The Redeemed Man

Jon Ebert, founder of Single Stone Counseling, comes from a lineage of pastors. Perhaps that’s why his work focuses on religious leaders, who can feel ashamed to admit they’re struggling. This week, Jon talks with Redeemed founder Paul Amos about the big expectations that can burden men, striving for authenticity, and how we can redefine society’s warped, stereotypical view of masculine strength b...

After spending his formative years in and out of prison, fighting in a street gang, Franklin Rivas Hodge left his native El Salvador for the United States with a bounty on his head. But crossing the Rio Grande was only the beginning. Franklin still had to overcome his feelings of anger and hopelessness. This felt impossible until an adoptive family gave Franklin his first-ever glimpse of God’s lov...

Barnabas Piper grew up the son of a pastor who practiced what he preached and encouraged deep conversations about God. Despite that upbringing, Barnabas found himself facing a crisis of identity and faith in his mid-20s. Ultimately, that crisis led to divorce, but the spiritual renewal he experienced taught him a lot about being a better husband, father, and disciple. Barnabas shares those lessons...

As an athlete, trainer, coach who heads CrossFit Mayhem’s online programming, and happily married father of four small kids, Jake Lockert has the kind of life, and physique, most men would envy. But he’s struggled with fear and anxiety, too. This week, Jake shares about his challenges, effective parenting, and the intersection of faith and physical fitness. Additional resources mentioned in this e...

Few would envy David Petty’s childhood. In and out of the foster care system, David suffered abuse and rejection. However, David’s foster parents modeled a truly devoted faith that helped him build a long-sought relationship with God.  Now a social worker in Nashville, David leads small groups for The Redeemed and talks with us about his journey’s impact on him as a man and a father and offers ins...

This week, we continue the conversation with Jay Brown, a team member at Church of the Highlands just outside of Birmingham. Tune in as we discuss cultivating meaningful friendships and how to talk about hard topics without hard feelings. Jay also shares tips for making time for prayer and the Bible verses that captured his heart and guide his ministry efforts. Find community, deepen your faith, j...

As the third of six children raised by a single mother, Jay Brown didn’t have a road map when he became a husband and father. Today, Jay serves as head of the “Dream Team” volunteer program at Church of the Highlands’ Grants Mill campus and shares what he’s learned from the men who walked with him on his spiritual journey: communication in marriage, navigating the challenges of ministry, and leadi...

For the longest time, Pedro LaTorre avoided addressing what was in his heart. Childhood abuse and blaming himself for his parents’ divorce drove Pedro to perform as a way to prove his worth. But when a major arm injury prematurely ended his baseball career, Pedro’s search for a new identity drove him to engage more deeply with his feelings. In the process, he built the kind of meaningful relations...

This week on the Redeemed Man podcast, Redeemed director Nate Dewberry sits down with his own pastor, Kyle Jackson, from Church of the Highlands in Columbus, Georgia. Kyle shares openly about the temptations he gave into as a young man and how he found his way back to God. He offers practical advice for men struggling with their faith, searching for purpose, or questioning their worth in ministry....

It was supposed to be a leisurely ride home from an ice cream parlor for Bryan and Lynn Koch on their beloved Harley-Davidson—but that 2015 ride ended in tragedy at the hands of a drunk driver, costing Lynn her life and Bryan his left leg. As Bryan and his three sons worked through unimaginable grief, though, they found comfort in their deep faith, along with lessons about forgiveness and hope. Br...

If you’ve ever watched a pro athlete making a sign of the cross and pointing to the sky after catching a long TD bomb or smashing a homer, and asked yourself, “Does God really care what we’re doing out on the field?”, this week’s podcast is for you. Guest Jonathan Carr, a former collegiate golfer who’s now a coach and teacher, says we might be asking ourselves the wrong question—what we should rea...

Ben Peterson describes his upbringing as “emotionally insane”—a father with OCD and myriad addiction issues; a mother with borderline personality disorder; a constant parade of screaming matches. That, combined with the emotional scars of seeing combat duty in the Middle East with the Army, meant the deck was stacked against Ben in terms of ever forming healthy attachments with other people. But t...

