Podcast
Pivot Podcast
Hosted by Faith+Lead · EN
Over the past few years, church leaders have been forced to respond to several global crises in the blink of an eye. In a moment with little information and lots of uncertainty, churches reinvented nearly every aspect of church.
Season 5 of the Pivot podcast explores the changing landscape of the church. Our co-hosts will dig into difficult questions that faith leaders are asking now, and provide an understanding of the deeper cultural shifts that account for the unraveling of inherited models of church. What are the four key pivots that today's church must make? New episodes post weekly on Thursdays.
26episodes
Episodes
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Why Is Cultivating Community in Church So Hard Right Now?
3w ago00:44:31Tap to summarizeWhy is cultivating community in church so hard right now? In this Season 6 finale, hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm reflect on a full season of conversations with historians, theologians, pastors, and researchers who helped them understand the many layers underneath that question. From the formative power of late modern culture to the provisional nature of relationships today, they name what the church is genuinely up against — and why the tools the surrounding culture offers can't get us to the deep belonging the church is meant to provide.But this isn't a conversation that ends in resignation. Dwight and Alicia also talk about what leaders can actually do: casting a bigger vision, getting off the hamster wheel of programs that aren't forming disciples, and starting small where community is already gathering. And they point to real signs of hope — a cultural shift away from cynicism and toward longing, and a growing number of people finding their way into Christian community precisely because the culture is offering so little. The soil, as Dwight puts it, is being prepared.
Transcribe →Amen Means I Trust You
4w ago00:28:16Tap to summarizeThe guilt most Christians carry about their prayer life, that it isn't deep enough, consistent enough, disciplined enough, may say less about them than about the world they're living in. In this episode, Dwight Zscheile talks with the Rev. Dr. Wesley Ellis, pastor of First Congregational Church in Ramona, California and author of Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age, about what a culture of optimization has done to the Christian prayer life and what might be recovered when we stop treating prayer as one more project to manage.Wes argues that prayer is primarily something God does, and that we are less its practitioners than its recipients. Drawing on philosopher Charles Taylor's account of the secular age and sociologist Hartmut Rosa's work on social acceleration, he makes a case that the exhaustion so many church leaders feel is bound up with a way of thinking about prayer that puts all the weight on us. The conversation moves from personal guilt to pastoral practice to the deep grammar of grace: that the most important things have already been done, and that amen means something closer to "I trust you" than "we're finished."Following Jesus to Purpose and Meaning with Angela Williams Gorrell Taste and See: Connecting with God Through Spiritual Practices Overflow: An Introduction to Growing in Faith with Steve Thomason
Transcribe →Half of Christians Say Faith Is Private. Here's What We're Losing
May 2800:31:58Tap to summarizeChurch community building has never been more urgent or perhaps more difficult. In this episode of Pivot Podcast, Jeff Galley and Phil Smith, co-authors of The Way Back to One Another, join Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to talk honestly about the loneliness epidemic reshaping American life and what it means for the church. Drawing on years of experience in large church ministry and global relief work, Jeff and Phil bring both data and personal longing to this conversation. Since 2014, time Americans spend with other people has dropped by roughly 50%, and the church is not exempt.Jeff and Phil ground their vision in three biblical terms, ezair, allelon, and koinonia, and lay out five practical "one another" commitments that Scripture calls us to. But the heart of the conversation is about culture, not programs. Real church community building, they argue, starts with leaders who are willing to model vulnerability, go first, and trust that one relationship at a time can turn the ship.The Way Back to One Another - InterVarsity PressMissio Dei: The Church Sent with Edwin Ortiz-Rivera and Chris SteubingListening and Serving: Community-Based Ministry with F. Willis JohnsonFamily Systems: Tool for Ministry with Jules Erickson
Transcribe →You Don't Own the Spirit: The Meaning of Pentecost
May 2100:07:58Tap to summarizeWhat is the meaning of Pentecost? In this reflection episode of the Pivot Podcast, Luther Seminary theologian Dr. Lois Malcolm moves past the familiar imagery of wind and fire to ask what the Spirit was actually doing that day in Jerusalem. Her answer is both clarifying and unsettling: the Spirit arrived not so the disciples could possess it, but so it could send them out.Lois draws three claims from the Pentecost story that speak directly to the life of the church today. The Spirit belongs to no one. Speaking in other people's languages is a divine mandate for empathy, not a one-time miracle. And the power given at Pentecost was never for the church's self-advancement; it was given for the common good, for the dead places in our communities, and for the people most unlike us. A short, searching reflection for Pentecost Sunday and beyond.
