In the last of our Advent conversations, Adam Hawkins welcomes back Elizabeth Woodson and Tymarcus to unpack the biblical concept of peace (shalom)—especially what it means in a season that’s often chaotic, overwhelming, and culturally mischaracterized. Merry Christmas. We will see you in the new year.

01:00 — Life Lately with Elizabeth

02:00 — Starting the Discussion: What Is Peace?

03:55 — Peace in a Broken World

04:42 — Ty’s Reflection on Isaiah & Peace

07:00 — Relational Tension & True Peace

09:00 — Peace Now vs. Peace Then

12:00 — Peace Beyond “Be Nice”

14:00 — The Reality of Brokenness

18:00 — How to Cultivate Peace Today

22:00 — Final Reflections

28:00 — Close & Christmas Blessing

• True peace (shalom) is not just absence of conflict—but wholeness and restoration found only through life with God.
• We can experience real peace now through obedience, worship, and trust—even as we wait for its full realization in Christ.
• Peace confronts brokenness at the root—requiring more than proximity or niceness, but the transformative work of Jesus.

Liz's new Podcast: Shalomies

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We continue our conversation with Caroline Smiley for a moving meditation on Love through the lens of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Tymarcus and Caroline reflect on Mary’s embodiment of sacrificial love at the manger and at the cross. This episode explores how Mary models a risky, selfless, participatory love—one that mirrors God's invitation for us to love as sons and daughters, not merely as servants.

The conversation weaves from Hebrews to the manger, from John's Gospel to the Prodigal Son, connecting the bloodied straw of the birth with the suffering of the cross. Through Mary’s obedience and Christ’s incarnation, listeners are invited into the family of God—called to love deeply, suffer faithfully, and hope fiercely.

00:00 – Introduction: Mary, Love, and Advent

03:00 – The Love of a Mother and the Love of God

10:00 – Mary’s Participation in Redemption

17:00 – Grieving the Cross: Mary and the Suffering of Love

23:00 – From Servanthood to Sonship

30:00 – Prodigal Sons and the Invitation to Come Home

34:00 – Closing Reflections: Love that Bleeds, Love that Welcomes

• Love Begins with Incarnation, Not Just the Cross
• Mary Models Risky, Participatory Love
• We’re Invited into God’s Family, Not Just His Service
• Suffering and Love Are Intertwined

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In this second Advent episode, Tymarcus and guest Caroline Smiley explore what it means to experience true joy during Advent — not the manufactured “cheer” of the holiday‑season spectacle, but a deep, scripturally rooted joy anchored in the arrival of Jesus Christ. They walk through how Mary’s song (the Magnificat) in the Gospel of Gospel of Luke isn’t just a moment of personal celebration, but a fulfillment of centuries of longing, pain, exile, and promise from the Old Testament. Through that lens, Advent becomes a sacred space for honest reflection, recognition of brokenness, and hope for what God has done — and is doing — in and through us.

02:00 – Holidays & Hardship: Joy in the Midst of Pain

05:00 – The Power of Mary’s Story in Advent

10:50 – Where Mary’s Song Sits in Luke’s Narrative

11:10 – Daughter Zion: The Honest Backdrop to Mary’s Joy

17:00 – Past Tense Praise: Why Mary Says “He Has Done”

21:00 – The Magnificat: Mary’s Song Read Aloud

23:00 – Defining “Good Things” Through God’s Eyes

30:00 – Incarnation and Human Longing

34:00 – Final Reflections & A Blessing for the Listener

• Advent isn’t about manufactured cheer. It’s about honest reflection — acknowledging our brokenness, recognizing the world’s pain, and yet hoping because God is entering that story.
• Mary connects us to the deep longing of God’s people. By framing Mary as “Daughter Zion,” we see that her joy isn’t merely personal or sentimental — it’s cosmic, spanning generations of suffering, exile, and promise.
• Joy precedes fulfillment. Mary sings in past tense because true joy is rooted not in what we see, but what God has already done and promised to do — God dwelling with us.
• Good things are deeper than comfort. For Christians, the “good” God promises isn’t just material blessing or comfort — it is Himself, righteousness, mercy, presence, and ultimate restoration.
• Incarnation anchors hope. The fact that Jesus became human assures us: God knows suffering, grief, exile, waiting — and in Him, even the most painful reality can be redeemed.

