If there is a good place to start this conversation for our season on Orphans and Vulnerable Children, Brandon Stiver is the right person to set the tone. With years of experience in this space, Brandon helped Lauren curate this episode through his knowledge and his connections to voices in this space. He is a co-host of the Think Orphan podcast, and has dedicated his work and his research to family preservation and family-based care for vulnerable children. Listen to Brandon and Lauren discuss the difference between family preservation and child protection, and why it is critical for the Church to revisit our approach to orphan care.

For this episode, Lauren spills her heart (and a bit of her life history) to explain the purpose behind this season’s episodes. She discusses how her biblical worldview has changed over time, shares stories from experiences with churches spotted across the world, and offers a hope for a future faith community that stewards responsible Gospel messaging.

For this episode, Lauren spills her heart (and a bit of her life history) to explain the purpose behind this season’s episodes. She discusses how her biblical worldview has changed over time, shares stories from experiences with churches spotted across the world, and offers a hope for a future faith community that stewards responsible Gospel messaging.

Dr. Aaron Wheeler, the Director of Missional Development for Kindred Exchange, chats with Lauren about four different frames through which people see the world and their place in the Story of God. Too often, he says, our evangelism problem is rooted in a limited theology–we have a “good news” that doesn’t match people’s bad news. This two-part episode series will significantly inform the way followers of Jesus share their belief with others, providing a set of powerful questions to ask and postures to take when connecting with other humans around conversations of faith.

Dr. Aaron Wheeler, the Director of Missional Development for Kindred Exchange, chats with Lauren about four different frames through which people see the world and their place in the Story of God. Too often, he says, our evangelism problem is rooted in a limited theology–we have a “good news” that doesn’t match people’s bad news. This two-part episode series will significantly inform the way followers of Jesus share their belief with others, providing a set of powerful questions to ask and postures to take when connecting with other humans around conversations of faith.

Lauren talks with Jeje Godfrey Nzirimu, President and Founder of East Africa Energy Solutions, about the many complications of mobilizing both aid and religion across cultures. Jeje highlights concepts of power dynamics, and explains why so many development efforts fall flat or cause unintended harm. With loads of generosity and grace, he shares wisdom for Westerners engaging in the majority world to help them be better partners and more humble co-laborers in whatever goals they have for engaging across borders.

Rob Touchstone, the Director for the Center for Vocational Discovery at Lipscomb University, shares his journey through different jobs in formal church-based ministry to social enterprise. He and Lauren discuss the Hebrew concept of Avodah, or the convergence of our work also becoming a form of our worship. In this episode, you will hear some new spins on the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, and will hopefully feel compelled to continue sharing yourself with the world around you as you see God’s reflection in your design and purpose.

Brian and Lauren discuss what has changed in missional movements since publishing his monumental book, When Helping Hurts. The two have a riveting conversation about economic structures, how financial capital can work against mental health, and how the Western world can learn some of its best lessons from the Majority World. In this episode, you will be challenged to think about how globalizing capitalism can come at a cost to communal societies.

Derran, a long-time acquaintance of Lauren from working in Southeast Asia, tackles some big questions around systems of community development. The two take a critical look at recent trends in social intervention, and ask where our best-laid plans for developing communities outside of the West have failed and how we can be more curious as we seek new strategies.

In this episode, Mats shares the history of the Business as Mission (BAM) Global Movement. He and Lauren discuss why business is an authentic way to connect across cultures, how business has been used to unethically enter different countries, and what the future of the BAM Movement entails. From human trafficking to economic justice, this conversations tackles the why behind Business as a form of Mission.

Lauren and Rachel discuss what years of living in a different context teaches us about agency, story, and power. Rachel shares how her Djiboutian neighbors respond to short-term interactions with foreigners who assumed charitable roles, and the long-term rebuilding that was sometimes required after Western travelers disrupted social norms. Rachel shares how she has learned to be a good neighbor in spite of her race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

In his new book, Subversive Mission, Craig Greenfield invites his readers to consider their spiritual gifts in ministry in the way they partner with God’s justice. This episode specifically tackles a critical analysis of Jesus’ ministry tools and the subversive manner of teaching. Craig and Lauren talk about the ways culture impacts our understanding of the Gospel, and how we can continue feeling our way towards God despite politicized messages that uphold an earthly empire over a heavenly kingdom.

As the author of A Just Mission, Mekdes Haddis identifies the history of colonialism in evangelical missions and invites Christians to wrestle with contextualization of their faith. Haddis, originally from Ethiopia, describes her experience assimilating into American churches and the racism she experienced attempting to appropriately inform mission efforts to her home community. Now a missionary to the United States, Lauren and Mekdes discuss how Western mission agencies and churches can be honest about their paternalistic past and center the purest form of the Gospel in their future cross-cultural evangelism efforts.

Lauren talks with Sara Billups, author of Orphaned Believers, about the current state of evangelicalism and what remains to hold onto for Christians today. They discuss major events of the 1980s that led to the current polarization of politics and faith, and point to the future of the American church, casting hope for a changing religious culture that is being informed by the global Church.

Welcome to the show where we talk about topics in modern Christianity that are so challenging, they require us to be grounded in something much bigger than ourselves. If you’re here, you’ve likely found yourself hungry for something deeper. You want to find answers for how to hold onto your faith after seeing religion be twisted in a way that has somehow become bad news instead of good. I’m here for all of that too. I’m here for the spiritual wrestle and I’m here to learn more ways that people are finding hope in a God that interrupts our norms and expectations.