Conversing with Mark Labberton

Strong leadership is born not from control, but from authentic community and the cultivation of people and teams. Nathan Hatch, former president of Wake Forest University and esteemed historian, joins Mark Labberton to reflect on the nature of transformative leadership. Drawing from his decades of experience at Notre Dame and Wake Forest—and from his new book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders—Hatch explores how leaders cultivate thriving institutions through humility, vision, and empowerment. Hatch shares his personal journey from growing up in a Presbyterian home to leading major universities, while reflecting on the comomunity, character, instincts, and freedom required for lasting institutional impact.

Episode Highlights

• "Organizations aren't self-generating—you bet on people, not on strategy."
• "Organizations are best served when you have a team of like-minded people, each using their own strengths."
• "Leadership has to flow out of who you are authentically—you can't try to be someone else."
• "If you have exceptional people, it takes management of a different form—it's collaboration."
• "Leadership is not about control but about strength: hiring strong people is harder, but it's transformative."
• "People read your real meanings, not your words—authenticity is the heart of leadership."

Helpful Links & Resources

• The Gift of Transformative Leaders, by Nathan Hatch
• University of Notre Dame
• Wake Forest University
• Jim Collins - Good to Great

About Nathan Hatch

Dr. Nathan O. Hatch is President Emeritus of Wake Forest University and one of America's leading scholars of religion and higher education. Prior to his presidency at Wake Forest (2005–2021), Hatch served as provost at the University of Notre Dame. His groundbreaking scholarship in American religious history includes The Democratization of American Christianity, and his latest book is The Gift of Transformative Leaders. Hatch is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and continues to speak and write on leadership, higher education, and culture.

Show Notes

• Raised in a Christian home; son of a Presbyterian minister and teacher
• Influenced early by history teacher and work experiences in Cabrini Green, Chicago
• Studied at Wheaton College, Washington University in St. Louis, and Johns Hopkins University
• Became an unlikely but successful historian at the University of Notre Dame
• Leadership philosophy shaped by early experiences with supportive professional teams and deep community and friendship
• How did the past come to change and create the world we live in?
• Transitioned from historian to administrator, balancing scholarship and administration
• Provost at Notre Dame: emphasized empowering faculty through development and resources
• President at Wake Forest: built strong leadership teams, expanded institutional vision
• Reflections on Father Theodore Hesburgh's visionary leadership at Notre Dame
• "Organizations aren't self-generating. … [it takes] a vision and leader."
• "Leadership must be authentic; it must come out of who you are."
• The transformative impact of great leadership teams over hierarchical control
• Importance of raising institutional aspirations and empowering individuals to flourish
• "Hiring strong people makes the leader stronger, not weaker."
• Nathan Hatch's book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders
• Profiles 13 leaders who exemplify commitment, character, and institution-building
• Focus on people-centric leadership: authenticity, humility, vision
• Leaders described as radiating positivity, cultivating others, and advancing institutional missions
• Catholic and Protestant institutional differences in faith expression
• Creating inclusive religious life in pluralistic academic communities
• Investing in character education through initiatives like Wake Forest's scholarship programs
• Building culture: "Noticing people, investing in them, seeing their potential."
• "How do we help young people live their life?"
• Identifying and empowering exceptional talent
• Embracing unconventional hiring practices
• Building thriving, collaborative, life-giving teams
• Cultivating environments where people pursue a common good
• Navigating faculty-administration relationships with authenticity and transparency
• Facing organizational financial challenges without losing people-first priorities
• Leadership in contexts with limited resources: raising people's potential
• Authenticity and empathy are foundational to leadership
• Humility and commitment to the common good are non-negotiable
• Leaders must genuinely invest in the flourishing of others
• Institutions are transformed not by structures alone but by transformative people

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nicholas Kristof (opinion columnist, the New York Times) reflects on his career of reporting from the front lines of injustice and human suffering, discussing hope, human resilience, and the urgency of responding to global injustice.

An advocate for empathy-driven journalism that holds power accountable and communicates the stories of the most vulnerable, Kristof joins Mark Labberton in this episode to discuss his life's work of reporting from the world's most troubled regions—from Gaza to Congo, from rural Oregon to global centres of power. Known for his unsparing storytelling and deep empathy, Kristof shares the family roots and personal convictions that have shaped his lifelong pursuit of justice and hope.

They also explore how despair and progress coexist, the role of faith and empathy in healing, and how local acts of courage can ripple globally. Grounded in gritty realism, but inspired by everyday heroes, Kristof invites us to resist numbness and embrace a hope that fights to make a difference.

• Stories from Gaza, Congo, Pakistan, and beyond
• Balancing heartbreak and hope in humanitarian reporting
• Why empathy must be cultivated and practiced
• The global impact of Christian activism and its complexities

Episode Highlights

"Side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the very best."

"We focus so much on all that is going wrong, that we leave people feeling numb and that it's hopeless … but people don't want to get engaged in things that are hopeless."