Transcribe →The False Choice That's Been Costing the Church for a Hundred Years
May 1400:38:25Tap to summarizeThe debate over whether the church's primary calling is evangelism or justice has been running for over a century, and Dr. Al Tizon believes it has cost us more than we know. In this episode, the lead pastor of Grace Fellowship Community Church in San Francisco and affiliate professor of missional and global leadership at North Park Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary joins hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to make the case for a missional church grounded in the whole gospel. Drawing on decades of ministry in the Philippines and the United States, Al offers reconciliation as the organizing framework for mission today, one that holds evangelism, peacemaking, compassion, and creation care together rather than forcing a choice between them.The conversation also gets at the heart of Season 6's central question: why is Christian community so hard to cultivate? Al's answer is direct. The church has largely failed at discipleship, forming individuals in private piety rather than communities that embody the values of the kingdom in every arena of life. He shares stories of congregations where holistic mission has genuinely taken root, names the false gospels most tempting to American churches right now, and closes with a candid account of where he is finding hope in a moment that makes despair feel like the easier option.Christ Among the Classes: The Rich, the Poor, and the Mission of the Church by Al TizonWhole and Reconciled – Baker Publishing GroupChristian Witness in Smaller Membership Congregations with Jon Anderson Missio Dei: The Church Sent with Edwin Ortiz-Rivera and Chris Steubing Recruiting, Equipping, and Empowering Church Leaders with Clara King and Dwight Zscheile
Transcribe →The Early Church Was Figuring It Out Too
May 700:23:34Tap to summarizeWhat does first century Christianity have to teach the church about belonging today? In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Kristofer Phan Coffman, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, joins hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to explore the early church as a community of genuinely unlike people navigating real social upheaval. From the chaos of the Roman Empire to Paul's fledgling congregations scattered across the Mediterranean, Kristofer helps us see that the early church was not a settled institution with established patterns. It was a community figuring out, often under pressure, what it meant to belong to one another across real difference.That history has direct implications for church leaders today. Kristofer challenges the assimilation patterns that quietly shape much of North American Christianity and invites leaders to ask hard questions about who feels at home in their communities and why. Drawing on Paul's letters and the witness of Acts, he points toward self-awareness and deep listening as the foundational practices for forming Christian community in a fragmented cultural moment.Genesis to Revelation: A Bible Overview with Kristofer Phan CoffmanWalking the Narrow Road: Milestones in Church History with Jennifer Hornyak WojciechowskiCrash Course: Church with Stephanie Luedke
Transcribe →God Doesn't Say Follow Your Bliss
Apr 3000:38:03Tap to summarizeWhat does it mean to find your identity in Christ, and what does the Old Testament have to say about it? In this episode of the Pivot Podcast, Dr. Kathryn Schifferdecker, professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, walks hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm through the Bible's vision for human community, from the boundaries woven into creation in Genesis, to the covenant at Sinai, to the prophets calling Israel back to account. Along the way, she challenges the modern assumption that identity is something we construct from within, offering instead a picture of people called into being by God and sent into the world to be a blessing.From the call of Abraham to the Sabbath commandment to the words of Amos, Kathryn shows how scripture consistently orients us away from self-fulfillment and toward the flourishing of others, especially the most vulnerable. This is the first of a two-part series on biblical community at Pivot Podcast, and it offers church leaders a grounding and hopeful framework for navigating a culture that has largely forgotten what community is for.
