Advertise on podcast: Faith Matters

Today we’re sharing a conversation with Paige Crosland Anderson, an award-winning abstract artist who wrote a beautiful essay for Wayfare Magazine’s special Advent issue. Paige builds her paintings in layers: she paints, paints over the paint, sands everything down, and paints again until the piece emerges often in unexpected ways. She suspects our lives work in a similar way; from the studio to the daily work of raising children, God seems to work through this pattern of creation and repair—and we’re invited to participate. In this conversation, we explore how in big ways and small, this pattern creates a seedbed of hope in a world of uncertainty. Paige’s invitation today is that when you’re looking for what’s yours to do, in a world where suffering outpaces anything our hands can do, to start moving—because inspiration, she says, comes to people who are already on the move. We’ve also included a reading of Paige’s essay from this special Advent issue at the end of this episode if you want to stick around. And if you’d like to celebrate advent this year, this special issue will make a beautiful guide and companion with art, poetry, and thoughtful reflections to make this season meaningful. Become a  paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive a copy in the mail, or order individual issues at our new storefront here. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we’re excited to welcome back Thomas McConkie to celebrate a new season of another Faith Matters podcast he hosts: One Heart, One Mind. Together, we dig into the story of Mary and Martha, which he recently explored in an episode there. Drawing on decades of contemplative practice, Thomas’s read of this story is that it may be inviting us to discover the kind of presence that allows us to carry the stillness of Mary into the action of Martha. It’s a new understanding that means we don’t have to leave divine presence—whether we’re at the Savior’s feet or getting dinner on the table. In this conversation, we also talk about how easily even an invitation to grace can become another item on our spiritual checklist—another way to feel like we’re falling short. Thomas invites us instead to turn toward that wound with compassion, and to remember that transformation doesn’t have to begin with fear, shame, or even striving for self-improvement. It can begin with the recognition that we are already and completely loved. Thomas has a remarkable gift for helping us slow down and experience these ideas rather than simply think about them. We loved this conversation, and we hope you will too. You can find Thomas' book At-One-Ment here, and find even more from him at LowerLightsWisdom.org. Thomas also shared his insights into the Mary and Martha duality in an episode of Proclaim Peace, a portion of which has been adapted for print and included in the brand-new print issue of Wayfare specially created to accompany your Advent and Christmas celebrations. Get your copy here, or become a Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive one in the mail — and take a look inside the issue here! The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

If Isaiah has ever felt impenetrable, start here. With Come, Follow Me taking us into Isaiah over the next couple of weeks, we’re sharing a special crosspost from Proclaim Peace, which is another Faith Matters podcast that we produce with Mormon Women for Ethical Government. In this episode, Jen and Patrick sat down with Reverend Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, a Christian nonprofit dedicated to social justice and peace. Today they are exploring Isaiah 58, which Adam calls his favorite text in the Old Testament. It's a chapter about fasting and about what happens when religious devotion stops changing hearts. The people in this story are fasting faithfully and getting frustrated that God doesn't seem to be noticing. They learn that a meaningful fast has more to do with who we feed, who we make room for, and how we treat each other. Adam shares some ideas for making our own Latter-Day Saint Fast Sundays more meaningful, and a simple prayer practice he’s returned to for years.  We hope that this episode helps Isaiah feel less distant and moves you to become a "repairer of the breach" like Isaiah calls for in this chapter. Find Reverend Taylor's book A More Perfect Union on Bookshop.org or on Amazon. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters. Maybe some of you relate to the stomach-dropping feeling I get when I’m asked to speak in church. If you’re anything like me, those 12 minutes can loom over your whole week. Today, Ben Crosby and Isaac Richards join us to talk about how to give a talk! How to prepare and deliver a talk with confidence and share a message that will be nourishing for your congregation. Both Ben and Isaac teach public speaking at a university level, and they’ve just completed an anthology of Latter-day Saint speeches spanning our entire church history—a fascinating window into how we’ve talked, taught, and testified, and what’s shifted about that practice over two centuries. Despite how central these talks have always been to our Sunday experience, they note, almost none of us are ever taught how to actually give one. So today: tips and tricks to make your talk less daunting, four methods for delivering and preparing one, and help finding the voice that’s authentically yours. We hope this conversation leaves you feeling a little more prepared for the the next time that call comes. Find 5 helpful principles from Ben Crosby here, use the discount code S26UIP for a 30% discount when you order the book, and get a look inside the book through a collaboration with Wayfare Magazine. