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.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

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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.

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.

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.