"Empathy is something that, like a muscle, can be nurtured."

"The worst kinds of evil and the greatest acts of courage are often just one decision apart."

"We are an amazing species—if we just get our act together."

"You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don't think there's an inconsistency there."

About Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, and is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, **where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Born, raised, and still working from his rural Oregon home, Yamhill, he is a graduate of Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

He is the co-author, with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. In 2024, he published a memoir, *Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life.*

Books by Nicholas Kristof

Tightrope

A Path Appears

Half the Sky

Thunder from the East

China Wakes

Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

Helpful Resources

International Justice Mission

Dr. Denis Mukwege – Nobel Peace Prize

PEPFAR: The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

Tim Keller's Final Interview with Kristof (NYT)

Show Notes

• A voice of conscience
• How a global orientation for journalism developed
• Kristof reflects on his humble roots in Yamhill, Oregon, as the son of two immigrants
• "My dad was a Armenian refugee from Eastern Europe. His family had spied on the Nazis during World War II. They got caught. Some were executed by the Nazis, others were executed by the Soviet communists, and my dad was very lucky to make it out alive and was sponsored by a family in the US in 1952."
• "I think that one fundamental mistake that bleeding hearts make, whether they're bleeding hearts in journalism or in the non-profit community or in advocacy, is that we focus so much on all that is going wrong that we leave people feeling numb and feeling that it's hopeless, so there's no point in engaging. And there's pretty good evidence from social-psychology experiments that people don't want to get engaged in things that are hopeless. They want to make a difference. And so I think that we need to both acknowledge all the challenges we face but also remind people that there can be a better outcome if they put their shoulder to the wheel."
• Extraordinary changes for justice and what's going right
• David Brooks: "A deeply flawed country that also managed to do good in the world."
• "It just breaks my heart that kids are dying unnecessarily."
• On losing PEPFAR foreign aid: "I hope that this damage can be repaired and that bleeding hearts of the left and the right can work together to try to help restore some of these initiatives."
• The tragedies that followed from dismantling USAID
• Kristof's book Chasing Hope
• "The fact is that I've seen some terrible things, and I think I may have a mild case of PTSD from, you know, seeing too much."
• Nicholas Kristof on Gaza: "I don't see Israel and Hamas as morally equivalent, but I absolutely see an Israeli child, a Palestinian child, and an American child as moral equivalents. And we don't treat them that way."
• "What human beings share is that when terrible things happen, some people turn into psychopaths and sociopaths, and other people turn into heroes."
• Cowardice and malevolent tendencies
• Empathy can be nurtured
• Children dying without anti-retroviral drugs in South Sudan
• Empathy Project in Canada
• Mass literature to inspire perspective taking
• Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Black Beauty and animal rights/well-being
• Kristof's run for Oregon governor
• Eastern Congo and UNICEF
• "A child is raped every thirty minutes in Eastern Congo."
• Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize laureate treating women brutally injured by militia rape in Bukavu, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Small gestures of compassion as an empathy grower for local communities
• "One of the lessons I think of Congo is that violence can be and inhumanity can be terribly contagious."
• Genocide in Rwanda in 1994
• The global sex-trafficking crisis
• "We don't have the moral authority to tell other countries to do better unless we clean up our own act."
• The American sex-trafficking crisis: systemic failures such as foster care pipelines into trafficking
• "There are no statistics, but I think it's plausible that a girl in foster care is more likely to emerge to be trafficked than she is to graduate from a four-year college."
• American sex-trafficking practices by PornHub and X-Videos: "Their business model is monetizing kids."
• "You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don't think there's an inconsistency there, and I, I think we've just blurred that too often."
• Christianity's disappointing response to injustice
• Nicholas Kristof's engagement with the activism and theology of the Christian church
• William Wilberforce's anti-slavery movement in the 1780s
• President Bush's establishment of PEPFAR in 2003: "This incredible program to reduce the burden of AIDS that has saved 26 million lives so far. It's the most important program of any country in my adult lifetime in terms of saving lives."
• "Evangelicals are very good in terms of tithing and donating money to good causes, but they've often opposed government programs that would create opportunity and address these problems."
• "Liberals are personally stingy, but much more supportive of government programs that that make a difference."
• Criticizing the dismantling of global aid programs like USAID: "How can you read the Gospels and think this is good?"
• "I think being part of a religious community has led people to do good works together."
• Christian advocacy for freedom of religion
• Kristof on scripture and belief: "We read the Bible and develop our religious views, and I think so often just reflects our priors rather than what the text says."
• A closing example of hope: The Afghan war
• "We are an amazing species if we just get our act together."

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

In this episode, Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, joins Mark Labberton to discuss the seismic political, moral, cultural, and spiritual crises facing American evangelicalism and how to respond.

Reflecting on his own journey from the Southern Baptist Convention to his current role, Moore offers a candid and theologically rich diagnosis of a movement he describes as simultaneously fragmented, bored, and longing for renewal.