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today, we decided to bring back one of our favorite conversations with Casper ter Kuile, because he'll be joining us this next week, September 24th through 26th, at Restore:Connect.  Casper has spent years exploring the changing landscape of spiritual life in America, especially the new ways that people are finding belonging, meaning, transformation, and even sacredness as traditional religious participation declines.  About a decade ago, Casper and his fellow Harvard Divinity School classmate, Angie Thurston, wrote a fascinating report called How We Gather, looking at the ways that millennials were finding forms of spiritual community in seemingly secular spaces, from CrossFit and SoulCycle to social justice movements.  Since then, Casper has continued exploring how we create meaningful spiritual lives. He co-hosted the beloved podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. He wrote The Power of Ritual and launched The Nearness, an online community built around exploring life's big questions together.  In this conversation, Zach Davis talks with Casper about what he's learned from years of studying and working at the edges of America's evolving spiritual landscape. We are so excited to share it again since Casper will be joining us next week. If you don't have your tickets for Restore:Connect yet, now is the time. We would love to see you there so you can hear more from Casper and so many other incredible speakers. You can go to faithmatters.org/restore for tickets. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we're joined by Colette Lafia, a spiritual director, poet, and author whose newest book Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer invites us into a different way of meeting the divine than we might be used to. Much of our faith language often centers on effort—perseverance, pressing forward, fighting the good fight. Colette offers a somewhat gentler direction: the idea that relationship with God can look much more like surrender than striving. One of the most vivid parts of the conversation is Colette's take on delight. She traces it back to relationship: the moment she stopped approaching God as someone to plead with, and started experiencing the connection as something to simply enjoy. Her point isn't that discipline or commitment don't matter—she still believes in practices that cultivate a spiritual life—but that delight can carry us there without so much of the striving we're used to. We felt like this conversation is an invitation to loosen our grips on outcomes, on certainty, even on the idea that connection with God has to be earned, and to notice what opens up when we let delight and creativity lead instead. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we're joined by John White, a theologian and ethicist who is currently Research Fellow at BYU's Maxwell Institute  — and who has a fascinating and unexpected story that led him to convert to the Church just under a year ago. For over a decade, John was a tenured professor of practical theology and ethics at Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary, where he directed the graduate chaplaincy program. His work has been at the intersection of theology, ethics, and everyday embodied life—character formation, moral agency, and the ways our institutions and practices shape who we become. Then a few years ago, an unexplainable experience at an academic conference set him on a path he never saw coming, one that eventually led him to baptism. What made this conversation so fascinating for us, is that John brings the full weight of that background to the questions many of us have lived with our whole lives. Together we explore the theology of the body—what it means to embrace the body, not just tolerate it, and how our theology supports that idea. We wrestled a bit with the phrase “the Church is true,” and how a Christ-centered lens might free us from treating every question as a row of dominoes. And we spent some real time on the problem of agency—where our freedom actually lives, and how it might expand as we act in concert with the divine. Again and again, John helped us see things we'd almost stopped noticing, and hear language we take for granted with fresh ears. We’re excited to share this one. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we’re bringing you a session we loved from last year’s Restore with Thomas McConkie. There’s a particular overwhelm I know that often comes with learning something new—a low-grade worry that I’m already missing something, forgetting the important pieces, not going to be able to hang onto it all. When it comes to personal development or spiritual truth, that worry can feel especially high stakes. In this session, Thomas offers what has felt to me like an antidote to all of that striving. The deepest truths, he says, aren’t hiding somewhere just out of reach — they’re woven into our actual lived experience, so close we can’t help but bump into them again and again. As Thomas puts it, “Sacred reality is so good you can’t miss it.” There’s something incredibly freeing to me about trusting that what is most true and most sacred will keep finding us. I’ve thought about this session and his message often since last year, and I’m excited to finally share it with you. Thomas will be back with us at Restore:Connect this September, so you’ll be able to hear more from him there. You can get your tickets now at faithmatters.org/restore! And be sure to check out Thomas’ podcast One Heart One Mind, produced by Faith Matters, as well as his book At-One-Ment. Available on Bookshop.org Available on Amazon The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

