The Living Church Podcast

Midterm elections. General Convention. Lambeth Conference. Family dinner. A work meeting. Interacting with parishioners on social media. Seeing for the first time the bumper stickers and various car decals of the person you thought you really liked. From friendships, family, and marriage to church leadership to international politics, we live in zones of conflict. We can, and sometimes have to, av...

Have you heard of a little theological term, theosis ? This is an important term, beloved and taught most explicitly in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but is at the heart of Christian hope. And, many Christians believe, at the heart of Christian experience. It's a term that grabbed my attention many years ago because to my little ol' Pentecostal heart, it captured the dynamism of life in C...

Happy Easter to all our listeners. We hope it's been beautiful and full of good food, nourishing time in nature or with people you love, and living into, even if in a small way, our Lord's victory. This week, we'll hear a conversation in honor of women's vocation, dedicated to a particular saint, that woman who stayed at the empty tomb, that bold apostle to the apostles, St. Mary M...

A very Happy feast of Easter to all of you podcast listeners. To all of our Western listeners, he is risen! And to many of our Eastern listeners, a blessed Holy Week to you, and a very happy Pascha when it comes! Something else that's happening this week: Friday, April 22, is Earth Day. Our celebration of the Lord's Passion and victory over death coincides with Earth Day, so in light of th...

Lately you may have heard about Pope Francis taking some heat for not being more severe and explicit with Vladimir Putin in denouncing Russian aggression against Ukraine. Yesterday evening I was taking a walk in my neighborhood listening to a recent episode of The Commonweal Podcast . And in it, New Yorker staff writer Paul Elie points out that as we wait to see how the pope and other church leade...

How was I to know that a conversation on the art of Anglican preaching would take me to talking about T.D. Jakes and The Grateful Dead? Well, I guess when you're talking to the Rev. Jacob Smith, it's bound to happen. We're talking about the art and craft of preaching today, thinking about beginners to the craft, but also thinking about those who have been at it for a long time, and wha...

Imagine you've just been dropped in the middle of a city center. You're stepping off the bus in a place you've never been, hundreds of miles from home, where no one speaks your language. You've been dropped there with your mom, your dad, maybe your in-laws, your kids, and you have no money, no papers. Now, figure out how to survive. This is how Mother Samira Page helps people put t...

Ciao! Welcome to a very special episode of the Living Church Podcast. We are headed to Rome. In January, Nashotah House Theological Seminary and the Living Church Institute co-hosted an ecumenical pilgrimage to Rome. We were a group of Catholics and Anglicans, students, clergy, and lay pilgrims, from the U.S., Canada, and Nigeria. The group was hosted by the Anglican Centre in Rome and the Centro...

In the beginning was the Word. For 2,000 years, theologians, pastors, philosophers, Christians in their devotional time, have been pondering this opening to the Gospel of John. Just the first six words, and no one has exhausted its meaning. Who is Jesus? Who is the Father? Who is the Spirit? What are they doing with us? Just the first six words. Well, like it says at the very end of John, the worl...

In 2023, Virginia Theological Seminary will be celebrating its bicentennial. (Congratulations, VTS, on 200 years!) As part of preparing for that celebration, they've cooked up an interesting project. Send a preacher all around the world to preach in 200 pulpits. And along the way, as you're preaching and teaching, see what you can see, learn what you can learn. What kind of survey do you g...

Happy new year, and happy Epiphany! While we're in this time of Epiphany, we've cooked up a few episodes of the podcast that have to do with recovering and sharing the "aha!" of what God has shown us in his Son Jesus. What does this, God's mission, look like in different contexts, among seekers and people of other faiths or none, as well as among the long-ago baptized and catec...

Happy Advent, folks. Almost, almost Merry Christmas. Here's a present for you. Today’s episode has its origins in the most recent meeting of the Living Church Foundation.  The Living Church Foundation is a diverse and dynamic group of leaders from around the Communion. They’re parish priests, business people, archbishops, prayer warriors, moms and dads, educators, organizers. And they're a...

