In this episode, David and Sissy offer encouragement, resources, and hope to parents dealing with all the challenges and joys of raising boys and girls, including how to write your family’s own mission statement and books and authors who have guided them in their counseling ministries.

Eddie and Chris join music legend Mac McAnally in a delightful conversation about music, making your mark, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. Mac is a native of Belmont, Mississippi, but he’s better known as a country music singer, songwriter, session musician, and record producer. He is an award-winning talent who has worked with country stars Kenny Chesney and Sawyer Brown, and he is a long-time member of Jimmy Buffett’s band, The Coral Reefers.

Today’s episode covers some heavy topics--suicide, depression, mental health and physical health issues--with hope. Our guest, Jacob Armstrong, is the author of Breaking Open: How Your Pain Becomes the Path to Living Again. As a pastor and a person, Jacob has firsthand experience not only with his own pain and suffering, but those of the people around him--his family, his friends, and his congregation. All these experiences led Jacob to the idea of breaking open, not just breaking down or breaking in, but allowing real Christian hope and God’s joy and delight to find you in those dark places.

Eddie and Chris are joined by a previous guest on The Weight, Kevin Watson, for a discussion about Christian perfection, or the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification--that Christians can live without sin. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, believed that the grace of God is available to all who hear the gospel, repent, and believe. The Christian life of faith means opening yourself to being fully holy through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

How do we as Christians have hope in a world that is more secular than ever? With decreasing church attendance, fracturing denominations, and new scandals coming out all the time, what does the future of the Church look like? Today’s guest on The Weight, Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, shares some good news with Eddie and Chris--hopeful, bright news that God isn’t done moving and shaping the world.

Alice Matagora has worked with The Navigators, a Christian disciple-making ministry, for nearly 20 years and is currently leading a Leader Development Initiative to develop leaders all over the world. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist.

She is the author of How to Save the World: Disciplemaking Made Simple” and for her, disciple making boils down to building relationships and allowing ourselves to be broken, vulnerable humans who relate to other broken, vulnerable humans with the power of the Holy Spirit. God wants to use us, so it’s time to let him do the work.

We often look at books as a way into getting more information, but today’s guest, Rev. Austin Carty, looks at reading as a way of deeper formation. To him, reading--especially fiction--is a way to deepen our well of empathy, of relating to one another with kindness and charity. Even if we don’t realize that what we’re reading is impacting our lives, Austin believes that it is.

In this episode, Eddie and Chris are joined by previous guest Jeff Bilbro in a continuing conversation about reading and contemplation. Jeff is an author and essayist whose most recent book, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, is about how we consume the news--and how sometimes we let the news consume us. Jeff challenges us to think about how we spend our time and attention and to think about how we can have a healthier reading diet.

Marilyn considers herself to be a writer who teaches after being a teacher who writes. Although she no longer is a full-time teacher, she continues to teach and speak and offer writing workshops throughout the year. She is the author of 18 books, including Make a List and When Poets Pray. She remains interested in the intersection of language, spirituality, and healing, and her writing reflects that.

With five decades of preaching and teaching experience, Rev. Willimon has great respect for the listeners of God’s Word. Listening to sermons is one of the main ways that God reaches God’s people, so how do you listen well? How do you open yourself to a sermon that might not be about you or for you and come away with a change in your perspective? And how do preachers step aside and let the conversation happen between God and God’s people freely? Rev. Willimon has a few ideas.

As a preacher, Rev. Wells says that people tend to respond positively to his preaching because he doesn’t skirt around the issues of the day. He doesn’t hide Christianity’s often difficult past, and he isn’t afraid to have the hard conversations with believers, doubters, and nonbelievers, because he believes it’s all about trust. “We can trust God, and because we can trust God, we can trust ourselves and one another.”

We are excited to welcome Barbara Brown Taylor to The Weight for a conversation about hospitality and being in the center and being at the edge of a religion--how is it different when you’re the outsider versus when you’re on the inside? How do you let people who believe in something completely different strengthen your own faith? Barbara leaned into these lessons when she taught a Religion 101 class at Piedmont College, now Piedmont University, in Georgia.

In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by Tish Harrison Warren, author of Prayer in the Night. When Warren found herself at a place filled with too many questions to bear, she began to write about the empty space of night and how we can present the weariness of our souls to God. Warren discusses prayer as communion with the presence of God, a practice that shapes who we are, how we believe, and our vision of the world. We hope this episode moves you toward peace and comfort as Warren illustrates ways to draw near to God in the midst of uncertainty and fear.

According to a Gallup poll released in March of 2021, less than half of Americans belong to a church, mosque, or synagogue. The politicization of evangelical Christianity has resulted in utter disillusionment, specifically among young Christians who were once eagerly committed to the ideals of the faith. Christians and non-Christians alike are longing for truth and openness in conversation within the church, as well as a sense of connection rooted in hope, grace, and love.

Amy Crouch is a student at Cornell University and, with her father Andy Crouch, co-author of “My Tech Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices.” She joins Chris and Eddie to discuss what boundaries and understandings regarding technology are necessary to harness its advantages while mitigating its negative effects. Crouch bases her message around the understanding that technology is not a bad thing, but something that must be seen as a tool rather than a foundation of life. What does that look like practically? Tune in to the conversation to find out!

Fujimura explains how the power, mystery, and depth of art drive us to ask deeper questions. He introduces his spiritual discipline of “slow art,” speaks to the nuances of tradition, and ponders the ways art can liberate us in our cultural context. Fujimura gives us space to identify where we meet Jesus in both making and consuming. This conversation speaks to the healing gift of art as culture care, rather than a commodity.

Abortion is a multi-faceted, multi-layered issue that the church often fails to engage with the depth and compassion it requires. Regardless of one’s position on this issue, the stories of those who have struggled with this impossible decision have been discounted in the midst of political fervor. Poverty forces many vulnerable, marginalized women to grapple with the decision to have an abortion, yet this factor is often overlooked. How do we make space for grace, respect, and empathy in such a nuanced conversation?

Chris and Eddie are joined by Kate Bowler, author of No Cure for Being Human, professor at Duke Divinity School and host of the podcast, Everything Happens. After receiving an unexpected cancer diagnosis at the age of 35, Kate began to observe that the world does not offer a safe space for people in pain. Her move from crisis to chronic has led her to asking deeper questions about faith, God, and human suffering. She talks to Eddie and Chris about the gift of presence, the absurdity of life, a robustly Christian account of time, and the many ways we try to make meaning out of everything.

Aimee discusses the gift of attention as the highest form of prayer, her perception of wealth and privilege in relation to her upbringing, and what the diverse, multifaceted nature of creation says about each of us. She challenges listeners to carve out time for stillness and careful attention in order to recognize the beauty in everything. This conversation reveals the precious mysteries of God’s nature and the ways our love for God constantly prompts a response of awe and wonder.

In his new book, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, Dr. Esau McCaulley aims not to answer questions the church is asking, but to answer questions that Black Christians are asking. A New Testament scholar, Anglican Priest, and theologian, McCaulley understands that the way we interpret the Bible often depends on our communities and context. He invites listeners to take an unfiltered look into the Black experience and to ponder how all of us can interpret the Bible as an exercise in hope.