Accidental Tomatoes

Helen Ryde is the Southeastern Regional Organizer for the Reconciling Ministries Network , a group of United Methodists seeking justice for LGBTQ+ people across all the intersections they inhabit. In this episode, Joe talks with Helen about their own faith journey, the work of RMN, and the importance of intersectionality in justice work.

Generations of oppression and exploitation have left the coalfields of central Appalachia among the most economically & socially depressed areas of the world. In this episode, Joe talks with coalfield justice advocate Brad Davis about how systemic dehumanization has affected the region and how his vision for a contextualized "Holler Gospel" can help restore individuals, families, and communities.

David Finnegan-Hosey, author of Christ on the Psych Ward and Grace is a Pre-Existing Condition talks with Joe about mental health stigma, the politics of healthcare, and how the language of Jesus helps us reframe our conversations.

Joe continues his conversation with innovator Jenny Williams about how we can begin to imagine new paradigms for faith communities to exist outside the molds and models of traditional institutional Christianity.

Rev. Jenny Williams is an innovator in ecclesiology, seeking new expressions of faith communities built around intersections of relationships and social justice. In this two-part episode, Joe talks with Jenny about how justice is the truest expression of the gospel and about how we can recapture and redeem troublesome and confusing language to help communities work for justice in their contexts.

In this episode Joe talks with The Collection lead singer David Wimbish about music and community and how vulnerability plays into both. Listen to David's new solo project, "Surface Tension" on your favorite streaming service starting Sept. 4!

In this episode Joe talks with author, speaker, and Norwich City FC faithful Sean Gladding about how community can form around a shared narrative of the Big Story of God. Learn more about Sean at seangladding.com and check out his podcast, The Naked Man .

In this episode of the podcast, Joe talks with public advocacy specialist Dr. Tomeka Robinson of Hofstra University about why it's important to center the voices of the marginalized in conversations around justice and equality and the role intersectionality plays in our exercise of privilege.

In this episode, Joe chats with pastor and theologian Jonathan Dierdorff on competing biblical narratives, challenges in interpretation, and writing a book during pandemic.

Is growing in wisdom more than simply gaining information? Have we traded experiential knowledge of the divine for spiritual formation programs that just give us more data? In this episode, Joe examines the devolution of much of American Christianity into a kind of folk superstition and talks about how a renewed quest for wisdom might change the game.

How one episode from the Old Testament story of King David might help us see where we are in the world today.

In this episode, Joe sits down with longtime friend and software developer Harry Morgan to talk about how they as white people are confronting their complicity in racist systems and structures and learning to accept accountability and make changes that can make a difference in our communities.

Story is one of the most powerful forces in how we shape ideas and attitudes, and the art of storytelling can be a vehicle for deeper understanding. In this episode, storyteller and artist Drew Willard joins Joe for a conversation about the power of good storytelling and how it can give us a clearer picture of the life and way of Jesus than we often experience in traditional formats. Find more of...

In this episode, Joe interviews social justice activist and author Shane Claiborne in a wide-ranging conversation covering issues from the Sermon on the Mount to gun violence and the death penalty to the Christian response to injustice in the world.

In this episode, Joe talks about how our various states of privilege impact the way we are experiencing life in a global pandemic and how recognizing our privilege can help us create a more equitable and just society on the other side. Special guests Emily Okes and Amanda Webb share how their senses of privilege are shaping their own experiences in complex and nuanced ways.

In this episode from the midst of COVID-19 shelter in place protocols, Joe reflects on what it means to experience the presence of the divine in a real, sensory manner in the mountains of West Virginia.

In this final part of our "Deconstructing Lent" series, Joe looks at some of the often-misused passages from Matthew 7 and places them within Jesus' larger context of deconstruction and reconstruction at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

In Part 3 of our Deconstructing Lent series on the Sermon on the Mount, Joe unpacks the way Jesus moves his 1st Century Jewish audience from deconstruction toward reconstruction in Matthew 6.

In Part 2 of our Deconstructing Lent series, Joe provides more cultural and historical content for the Sermon on the Mount and talks about how Jesus begins to deconstruct his listeners' understanding of Torah, the Jewish legal code of the time.

For Christians, the season of Lent is a time of reflection. But it can also be a time for those of us on the outside of religious traditions to deconstruct some of the myths that often hold us captive. Episode 9 is the first in a four-part series aimed at deconstructing Lent through the lens of one of Jesus' most well-known and important teachings: the Sermon on the Mount from chapters 5, 6, and 7...

In this Black History Month episode of the podcast, Joe talks about how white privilege happens, how he discovered his own privilege, and why it's so important for white people to recognize privilege and help to re-center the stories of people who have been harmed by it.

More and more we meet people who have experienced or are experiencing some type of spiritual or religious trauma. Our special guest on this episode is Emily Stuart, a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling who has done some very important research into spiritual trauma...and who shares her own story of experiencing it herself firsthand. If you or someone you know has been shamed or...

In this week's episode, Joe talks about the statement, "God is Love." Is it really true? And if it is really true, then what does it really mean? Does it make our concept of God too small? Or does our concept of love need to be bigger?

Guest host Anna Webb of Remember That Time: An Historical Podcast joins Joe for a conversation about how the language we use in the church can create unintentional barriers to people's experience of the divine, and how we can learn to be more intentional about the words we choose to create deeper and more meaningful relationships.

Sometimes our expectations can cloud our view of reality. On this episode of the podcast, Joe uses a creative interpretation of a story about Jesus and John the Baptist to talk about how we can be imprisoned by our expectations and how deconstruction and reconstruction can help us see reality more clearly.