Complex Creatures

What if the story the church tells about itself has always been wrong?

In this debrief episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with producer Alan Barnes for a candid conversation following the annual Craddock Lectures at Peachtree Christian Church — this year featuring political scientist and data researcher Ryan Burge, professor at Washington University in St. Louis and author of The Vanishing Church. Burge's numbers are sobering: mainline denominations are in the sharpest decline in American religious history, and he doesn't see it reversing. But Jarrod isn't so sure the math tells the whole story.

Watch the talk this references in 2 parts:

https://youtu.be/LmsgshftzQU

https://youtu.be/2c0OqXjSWMk

Together they dig into:

• Why the "golden age" of mainline church was mostly a myth — and what the data actually shows
• How the collapse of voluntary association culture (Rotary clubs, civic organizations, and yes, denominations) explains more than the theology does
• The movement church vs. the institutional church — and why vibe matters more than people want to admit
• Why the Assemblies of God is growing while the Disciples of Christ is losing ground fast
• Belong before believe — and what that actually means for how communities form
• The case for micro churches, dinner churches, and planting in someone's backyard

Jarrod's takeaway: the hope of the world isn't in churches growing. It never was. But hunger is an open door, and right now, there's a lot of hunger.

#ComplexCreatures #RyanBurge #TheVanishingChurch #ChurchDecline #MainlineChristianity #CraddockLectures #MicroChurch #ChurchPlanting #BelongBeforeBelieve #Discipleship #FaithAndPolitics #AssembliesOfGod #GraphsAboutReligion #ChristianPodcast #TheologyAndCulture

Today's episode begins with a confession: many of us don't like snakes. For some of us, that is putting it mildly. Snakes slither through our nightmares and our sacred stories alike, from the serpent in the garden to whatever might be under the next rock on the trail. But what if fear is only part of the story?

Jarrod is joined by Dr. Joe Gordon, Professor of Theology at Johnson University, a teacher and writer, and one of the most thoughtful people he knows on the relationship between Christian faith and the created world. Joe has spent years helping students think deeply about God, the Bible, humanity, and the rest of creation. One of his most enduring fascinations is not an abstract doctrine or an obscure theological debate. It is snakes.

The conversation ranges from the suburban St. Louis garden bed where a four year old Joe first saw a snake, to primatologist Lynne Isbell's argument that our eyesight and our brains were shaped by our long relationship with venomous snakes, to Genesis 1 and the claim that the deepest line in the creation account is not between humans and everything else but between God and everything God has made. Along the way: why Joe teaches theology outdoors, what a bioblitz on a 320 acre campus can do for a doctrine class, why an American lawn is ecologically worse than a desert, and why English ivy on a Georgia hillside is not the same thing as ivy on a thousand year old English wall.

It is a surprisingly hopeful conversation. Joe suggests that a flourishing world is not one stripped of mystery or danger, but one where we learn to inhabit creation with humility, curiosity, and even affection for creatures very different from ourselves.

If snakes make you uneasy, stay with us. This isn't a conversation that asks you to love snakes overnight. It is one that treats misunderstood creatures with a kind of redemptive care, and asks whether the world God made might be stranger, richer, and more beautiful than we imagined.

If this conversation is helpful, please like, subscribe, and share it with a friend.

#ComplexCreatures #CreationCare #Theology #Snakes #Herpetology #CreatureTheology #Genesis #ChristianEcology #Appalachia #GreatSmokyMountains #Copperhead #Biodiversity #PublicTheology #SpiritualityAndTheCommonGood

Short set for Instagram or Threads: #ComplexCreatures #CreationCare #Theology #Snakes #Biodiversity #Appalachia

What happens to a country when the church stops being the one room where people who vote differently still sit together? On this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons talks with Ryan Burge, a political scientist, former pastor, and researcher at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, whose new book is The Vanishing Church. Together they trace how the moderate congregation hollowed out, why that is bad for democracy and not just for church people, and what the rural mega church is really doing to the small churches around it. They dig into the 1990s sorting that nobody noticed until 2000, why people actually leave church, the dairy farmer who taught Ryan how to be a father, and the humility of a preacher who ends a sermon with "but I might be wrong." Go to church to learn how to be a human being.

