The murder of Charlie Kirk has shaken both political and faith communities. It is fortunate that we interviewed Shirley Mullen a couple of months ago. We are glad to provide that interview now. She encourages us to take up the courageous middle in the midst of the kind of polarization that has led to this kind of violence.

We are experiencing increased suspicion and animosity in our churches, our workplaces, and even our families. It has also led to a false sense that our options are limited to choosing only one side.

When we look around us, we see people so extremely confident that they are absolutely right and that the opposition is not only absolutely wrong, but downright evil.

Is there a better way? Are Christians called to be peacemakers and bridgebuilders? And can they do that without jettisoning our core convictions?

Into the fray comes Dr. Shirley Mullen and her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future (Baker Academic, 2024).

Scroll down to learn more about Shirley Mullen.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Shirley A. Mullen

We welcome Shirley Mullen, who served as president of Houghton University for fifteen years before retiring in 2021. After receiving two doctorates (one in history from the University of Minnesota and the other in philosophy from the University of Wales), she spent four decades in the field of faith-based liberal arts education, serving as a professor, residence life director, chief academic officer, and president. In her role as president of the college, she led her institution to a place where students and faculty could be courageous in creating space for people to be in the courageous middle.

She continues to invest in the next generation of leaders through mentoring and serving on the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Jericho Road Community Health Center, the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the 1st Amendment Partnership.

We recommend purchasing this book from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about this book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

Do you feel that our isolating individualism, nonstop injustices, consumerist lifestyles, or everyday monotony are suffocating your soul?

Our guest, Wesley Vander Lugt, believes what breathes life into us is something that we can easily miss or dismiss: BEAUTY.

His book is Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith That Breathes (Eerdmans, 2024). Here is not your ivory-tower theologian; his PhD is in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. Wes shows how beauty can break us out of self-centered malaise, promote healing and hope for our broken world, and re-enchant our lives. Wes believes that Beauty is as essential to our souls as oxygen is to our bodies.

Here is the poem that Wes cites in the podcast:

Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman

God goes, belonging to every riven thing He’s madeSing his being simply by beingThe thing it is:Stone and tree and sky,Man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing He’s made,Means a storm of peace.Think of the atoms inside the stone.Think of the man who sits aloneTrying to will himself into the stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing He’s madeThere is given one shadeShaped exactly to the thing itself:Under the tree a darker tree;Under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s madeThe things that bring Him near,Made the mind that makes Him go.A part of what man knows,Apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing He’s made.

Scroll down to learn more about Wesley Vander Lugt.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Wesley Vander Lugt

Wesley Vander Lugt is the Director of the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness and Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte.

His publications include Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breathes (Eerdmans, 2024), A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault (IVP Adademic, 2024), Living Theodrama: Reimagining Theological Ethics (Routledge, 2014), Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition (co-authored with Kelly Kapic), and Theatrical Theology: Explorations in Performing the Faith (edited with Trevor Hart).

We recommend purchasing these books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about these books on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

On this episode, we welcome back our friend, Erica Reitz, who has been helping young men and women transition out of college for several years. The transitions that 20-somethings experience in the years after college are some of the most stressful, unstable, and uncertain times we can ever experience.

Erica Young Reitz is the author of After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships, and Faith (InterVarsity Press, Revised Edition, 2025). It has been republished in a revised edition this year by InterVarsity Press. No book on the market deals with the after-college years so thoroughly and so practically.

Scroll down to learn more about Erica Young Reitz.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Erica Young Reitz

Erica Young Reitz is the founder of After College Transition, an organization that helps higher education professionals, church leaders, and college ministers equip students to thrive after college.

Her experience working with college students has included teaching advanced writing at Penn State and serving in campus ministry with the CCO (Coalition for Christian Outreach), as well as directing Senior EXIT. She holds an MA in higher education from Geneva College with a research focus on the senior year transition. Erica serves as a leadership development specialist for Bartell & Bartell, helping individuals and teams uplevel their leadership and unleash their organizational potential. Erica lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband, Craig, and their two children.

You can purchase Erica’s book from our partner in ministry, Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Byron and Beth Borger are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about this book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor.

On a previous episode, we had a blast talking with him about his last bestselling book, Redeeming Your Time. Be sure to go back and listen to that episode. What was impressive about that book was how, even though very practical, it was so clearly written on a strong biblical foundation.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You're Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

Here at Reintegrate, I often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

Scroll down to learn more about Jordan Raynor.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Jordan Raynor

Jordan Raynor’s other books that help us reintegrate faith and work include Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive, Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do and Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk.

He has also written two children’s books (The Royal You, and The Creator in You) and a weekday devotional (The Word Before Work).

Jordan’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.