Drawing parallels to historical awakenings and moments of global upheaval, Moore challenges listeners to consider what faithful Christian witness looks like in a time of digital saturation, political idolatry, and ecclesial disillusionment. Together, they wrestle with how evangelical institutions can resist becoming co-opted by market forces or ideologies, and instead return to the soul of the gospel—Jesus himself.

Episode Highlights

"We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture." (Russell Moore)

"The good news is so clouded with distorted noise." (Mark Labberton)

"You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem." (Wendall Berry, cited by Russell Moore)

"Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication." (Nicholas Carr, cited by Russell Moore)

"Christian Nationalism is like 'Bizarro Evangelicalism' … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness." (Russell Moore)

Karl Barth on Christian disillusionment during World War I: "We we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened." … " He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God."

About Russell Moore

Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House).

The Wall Street Journal has called Moore "vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate." He was named in 2017 to Politico Magazine's list of top fifty influence-makers in Washington, and has been profiled by such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, **and the New Yorker.

An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics.

Moore was a Fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics and currently serves on the board of the Becket Law and as a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C.

He also hosts the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show and is co-host of Christianity Today's weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin.

Russell was President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.

A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons. They live in Nashville, where he teaches the Bible regularly at their congregation, Immanuel Church.

Show Notes

• Comparing Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary
• Religious reconsiderations post-World War II
• "My grandfather was blown out of a tank by the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge and came back. He went an unbeliever, came back really feeling his mortality and, and searching for answers. And ended up at a revival meeting where he came to know Christ."
• A false choice presented to Christians: "You had this false choice being presented to Christians … you either go with an ever narrowing, ever quarrelsome sort of group of fundamentalists or you liberalize."
• Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The recent history of Evangelical Christianity
• A Movement in Crisis: What is the state of Evangelicalism in America?
• Revival preachers and entrepreneurialism: a religious, market-driven reality
• "Lifelessness and deadness"
• " I can't think of a single church that has split over Christology. Most of the arguments have to do with politics and, and related sort of cultural issues because that's what people really care about and what they really think often is important."
• Tumult of the digital economy
• Alienation, dehumanization: "We can simultaneously think of ourselves as gods and as sets of data and algorithms."
• Speed of change and life
• Teaching ethics: a final exam question students have never thought about
• How to prepare people for ethical problems and real-life challenges
• Mental health crisis: "high rates of depression and anxiety driven by a piece of glass that everybody carries in his or her pocket that can connect that person with all of the information in the entire world."
• 100 years since the invention and use of the microphone
• No microphones, but extraordinary voices
• "The dials are askew, because the sound that evangelicalism is evoking in so many quadrants is a sound that is hostile and grading and brash and arrogant."
• "The good news is so clouded with distorted noise."
• Secularization
• How Evangelicalism appeals to people: End Times Prophecy, Marriage and Family Values, and Shocking Attention-Grabbing
• "Real life takes on the characteristics of the internet."
• Wendall Berry: "You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem."
• Can you give us some hope?
• "Hope that is seen is not hope. Instead, there's suffering that creates endurance. Endurance that creates character, character that creates hope, and hope does not put to shame."
• Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones
• What is the work of Christianity Today right now?
• Redefining who is "us." Who is the "we" of Evangelicalism?
• "We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture."
• 2 Corinthians 4: "The glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus Christ."
• Karl Barth and disillusionment during World War I: "We we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened." … " He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God."
• How to cultivate freedom
• "One of the major challenges to a freedom is loss of attention."
• "I have to be free from the constant whirl—and what he meant at the time was the radio, you know, which is nothing compared to what we have—because my attention is necessary for me to be able to serve and to give."
• "Kingdom of God is like yeast." Waiting, attention, and a longer view of time
• "How do you then hold onto this freedom that we're describing in a way of connected disconnectedness or disconnected connectedness or something?"
• Nicholas Carr: "Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication."
• Revelation and the Book of Daniel: "Seal all this up for now. … Don't worry about it."
• Nebuchadnezzar demanding that. Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego bow down and worship the golden statue.
• Evangelical Pastors: Preaching the Bible versus advocating a political vision
• Galatians 1 and 2—Paul's not yielding to false teachers in order to preserve the Gospel
• New Apostolic Reformation
• Christian Nationalism: "Bizarro Evangelicalism … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness."
• "Blood mysticism"
• Jonathan Rauch's Cross Purposes
• Keeping guard up in conversations with disagreement
• "Simply asking for Christians to be who we say we are."

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

"If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR."

PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. And as of March 25, 2025, its congressional reauthorization has expired.

For more than two decades, its website states, "the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history—saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries."

Now, some estimate that over 20 million people will lose access to antiretroviral drugs, which may result in up to 1,650,000 deaths over the coming year.

In this episode, Mark Labberton speaks with Mindy Belz, an award-winning journalist and longtime war correspondent, to explore the urgent moral and humanitarian implications of PEPFAR's uncertain future. Drawing on Belz's deep reporting experience in conflict zones and her time covering global health efforts, their conversation traces the remarkable legacy of the U.S. government's investment in HIV/AIDS relief, the stakes of congressional inaction, and the broader questions this crisis raises about American moral leadership, Christian charity, and global responsibility.

