Pivot Podcast

Every generation inherits the same task: figuring out how to receive an ancient faith and pass it on in a language people can actually hear. In this episode, Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm open a new season of the Pivot Podcast by asking what spiritual formation looks like when it draws on centuries of Christian practice, the Book of Common Prayer, the doctrine of the Trinity, the rhythms of...

Why is cultivating community in church so hard right now? In this Season 6 finale, hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm reflect on a full season of conversations with historians, theologians, pastors, and researchers who helped them understand the many layers underneath that question. From the formative power of late modern culture to the provisional nature of relationships today, they name w...

The guilt most Christians carry about their prayer life, that it isn't deep enough, consistent enough, disciplined enough, may say less about them than about the world they're living in. In this episode, Dwight Zscheile talks with the Rev. Dr. Wesley Ellis, pastor of First Congregational Church in Ramona, California and author of Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age , about what a culture of o...

Church community building has never been more urgent or perhaps more difficult. In this episode of Pivot Podcast, Jeff Galley and Phil Smith, co-authors of The Way Back to One Another , join Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to talk honestly about the loneliness epidemic reshaping American life and what it means for the church. Drawing on years of experience in large church ministry and global r...

What is the meaning of Pentecost? In this reflection episode of the Pivot Podcast, Luther Seminary theologian Dr. Lois Malcolm moves past the familiar imagery of wind and fire to ask what the Spirit was actually doing that day in Jerusalem. Her answer is both clarifying and unsettling: the Spirit arrived not so the disciples could possess it, but so it could send them out. Lois draws three claims...

The debate over whether the church's primary calling is evangelism or justice has been running for over a century, and Dr. Al Tizon believes it has cost us more than we know. In this episode, the lead pastor of Grace Fellowship Community Church in San Francisco and affiliate professor of missional and global leadership at North Park Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary joins hosts...

What does first century Christianity have to teach the church about belonging today? In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Kristofer Phan Coffman, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, joins hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to explore the early church as a community of genuinely unlike people navigating real social upheaval. From the chaos of the Roman Empire to Pau...

What does it mean to find your identity in Christ, and what does the Old Testament have to say about it? In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Kathryn Schifferdecker, professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, walks hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm through the Bible's vision for human community, from the boundaries woven into creation in Genesis, to the covenant at Sinai, to the p...

Why does God allow suffering? It's one of the oldest and most urgent questions in human experience, and Dr. Rolf Jacobson has lived inside it. Diagnosed with bone cancer at 15 and losing both legs, then decades later walking alongside his brother Karl and close friend Mike through simultaneous cancer diagnoses, Rolf has wrestled with that question personally, pastorally, and theologically. In this...

What does real church community cultivation require? The Rev. Dr. Eun Strawser, physician, author, and pastor of Ma Ke Alo'o, a network of multiplying missional communities in Honolulu, Hawaii, has spent years working out a practical answer to that question. After planting her first church and growing it to 450 people, she realized a crowd had gathered but a community hadn't really formed. Her sec...

Why is Christian community so hard to cultivate in contemporary culture? In this episode of Pivot Podcast, host Dwight Zscheile continues his conversation with Dr. Jennifer Wojciechowski, a professor of church history at Luther Seminary, tracing the deep cultural roots of our present challenge. From the Enlightenment's reimagining of the human person as an autonomous individual to the seismic cult...

"Your labor is not in vain." It's one of Paul's most direct declarations in 1 Corinthians 15, and Dr. Jennifer Pietz, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, believes it has everything to do with how church leaders carry their work today. In this Easter reflection, Jenny addresses three common misconceptions about resurrection that quietly hollow out hope in ministry, and grounds...

Cultivating Christian community can feel really hard today, but the reasons run deeper than most church leaders realize. In part one of this two-part conversation, Luther Seminary professor Dwight Zscheile sits down with church historian Dr. Jennifer Wojciechowski to trace the roots of today's loneliness epidemic and discipleship crisis from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and into our p...

What does Christian community look like when a city is in crisis? In this first episode of Season 6 of the Pivot Podcast, Faith+Lead scholars Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm go inside the last eight months in the Twin Cities, a period marked by targeted violence, a school shooting, and a large-scale federal immigration enforcement operation that left communities shaken and afraid. The church s...

What does Ryan Burge's research on religious nones reveal about the Americans sitting just outside your church doors? In part two of this two-part conversation, Dwight and Alicia continue their discussion with Dr. Ryan Burge, data scientist and author of The Vanishing Church , diving into what the data actually shows about faith, formation, and the roughly seven out of ten Americans who are neithe...

What happens when political identity becomes stronger than faith identity? Dr. Ryan Burge is a data scientist, professor, and pastor who watched his own 150-year-old congregation close its doors in 2024. In part one of this two-part conversation, Ryan brings the data to bear on one of the most urgent questions facing church leaders today: how faith and political identity have become so entangled i...

Dr. Verlon Fosner's Seattle congregation was declining 14% every year despite doing everything right—improved worship, new programs, upgraded tech. So Verlon stopped trying to fix the decline and started asking a different question: Where is God already at work among people who will never walk through our church doors? His answer transformed his understanding of missional church. In 2008, his team...

Church leaders often approach Lent with a familiar script: add a devotional practice, give something up, host a midweek service. But what if this season called us to something deeper? In this special Pivot Podcast Lenten reflection, the Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson invites us into four transformative Lenten practices for church leaders that meet our exhaustion head-on. He offers: 1. sacred honesty a...

Many church leaders feel crushing church growth pressure—the constant anxiety that if you don't reverse decline or manage outcomes perfectly, you've failed. But what if that pressure is actually destroying the very connections you're trying to create? Dr. Andy Root and Rev. Kara Root discovered this truth on a 63-mile pilgrimage through Scotland with their teenagers. As they learned to let go of c...

Many church leaders love the idea of lay ministry in theory, but struggle to understand what it actually looks like in practice. In this special Q&A episode, Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm answer your questions about the shift from clergy-led to lay-led ministry, sharing concrete examples from small congregations to megachurches that are making this work. You'll hear concrete examples fro...

What if the church planters God is calling are already in your congregation? John McGinley, executive director of Myriad in the UK, shares how they're equipping everyday disciples to start new worshiping communities in gyms, schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Since 2022, over 100 teams and 400+ people have launched contextual churches led by non-ordained believers. John explains how to recogn...

What does Protestant identity in Christ mean for today's church leaders? In this conversation, theologian Beth Felker Jones explores why Protestant faith still matters in a moment when many are converting to Catholicism, embracing Orthodoxy, or deconstructing entirely. Beth unpacks the unique gifts of Protestant tradition: scripture as our primary authority, communal interpretation led by the Spir...

Discover how to read the financial parables of Jesus Christ with fresh eyes in this conversation with Dr. Keith Bodner, author of "Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus." Keith shares how a moment of panic in the pulpit led him to rediscover the confrontational power of Jesus' economic stories—parables about treasure in fields, workers in vineyards, servants with talents, and rich men who know...

In November 2020, amid a pandemic and national racial reckoning, two congregations in Des Moines made a bold decision to merge. Hope Des Moines, a primarily white Lutheran church, and Elim Christian Fellowship, a historically Black church, became Hope+Elim. This wasn't about saving declining attendance or finding quick institutional fixes. It was about two pastors who had built a friendship over y...

Pastoral care for pastors takes center stage in this special Christmas reflection as Steve Thomason offers church leaders a rare gift during the busiest season of the year: permission to let go of perfect. If you've been working nonstop since September with rally days, sermons, hospital visits, and board meetings, you know the weight that builds as Christmas approaches. The pressure to make everyt...