Be sure to check out Jordan’s fascinating podcast, Mere Christians, where he interviews people from a wide variety of vocations about how they reintegrate faith and work.

Jordan lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and their three young daughters.

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor.

On a previous episode, we had a blast talking with him about his last bestselling book, Redeeming Your Time. Be sure to go back and listen to that episode. What was impressive about that book was how, even though very practical, it was so clearly written on a strong biblical foundation.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You're Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

Here at Reintegrate, I often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

Scroll down to learn more about Jordan Raynor.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Jordan Raynor

Jordan Raynor’s other books that help us reintegrate faith and work include Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive, Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do and Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk.

He has also written two children’s books (The Royal You, and The Creator in You) and a weekday devotional (The Word Before Work).

Jordan’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.

Be sure to check out Jordan’s fascinating podcast, Mere Christians, where he interviews people from a wide variety of vocations about how they reintegrate faith and work.

Jordan lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and their three young daughters.

We know that quiet is an essential aspect of the spiritual life, that we need to leave the craziness of our hurried and frenzied lives and find the deep peace of being in God’s presence. But in our busy lives of deadlines and distractions, of screens at work and at play, this seems abstract and impossible.

David Loughney and Bob Robinson welcomes Sarah Clarkson to the podcast. She writes regularly about literature, faith, and beauty. Check out her Substack, From the Vicarge, where she writes about “suffering and beauty, theodicy and theology, imagination and the luminous grace of real, disciplined wonder.”

Her latest book is Reclaiming Quiet: Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention (Baker, 2024). In it, she tells her story of trying to overcome anxiety and hurry by cultivating a life of holy attention, an inner quiet of paying attention to God in the everyday aspects of life.

Scroll down to learn more about Sarah Clarkson.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Sarah Clarkson

Sarah loves reading many novels, listening to a great deal of music, and drinking as many cups of coffee and tea as she can get away with in a day. She’s married to Thomas, a priest in the Church of England, and they have four children, Lilian, Samuel, Lucie, and Elanor. They live in (and she does her writing from) an old English vicarage in Oxford.

Sarah Clarkson on Instagram.

Sarah has also authored This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness (Baker, 2021), Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life (Tyndale Momentum, 2018), and The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming (Tyndale Momentum, 2016).

Sarah’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.

VIDEO LINK on YOUTUBE.

Should Christians care about the ecological crises that we face? Should climate change be a concern for believers?

Many Christians still view their faith as primarily a “spiritual” matter that has little to do with the “physical” world in which they live.

Our guest is Steven Bouma-Prediger, who contends that protecting and restoring our planet is an essential practice for Christians. Steve has studied the Bible and understands what it teaches about this earthly life. He has written extensively about how humans are called, in the words of Genesis 2:15, to “work and take care of” the world in which we live. He is troubled by how too few Christians see this as a crucial part of Christian discipleship.

Scroll down to learn more about Dr. Steven Bouma-Prediger.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. Go to re-integrate.org for further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission.

Steven Bouma-Prediger, Ph.D.

Dr. Steven Bouma-Prediger is Professor of Religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where he has also served as the chairperson of the Department of Religion and as the associate dean for teaching and learning. He also oversees the Environmental Studies minor. In addition, Steve teaches in Belize and New Zealand for the Creation Care Study Program.

His latest book is Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice (from Baker Academic).

Among his previous books are Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic and For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care, and (co-authored with Brian J. Walsh) Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement.

His books can be purchased from independent bookseller Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore.

Both David and Bob are history buffs. But studying history is not as simple as watching a documentary, a biopic, or reading a bestselling narrative history.

We need to be aware of how historians actually do their craft, and use those same tools as we watch and read.

Some use history to advance their political agendas, while others just echo ideas that are not substantiated by historical scholarship. Armchair historians can often get it very wrong.

How should Christians study history? Christians are a people of the Truth, so how do we know what is legitimate history?

How do we reintegrate our faith with our understanding of the past?

Our guest is Dr. John Fea, Distinguished Professor of American History at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He has recently released the second edition of his book, Why Study History?: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Baker Academic, 2024). In this book, he talks about what historians do, what bad history looks like, and how studying history can be a form of spiritual formation.

Scroll down to learn more about Dr. John Fea.

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Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends.

Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney.

Go to re-integrate.org for further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission.

John Fea, Ph.D.

John Fea’s essays and reviews on the history of American culture have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. John speaks regularly at universities, academic conferences, churches, school and teacher groups, civic groups, and historical societies and has appeared on NBC News, CNN, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, and dozens of radio programs nationwide.

John writes about American history, religion, politics, and academic life at his blog housed in the online magazine Current.

John Fea has authored several other books, including Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), and Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, June 2018).

John was on two previous episodes of the Reintegrate Podcast, discussing these two books: here and here.