What do you do after you win the College World Series?

If you’re Mike Bianco, head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels baseball team, you let your routine guide you. You go to work every day. You have the hard conversations. You give praise when it’s due and constructive criticism when it’s needed. And you absolutely love what you do.

Dr. Ethel Young Scurlock is a leader in two different spheres: education and religion. She is Dean of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies, and Senior Fellow of the Luckyday Residential College. Dr. Scurlock is also the pastor of two small Baptist churches in Mississippi, First United Missionary Baptist Church and Alvis Grove Missionary Baptist Church. She is an award-winning teacher and the author of Trusting God in Crisis, Chaos, and Confusion.

Jason has first-hand experience with the ongoing revival at Asbury University, which sits across the street from his office at Asbury Seminary. This revival started with a few students who stayed after chapel one day. These students stayed, prayed, and sang, and as they did, more and more people showed up to stay, pray, and sing with them. People from around the United States and the world showed up to the small town of Wilmore, Kentucky, hoping to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit that lead these students to stay, pray, and sing.

Kari offers advice to teens and parents, but more importantly she offers compassion and understanding. Parenting is hard at any stage, even if the struggles from family to family are different. As a mom of four girls, Kari has learned that parenting moves from a place of control to a place of influence. That transition can be hard without faith and without a strong support system.

Ryan Burge’s Twitter bio says that he makes graphs about religion, but what Ryan does is so much more than making graphs. As a social scientist, Ryan studies the macro-level forces that are shaping churches across the nation--mostly in mainline Protestant denominations. The data that Ryan studies doesn’t show a surge of people coming back to mainline religious institutions, so what does that mean for churches?

This week, Chris and Eddie have an important conversation about leadership with Tod Bolsinger, senior congregational strategist and associate professor of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Canoeing the Mountains, a book about adaptive leadership.

It’s hard to believe that we’re wrapping up three seasons of The Weight, but here we are! Eddie and Chris are joined by producer Cody Hickman to talk about some of the highlight episodes for each of them this year--including conversations with Mac McAnally, Alice Matagora, and Austin Carty. This season, we’ve listened to conversations about music, mental health, parenting, faith, and history. We’ve heard a hopeful word about the future of the Church, and we’ve been given moments for reflection and contemplation.

Mississippi’s history with slavery, segregation, and racism has deep roots, and has caused--and continues to cause--immense turmoil and violence. We like to think we’ve moved past it, but we haven’t. There is still work to do, and we can begin that work by looking to the leaders of the past, and take to heart what Jesus has tried, over and over again, to teach us.

How do churches adapt to the world we’re in today? How do institutions with inherited traditions of membership and specific roles to play in a community change to actually fit their current context? Today’s guest, Lisa Greenwood, has a few ideas. Even if you’re not a pastor, this episode provides some thoughtful ways to engage the people around you and to help you better serve your community.

Our world is increasingly polarized, and public discourse often leads to anger. The Church used to be at the center of these conversations, but Scott Black Johnston sees the church as becoming more decentered: stepping to the side, offering critique--or praise--and adding to the conversation. He talks about the current pervasiveness of anger with gentleness and grace, and challenges everyone to take a step towards temperance--being calm and encouraging, listening, and valuing each other.

In her role at Onsite, Mickenzie is the producer and cohost of the Living Centered podcast and is the host of Onsite’s emotional wellness webinars. Although she is not a therapist, she is an advocate for mental health and dealing with and working through trauma, because trauma is something everyone experiences, and it affects us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

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.