The Substance

It's been a while since we've covered a classic book on the show and we are excited to shine the spotlight on one that was a first time read for all 3 of us! G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy is a classic of Christian apologetics and has been in print ever since it was originally published. Joining us this week is Trevin Wax. Trevin is the VP of Research & Resource Development at the North American...

Happy 100th episode of The Substance! Whether you've been with us since we started (or more likely, relaunched on Episode 13) or you're relatively new, we are grateful you're here with us as we celebrate 100 episodes of the podcast! On this show we'll be looking back on favorite episodes and moments from #1-99, things we've learned over the years, goals for the future, and we'll also be hearing so...

Welcome back to another episode!  We were super excited and blessed by our guest's this week John Onwuchekua (John O for short) and Keith Pinkney from the AMAZING podcast Windows & Mirrors where they say, "The Bible is more like a window than it is a mirror. We come to it to look through it and see God. We don't come to it primarily to look at it and see ourselves." We had great conversat...

Let the record show that Trevor is out this week because he was attending a John Mayer show (featuring previous Substance Shoutout recipient Yebba) and not all the bad guesses that Philip & Vincent came up with. We thought that we'd maybe do a Topic Toss Up show when we started recording but it quickly became apparent that we'd be spending the whole episode on the most recent Julie Roys articl...

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter and are excited to be back in your ears! On this episode we are joined by Hannah Chao of SOLA Network. SOLA Network is a Christian platform designed to influence the next generation of Christians (and current & older ones as well) specifically with a focus on Asian Americans, both creating content directly relevant to their experiences as well as being a...

We love sharing great movies with you all and it's especially enjoyable to highlight a film that is generally overlooked or that a majority of people may not be familiar with. This week we are looking at David Lynch's 1999 film The Straight Story. The movie is best experienced without knowing much about it (so if you haven't seen it before, stop reading and watch it now!) but it's a beautifully hu...

Website We're closing in on our 100th episode and today we've got our 20th Topic Toss Up! First up, we've got the first voicemail of the year (2022 is, in fact, The Year Of The Voicemail. Give us a call!). It follows up on our discussion with Propaganda about cursing, along with tying into a very early episode of The Substance. Then, a semi-recent episode of Brett Goldstein's podcast, Films To Be...

Happy April Fools' Day! This is a silly idea we had way back in 2019 before we took our unplanned year and a half hiatus (see "Special Annoucement" between episodes 12 & 13) but we're happy to finally share this very bad movie with you all! Manos (Spanish for "hands"): The Hands of Fate is a famously bad movie resurrected by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 team in 1993. It was made by a ferti...

This week we dive more into a topic that affects us all to varying degrees and that can be difficult to talk about, doubt. Austin is a pastor at Vista Community Church in Texas and identifies as Young, Restless, and No Longer Reformed. He is also the author of the challenging and enjoyable book Faith in the Shadows: Finding Christ in the Midst of Doubt at IVP. We talk about a number of ways that d...

Website It's been a minute since we've dropped a Reflects (shoutout to all our excellent guests lately!) but we're back this week talking about a common pitfall (and accusation) related to Bible study and public theological discourse, prooftexting. It can be easy to read one passage, or even a portion of a passage, by itself and come away from it with an interpretation that is unsupported by the c...

This week we are excited to share a wonderful conversation we recently had with Tim Whitaker, Founder of The New Evangelicals, an online community for folks who are deconstructing their faith and finding themselves without an immediate spiritual community. We talk about a wide variety of subjects including Tim's story (which is eerily similar to several aspects of our's), how the Bible is used, th...

We are very happy to welcome our friend Brett McCracken back for his fourth appearance on The Substance (and his third Malick film)! Brett is a longtime film critic, the Senior Editor for Arts & Culture at The Gospel Coalition, an author of 4 books currently, and a pastor at his Church in Brea CA. Terrence Malick surprised and delighted film lovers in 1998 with The Thin Red Line for many reaso...