#ComplexCreatures #RyanBurge #TheVanishingChurch #GraphsAboutReligion #ChurchDecline #ReligionAndPolitics #AmericanChristianity #Polarization #ReligiousPluralism #ThirdSpaces #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndCommunity #SpiritualPodcast

Is artificial intelligence a tool we steer, or one that is quietly steering us? On this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons talks with Nathan Barczi, a pastor and theologian who holds doctorates in theology from Nottingham and economics from MIT, where he also serves as a chaplain. Together they ask what AI is doing to our work, our relationships, and our sense of what it means to be human. They dig into the economics of attention and addiction, Sherry Turkle's idea of settling for "alive enough," the danger of AI substituting for friends and even parents, and why Aquinas's understanding of the soul means you cannot truly befriend a machine. Use the tool. Do not become it.

#ComplexCreatures #NathanBarczi #FaithAndAI #ArtificialIntelligence #TechnologyAndFaith #WhatMakesUsHuman #HumanFlourishing #TheologyAndTechnology #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndCommunity #SpiritualPodcast

Can a Netflix series or a Gilmore Girls rerun carry a word from God? On this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with singer, author, and podcaster Savannah Locke, co-host of The Subtext, to talk about reading pop culture for its spiritual undercurrents. Savannah shares the fire poppy that became her life metaphor, why she threw a phone-free album launch for Songs of Peace in Times of War, and how a scene in Gilmore Girls opened up new names for God. They wrestle with shrinking attention spans, Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine, the strange success of Theo of Golden, and what it means to read the Bible against ourselves rather than as a weapon. A thoughtful case for paying attention. Look underneath.

#ComplexCreatures #SavannahLocke #TheSubtext #NoSmallEndeavor #PopCultureAndFaith #FaithAndCulture #TheologyAndPopCulture #PayingAttention #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndCommunity #SpiritualPodcast

What is the smartphone in your pocket quietly forming you into? On this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons talks with pastor and theologian Dillon Thornton about his book Deathly (De)Vices: Our Ever-Present Portals to Seven Ancient Sins, which reads our screens through the old Christian language of the seven deadly sins. Drawing on Evagrius of Pontus, Aquinas, and a memorable story about violinist Fritz Kreisler, they trace how devices amplify vainglory, envy, sloth, and lust, and how pornography is uniquely deforming young men. Thornton reframes technology not as neutral but as spiritual formation: our phones echo Jesus's call to abide. The takeaway is bracing. You can live without it, and you might be more human if you did.

#ComplexCreatures #DillonThornton #DeathlyDevices #SevenDeadlySins #SpiritualFormation #TechnologyAndFaith #DigitalDiscipleship #SocialMediaAndFaith #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndCommunity #SpiritualPodcast

What if the crisis facing boys and men isn't a lack of rules, but a missing aspiration? A vision not just of what to avoid, but of who to become?

In this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with author, ordained minister, and New Testament scholar Zachary Wagner ( Director of Programs at the Center for Pastor Theologians, DPhil graduate of the University of Oxford, and co-host of the Pastor Theologians Podcast) to talk about his forthcoming book Men of Virtue: How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World (Brazos Press, May 26, 2026), the follow-up to his 2023 Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality (InterVarsity Press).

Zach lays out a framework he calls three revolutions leading to a fourfold crisis: the Industrial Revolution, which untethered male embodiment from meaning-making; the Sexual Revolution, which reshaped gender roles and intimacy; and the ongoing Technological Revolution, which is accelerating the displacement faster than we can metabolize it. The result is a generation of boys and men casting around for something, anything, to fill the void: parasitic masculinity influencers, martial arts as identity, deaths of despair. What if the answer the Church has been holding all along is the fruit of the Spirit?

Together, Jarrod and Zach explore:

• Why "don't misbehave" is the lowest possible bar, and what an aspirational, virtue-rooted vision of manhood actually looks like
• The legacy of Wild at Heart, purity culture, and Joshua Harris, the good, the bad, and the wreckage left behind
• Richard Reeves's Of Boys and Men and why both left and right finally agree something is wrong
• The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — as a Christian alternative to neo-Stoic "bro-icism"
• Why organized sports, martial arts, and even fraternities historically emerged as responses to industrial displacement
• The theological scandal of male embodiment, and why disdain for our own bodies isn't piety, it's pathology
• The three things boys and men need from older men: acceptance, aspiration, and delight , including the simple, unfashionable words "I like you."

Zach's hope is straightforward but rare: a vision of masculinity that is distinctly Christian, biblically grounded, embodied, and aspirational, not a culture-war flag, not a list of prohibitions, but participation in the divine nature itself.

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When you hear the word "masculinity," what's the first image that shows up — for better or worse? And what changes if the real answer has less to do with being a man and more to do with being good?