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We're releasing a series of episodes centered around the Season of Advent. In this episode, Chelsea sits down with Lindsey Jackson by reflecting on Hope — not as wishful thinking, but as a firm trust in God's promises amid suffering. Lindsey shares the story of losing her infant daughter Hadley in 2017 to sudden unexplained infant death (SUID) and how her grief became a place where God reoriented her faith, built deeper endurance, and reshaped her understanding of biblical hope. Together, they discuss how lament differs from grief, why holidays can be hard, and how the church can show up for those in pain.

01:00 – Introducing the Advent series: Hope, Joy, Love, Peace

03:00 – Lindsey’s story: marriage, motherhood, and baby Hadley

05:00 – Hadley’s death and the immediate aftermath

07:00 – “So much of me died when she died” — grief and resurrection

10:00 – What helped: letters, meals, naps, presence

12:00 – On studying grief and counseling at DTS

14:00 – Hope and the discipline of remembering

17:00 – Hebrews: endurance, lament, and anchoring in Christ

20:00 – Longing in Advent: slow down, find wonder again

24:00 – Misplaced hope vs. rooted hope

27:00 – Lament is not passive grief — it holds expectation

30:00 – Heaven: the promise of restoration

33:00 – “Pre-Hadley” Lindsay vs. post-suffering hope

36:00 – Endurance is a group project

• Hope is not optimism or emotional positivity — it's a discipline to root your mind in God's promises.
• Grief is the response to loss; lament is grief directed toward God, filled with trust and expectancy.
• Holidays can amplify sorrow — presence, not perfection, is what grieving people need most.
• Studying grief deepened Lindsey’s calling: to walk with others through loss as a biblical counselor.
• The resurrection reframes our pain — we grieve, but not without hope.
• Advent means coming — Christ came once, and He is coming again. This fuels our hope.

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In this episode, Adam and Ty sit down with Rebecca McLaughlin to discuss her new book How Church Could (Literally) Save Your Life, which explores how regular involvement in a local church is linked with mental, physical, moral, and spiritual flourishing. Drawing on rigorous academic research (especially from Harvard School of Public Health), Rebecca outlines compelling findings: weekly attendance correlates with lower rates of depression, extended life expectancy, reduced deaths of despair, and more. She also addresses objections (such as church‑hurt, abuse, selection bias) and pivots to a theological framing: the church is more than an event — it is family.

In This Episode

01:00 – “church is our family”

06:00 – Why this topic? The research behind the book

08:00 – Stats: church attendance & health outcomes

11:00 – Not prosperity gospel: deeper than health hacks

12:00 – What about unhealthy churches?

14:00 – Data controls: not just correlation

16:00 – Theology: why worship matters

18:00 – Church vs. self-optimization culture

23:00 – Virtual vs. in-person: why weekly presence matters

26:00 – Making church a real family

29:00 – Marriage, singleness & spiritual kinship

32:00 – Closing reflections & next steps

Key Takeaways

• Regular attendance at church (once a week or more) is strongly correlated with improved mental health, longer life expectancy, and reduced risk of “deaths of despair.”
• The positive effect is not explained solely by social support.
• The church is not just “another activity” but a family.
• Making church family real may require simple but counter‑cultural practices.
• The research is not a guarantee of trouble‑free life or a health‑miracle; the gospel remains central — the church is for life in Christ, not just health benefits.
• For those who’ve been hurt in church: the invitation is not necessarily to abandon church, but to work toward healthy, safe, loving communities.

