In No Hurry with Cole Douglas Claybourn

This week I wanted to do something a little different with the show. There’s no guest this week, and I just want to take a little time to talk with you about the topic of identity, and more specifically what I learned about identity and contentment, and what the Bible has to say about it, in the year that I was away from teaching and just this past year of life in general.  If you listened to...

When I was fresh out of college, I use to bemoan the fact that the churches I went to seemed to lack any sort of substantial programming for that awkward age range of early 20s to mid-30s. Growing up in the church, there's always plenty for youth and even in college there are plenty of campus ministries to be a part of and meet people to do life with.  But for a lot of places, once you're out...

Happiness is often a difficult concept to explain, much less achieve. It seems ever out of reach, yet its profoundly subjective in its nature. If we can define what makes us happy, why does it feel so hard for us to obtain it? Much like identity, we often look for happiness in all the wrong places — people, sports, hobbies, or other activities that are full of human beings who are bound to disappo...

It's all too tempting in the age of social media to jump in on any and every controversial debate or conversation we see. Chances are, especially in 2020, you've had to decide whether to engage with someone or bite your tongue. If you're like me, you've entered into some online battles you didn't really need to. We've all been there, and it's only going to get worse as we get closer to the electio...

Ben Courson's mission is to inject hope into a generation plagued by anxiety and despair. In the middle of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, this conversation comes at an important time when suicide rates are climbing due to COVID-19 and other perils that 2020 has brought. Ben's new book, Flirting with Darkness, encourages you to not accept depression as a permanent state, but instead turn...

No matter where you are in life, God can and will meet you there. That's one of the most beautiful things about the gospel, and it's the premise of my friend Rashawn Copeland's new book, "Start Where You Are."  Rashawn was living a life of self-gratification, chasing after fame on the shoulders of a football career and eventually lived the Hollywood lifestyle in Los Angeles for a while. In th...

We were created out of love for love, but it's not always easy to love some people. Adam Weber, pastor at Embrace Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, knows that well — so well that he wrote an entire book about a season of life where he was finding it difficult to love everyone.  His new book, "Love Has a Name: Learning to Love the Different, the Difficult, and Everyone Else" came out Aug. 2...

I know I say this a lot, but this episode is truly one of my favorites. As you know, I'm a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, so getting to talk baseball and relive the Cardinals 2011 World Series run with one of the best players to wear a Cardinals uniform in some time was awesome. In all seriousness, Matt Holliday is a great guy and super genuine human being. I had a great time talking about his play...

As so many of us are struggling with anxiety, disappointment, and grief in the wake of COVID-19 and everything else 2020 has thrown at us, author Nancy Hicks is working to provide hope and guidance. Earlier this summer she launched Meant to Live: Six Sessions, a brand new course based on her book, Meant to Live, that is dedicated to helping people live a life of meaning — a life where they wa...

We're picking up with the final installment of our short two-week feature on Olympic athletes during what would've been the 2020 Olympics. This week my guest is swimmer Erik Risolvato, who is hoping to qualify to swim for Team USA in next summer's Olympic games. Risolvato actually has dual citizenship with Puerto Rico thanks to his grandmother being born there, and in the 2016 Olympics he was...

We're supposed to be enjoying the Olympics right now, but COVID-19 has forced it to be postponed until 2021. So to fill the Olympic void you're feeling right now, the next two episodes will feature Olympic athletes. We're starting it off with USA Rugby star Carlin Isles — the fastest man in rugby. Carlin has an amazing story. Long before he became the face of the USA Rugby team, the fastest man in...

Losing one child at birth is hard enough. Jon Ackerman and his wife, Shannon, have lost two, with a third being lost to a miscarriage.  Needless to say, there have been plenty of times when Jon could've walked away from God and many people in the world wouldn't have blamed him. But that's why his story is so good, because he doesn't approach his heartache that way. Instead, he runs toward God...

