I’m a white pastor in San Diego, and it’s easy for me to forget that what’s happening to immigrant communities is still happening. Marcos Canales doesn’t have that luxury. He’s the pastor of La Fuente Ministries, a bilingual congregation in Pasadena and Altadena that lived through the Eaton fire in January 2025 and, within weeks,…
What does it mean when a congregation stands for the national anthem without a second thought, but flinches at a sermon on nonviolence? That is the tension at the center of this conversation with Ben Daniel, Senior Pastor of Montclair Presbyterian Church and author of Grace Over Guns: Pursuing Peace in a Militarized World. Markus…
Ten years ago I told myself I would never be a pastor again. And I meant it. It was 2016, and after a year of false accusations, the congregation I served voted to dissolve our relationship. I was eventually exonerated, but by then something in me had already closed up. I didn’t trust churches anymore,…
What if the healthiest thing a pastor could do is stop trying to control the outcome? Kurt Fredrickson, author of the new book Compelled, joins Markus Watson to argue that most congregations are stuck thinking like machines when they were built to grow like gardens instead. Garden, Not Machine The image on the…
Most of your congregants were never taught that their jobs might be doing something to their souls. They assume work is neutral at best, a distraction from “real” spiritual life at worst. Matt Rusten, president of Made to Flourish and author of Pastoring for Monday, makes the case that work has been central to God’s…
I want to tell you about a conversation I wish I could get back. It was the end of a long Sunday. I’d preached in the morning, then led a small group for another hour and a half. By the time I got to my office I was wiped out. Honestly, I was already driving…
Angela Weszely didn’t go looking for a calling on abortion. Twenty-one years ago she took a job at a Christian pregnancy center in Chicago, and within her first interview she found a brochure in the lobby that made her uncomfortable: statistics about children raised by single parents, framed to steer women away from adoption and…
We’re in the afterglow of America’s 250th Fourth of July. Fireworks, parades, hamburgers and hot dogs. And I’ll admit it, I kind of love all that. I don’t mind the phrase “healthy patriotism” one bit. If patriotism means loving the land and the people, the freedoms, the best parts of our history, then count me…
What if the most dangerous thing a pastor could do is simply want to be the pastor? That question sits at the heart of this conversation with JR Woodward, National Director of the V3 Movement and author of The Scandal of Leadership. Drawing on the work of philosopher René Girard, lay theologian William Stringfellow, and…
Most pastors don’t have an information problem. They’ve read the books, sat through the classes, and can talk theology for hours. What’s harder to come by is a way of actually living differently because of it. That’s the question at the center of this conversation: not what it means to know about following Jesus,…