defragmenting

Episode Notes For several years, Michael Sacasas, executive director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, has reflected on and written about the effects of emerging technologies on us individually and societally. His work explores how our interactions with technology affect how we answer the questions of what it means to be human and the nature of the "good life." In this episod...

Episode Notes “Gift” and “good” aren’t words that usually come to mind when we think about our limitations. Dr. Kelly M. Kapic, author of You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News , thinks this reveals a serious theological problem, writing that denying our finitude “distorts our view of God and what Christian spirituality should look like.” In this episode h...

Episode Notes Disenchanted by the atheism she embraced in her teenage years, Ashley Lande turned to the world of psychedelic drugs and Eastern mysticism in search of meaning, satisfaction, and spiritual reality. Though her desires went unfulfilled, and she experienced the very opposite of what she was looking for, she kept returning to mushrooms and LSD. In her book _The Thing that Would Make Ever...

Episode Notes The velocity with which culture changes challenges evangelism and discipleship — something Brad Edwards, planter and lead pastor of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado, thinks about a lot. In this episode, he joined Dr. Keith Plummer to discuss lessons he continues to learn while ministering where people are “open to the idea of God but very turned off to the idea of church.” Oth...

Episode Notes Chris Martin, author of Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media , says social media has become so pervasive that not even non-users can fully escape it. He joins Dr. Keith Plummer to talk about how social media is influencing how we think and feel about life in largely negative ways and—most importantly, what Christians can do to resist. His is not a call to totally reject so...

Episode Notes Michael Graham is the program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and coauthor of The Great Dechurching : Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back? In this episode, he joins Dr. Keith Plummer and co-host Pastor Ben Best to talk about the 40 million Americans who have left the church in the last 25 years. They discuss the cultural...

Faithfully following Jesus in a digital and media-saturated society involves more than not using our devices for explicitly immoral purposes. Forming biblical wisdom requires being aware of how our technological practices might be shaping us in ways contrary to that of Christ. Listen to Dr. Felicia Wu Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age ,...

Episode Notes Cairn University’s Professor of New Testament, Dr. Kevin McFadden is the author of Hidden with Christ in God: A Theology of Colossians and Philemon , in Crossway’s New Testament Theology series. He joined Dr. Keith Plummer to discuss Christ as our hidden hope, his preeminence and sufficiency, Christians’ union with Jesus in death and resurrection, and its profound significance to cha...

Episode Notes “To live with OCD is to be vulnerable to the machinations of your own mind...It is an Affliction that lives in me as a powerful, painful intimidation.” So writes John Andrew Bryant in his award-winning book A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ , a book in which he recounts how a mental breakdown, a stay in a psychiatric ward, and being diagnose...

Episode Notes Proponents of physician-assisted death present it as an act of compassion that recognizes the dignity of those suffering from terminal diseases and other illnesses. Dr. Ewan Goligher, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, is a critical care physician who is regularly involved with patients and their families facing end-of-life decisions. In his book How Should...

Episode Notes Over his almost two decades as host of the UK-based radio program and podcast Unbelievable?, Justin Brierly facilitated countless thoughtful conversations about faith and unbelief between some of the world’s foremost atheists and Christian apologists. In his book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God  and podcast by the same name, Justin explores what led to the popularity of the s...

Episode Notes The Christian faith provides intellectually and existentially satisfying answers to many of life’s questions. But it likewise challenges us to consider whether the things we’re most curious about are really important and liberates us to ask new and better questions. Dr. Matthew Lee Anderson is convinced that the call to follow Jesus is a call to a life of questioning (to be distingui...

Episode Notes Dr. Gary Schnittjer, Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Cairn University, is co-editor of the Scripture Connections series to which he is also a contributing author. His book, Old Testament Narrative Books: The Israel Story , explores the histories of the Hebrew kingdoms—their rise, fall, exile, and restoration—and shows their connections to the ancient near eastern world, t...

Episode Notes The question “ Am  I being formed?” is never a valid one for the Christian. Rather, we must continually ask ourselves “By  what  am I being formed and  how ?” In his book  Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age , Samuel D. James claims “Rather than being a neutral tool, the internet (particularly the social internet) is an epistemological environment—a spi...

Episode Notes Our world is becoming increasingly polarized and we're prone to division before unity in any number of arenas. Technology fractures our sense of embodiment and the current culture wars see Christians parting ways over theology, politics, history, race, social justice. This division isn't only external...rather there is an ongoing pressure to disassociate the mind from the body - divo...

Episode Notes Matthew T. Martens is the author of Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, a book in which he hopes “to demonstrate from Scripture that justice is, most fundamentally, an issue of love.” “Get love right,” he says, “and you will get justice right. But you will never set the justice system straight without a proper understanding of love.” Bringing together his almost thirty...

Episode Notes Christian colleges and universities committed to biblical authority endeavor to help students see the connection between their faith and the academic subjects they’re studying. This is sometimes hindered by the fact that some professors have been trained in settings where the implications of Christian doctrine for their areas of specialization were either ignored or significantly min...

Episode Notes Artificial intelligence and deconstruction are topics receiving a lot of attention in a variety of Christian circles but rarely in the same place. Dr. Michael J. Svigel, department chair and professor of theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, creatively brings the two together in his latest novella, The AItheist. He joined Dr. Keith Plummer to discuss this book about an apparently...

Episode Notes As evidenced by the multitude of tributes offered following his death, the pastoral ministry, speaking, writing, and example of the late Dr. Timothy Keller helped countless people better know, love, and obey Jesus. Even those who didn’t share his faith, have offered sincere expressions of gratitude and admiration for his life. In this episode, Collin Hansen, vice president of content...

Many believe higher education is facing an existential crisis. While nonprofit and for-profit schools are battling issues of affordability, enrollment, and latent COVID realities, the need for Christ-centered, academically rigorous, and biblically faithful institutions of higher education remains. In this episode, Dr. Todd J. Williams, president of Cairn University, and Dr. Allen Guelzo, American...

Many believe higher education is facing an existential crisis. While nonprofit and for-profit schools are battling issues of affordability, enrollment, and latent COVID realities, the need for Christ-centered, academically rigorous, and biblically faithful institutions of higher education remains. In this episode, Dr. Todd J. Williams, president of Cairn University, and Dr. Allen Guelzo, American...

The Edmiston Center focuses on Christian endurance in the midst of competing cultural narratives. Mrs. K.A. Ellis, its director, joined Dr. Keith Plummer to talk about how she came to Christ and the people and things God used to form her heart for Christians experiencing persecution around the world. What different forms does persecution take, and despite these differences, what commonalities unde...

When Christians think about sharing the gospel, many of us tend to think primarily in terms of making a presentation. Dr. Randy Newman, the senior fellow for evangelism and apologetics at the C. S. Lewis Institute, is convinced that we need to think much more about how to engage people in conversations, and for years, he’s been teaching that asking questions is an effective way to accomplish exact...

We are most vulnerable to drifting from the core teachings of the Christian faith when we find them boring, irrelevant, or embarrassing. Dr. Trevin Wax wrote his book The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith to counteract the familiarity with Christian teaching that he says is “the enemy of wonder.” He joins Dr. Keith Plummer to discuss a wide array of topics includi...

Episode Notes Chris Martin, author of The Wolf in Their Pockets: 13 Ways the Social Internet Threatens the People You Lead , returns to the podcast to talk with Dr. Keith Plummer about why Christian leaders need to understand how our relationship with social media changes the ways we think, feel, and believe. Chris explains why he calls social media “the most pervasive discipleship force in the wo...