Transcribe →What to Say (and Not to Say) to People Who Are Suffering
Apr 2300:35:44Tap to summarizeWhy does God allow suffering? It's one of the oldest and most urgent questions in human experience, and Dr. Rolf Jacobson has lived inside it. Diagnosed with bone cancer at 15 and losing both legs, then decades later walking alongside his brother Karl and close friend Mike through simultaneous cancer diagnoses, Rolf has wrestled with that question personally, pastorally, and theologically. In this conversation with host Dwight Zscheile, he draws on the theology of the cross, the Psalms, and the hard-won wisdom of his own experience to offer some of the most grounded and practical guidance you'll hear on faith, suffering, and Christian community.Rolf talks about what to say and what not to say to someone in crisis, why the impulse to explain suffering usually backfires, and what it looks like for a congregation to truly show up for someone going through the worst. He also shares the story behind his book God Meets Us in Our Suffering, co-authored with Karl and Michael Pancoast, and why he believes the theology of the cross is not abstract doctrine but the most practical pastoral theology there is. Dr. Rolf Jacobson is Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary.The Grace of Just Showing Up (With Cheetos) - MockingbirdGod Meets Us in Our Suffering – Baker Publishing GroupGod and Grief and Loss: Turning on the Light with Michelle Bryant Powell
Transcribe →A Crowd Is Not a Community
Apr 1600:34:34Tap to summarizeWhat does real church community cultivation require? The Rev. Dr. Eun Strawser, physician, author, and pastor of Ma Ke Alo'o, a network of multiplying missional communities in Honolulu, Hawaii, has spent years working out a practical answer to that question. After planting her first church and growing it to 450 people, she realized a crowd had gathered but a community hadn't really formed. Her second church plant took a radically different approach, starting with 15 people, a discipleship core, and weekly community dinners before ever launching a Sunday service.In this conversation with Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm, Eun makes the case that discipleship is the missing link in most churches' understanding of community. She shares what it looks like to form people for neighborhood presence rather than church volunteerism, how to make locally rooted invitations that actually move people, and why the vision of the early church in Acts 2 is less about miraculous growth and more about a countercultural way of life together. If your church is serious about church community building that goes beyond filling seats, this episode is a place to start.Recruiting, Equipping, and Empowering Church Leaders with Clara King and Dwight Zscheile Starting a Fresh Expression of Church with Michael Beck, Dwight Zscheile, and Dee Stoke Starting a Fresh Expression of Church with Michael Beck, Dwight Zscheile, and Dee Stoke Ma Ke Alo o - HomeCentering Discipleship: Connecting the Church to Community Development-Rev. Dr. Eun K. Strawser, Melissa Cabagbag, Kelci Schedler » Christian Community Development Association
Transcribe →The Two Things That Have Always Renewed the Church
Apr 900:30:15Tap to summarizeWhy is Christian community so hard to cultivate in contemporary culture? In this episode of Pivot Podcast, host Dwight Zscheile continues his conversation with Dr. Jennifer Wojciechowski, a professor of church history at Luther Seminary, tracing the deep cultural roots of our present challenge. From the Enlightenment's reimagining of the human person as an autonomous individual to the seismic cultural shifts of the 1960s and 70s, Jennie and Dwight examine how Western culture arrived at a place where shared frameworks for truth and the common good have largely dissolved, and how both mainline and evangelical churches have accommodated themselves to that story in ways that have undermined their witness.But the conversation doesn't stop at diagnosis. Jennie draws on two thousand years of church history to identify what has actually produced renewal: communities defined by credible Christian living and the clear proclamation of the gospel. From the mendicant movements of the High Middle Ages to the witness of St. Francis, the pattern holds. In a culture that measures human value by productivity and self-optimization, the message of grace turns out to be genuinely strange and genuinely needed. This episode offers church leaders both an honest reckoning with the forces shaping their congregations and a historically grounded reason for hope.
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