Pastor Writer: Conversations on Reading, Writing, and the Christian Life

Each year, as Christmas comes around, I sit down to make a list of the ten books that most impacted my thinking in the previous year. It’s an interesting exercise for anyone to do. I look through my amazon orders, my bookshelves, and my audible account and I try to recognize the books that impacted me most. In this episode, you'll find a list and explanation of those 10 books. I’d also love t...

P reston Ulmer is the founder and director of the Doubters’ Club, an organization that teaches Christians and atheists to model friendship and pursue truth together.**** Additionally, he serves as the director of network development for the Church Multiplication Network (CMN), the church planting arm of the Assemblies of God. Before joining CMN, he served in ministry for years as a youth pastor, y...

Tom Nelson is president of Made to Flourish (MTF), a network that seeks to empower pastors to lead churches that produce human flourishing for the common good. He has also served as senior pastor of Christ Community Church in Leawood, Kansas, for almost thirty years. A council member for The Gospel Coalition, Tom is the author of Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work , Five Smooth...

Lee Strobel is a former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune and a New York Times best-selling author of more than forty books that have sold fourteen million copies in total. He currently serves as Founding Director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. Lee has been described in the Washington Post as “one of the evangelica...

ERIC METAXAS is a #1 bestselling author whose books have been translated into twenty-five languages. The host of a nationally syndicated radio show and the acclaimed conversation series Socrates in the City, he is a prominent cultural commentator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives with his family in New York City. He j...

Gary Schnittjer teaches biblical Hebrew and Old Testament for the School of Divinity at (CArn) Cairn University. He is the author of the new book, Old Testament Use of Old Testament . It is a reference book for students and ministers of the word with chapters on every book of the Old Testament as well as a chapter on looking “Toward the New Testament.” He is currently doing research for writing pr...

Todd Miles is Professor of Theology at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches theology, church history, hermeneutics, and ethics. Prior to becoming a seminary professor, he was a nuclear engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He joined me to talk about his new book, Cannabis and the Christian: What the Bible Says about marijuana. 

Pastor Ray Ortlund was ordained into the Christian ministry in 1975.  He taught Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School from 1989 to 1998.  His primary ministry, for 28 years, has been as a pastor in California, Oregon, Georgia and Tennessee. In addition to numerous essays and articles, Pastor Ortlund has published eight books. Marriage and the Mystery of the Gos...

Alan Bandy a Professor of New Testament and Greek at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Previously, he was the Assistant Director of the Ph. D. program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and an Assistant Professor of Christian Studies at Louisiana College. Alan's area of expertise is the New Testament with a specialization in The Apocalypse of John. He has published The Prop...

Kevin Weaver is the President and Co-Founder of The Warrior’s Journey. The Warrior's Journey recognizes that the military creates a set of unique challenges that most people don’t understand. They have worked to build a team of veterans to triage and help our warriors create a personal plan to navigate those challenges so they can experience strength and resilience. Kevin is a former pastor a...

Joel Kilpatrick is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has been featured in Time magazine, the Washington Post, USA Today, CBS Radio, the Dallas Morning News. He has authored and ghostwritten more than 40 books, including a New York Times bestseller. He has reported from disaster zones and civil wars in seventeen countries and received numerous prizes for writing and reporting. Joel...

Jon Tyson is a pastor and church planter in New York City. He is originally from Australia and moved to the United States over two decades ago with a passion to seek and cultivate renewal in the Western Church. He is the author of Sacred Roots, A Creative Minority, The Burden is Light , and Beautiful Resistance . But he joins me to talk about his soon-to-be-released book, The Intentional Father: A...

Robert Wolgemuth has been in the media business for more than forty years. A former president of Thomas Nelson Publishers, he is the founder of Wolgemuth & Associates a literary agency exclusively representing the writing work of more than one hundred authors. Among his professional accomplishments, he has served two terms as the Chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. He...

Brad Lomenick is passionate about raising up great leaders around the globe. He is a business entrepreneur, speaker, sought-after leadership advisor, author and longtime president of Catalyst, largely credited with growing the organization into one of the largest and most recognized leadership brands and gatherings of young leaders in the US. Prior to running Catalyst, Brad spent several years wor...

Jared C. Wilson is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary , General Editor of For The Church (and host of the FTC Podcast ), and Director of The Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Kansas City, MO. He also co-hosts The Art of Pastoring Podcast published by Christianity Today. Jared is not a catalytic "agent...

Matt Morton is a teaching pastor at Grace Bible Church in College Station, Texas. Prior to his current role, he has served as a worship leader, a college pastor, and a communications pastor. He has a Master of Theology degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry. He is the co-author of the Ordinary Greatness Bible study series (NavPress, 2012). He has wri...

Paul Batura is vice president of communications for Focus on the Family. In his role, Paul is responsible for media and guest relations. He has more than two decades of experience in the news media, broadcast journalism, publishing, and non-profit administration. Paul has been with Focus on the Family since 1998. Prior to serving in his current capacity, he served as a top writer and adviser to bo...

With 30 years of experience in book and Bible publishing, Tom Dean is a publishing insider who helps authors smoothly navigate the often confusing process of publishing a book and marketing it. Tom spent almost two decades with Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins in marketing, product development, and acquisitions roles - including six years as Vice President of Marketing for Zondervan Books. H...

According to ancient historians, most of the Jewish families sitting on that Galilean hillside listening to Jesus teach would spend every day of their lives on the edge of hunger and starvation. Some days were better than others, but they never escaped hunger for long. By some estimations, as much as 85% of a Galilean’s wages/time went toward acquiring food. By comparison, the average US family sp...

Kurt Willems is a pastor, writer, and spiritual director. After several years in student and adult church ministry in Central California, he partnered with the Brethren in Christ to plant a Christian community in Seattle called Pangea Church.  Kurt maintains a resource website, which hosts articles and podcasts, called Theology Curator (formerly called, The Paulcast). He is passionate about taking...

Cory Verner began in the audiobook industry in 2003 when the market was 90% cassettes. In 2004, he founded christianaudio, a niche audiobook publisher focused on thoughtful Christian audio content. christianaudio's first sale was a download on christianaudio.com, one of the initial few audiobook download sites. He and his wife Crissy began an audiobook production company in 2005 – Ver-ity Aud...

Dr. HB Charles is the Pastor-Teacher at the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church of Jacksonville and Orange Park, Florida, where he has served since 2008. Prior to joining the Shiloh Church, he led the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church of Los Angeles for almost eighteen years. Succeeding his late father, he began pastoring at Mt. Sinai at the age of seventeen – a senior in high school. He is a reg...

Win Collier was a  Pastor for twenty-five years, founding All Souls Charlottesville. He now serves at Western Theological Seminary as Director of The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination & Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Christian Imagination. He received a Ph. D. from the University of Virginia where his work centered on the intersection of literary fiction and religi...

Thomas Umstattd, Jr. is an author, speaker, and consultant helping authors better market their writing. He provides online tools and advice through his company Author Media. He has worked with numerous publishers on marketing strategies and also worked as a literary agent. Thomas is the host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show podcast. It’s one of the writing podcasts...

K.J. Ramsey is a licensed professional counselor and writer. Her writing has been published in Christianity Today, RELEVANT, The Huffington Post, Fathom Magazine, Health Central, and more on the integration of theology, psychology, and spiritual formation. Last year she released the book This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers. She joined me to talk about her own suffering, how s...