This conversation pairs well with last week's with pastor Scott Sauls as we pick up where we left off talking about how Christians can respond on the Internet in the growing age of vitriolic public discourse.  Matt Brown is an evangelist and the author of Truth Plus Love: The Jesus Way to Influence, where he discusses how Christians can respond with truth and love when it might be tempting to...

Pastor Scott Sauls is one of the most prominent voices when it comes to how Christians can and should should respond to potentially contentious conversations about race, social issues, politics, and religion. His new book that came out in early June, A Gentle Answer: Our Secret Weapon in an Age of Us Against Them, is a timely, necessary book in a year of racial unrest and political contentiousness...

You could make the argument that Matt Jones is the most influential person in Kentucky and you'd have a good argument. His title might say "host of Kentucky Sports Radio," but those from this state know he holds much more weight than just the founder and host of a radio program covering University of Kentucky athletics. Love him or hate him, Jones has built KSR from the ground up, starting in the...

What's it like for a sports journalist during a time when there aren't really any sports? If you're a good storyteller and know where to find stories, it's not so bad. That's been the case for Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel, who's arguably busier now than he's been with live sports. Gregg is one of the best storytellers I know. If you need proof of that, just ask the Associated Pre...

It may not be Godzilla or Bigfoot or something like that, but we all deal with monsters in our own lives. Maybe it's comparison, or chasing after success, or a misplaced identity. In his new book Befriending Your Monsters , author and pastor Luke Norsworthy addresses those lies we believe and how we can fear them in a way like we did with monsters as children. But instead of running from them, his...

Fear is something we don't always like to talk about. But gear up, because this conversation with author Scarlet Hiltibidal is full of talk about fear. This is a pretty topical conversation right now given what's going on in the world. We all might be getting adjusted to life during COVID-19, but I'm guessing at some point all of us have experienced some level of fear during this. Scarlet's book A...

Our season was canceled due to COVID-19, but that won't stop us from having a makeshift Senior Night for these girls. As many of you know, this Spring was going to be last season coaching high school tennis at Reitz High School in Evansville. Even though Emily and I moved two hours away to Bowling Green, I was going to live in Evansville during the week for the two months of the season and coach t...

I have an affinity for wit mixed with a little cynicism and sarcasm. Because of that, Tyler Huckabee is one of my favorite Twitter follows, and he was one of the first people I wrote down as someone I wanted on this podcast as a guest. I'm glad to finally get him on here to talk all things faith and culture. Tyler is the senior editor at RELEVANT Magazine and is one of the best writers I've read i...

Alex Stein is one of the most successful basketball players in the history of the city of Evansville, Indiana. He was one of the best players on his high school team that went to the State championship his senior year, then he became the all-time leading scorer at the University of Southern Indiana, and is now working his way toward the NBA with the Canton Charge of the G-League. But, like, every...

Several authors from B&H Publishing have been on this show this year, and Jenaye White is largely to thank for that. Jenaye is the senior publicist for B&H Publishing and has been super helpful in setting up the interviews for authors like Daniel Im , Robin Dance , Jamie Sumner , and Art Rainer . We found out we have quite a few mutual friends and figured we needed to get her on the show a...

One of the hardest parts for me about the COVID-19 shutdown is that there's no baseball right now. It's just as hard for the players. This week I got to chat with Jerad Eickhoff, a fellow Evansville native and pitcher for the San Diego Padres, about how he's handling not being able to play baseball and having to head back to Evansville for the time being. Jerad played for Philadelphia Phillies for...

There is a lot of misinformation about and misrepresentation of the gospel amid the COVID-19 crisis. With Easter falling in the middle of it, I thought it was important to have a pastoral voice on this podcast to guide us toward some truth in this season. Gregg Farrell is the senior pastor at my church here in Bowling Green, Kentucky — Crossland Community Church — and he is truly one of the smarte...

It's a weird world as a sports fan to not have any sports to watch right now. It's even harder for athletes, though, whose sport is on hold indefinitely due to COVID-19. Some have seen their careers end abruptly. This week you'll hear from Oklahoma University softball player Shannon Saile, whose senior season was canceled early because of the virus. Every Thursday in April, I'll feature an athlete...