Together they discuss:

Mindy Belz's background as a journalist and war correspondent

The significance of PEPFAR in the global battle against HIV/AIDS

The pivotal leadership role the U.S. government has played in supporting AIDS relief efforts for the past two decades

The devastating impact that losing PEPFAR would have on human life around the world, particularly in Africa

And, perspectives on charity, moral conscience, and faith in American Christianity

Helpful Links

mindybelz.com

Mindy's Article about PEPFAR: "1,650,000: How killing a global program to fight HIV/AIDS kills": "PEPFAR contracts ended under Trump mean 20 million people on treatment now face HIV disease again. Without more reinstatements that could lead to a death toll of 1.6 million in a year's time."

About PEPFAR, the "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief": Through PEPFAR, the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history – saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.

From ThinkGlobalHealth: "PEPFAR Misses Reauthorization Deadline: What's Next for Global HIV Fight?"

Mindy's book They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East

Follow Mindy on X @mindybelz

Follow Mindy on Substack: Globe Trot

About Mindy Belz

Mindy Belz is an award-winning American journalist. For over two decades, she has covered wars and victims of conflict in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Sudan and the Balkans. She recounts some of her experiences in a 2016 award-winning book, They Say We Are Infidels.

Her work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Plough Quarterly, and other publications. The New York Times calls her "one of the bravest and best foreign correspondents in the country."

Mindy currently is editor of the 2024 Christianity Today Globe project. Her news roundup, Globe Trot, is read by thousands each week and available on Substack. She speaks internationally and has taught journalism courses in Uganda, India, Hungary, and the United States. She is the former senior editor at World Magazine.

A mother of four and grandmother of three, Mindy was married for 40 years to Nat Belz, who died in 2023. She lives in North Carolina.

Show Notes

Mindy Belz: A Journalist in the Trenches

• Mindy Belz and her career at World Magazine
• Mindy's coverage of the AIDS pandemic in East Africa and the war in Sudan
• The rise of Islamic extremism, Al-Quaeda, and crossing the Tigris into Iraq
• Her early experiences in journalism and what drew her to war reporting
• How she came to report from the Middle East and other conflict zones
• The challenges Mindy faced as a woman journalist
• "We've all experienced some of the conflict in the world. We've all experienced some terrorism and violence … this is a part of life in a broken and fallen world, and so learning from women, from men, from children incredible resilience in the face of terrible breakdowns is that I just consider a real privilege of my work."
• Working with a Sudanese NGO—finding starving people, barely surviving
• "For Americans, we always get to walk away. I'm really aware in whatever hard situation I'm in, there's little voice at the back of my brain that's saying, 'Don't forget you get to go home.'"

What is PEPFAR?

• " President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," developed by George W. Bush in 2003
• Trendsetting program to battle HIV/AIDS
• Anti-viral drug program to prevent the spread (but not cure) the disease
• "We still don't have a real cure for HIV."
• "You have 20 million people who are currently taking antiretroviral drugs that are funded under PEPFAR and most of those people just suddenly could not have access to their medicine and, and that means that we are watching even now the disease grow."
• "The Trump administration has basically shuttered the program and they have done so without the oversight of Congress."
• Nicholas Kristof's NYT March 15 article estimates that 1.6 million people could die over the next year. Link: "Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn't True."
• "The scale of the devastation is mind-bending."
• What can we do?
• "Congress is not exercising its oversight responsibilities right now."
• "If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR."
• What is the role of our government?
• "I've also seen PEPFAR working and working incredibly. I routinely and in lifesaving ways."
• Understanding moral conscience
• "We are needing to call our nation not to a Christian identity, which I think is the, the false attempt of Christian nationalism, but to a moral identity. That people of faith, little faith, no faith, other faiths, can enter into and share. And I think some element of that has been operational in the United States for a very long time. And now all of that is being dismantled and being labeled, as you say, by a really cheap word like charity, as though there's no wider frame than simply compassionate sentimentality, as opposed to something that's really taking the moral realities of the world and all of their urgency seriously. And not pretending that we need to be (as we've sometimes tried to be as a nation) the healer of the nations, but to say that we should actually be a force for taking these issues with great national seriousness, and not just repudiating it because it's not inside the boundaries of our own country."
• "Use the influence and the economic force of the United States to fund local programs."
• " We have the resources to go and make a difference in this situation. And by doing that we set an example for others to do it."
• "We have adopted an attitude of scarcity."
• The impact and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs to improve the lives of people with HIV/AIDS—"To suddenly cut them off is an act of cruelty."
• "This is a system, not just medication."
• "If we're suddenly saving $5 billion a year, what is that going to be used for?"
• "If these things are all happening by executive decision, and Congress does not have a meaningful role, then essentially the people are cut out of the conversation."
• "People who become sicker with HIV will become more likely to have tuberculosis, more likely to be suffering from other diseases than side effects of the virus itself."

