity” and think of their own congregation, country, or a handful of familiar headlines. Gina Zurlo spends her days looking at the whole picture. A Senior Researcher and Lecturer in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, editor of the World Christian Database, and co‑editor of the third edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia (which she personally presented to Pope Francis), she tracks how religious and non‑religious affiliation is changing in every country on earth—past, present, and projected into the future.In this episode, Gina pulls back the curtain on how that work is done. She describes what it means to maintain a database that follows nearly every world religion and tens of thousands of Christian denominations, why she might be working on Burkina Faso one day and Brazil the next, and how raw numbers get turned into a coherent story. Along the way, she tackles common misunderstandings about “the rise of the non‑religious,” the shifting center of gravity of Christianity toward the Global South, and the surprisingly important role that gender plays in global religious life.One of Gina’s central passions is what she calls the “female future” of faith—the fact that women make up the majority of Christian believers worldwide, yet are often underrepresented in leadership and in how we tell the story of the church. Drawing on her background in history, sociology, and demography, she explains why paying attention to women’s religious lives is key to understanding where Christianity is actually headed. Throughout the conversation, she keeps bringing the data back to everyday questions: What does this mean for local churches? For mission and evangelism? For how believers relate to their secular neighbors?For anyone curious about what Christianity really looks like beyond their own country—or wondering how numbers and faith can speak to each other without flattening the mystery—this episode offers a clear, accessible guide. Gina’s work invites listeners to see global Christianity as a living, changing mosaic—and to consider their own place within it. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• From Survival to Sovereignty with Lela Tuhtan | Created In The Image of God 243 04.05.2026 55dk

  Many people are raised on a simple script: work hard, get a stable job, stay loyal to one institution, and security will follow. For Lela Tuhtan, that script shaped her early life and career—and then became the very story she had to unlearn. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by second‑generation immigrant parents—an electrician father and a teacher mother—she grew up in a home where diligence, sacrifice, and external security were non‑negotiables. You found a job, ideally in a union, and you stayed. That was the American dream.Yet even as those values took root, something else was happening. At ten, Lela was hit head‑on by a car while riding her bike. She survived with a fractured skull, broken bones, and months of rehab. When she finally returned to school, she was met not with compassion but mockery; classmates held up the newspaper photo of her injured face and called her ugly. In that moment, Lela describes feeling a physical fork in the road: she could let their words become her identity, or she could transmute the pain into something else. Without having the language for it yet, she chose to “compost” the trauma—turning it into the raw material for resilience and a different kind of self‑story.For years, she still followed the expected path, earning degrees (including a master’s from Columbia), teaching in classrooms, and pursuing the kind of career her parents could easily understand. But around 2018–2019, right before COVID, a quiet dissonance grew too loud to ignore. Training in Co‑Active Coaching and eco‑psychology opened her eyes to a different way of working—one that honored her love for literature, story, and the inner lives of people. She began coaching other educators and high‑impact professionals, realizing she was, as she puts it, the “black sheep” in her family: wired not for one institution and a retirement watch, but for entrepreneurial, narrative‑driven work that helps others reclaim their own agency.In this episode, Lela and Wade explore what it means to move from survival‑based scripts to sovereignty—without abandoning community or responsibility. They talk about how stories we inherit about safety, success, and belonging can quietly imprison us, why so many people have outsourced security to institutions that no longer feel trustworthy, and how practices as simple as gardening—literally getting your hands in the soil—can reconnect a person to their own capacity, creativity, and interdependence with others. Lela shares practical examples from her coaching: how she helps clients notice the “second arrow” of self‑judgment after hardship, reframe limiting beliefs, and build lives and businesses that are both aligned and generous, rooted in mutual support rather than isolation.For anyone sensing that the life they’re living doesn’t match who they really are—or who feels torn between the stability their family prized and the freedom their soul longs for—this conversation offers both clarity and encouragement. Lela’s story is a living illustration that you can honor where you come from, compost what has harmed you, and still grow into a life that feels deeply, authentically your own. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• Fake ID & the Search for Truth with Abdu Murray | Created In The Image of God 248 29.04.2026 56dk