Guest Resources

• How Church Could Literally Save Your Life by Rebecca McLaughlin
• Rebecca’s Website
• Confronting Christianity Podcast
• Follow Rebecca

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In this episode, we welcome back Whitney Pipkin, who explores how artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with Christianity, the body, embodiment, and culture. Whitney draws on her background in environmental journalism and Christian thought to highlight the impacts of AI: its resource footprint, its effect on how we think, its influence on discipleship, and what it means for embodied Christian living in a disembodied age. The conversation covers both practical and theological questions—How does AI shape our habits, relationships, thinking? Are we just consumers of information, or are we being formed as creatures who live in bodies and communities?

• AI’s Real-World Environmental Costs
• Power, Water, and the AI Boom
• Theological Accuracy in AI Models
• AI’s Influence on How We Think
• Should Christians Use AI Tools?
• Algorithms, Formation & Discipleship
• Disembodied Faith vs Embodied Life
• Discipleship Requires Community
• What AI Is Discipling Us Into
• Embodied Practices in a Digital Age
• Forecasting the Future of Tech & Faith
• Digital Monks or Missionaries?
• Limits, Attention & Accountability
• The Body as a Theological Witness

• AI isn’t neutral — it has real environmental, ethical, and spiritual consequences.
• Embodiment matters — we’re made to live, think, and relate in physical bodies, not just as online users.
• Formation over efficiency — spiritual growth comes through limits, relationships, and real-life discipleship.
• Question the tradeoffs — just because AI makes something easier doesn’t mean it’s good for us.
• Be distinct — Christians should live and think differently in a tech-driven, disembodied world.

• Website
• Instagram
• Substack

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In this rich conversation, Tymarcus and Dr. Claudia MacMillian explore how our contemporary educational and cultural frameworks—especially the “myth of fact”—shape our abilities to imagine, love, think, and live well. Dr. MacMillian traces the idea back to the work of Donald Cowan and Louise Cowan, showing how modernity’s emphasis on extracting isolated “facts” from context has left many of us brittle, shallow in our sensibilities, and under‑equipped to embrace mystery, beauty, narrative, poetry, and the fullness of human experience. Ultimately, the episode argues for a return to formation over mere performance—cultivating souls able to engage with the world deeply, compassionately, and imaginatively.

1. Fact isn’t truth — Modern culture wrongly treats isolated facts as ultimate truth.
2. Context matters — Truth must be understood in its full, lived context.
3. Imagination is essential — The poetic imagination shapes how we see, love, and live.
4. Formation over performance — Education should form souls, not just train skills.
5. Read whole works — Novels, poetry, and scripture cultivate depth and empathy.
6. Mystery is good — We must embrace mystery, not reduce everything to certainty.
7. People are complex — Literature reminds us no one is all good or all bad.
8. Scripture is story & song — Most of the Bible is narrative and poetry, not bullet points.
9. Technology isn’t the problem — How we form humans in the face of AI is the real issue.
10. Live with depth — True discipleship means growing in imagination, humility, and love.

• https://www.macmillaninstitute.org/
• Donald and Luise Cowan Center

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In this episode, Chelsea sits down with friends Ashley Hardcastle and Kaylee to explore the world of youth and amateur athletics, reflecting on their personal stories, the pressures and joys of competition, and how faith intersects with identity in the arena of sports and performance. They discuss what they loved, what they struggled with, and how they now seek to guide the next generation (whether as parents or mentors) toward a healthier, Christ‑centered perspective on activity, achievement, and belonging.

02:07 – Ashley’s story

06:47 – Kaylee’s story

14:59 – Reflecting on what was good

22:28 – Discussion of parental/coach roles

29:26 – Parenting advice

38:32 – Coach/organization considerations

49:56 – “What do we say to kids before and after games/performances?”

54:26 – Final take‑aways

1. Activity is Not Identity
2. Joy & Pressure Often Coexist
3. Parents & Coaches Shape More Than Skills
4. Family Health > Activity Stacking
5. What You Celebrate Shapes What They Remember

• Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports--and Why It Matters

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