Where Is God in All of This?

• "It's a dangerous world. Go anyway."
• "We have to trust that the hand of God is there and that it will meet us in the midst of those hard situations."

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

"Listening is everything. Without listening, there's no music, no art, no understanding—just noise." (Charlie Peacock, from the episode)

Acclaimed musician, producer, podcaster, and author Charlie Peacock joins Mark Labberton to reflect on music, art, attention, listening, faith, and spirituality. From his groundbreaking work in pop music production (e.g., Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars), to his deep engagement with faith and mentorship, Charlie explores how attention shapes creativity, why making space for beauty is a spiritual discipline, and how a life of music can be an act of service. Through stories of artistic risk, collaboration, and calling, this conversation explores the rhythms of a flourishing life.

In this episode, they discuss:

Charlie's new memoir, Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music

The communal nature of making and producing music

The unsung music heroes from Charlie's life

Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things

Hearing and visualizing music

The intersection of creativity, spirituality, and paying attention,

How listening transforms both art and relationships,

Life lessons from jazz, pop, and worship music production,

And the role of both sound and silence in artistic and spiritual life.

About Charlie Peacock

Charlie Peacock is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician and producer, having produced Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars, and many more artists. A three-time recipient of the Gospel Music Association's Producer of the Year Award, he's named by Billboard's Encyclopedia of Record Producers as one of the five hundred most important producers in popular music history. His latest book is Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music, and you can listen to his podcast, Music & Meaning. For more information visit charliepeacock.com.

Episode Highlights

"If you're not paying attention, you're missing the song that's already being sung around you."

"A mentor doesn't hand you a map; they help you learn how to navigate."

"Faith and art are both about trust—trusting the unseen, the unfinished, and the uncertain."

"The hardest and best lesson for any artist: keep showing up and doing the work."

"Music isn't just a product—it's a means of connection, healing, and worship."

Show Notes

• Charlie Peacock, Roots & Rhythm
• Music and community
• The unsung music heroes from Charlie's life
• Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things
• Hearing and visualizing music
• Michael Polanyi tacit understandings
• Re-creation of the old into the dramatically new—e.g., Notre Dame Cathedral
• The joy of generational community
• Jazz: spirit, skill, and ability
• "That's what I love about jazz improvisation. There was nothing and then there was something. Over and over again. … When you have those people in a room making music … it's hard to go to sleep at night."
• "I have been pursued by a loving Creator … God-haunted since I was a little boy."
• "I wanted to know everything. … how, why, what, when … everything."
• "Never once was there a moment when I was out of God's grip."
• Charlie Peacock's Secret of Time: "God gives you time to be saved."
• John Coltrane's spiritual journey
• "250 people a night…"
• "I took the F-word out of two songs, and stopped taking 10% from the bar tab."
• Hans Rookmaaker
• Inklings
• Time in England and the Netherlands, including time at L'Abri (run by Francis and Edith Schaeffer)
• "An artist and a follower of Jesus, and how those two could be congruent …"
• "Our death is life to life. The kingdom has already begun. We have been living it. And we will continue to live it."
• "Playing with the entire history of music in your brain."
• The Civil Wars: "We re-presented hyper-dynamics. … A lot of people have never heard that before. … It invites you in and lets you sit back." (e.g., pianissimo to forte)
• Over-compressed music.
• "That lean in to the music is a part of your participation. … I'm committed to this music."
• "I produced music in the '80s. I know how to ruin a record. … Big hair and big snare. … But really it had to do with technology."
• Music in the late '70s and early '80s
• Neil Postman: "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
• "When I use this tool I have to make sure it doesn't use me."
• "My subtext is that this is a book about epistemology. … To say, 'This is how I know what I know.' It came through God, people, and place."
• A worker-bee in the music business
• "Like a house with a party going on"
• Vocation, epistemology, and how an artists become who they are

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

"They're fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane. … There's a wideness in God's mercy. Since when has anybody said mercy for some and not for all? … Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. … This is not an impossible crisis to solve. … We need to not be divided by our political affiliations. As Christians, we stand with Christ, who critiques all human institutions." (Alexia Salvatierra, from the episode)

The immigration crisis on US borders reveals a deeper crisis of humanity—another example of democracy at a turning point. What should be the Christian response to the current immigration crisis? How can the individuals and small communities take effective action? And who are the real people most affected by immigration policy in the United States?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes theologian, pastor, and activist Alexia Salvatierra. She shares stories from the front lines of immigration justice.

Alexia Salvatierra is an ordained Lutheran pastor and a leading voice in faith-based social justice movements. She serves as assistant professor of integral mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a key organizer in immigrant advocacy for over four decades. She co-authored Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and works extensively with grassroots organizations to address the intersection of faith, justice, and policy.