  Abdu Murray grew up certain Islam was true. The son of Lebanese immigrants in southeast Michigan, he was raised in a serious Shia Muslim home where faith wasn’t just cultural; it shaped his identity and his arguments. From an early age he absorbed both apologetics (why Islam is true) and polemics (why Christianity is false), and in 1980s–90s America—when it was fashionable to call yourself “Christian” with little thought—he found Christians easy targets. He would ask classmates why they were Christians and usually got answers like “tradition” or “we go to church on Christmas and Easter.” For Abdu, that wasn’t good enough. “Why,” he’d ask, “would you trust the destiny of your eternal soul to a system of belief someone else thought through?”Underneath the jock exterior (a 6'7"" athlete who played Division I basketball and trained in martial arts), Abdu was a natural advocate. He loved philosophy, logic, and evidence, studied psychology in college, and later earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. Questions about truth weren’t abstract; they were everything. He believed that what is true excludes its opposite, and that relativism—“what’s true for you is true for you, what’s true for me is true for me”—simply didn’t work. Islam, he thought, was that truth, and Christianity was a corrupted, lower‑grade version of original revelation. Like many Muslims, he saw Islam as “college” to Judaism’s “grade school” and Christianity’s “high school.”In this episode, Abdu tells the story of how that certainty was slowly unsettled. What began as an effort to “knock over” other people’s faiths turned into a nearly decade‑long investigation of Christianity’s historical, philosophical, theological, and scientific claims. Along the way he had to grapple with uncomfortable questions: Why does the Qur’an speak positively about the Torah and the Gospel in the present tense, yet deny the central claims those texts make about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection? If Jesus didn’t die on a cross and rise from the dead, what do His own words about giving His life “as a ransom for many” mean? Is Christianity really a regression from pure monotheism—or the fulfillment of the story the Hebrew Scriptures have been telling from the beginning?Abdu describes the moment he realized the faith he was trying so hard not to have was the one he desperately needed—that the Trinity, the incarnation, and the cross were not insults to God’s greatness but the clearest demonstrations of it. He also talks about how his twin loves—understanding how people think (psychology) and how to marshal evidence (law)—shaped his calling as a Christian apologist and evangelist. Now president of Embrace the Truth and author of books like Saving Truth, More Than a White Man’s Religion, and his latest, Fake ID: How A.I. and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality—And What to Do About It, he spends his life helping people see that questions need more than slogans, and that real freedom requires real truth.The conversation ranges from Islam and Christianity’s different views of revelation, to how identity politics and artificial intelligence are distorting our sense of what’s real, to why arguments should always be aimed at people, not just positions. For anyone wrestling with doubt, curious about Islam and Christianity, or simply feeling disoriented in a world where reality itself seems up for grabs, this episode offers both intellectual rigor and pastoral warmth—an invitation to test the big claims and, in the process, meet the One who calls Himself “the way, the truth, and the life. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe
• God’s Imperfect Plan with Steve Rotermund | Created In The Image of God 241 27.04.2026 50dk

  From the outside, Steve Rotermund checked all the Christian boxes. He’d gone from a powerful Promise Keepers experience to volunteering, sensing a call to ministry, and eventually stepping into pastoral leadership. He served as a children’s pastor over 150 kids, directed Awana and Celebrate Recovery, planted a church, and even hosted a radio ministry. But behind the scenes, a different story was unfolding: a marriage shaken by his wife’s secret addiction to pain medication, a home full of fear and shame, and a deep anger at God for not “fixing” her while Steve worked full-time for Him.In this episode, Steve goes back further—to the soil all of that grew out of. He describes a childhood dominated by abandonment and trauma: a mother who left when he was four and disappeared until he was eighteen, a father who cycled in and out of alcoholism and told him he’d never amount to anything, and sexual abuse at age six that he carried in silence into his forties. Those early wounds left him convinced he was fundamentally unworthy, even as he “sold Jesus” to others from the pulpit. Ministry became a stage where codependency thrived: needing to be needed, feeling important, and trying desperately to control what was broken at home.When his wife began passing out on the front row of church, the shame and exhaustion finally broke him. Steve handed his congregation to another pastor, walked away from ministry, and walked away from God. The next two years were, as he puts it, “hell”—a codependent husband trying to fix an addict he couldn’t control. A trusted friend finally pushed him to see a Christian counselor. Within fifteen minutes of their first session, the counselor told him, “You’re part of the problem.” That blunt diagnosis of codependency—and the later challenge to move from “adopted son tolerated by God” to full sonship in Christ—became the turning point.Steve describes how, through years of counseling and a fresh encounter with John 14:20 (“I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”), his identity shifted from shame and performance to union with Jesus. The journey wasn’t neat: he still had to make the painful decision to divorce in order to protect his kids, rebuild his own life, and slowly reengage with church. But out of that wreckage came a renewed call to ministry and the birth of Walk Right Ministries—a Christ-centered 12-step recovery community where he now walks with others through trauma, addiction, and codependency. His book, God’s Imperfect Plan—Is Perfect, invites readers to see that God can weave purpose even through what feels like failure.For anyone carrying hidden wounds, trapped in someone else’s addiction, or burned out on a version of faith built on performance and control, this conversation offers both honesty and real hope. Steve’s story is a living reminder that God doesn’t just rescue us from our circumstances; He meets us in them, heals the heart beneath the behavior, and invites us into a freedom where our worth is no longer on trial. Get full access to SOOPMedia on Substack at soopllc.substack.com/subscribe Get full access to Created in the Image of God at wadefransson.substack.com/subscribe