In this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons steps out from behind his own show with producer Alan Barnes for a wide-ranging, unscripted conversation about masculinity — what we inherit, what we choose, and why the topic has become so hard to talk about.

Together, Jarrod and Alan explore:

• How a holiday spent with nephews — rock climbing, ropes courses, trips to the nail salon — got Jarrod thinking about what we actually tell boys about being a good man
• Promise Keepers, Wild at Heart, and the cultural whiplash between "be a leader" and "be sensitive"
• The manosphere — from the Tate brothers to Jordan Peterson — as "a very bad answer to a very good problem"
• Why resentment is the engine drawing so many young men in, and how the economy and online dating feed it
• The case against essentialism — why virtue (faith, hope, love, courage, prudence, temperance) belongs to everyone, expressed through each person's own temperament
• Jarrod's "real hot take": that what young men need most is an older man to look at them and say, I see you, and you're okay
• Alan's closing reflection on expressing who you are through the lens of virtue, responding instead of reacting, and learning to trust yourself

It's not a checklist, and it's not the final word — but as Jarrod puts it, that's rather the point. We are complex creatures, and this is a conversation worth continuing.

#ComplexCreaturesPodcast #Masculinity #Virtue #ChristianFormation #Discipleship #Mentorship #BoysAndMen #FaithAndCulture #SpiritualFormation #Fatherhood #ManosphereDiscourse #RootedAndRenewed #ChristianPodcast #TheologyAndLife #PeachtreeChristianChurch

What does it mean to carry tradition without becoming a relic — in a world that's either obsessed with novelty or stuck in nostalgia?

In this episode of Complex Creatures, the tables turn: Alan O.W. Barnes steps out from behind the scenes to host, putting Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons in the guest seat for a wide-ranging conversation about traditioned innovation — the language Jarrod borrows from theologian L. Gregory Jones and Andrew Hogue's Navigating the Future — and what it looks like to lead a 100-year-old congregation in Midtown Atlanta into its next century.

Drawing on John Henry Newman's image of doctrine as a river, Robert Webber's Ancient-Future vision, and a memorable story about a 1980s church bus ministry, Jarrod unpacks the difference between the purpose of a tradition and the container it arrives in — and why mistaking one for the other is how communities end up worshipping at the feet of relics.

Together, Alan and Jarrod explore:

• Why tradition and innovation are a tension, not a conflict — and how Christianity itself is a traditioned innovation of Judaism
• The "spirit and purpose versus container" framework, and how it changes everything from bus ministries to worship style
• How Holy Eucharist shapes Peachtree's architecture, liturgy, and even its strategic plan — "everyone has a place, everyone is called, everyone is welcome"
• The elders' prayer-card tradition, and what makes a small practice life-giving for decades
• How to safeguard against idolatry of place and trend-chasing — and why most "next steps" in church growth are really keeping up with the Joneses
• The cautionary tale of trying to out–North Point North Point
• Lectio divina, holy reading of the Church Fathers, and why Augustine on Genesis still has something to say to us
• Carey Nieuwhof's line that "churches in love with their mission will thrive; churches in love with their method will die"
• What the latest Barna and Pew numbers reveal about Gen Z, young men, and the surprising rise of Latin Rite Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Pentecostal worship
• Why high-demand, high-experience churches are growing — and what that says about what people are actually hungry for
• The "manosphere" as a bad answer to a good question, and why men's ministry doesn't need to be complicated to matter
• How Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation, and a sober-from-network-news governor of Utah point toward spiritual practices for the common good
• And one piece of fatherly advice for Jarrod's daughter Ruby — and a message in a time capsule for Peachtree Christian Church a hundred years from now

Whether you lead a congregation, sit in a pew, or just wonder how anything good survives the relentless churn of culture, this episode is an invitation to find the kernel — the thing actually worth carrying forward — and to let the rest get dressed up however the moment requires.

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Theology lives differently in a pulpit than it does in a lecture hall. Dr. Steven Cone — author of An Ocean Vast of Blessing and Theology from the Great Tradition — joins Jarrod to talk about preaching the great tradition to a congregation, walking with people through beginning-of-life and end-of-life moments, and the slow, on-the-job work of becoming a pastor. A conversation about how the deep wells of Christian thought meet the daily work of ministry.

#ComplexCreatures #PastorTheology #HigherEdInCrisis #LincolnChristianUniversity #RestorationMovement #PastoralMinistry #AcademicBurnout #CalledToPreach #FromProfessorToPastor #TheologyFromTheGreatTradition #ChurchOfChrist #FaithAndVocation #SeminaryLife #PastoralCare #ChristianLeadership