The Common Good Podcast

With the midterms a week away, Brian From responds to a Christianity Today report on Republican candidates courting evangelical voters, arguing that evangelicals are a movement of Christ followers, not a voting bloc. He reacts to Dictionary.com naming “maxing” its word of the year, and pushes back on a viral post claiming it’s fine for Christians to “disagree with Paul,” urging a high view of Scripture. He questions a pastor’s claim to be one of the most gifted storytellers God ever made, and shares Tim Challies’s warning that we become like the people who influence us. Brian admits to falling for a misleading headline about George W. Bush and the Texas Senate race, and discusses Highland Park United Methodist Church’s vote to leave its denomination. In the second hour, he looks at people using apps to make friends, Mark Cuban’s regret over missing time with his kids, and a 93-year-old Japanese woman who helped police catch a scammer. He also covers Relevant’s advice to “define enough” before building wealth and a New Jersey bill that could ban gum over microplastics, then closes with a Gospel Coalition call to attempt small, faithful things for God.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian From returns from Dallas, where he officiated the wedding of a former youth group student, reflecting on how staying connected to Jesus is the key to a strong marriage. He passes along an Uber driver’s wise advice for empty nesters: keep seeing each other. He airs some frustrations about air travel etiquette, applauds a megachurch pastor for urging every Christian to vote without telling them how, and sides with apologist Frank Turek in his disagreement with Ken Ham, arguing that the age of the earth is an important question but not a test of orthodoxy. Brian wonders why so many in Gen Z are delaying their driver’s licenses, pushes back on Carl and Laura Lentz’s media tour for their book on infidelity, and discusses a UC Berkeley professor who stopped grading homework for correctness because of AI. He reflects on Paul’s call in Philippians 1:27 to live worthy of the gospel “whatever happens,” and remembers the 1999 plane crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart. He warns that Eric Trump’s claim that “we’re saving God” turns a politician into an idol. He closes with John Piper on why true fulfillment is found in God rather than the self, and a Charles Stanley devotional on everyday disciple-making.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian From talks with New York Times bestselling author and Washington, D.C. pastor Mark Batterson, a Naperville native, about his new book, Not My Circus: Living with Courage, Conviction, and Compassion in a World of Chaos. Mark explains the title’s double meaning: the familiar proverb about healthy boundaries, and Paul’s call in Romans 12:2 not to be conformed to a world whose largest building, Rome’s Circus Maximus, shaped what people cheered and feared. He describes the cultural “three-ring circus” of shaming, blaming, and faming that traces back to Genesis 3, and argues that grace and truth must go together. Grace without truth is “weak sauce,” truth without grace is “hot sauce,” and together they’re the “secret sauce.” For recovering people pleasers, Mark offers the fear of the Lord as the cure for the fear of man. Drawing on 30 years of pastoring on Capitol Hill, he reminds listeners heading into the midterms that politics matter but are never ultimate, because administrations come and go while God’s kingdom endures.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian From kicks off the weekend reflecting on what fall’s changing seasons reveal about a God who never changes. He vents about increasingly reckless, distracted drivers, and walks through Russell Moore’s Christianity Today column explaining why recent events, including Christa Pike’s failed execution in Tennessee and plans to livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, have moved him away from supporting capital punishment. Brian revisits the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal as a warning about money, helicopter parenting, and the message we send kids when we don’t believe in them. He shares Tim Challies’s case that every part of a worship service matters, not just the sermon, and urges listeners to get to church on time. In the second hour, Brian encourages patience in planting spiritual seeds, discusses a survey showing financial anxiety affects people at every income level, and shares a Gospel Coalition piece on living in the moment with eternity in mind. He closes with OpenAI data showing ChatGPT receives more than 70 million religion-related questions a week, a sign that people are hungry for answers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian From opens with another cautionary youth sports story: a former MLB player and his wife charged with diverting about $60,000 from a youth baseball program. He then turns to a Christianity Today profile of a Portland Trail Blazers ball boy who sees his part-time job as a mission field, handing LeBron James a card with Isaiah 41:10 and telling him Jesus loves him. Brian shares research linking reading for pleasure to better mental health and lower dementia risk, and condemns an Ohio campaign ad that features a gubernatorial candidate’s estranged mother, despite the abuse in her past. He responds to an article warning pastors they will get hurt by asking why churches accept cruelty from their own members. He discusses a New York Times report on turmoil and layoffs at Christianity Today, and warns against describing any politician as “working for God” with God “on his side.” He closes with reflections on cultivating a “secret place” with God in a publicity-driven age, and on being an everyday missionary in ordinary places.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.