This week we are excited to share our conversation with Corey Nathan of the Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other podcast. To everyone's delight, we did get into politics and religion and did not, in fact, kill each other. Corey shares his conversion testimony, talks about his relationship with Ravi Zacharias & RZIM and how he's processed things in the last couple of years...

Felicia Song is an author, Westmont College professor, and cultural sociologist who studies the place of digital technologies in contemporary life. Having trained in History, Communication Studies and Sociology from Yale, Northwestern, and University of Virginia, her research is oriented around the rapidly evolving digital technology industry and how the adoption of social media and digital device...

Surprise! We're excited and honored to share a very special feed drop with you all today! You may remember Phillip Holmes from our great conversation in Episode 70 where we talked about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., what people get wrong about them, and the importance of properly understanding power dynamics. He also cofounded The Witness (formerly The Reformed African American Network) wi...

We love being positive on The Substance but we had some heavy thing on our hearts that we cover on this week's show. Longtime Christian rapper Phanatik (Brady Goodwin Jr.) recently has denounced the faith and we wanted to both look at his specific situation as well as consider the group of former leaders who have publicly left the faith over the last several years and see what we can learn from it...

Jemar Tisby is a historian of race and religion with an emphasis on Christianity in the Black Power era, the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise & How To Fight Racism, president and co-founder of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, and co-host of the podcast, Pass The Mic. We pray that this episode challenges and encourages you as you work on developing your own...

We are very excited to bring you a fantastic (extra long) conversation with hip hop artist, author, and activist Propaganda. We talk Hood Politics, the 10 year anniversary of his controversial track Precious Puritans, and all things Terraform. This was a blast and we are excited to hear what you think (especially about our final tangent about cussing). Enjoy! Shoutouts: Reggae artists Capleton &am...

We talked about spiritual leaders and divorce a few weeks ago and we thought it would be good to zoom out and talk more broadly about what the Bible has to say about the qualifications of pastors, teachers, etc. in the Church. What did God say were the important characteristics of a healthy leader and do they match what we typically think of as a good leader? Give it a listen and join the conversa...

The timing on this show is funny because we recorded this almost exactly a month and a half ago and the clip of John MacArthur's remarks on religious freedom has just gone viral a but this week on Christian Twitter. We promise we're not chasing trends, rather just trying to address and discuss important theological and practical matters of the day. Jeremiah 29:5 Build houses and settle down. Plant...

The first Matrix movie was released in March of 1999 and was an instant sensation. Movies, and in many ways our culture at large, would be forever changed. Two weeks ago, 18 years after the last Matrix film we had, the fourth installment, The Matrix Resurrections, premiered theatrically and on HBO Max. Returning guest, Eugene Park, joins us as we dive back down the rabbit hole! Reactions from both...

In October, the Rise & Fall of Mars Hill podcast had a story about a faithful church-planting pastor who lived his life in obscurity. His ministry had started off rocky because he graduated seminary at the same time that his wife left and divorced him for someone else. Today the guys consider the standards set for elders and church leaders, especially with regard to divorce. We work out our though...

It's been another wild year but if you're here listening (and reading) we're grateful to have you with us! We hope you have a nice end of the year and that 2022 is filled with grace and growth! Favorites: Kyle Strobel ( Ep. 66) Hot Dog/Stumbling Blocks (51) Systemic Racism (40) Deconstruction (68) Kaitlyn Schiess (46) Barnabas Piper (38) Eugene Park (62) Phillip Holmes (70) Books: Reading While Bl...

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays everyone! Last year we had a wonderful time talking about the 2019 adaptation of Little Women (with the incredibly talented Alissa Wilkinson) . This year we're going back to the early 2000s and talking about the Will Ferrell Christmas classic, Elf (2003). Join us as we talk about what made us laugh, why we still love it after so many annual viewings, and what t...

Here at The Substance we love engaging with the folks who listen actively and have things to say. This week we're engaging with two topics brought to our attention by a listener email. One is on the lighter side, though there's some definite substance to it, and the second is extremely important and touches on some of the justice topics we've been addressing for quite a while. Interestingly, both...