Abandoned by his father and sexually abused as a pre-teen, Jim Miner’s life was one of brokenness, infidelity, and hopelessness. “All I wanted to do,” he remembers of hitting rock bottom, was to “die in the darkest, dankest, stinkiest, ugliest corner of a back alley off of Bourbon Street.” It was the grace of God, he says, that taught him how to let go—of his sexual obsessions and his long-simmeri...

During his days in the Navy, Charlie Watkins’ best friend was a surgeon who was great with patients, always stayed in shape, and maintained a smile on his face even in the high-stress environment of a nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser. One day Charlie asked his friend, “Jim, you’ve got to tell me what you’ve got!”—and was invited to a Bible study session that forever changed his life. Today,...

Ron Acosta’s childhood was a nonstop litany of insults, abuse, and even outright abandonment. Constantly having to hear people (even his own family members) tell him he’d never amount to anything made him that much more motivated to succeed in life—and succeed he did, eventually becoming the VP of operations at Walmart. But he still had to confront the wounds of his past—and he still had to learn...

In his very first “Mighty Mite” football game at age six, on a play called “Splat Green Sweep Right,” Jordan Kunaszyk scored a 60-yard TD. Today he’s an NFL veteran who’s played for Carolina, Washington, and Cleveland. But Jordan isn’t shy about admitting that the journey in between—like his personal faith journey—has had plenty of ups, downs, and false starts. This week Jordan talks with Redeemed...

As a doctoral candidate in counselor education and vice president of the American Association of Christian Counselors, Zach Clinton has seen up close our society’s epidemic of depression, loneliness, and hopelessness. In this week’s podcast, he talks with Redeemed founder Paul Amos about ways men can combat that epidemic, build emotional and spiritual resilience, and overcome the things standing i...

Josh Swing is a longtime basketball player who’s worked closely with successful Chick-fil-A managers and executives in his current career, and his dad was a youth pastor—so it’s safe to say he’s learned a lot about leadership from many different sources, and in a wide variety of environments. Through his work at Wildsparq, an online leadership training system, he helps to broadcast those lessons t...

It was supposed to just be a fun story for the USC student newspaper, but Ben Malcolmson’s tryout for the Trojans football team led to a spot as a walk-on wide receiver—and a lengthy professional relationship with head coach Pete Carroll, whom Ben served as a special assistant when Carroll became head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Ben’s story wasn’t without its challenges, pitfalls, and disappoin...

Singer/songwriter Kristian Stanfill has been leading worship services ever since he was 15 years old; unfortunately, he had a drinking problem for nearly that long. He’d managed to mask it reasonably well for years, “talking around” his struggles rather than admitting to them directly. But it all came to a head in November 2020, when his wife and two best friends finally confronted him and he foun...

Cody Hollister has two parents who’ve loved and supported him, a twin brother with whom he has an unshakeable bond—and, oh yeah, a seven-year NFL career, one that includes a Super Bowl ring won as a member of the 2018 Patriots. But even with all these blessings, Cody has faced his share of challenges, from struggling to catch on with a college team to being a child of divorce. Cody talks with Nate...

As a former Division I college basketball player who’d been playing the game ever since he was a little kid, Doug Elks is no stranger to physical exertion or the sacrifices athletes make. Even with that in mind, though, running 100 miles wearing a weighted 20-pound vest—as Doug, an avid long-distance runner, plans to do this December—might sound extreme. But he says he’s doing it to symbolize the...

This July at The Redeemed we are focusing on community service , and there are few acts more profound than aiding the addicted, the homeless, and the hopeless. This week's podcast features Phil Shuler, Director of Development for SafeHouse Ministries in Columbus, Georgia, and Troy Gardner, a testament to transformation after nearly three decades of drug addiction. Phil and Troy have seen firs...

With all the distractions presented by the media, popular culture, and the online world, it can be hard to carve out time and space to block out the outside world and just be with God. This week’s episode of The Redeemed Man contains some worthwhile advice on how to do it—and ironically enough, it comes from someone in the entertainment industry: Tracy Campbell, a Georgia native who’s now a writer...

This week, The Redeemed Man welcomes its first international guest: Jamie Bambrick, associate pastor of Hope Church Craigavon and YouTube content creator. Earlier this year, Bambrick created a video responding to the “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ad that attracted more than half a million views; he talks with Nate Dewberry about dealing with the pressures (both positive and negative) of sudden online fa...