Faith Matters

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...

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 f...

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 th...

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 Scho...

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 part...