This week, we're asking: how do you fit a full Sunday School lesson into twenty-five minutes? Our worldwide church is shifting to shorter lesson blocks, and teachers everywhere are feeling nervous. Isaiah in 25 minutes? What do you cut, what do you keep? Today we're sitting down with Patrick and Melissa Mason to think through this transition and to really embrace it as an invitation to consider what church is actually for. We talk about the difference between content and communion, why less can genuinely be more, and get some great tips for preparing for these blocks.  We get into the unglamorous but invaluable art of ending on time, and for anybody worried about the quick transitions, Patrick invites us to consider whether getting stuck in the hallway to catch up with a friend or hear about what’s going on in the life of a neighbor might not be defeating the purpose of church so much as fulfilling it. Patrick is the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University and Melissa is a clinical social worker and therapist whose work focuses on relationships and personal growth. Both Patrick and Melissa spend so much of their daily lives teaching, listening, and engaging in meaningful conversation, and we couldn’t imagine better people to help us think through how these 25 minutes might become genuinely nourishing and powerful moments in our spiritual lives. Patrick and Melissa will both be joining us at Restore:Connect this year so if you’d like to hear more from them, you can get your tickets now at Faithmatters.org/restore!  The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Most of us can probably recall a verse or two from the book of Psalms—something comforting, or words inside a hymn we know. But Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and tucked inside this same book of scripture are psalms of rage, cursing, and despair that are a lot harder to make sense of. Today, Dr. Ellen Davis joins us to talk about this ancient, essential book, and describes the Psalms as a kind of script for the full range of human experience before God. The Psalms, she says, expose “all parts of our soul for healing.” In this conversation, Ellen, who has spent years translating the Psalms, shows us just how expansive this ancient prayer book really is. She calls the Psalms a kind of “First Amendment” for the life of faith: permission to bring everything before God. Even the shape of the book reflects that, with lament gradually giving way to praise by the book’s end. Ellen also takes us beneath some familiar translations with words like nefesh, usually rendered “soul.” Ellen says this actually probably means something closer to our whole embodied self, challenging the idea that our spiritual lives are somehow separate or at odds with our physical ones. It’s another way the Psalms widen our sense of prayer—it’s a vision spacious enough to hold our grief, our anger, our bodies, our silence, and our joy, trusting that all of it belongs in our relationship with God. Dr. Ellen F. Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School and the author of several books exploring scripture and the life of faith, including extensive work on the Psalms. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Job is probably one of the most difficult and haunting books in scripture, and this summer as we read it together, we wanted a guide—so we invited Mike Petrow back to join us. With doctoral degrees in psychology and mythological studies, Mike helps us understand Job as an ancient text, and as a story that continues to speak in our own lives. Today Mike takes us straight into one of the most striking turns in this story: Job’s friends show up in his deep suffering, and one by one try to defend God with tidy theology, debate him out of his grief, and ultimately accuse him of bringing this suffering on himself. But then God show up and finally speaks, rebuking the friends and declaring that it is Job—the one who questioned, lamented, and wrestled—who has spoken truthfully. Mike unpacks what that reversal means for anyone who’s ever felt like their questions made them the problem. And then there’s Job himself: a good man who loses everything. Mike walks us through what this ancient story has to teach us about our own doubt, grief, and the sacred work of asking questions—showing again how honest questioning can be the threshold to a richer spiritual imagination and deeper faith. Dr. Mike Petrow is the host of The Healer With a Thousand Facesand one of the lead hosts on the Everything Belongs podcast with Father Richard Rohr. He’s the Manager of Formation for the Center for Action and Contemplation, a jungian spiritual director, and a certified grief and trauma counselor. And we are so thrilled to share that he’ll be joining us live at Restore:Connect this year! We hope this conversation is nourishing and sparks lots of new insights for you as you study the book of Job this month. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

