Everything Made Beautiful with Shannon Scott

There are a handful of topics that can empty a room faster than almost anything else in evangelical Christianity, and the question of women in ministry is near the top of that list. It's become so charged, so politicized, and so tangled up in identity and tribe that a lot of people have simply stopped asking the actual question: what does the text say? Dr. Lynn Cohick has spent decades trying to a...

Today, I'm sharing the eulogy I delivered at my Dad’s memorial service in February of 2018, but I’m also pausing to reflect on what those lessons look like seven years later, as I turn 50 years old. My dad spent just shy of fifty years (the full span of my life) in full-time ministry. He was a man of unimpeachable integrity, contagious joy, and a gentleness that wasn't weakness but the result of a...

We have a lot of feelings about our bodies. What we don't have (and what the church has largely failed to give us) is a theology of them. Lisa Whittle has been a Bible teacher, bestselling author, and pastor's daughter her whole life. And even she admits she never thought to open Scripture and ask: what does God actually say about this from Genesis to Revelation, all the way through? It took a sea...

What if your “quiet time” doesn't have to look like everyone else's? Kim Pepper never set out to be a creative faith coach. She was a blogger, a wife, a mom of three, until a blindside divorce in early 2020 left her sitting alone in a COVID lockdown, holding a life she didn't recognize and feelings she didn't know how to put into words. Journaling felt too exposed. Writing felt too raw. So she pic...

Some stories don't fit neatly into a testimony card. Ro Elliott's story is one of them. In this episode, Ro sits down with me to walk through a life marked by unexpected loss, hard-won faith, and the kind of redemption that only makes sense in hindsight. Ro grew up in a tightly-knit Italian Catholic family outside New York City before her father's job transfer landed them in the deeply unfamiliar...

In the South, you can drive down the same road and see both of them… Spanish moss and kudzu… sometimes on the same stretch of trees. Both draped. Both familiar. Both so much a part of the landscape that most people don't look twice. But up close, everything is different. One takes nothing. One eventually collapses what it climbs. One rests and receives. One covers until you can no longer see the s...

If you've driven through the South, you know the image… entire treelines swallowed whole, every individual form buried under a mass of relentless green. That's kudzu. And I think most of us have some version of it growing in the interior landscape of our lives. Here's the part that I couldn't shake when I started researching this: kudzu wasn't snuck in. It was invited. Celebrated, actually. The U....

I was standing outside in Florida looking at the trees when it hit me. That gray, ghostly draping hanging off the branches stopped me in my tracks. And my first thought was: that's dead, right? Wrong. Completely wrong. And what I found out next sent me down a rabbit hole that turned into this episode. What most of us call Spanish moss isn't a moss at all. It's a flowering plant (an air plant) with...

Tim Timmons was given five years to live over two decades ago. He is still living with cancer, but he is also one of the most genuinely free people I have ever had a conversation with. You might know Tim from Even If , one of the most honest songs about suffering and faith written in the last decade. What you may not know is that he co-wrote it while actively living the question. Not hypotheticall...

Ashley Martin is a teacher-turned writer and speaker, and she is not writing from a safe distance. She is writing from the wreckage and the redemption of her own life. I've spent time with Ashley, I've heard her story, and I've now read her book. And I can tell you: this one is real. Ashley's story starts in a seventh-grade pew, feeling completely alone in a room full of people. It winds through a...

I've known Rachel Faulkner Brown for close to 25 years. I still remember standing on a sidewalk at a retreat, hearing her casually drop the details of her story, and staring with my mouth open, because Rachel was full of joy as she told her unbelievable story. Here's what you need to know going in: by the time Rachel was 31, she had been widowed twice. But the grief isn't actually the headline. Be...

I’m so grateful to have Dr. Joel Muddamalle on the podcast. He has a gift for making theology genuinely accessible without dumbing it down. Real scholarship plus real humility. That combination is rarer than it should be. Joel holds a PhD in theology, serves as Director of Theology and Research at Proverbs 31 Ministries, co-hosts the Therapy and Theology podcast with Lysa TerKeurst and Jim Cress,...