Together they discuss:

• Personal testimonies and policy insights based on stories of real people facing the immigration system in the United States
• The challenges immigrants face under an increasingly unforgiving system
• How faith communities can respond with faithful courage and productive grief, instead of outrage
• The global nature of the immigration, refugee, and foreign-aid crisis
• The width of God's mercy and the effectiveness of immigration and refugee public policy
• A call to action for Christians to become "gracious disrupters" and stand with the vulnerable

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief – Christian organization supporting refugees
• Lutheran Social Services – Organization falsely accused of money laundering

Show Notes

• Immigration policy and the church's response
• The impact of executive orders on deportation and asylum seekers
• Faith-based advocacy for immigrants
• The role of Latino churches in immigrant support
• How Christians can move from outrage to courageous action
• Immigration reform
• Faith-based activism
• ICE raids on churches
• Asylum seekers and deportation
• Christian response to immigration crisis
• Latino churches and advocacy
• Political fear versus Christian courage
• The role of the church in justice
• Broken immigration system
• Policy changes under different administrations

Immigration Today: Stories and Case Studies

• An Assemblies of God pastor from Guatemala, facing deportation despite three qualifying cases for legal residency—South Los Angeles
• " That's what we mean by a broken system, is there's all these little wrinkles in the system that don't work."
• Detention at a deportation facility called Adelanto
• "They're fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane."
• Asylum, ankle bracelets, and "legitimate fear"
• " They said he was a criminal because he had entered without authorization twenty years before when he was a teenager."
• ICE agents attempting to detain a man during a worship service
• ICE and "sensitive locations"—Is a church an ICE "sensitive location"?
• Hispanic Theological Education Association
• Latino Christian National Network
• "That arrest has provoked intense fear. … they're terrified to go to church."
• The impact of anti-immigration policies on church attendance and spiritual care
• A desperate mother of a special-needs child preparing legal custody papers in case of deportation
• The economic and moral contradictions in mass deportation efforts
• "Cities that have municipal sanctuary laws are threatened with suit by the new administration."

The Global Immigration and Refugee Crisis

• "All around the world immigration is in crisis."
• 1980 Refugee Act
• "All the countries who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have to take refugees."
• The concept of "Refoulment"—"which means that you're sending someone back to die."
• "Not only are all refugee programs stopped, but current refugees are not getting the support that they need."
• " Costa Rica is a five-million-person country and they've taken two million refugees."

American Immigration During the Trump Administration

• Elon Musk saying " that Lutheran Social Services was a money-laundering machine."
• Current administration's policies as " bold, unilateral, and so comprehensive and unnuanced"
• "If the Trump administration is successful at deporting ten million people, many of whom have been here over twenty years, thirty years, um, where will we find the labor that we need?"

Policy and Legal Discussion

• The end of Deferred Deportation under the Trump and Biden administrations
• Executive orders eliminating prioritization of deportation
• The freezing of USAID and refugee support programs
• "All foreign aid has always been strategic. It's never not."
• "Global warming refugees"
• "The current president of Venezuela loves gangs."
• "Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. … this is not an impossible crisis to solve."
• The bipartisan immigration bill that Trump advised Republicans to block
• Historical immigration policies and their effectiveness
• "Policy does make a difference."
• Objection to open borders: What about mercy for Americans? A false dichotomy. God's mercy is wide.
• "We have a number of believers in Congress who are acting out of fear right now and not out of faith."

Call to Action

• How faith communities can support immigrants
• "Immigrant churches are taking the brunt of this."
• Why outrage doesn't help the process
• Ways to engage with legislators and advocate for reform
• The importance of standing with immigrant churches in this moment
• Supporting organizations like World Relief and Lutheran Social Services
• "The bulk of the people in the United States, the majority, have not had to grieve on this level. Not had to grieve with this intensity, with this constancy. Our spiritual muscles are weak—in terms of knowing how to grieve and keep going and trust God. 'Though he slay me, I will worship him.'"
• "Encourage literally means 'to get more courage.' You know, to give courage, to get courage. And so I just would want everybody to stop being outraged and start being courageous."

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

"If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment."

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the full-bodied, empathetic nature of listening and the communication process. He reflects on good listening, the empathy it requires, and what it means to truly recognize and successfully understand each other.

Listening and perceiving are bound up together in a fundamental way, offering us an opportunity to enter into another's experience, truly seeing and recognizing them and receiving who they are.

About Conversing Shorts

"In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me."

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller's fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He's the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• "Listening is almost always seeing."
• Full-bodied listening and how perception adds to our understanding of each other
• "If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment."
• Examples of bad listening: "pinning words on the speaker."
• Recognition for the speaker: "My listening reflects that I'm actually perceiving them."
• The fun and joyful work of communication
• Total body experience of listening and perceiving is about empathy.
• Empathy and entering the speaker's world and experience
• The difference empathy makes
• "Empathy, even when you're wanting to give it doesn't make it automatic. It often has to be something that emerges out of the communication experience itself."
• Hearing, perception, and full-bodied communication
• "How we see and receive another person's being…"
• Achieving a communication breakthrough: "Oh, I see!"
• "It is like amazing grace is playing in the background. And I want to say 'I once was blind, but now I see' that's what it feels like a real revelatory discovery."