When Dallin Zimmerman was four years old, he memorized every Article of Faith. As a teenager, he studied Portuguese and Spanish, and had long been the family's peacemaker — a bright, fun-loving light that people gravitate toward. Today he's serving a full-time mission in South America. And at thirteen, years before any of that, he sat down with his parents and asked a question that would shape everything ahead: "What if I'm gay?" Today we're talking with Dave and Kirty, Dallin's parents, married 22 years, raising four kids, longtime Utah County residents. For more than three years, they kept Dallin's story private, scared of what they might lose, and of what it would cost Dallin if their community found out. Many of their questions remained unresolved. But eventually, the secret became too heavy to carry alone.  So together, they helped Dallin share his story with trusted leaders in their ward, in a gathering of Young Men and Young Women leaders who had known him for years, he bore his testimony, and shared that he is gay. One by one, these leaders stood up, embraced him and assured him that he was so loved—and that he belonged. That moment marked the beginning of a new way forward, where isolation gave way to the healing that comes from being known and loved. In this conversation, Dave and Kirty are remarkably candid about the fear they felt at first, the questions that still remain, and the unexpected ways this journey has transformed them—a journey that, as Kirty says, has become "the biggest blessing of their lives." Dave and Kirty would be the first to tell you their story isn't a prescription for any other family's journey. But if you're a parent near the beginning of this path, or a leader wondering how to better love and support the youth in your ward, we hope you'll be inspired by their courage, their humility, and creativity. You can find even more resources around this topic on our website, faithmatters.org. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we’re honored to share a conversation with Peter Wehner. We want to acknowledge that this conversation explores territory that is going to feel personal, political, and, probably at some points, challenging. Our hope that it creates honest and faithful wrestling where where we need it. Today, we explore what it means to follow Jesus in a time when political identities increasingly compete with religious ones. Pete argues that Christians have always faced the temptation to use the Bible to back up our own opinions rather than allowing the life of Christ to reshape us. He challenges us to consider how certainty may be blinding, explains that a healthy patriotism deepens our love of neighbor, and emphasizes the revolutionary nature of Jesus’s love for those on the margins and calls us to consider what all of this means for Christians today. Pete has spent decades at the intersection of faith and politics, serving in three Republican administrations, including as a speechwriter and director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives to President George W. Bush. He’s now a contributing writer for The Atlantic and The New York Times. Throughout his career, he’s consistently challenged himself and others to think with moral seriousness, intellectual honesty, and Christian charity. This conversation invited us to think more deeply about where our deepest allegiances belong. We found it thoughtful, grounding, and so worthwhile, and we hope you will too. And with that, we’ll jump right into our conversation with Peter Wehner. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we’re pulling out one of our favorite episodes from the archives.  Our guest is Pete Enns, a well-known bible scholar and the Abram S. Clemens professor of Bible Studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. In recent years, Pete has become well known for several highly popular books, including How the Bible Actually Works, The Bible Tells Me So, and the book we discussed with him in this episode: The Sin of Certainty. In addition to his research and writing, Pete co-hosts the podcast The Bible for Normal People. In The Sin of Certainty, Pete opens up about his own faith journey, including what he calls “uh-oh” moments — those moments that, as Pete says, “wreak havoc with our neatly arranged thoughts of God, the world, and our place in it.” He makes the argument that a faith preoccupied with correct thinking can quickly become exhausting as we try to force disruptive experiences into our existing frameworks. Pete insists that there’s a different way—the way of listening to those moments and learning from them, even letting them change us—and discovering a faith that shifts from rigid certainty about God to a more open, resilient trust in God. This conversation has really stayed with us over the years, and we are so excited to share it with you now. You can also watch the presentation Pete gave at Restore 2023, "What Our Strange Universe is Telling Us About God and Faith," on our YouTube channel. The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Today we’re joined by two thoughtful therapists, teachers, peacebuilders, and friends, Amanda Ford and Melissa Mason. Together with their spouses, Patrick Mason and Chad Ford, Melissa and Amanda have dedicated years to the work of building peace in families, communities, and faith spaces. But in this conversation, they invite us to consider the foundation of all lasting peace: the quiet, often difficult work of cultivating peace within ourselves. Drawing from their work as therapists and educators, Amanda and Melissa offer a vision of emotional wholeness that challenges many of the assumptions our culture rewards. Together we explore how striving, productivity, and constant achievement may inadvertently shape our sense of worth, and ask why so many of us find it so difficult to rest—even when we desperately need it. They ask us to become more fluent in the wisdom of our bodies and to rediscover rest—not as something we earn, but as both a spiritual practice and a commandment. Again and again, they remind us that spiritual formation isn’t a race toward perfection, that every season of our lives can become part of who we’re growing into. We hope this conversation helps you notice the ways you might be being invited into more rest and presence and less striving.  Learn more about their work at Waymakers at waymakers.us The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!