Lisa Harper is one of my favorite humans on the planet, and I mean that. I've known her in the back rooms and on the platforms, through the hard things and the hilarious ones. She is exactly who you think she is. Exactly. In this episode, we go deep on what it actually looks like to stay faithful in ministry for over thirty years without burning out. Lisa is honest about the self-dug pits, the sha...

Masi is back! We recorded this one in our Christmas pajamas from Deep Woods Refuge, and it's less like a podcast and more like two friends processing life over coffee. We started with a question I think about every holiday season: everyone's singing about peace on earth, but how do I get peace on me? We talked about the difference between positional peace (knowing where we stand with Jesus) and pr...

What happens when you become empty nesters and realize you need less house and more... something? In this deeply personal episode, I'm sharing the full story of our recent move, from endless house showings and a fallen-through contract to eating Chinese food on the floor and discovering what my soul was really crying out for. This isn't just a story about downsizing or real estate. It's about what...

This is a very special crossover episode airing on both the Everything Made Beautiful podcast and Masi Willis's Lead Like You Mean It podcast. Masi is one of my longest friends (we're talking almost 30 years), and this conversation is one of my favorites. As we head into Thanksgiving, we knew we wanted to talk about gratitude, but not in the superficial way our culture often does during November....

Today, my conversation is with my dear friend Yancy Wideman Richmond and honestly, it feels so necessary. I think it's because she's shining a light on something that’s often overlooked if you’re not experiencing it firsthand: the kids growing up in the fishbowl of ministry. Yancy is a worship leader who's been creating music for kids and families for years. But lately, God has put something else...

Today's conversation is with two of my favorite worship leaders, Jenna Nicholson and Zoe Kuhn, and I've been waiting to have this one for a while. I first met Jenna and Zoe at a book release event I was producing at church, and they closed the night with a song called "New Thing" that absolutely slayed me. I thought it was just the season I was in that made it hit so hard, but turns out every time...

Today's conversation is about holding grief and grace at the same time, and how God meets us in crisis moments we never saw coming. My guest is Leah Outten, author of The 16th Year , a memoir about becoming pregnant at 16 and choosing open adoption for her daughter. Leah's story is marked by an unstable childhood and searching for love and acceptance in all the wrong places. But at 16, when she fo...

Today's conversation is one I didn't know I needed, a conversation about the Holy Spirit that's accessible, theological, and deeply practical. My guest is Jenny Randle, author of The Promised Presence: An Introduction to Holy Spirit's Power and Authority . Jenny's journey took her from the heart of Hollywood editing DVD features for movies like Kung Fu Panda, to launching churches, raising middle...

Today's conversation is one I've been looking forward to having... a conversation about profound loss, tangible hope, and the ministry of presence in the darkest moments. My guest is Ashley Opliger, author of Cradled in Hope: Trusting Jesus to Heal Your Heart as He Holds Your Baby in Heaven and founder of Bridget's Cradles, a ministry that has now placed over 30,000 cradles in 1,600 hospitals acro...

I almost didn't record this episode. I've been sitting with these thoughts for weeks, wrestling with whether to speak, when to speak, and how to speak about the cultural moment we're in. I've been thinking a lot about September 11th lately, about who we were in those days and how we were. Republicans and Democrats wept together. Strangers helped strangers. We saw each other as Americans first, hum...

Today I sit down with Carl and Heather Cartee, married 26 years and hosts of their own marriage podcast, for our first deep dive into marriage on Everything Made Beautiful. This conversation is for every couple - whether you're thriving, struggling, or somewhere in between. Carl and Heather get real about the biggest challenge they see in marriages today: the epidemic of busyness that leaves coupl...

I sit down with author Jen Thompson to discuss her book "Return to Jesus: An Invitation to Abide with Him in Every Beautiful, Stressful or Tedious Moment." This conversation is for every woman who feels overcommitted before her feet hit the floor in the morning. Jen opens up about what prompted her to write the book... that post-pandemic season when life went from zero to 100 mph and she desperate...

I sit down with Pastor Tony Calabrese, lead pastor at The Gathering in Spring Hill, Tennessee, for a conversation that ranges from his admittedly bougie coffee habits to the deep spiritual work that happens in seasons of transition. Tony shares how his passion for prayer was shaped by watching his single mom depend on God through difficult circumstances, and why he believes prayer begins with unde...