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

"'To whom much is given, much is expected.' … That is the core of our Christian belief."

"I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad brush."

(Condoleezza Rice, from this episode)

In this episode, Condoleezza Rice joins Mark Labberton to discuss the state of US foreign and domestic policy in light of Christian moral convictions. Secretary Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 1981, and is currently the director of the Hoover Institution.

Together they discuss:

The state of US foreign policy and international relations

How to think about American involvement in global politics

The importance of US foreign assistance

American patriotism and Christian devotion

And Condoleezza Rice's prayers for American leaders right now: discernment, judgment, compassion, and policy that reflects the dignity of all human beings.

About Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush's Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University's provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university's highest teaching honors.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush's National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For more information, visit her profile at the Hoover Institution.

Show Notes

• The state of US international relations
• " The beginning of any administration is a bit chaotic"
• "I continue to hope that we will find a way to help Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin doesn't benefit from the aggression that he committed."
• "The United States will undoubtedly play a different role. … That is the outcome of what's been eighty years of post World War II American engagement. … And so we need to ask, what are our values? What are our interests? And I think we're going to, we're going to see a good, solid American role in foreign policy."
• Is the world order in the process of receiving a shock treatment?
• " We really do need to rebuild our defense industrial base."
• USAID: " I'm a great believer that foreign assistance is one of the important tools in our toolkit of foreign policy."
• " I actually am one who believes that the absorption of USAID into the State Department is the right answer."
• On US foreign assistance
• "A lot of what we do is purely humanitarian, purely life saving. We should. Just do that. Some of what we do is also strategic. What countries do we help to develop to be less fragile so that they don't become hubs for terrorism? … And sometimes our assistance is to stabilize places in the world so that we don't face a security problem down the road."
• Developing infrastructure
• "Am I patriotic? Do I love my country? Am I a nationalist? Absolutely. Am I Christian? Yes. And so I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad crust."
• "But if we think about what it means to be Christian, it means to care about every human being, because every human being is created in the image of the Lord, and therefore every human being has worth."
• "One of the closing comments from President Bush was, 'To whom much is given, much is expected. … that is the core of our Christian belief."
• What is the state of the Christian influence in American politics and life?
• Emulating the early church in establishing orphanages and hospitals, "and to be a voice on behalf of those who are dispossessed."
• Religious Freedom
• "When I was secretary of state, not because I was Christian, but because I was secretary of state, I would take a list of religious objectors with me to countries like China."
• "The evangelical church has been very involved in human trafficking issues. We actually do have a problem of modern slavery."
• "The church has a lot of potential to be a really good force in the world."
• Condoleeza Rice's most passionate prayers for the nation and the world right now
• "My most passionate prayer is that our leaders would have—and I actually pray this prayer— that they would have judgment and discernment, that they would have compassion, that they would lead from a position of knowing how much America has, and that they would understand that our role in the world derives from our universal belief in human freedom and that it is the only way that human beings have the dignity that they should have as having been created by God."
• "I think one of the reasons we've had a bit of a backlash against some foreign assistance is that people wonder, 'Well, are you thinking about Americans in the same way?'"

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

" When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received." (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

Why is it so hard to communicate? To accomplish the simple task of delivering and receiving information?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton suggests that real and successful communication is a miracle, and an infrequent one at that. Our failure to communicate regularly demonstrates just how far we are from adequately listening to one another. Ultimately, if we want to seek the miracle of communication, we need to take the responsibility to "close the loop" and do the work of hearing, listening, and acknowledging receipt.

About Conversing Shorts

"In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me."

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller's fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He's the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• Endless communication meetings talking about the failure of our communication
• News media's failure to communicate
• Marital failures to communicate
• Parent-child failures to communicate
• Overcommunicating with too much information
• Undoing miscommunication
• "Communication is a miracle and not a frequent one."
• Why is it so hard to communicate?
• " In many ways, the stakes are against us when we're really trying to communicate."
• Ears, eyes, space, time, sounds, lighting
• How far we are from adequately listening to one another
• Acknowledging receipt of a message
• "The world is pushy. Culture is pushy."
• Clarity of mind and heart
• "When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received."
• The importance of closing the communication loop
• "If I'm seeking the miracle of communication, then I have to live into the responsibility of closing the loop of communication and not just being a passive recipient of what it is that's been said."
• Failure to close the loop is what allows us to measuring the infrequency of true, successful communication.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

This is a turbulent time for American democracy. Years, perhaps decades, of social change is manifesting in the form of distrust, violence, chaos, fear, loneliness, and despair.

But Conversing, along with Comment magazine, is about hope, healing, and hospitality.

For this special 200th episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton invites Anne Snyder (Editor-in-Chief, Comment magazine) for a close reading and discussion of the 2025 Comment Manifesto, a hopeful new document offering a vision of Christian Humanism for this era.