Bold, confident, yet natural. No, we are not talking about makeup, furniture, or dating advice. We're talking about evangelism. There's seems to be this golden combination of boldness, confidence, yet naturalness, humanity, humility, simplicity, that makes for really effective evangelism, no matter the personality type or tradition a Christian is formed in. This kind of evangelism does not...

Encountering Orthodoxy can feel, to Westerners, like a real re-orientation (pardon the pun) of their understanding of Christianity. A supposed point of departure, even contention, between East and West has traditionally been in their theologies of salvation—specifically in the atonement. What has Christ done for us? That question shapes entire lives, entire cultures. In his book  Deification Throu...

You may have heard this, or you may have guessed, but the Living Church has two offices these days. One of course is in Milwaukee, the historical home base of our magazine. And now we've also got a home for the Living Church Institute, in Dallas, Texas. And the location of our office building fascinates me. Right now I'm looking out onto crepe myrtle trees, a library, bike racks, and stude...

Happy All Hallow's Eve and All Saints Day, dear listeners! (Or close enough.) If you think this will be your typical episode, you're dead wrong. Today we're dealing with grave matter on The Living Church Podcast . Literally, we are talking about graves, churchyards, clergy wills from the 17th and 18th centuries in Wales, and some fascinating social and religious history that these will...

There's been some talk that American mainline Protestants are starting to outpace American Evangelicals in church growth. The numbers may reflect real growth in mainline churches; they may also, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, reflect white evangelicals, who might have previously called themselves evangelical, shying away from the label these days; or maybe both. Anglicani...

Understanding trauma and how it works can be an invaluable tool in the emotional and spiritual toolbox. Navigating life and ministry in the second half of 2021, how can we understand and love better the people in our lives who have experienced or are experiencing trauma? How is a traumatic experience unique from other difficult experiences? How does it affect communities and churches? And how can...

As we're looking toward Lambeth 2022 (Lord willing), we all know one of the biggest issues on Archbishop Justin's mind, one of the biggest topics we'll be addressing: climate change. With this in mind, we're working here at the podcast on producing a series of interviews with organizers, artists, scientists, scholars, and pastors to talk about climate urgency, creation, and how pro...

Today we bring you a reading in our Classic Texts series, an excerpt from a great work by a great author, ancient or contemporary -- this one from the holy orator, St. John Chrysostom. Today is a bit shorter than usual. We're taking it a little easier this week. Like many of you, I'm sure, we're transitioning from one season to another, from summer to a slightly busier fall, and we&#39...

Small groups are a growth edge for a lot of us. Even those committed to the church and leadership. And maybe especially for those in liturgical contexts. We may be tempted to think that Sunday morning, and maybe some volunteer work thrown in there, is all we need for spiritual flourishing. But all Christians need community, and whether small groups particularly work for us or not, we have to seek...

We're still maybe not flocking back into movie theaters, but that's OK. We thought we'd bring a little of the arts and entertainment world to you today. A couple months ago the Living Church made a friend in producer Mary Beth Minnis, a documentary filmmaker from Austin, Texas. In various ways, Mary Beth has dedicated her life to tell stories that reveal truth and bring hope. After ove...

What hath Pentecost to do with Wall Street?  Or, for that matter, what do the drudgery and stress of balancing checkbooks, checking spreadsheets, and making financial decisions, in your parish, diocese, or at home, have to do with the Holy Spirit's creative, enlivening presence? As Christians we often do have an idea of how our personal finances are or at least should be guided by prudence, si...

We are heading to Toronto! Toronto, Ontario is a center of multinational life, education, commerce, the arts, and food. It's also full of thriving churches. How do urban and rural Canadian Christians thrive? Where is the church growing, and why? And what can the rest of us learn from what Anglicans in Toronto are learning about ministry, multiculturalism, and community? Today I speak with the...

Live streaming and worship. Zoom and Bible study. Outreach and TikTok. For the average congregation, we used to think, never any of these twains shall meet. Now, if you work at a church, you'd better be on your iPhone and Facebook game. And, if you're ordained, you had better know how to use a tripod. Right? A couple of weeks ago we started a series on "Hybrid church."  What is hyb...