Together they discuss:

The meaning and intent behind a new Comment magazine Manifesto for Christian humanism

The Incarnation of Christ for what it means to be human

Hospitality in an era of exclusion

Healthy institutions and the importance of communal agency

Individualism vs communitarianism

Learning to perceive the world in fresh, surprising ways

About the Comment Manifesto

To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/, or scroll below.

To watch a reading of selections from the Comment Manifesto, click here.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the Editor-in-Chief of Comment magazine, which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit https://comment.org/ for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees our Comment's partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

Show Notes

• Giving thanks for 200 episodes of Conversing!
• 2000 years of Christian thought to the public square
• James K.A. Smith, the former editor of Comment Magazine
• Seeking a positive moral vision
• A turbulent moment for democracy
• MANIFESTO SECTION 1 "We are Christian humanists…"
• What it means to be human in our age—our infinite dignity, relationship to the earth, and woundedness
• The significance of Jesus Christ for what it means to be human
• What the Incarnation of Christ means for our world
• "So many people we know and love and respect feel ecclesially homeless, obviously politically homeless."
• MANIFESTO SECTION 2 "We believe it's time to build…"
• Agency
• Called to a co-creative project
• Productive and constructive
• "Contributing the true and good and beautiful in a messy world."
• MANIFESTO SECTION 3 "We believe in institutions…"
• Collective, common, and communal
• Institutions, as part of the social architecture of our world, can be extraordinarily positive.
• "I always get asked, 'Why do you believe in institutions? Why? You don't need to! They're gone! They're dead!'"
• "Healthy institutions are channels within which you can actually realize your sense of agency in a way that might be more moving than you ever would have imagined just by yourself."
• Yuval Levin's take on community (paraphrased): "All the tumult we're experiencing, we're just having a big fight about what kinds of what community means."
• Polarization
• MAGA as a kind of community
• "I consider myself a bit of a communitarian."
• Christian humanism throughout history always has four projects connected to it: Theology, character formation, political economy, and aesthetic.
• MANIFESTO SECTION 4 "We believe in the transformative power of encounter—encountering reality, encountering those unlike us."
• Addressing the fractured social fabric and isolation of this age
• Encounter and trust
• Hospitality— "taking one another's being and doing in the world seriously enough"
• Enter the room listening
• MANIFESTO SECTION 5 "We believe Christianity is perpetually on the move. There is no sacred capital."
• "This is our most aggressive claim."
• Distinguishing Comment from peer publications such as First Things
• "All cultures are fallen, and we're part of another kingdom."
• Galatians 5 and the Fruit of the Spirit
• Civilizational Christianity
• The smallness of "faith, family, flag"
• "So much of my Christian identity has been rewritten by experiences of Christian faith that are completely outside the, the social reality that is my fundamental location."
• "When Christianity seems to be running the dangerous risk of being captured, captured by a certain kind of ideological political social frame that feels as though it's really making itself primary simply by its Napoleonic capacity for self-crowning, that is a very, very dangerous thing."
• MANIFESTO SECTION 6 "We believe there are different ways of knowing—that the thinker and the practitioner have equally valuable wisdoms worth airing, that relationship and context matter for the ways in which we perceive reality, that the child with Down syndrome perceives truths that a Nobel Prize winner cannot, and that there is a need for those who inhabit these myriad ways to share space and learn how to pursue understanding—perhaps even revelation—together."
• Perceiving the world differently
• Down syndrome and the expression of a different kind of knowing or wisdom
• Full circle with the first principle of the imago Dei
• Functioning out of either confidence, uncertainty, or anxiety
• Mark Labberton's friend Dustin (R.I.P), who had cerebral palsy
• Fatigue, trying to get our bearings
• Looking for moral and eschatological coherence

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

The 6 Primary Sections of the 2025 Comment Manifesto

To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/.

1. We are Christian humanists, those who believe that Jesus Christ—God become man—is the ultimate measure of what it means to be human. We believe that every human being is created in the image of God, whole persons who are at once fallen yet gloriously endowed, finite and dependent, yet deserving of infinite dignity. We seek to stay true both to the wonder and to the woundedness of life this side of the veil, even as our eschatology floods us with hope: Jesus has walked with us, died, risen, and ascended, and he will come again to make all things new.

2. We believe it's a time to build, that the creative imagination and the Christian imagination are mysteriously linked. We want to begin with the Yes in Christ, not our own noes. While there is an important role for criticism baptized in a study of what is true, good, and beautiful, it is a means to an end—the basis for wise repair and imagination, not the justification for destruction or erasure. We are committed to keeping orthodoxy and orthopraxy married, taking seriously our job to translate between them.

3. We believe in institutions: government, guilds, families, schools, universities, the church. We recognize that in our age of individualism, institutions are often painted as the enemy. We try to change that, seeking to shape the character of today's most formative institutions while exploring what kind of reimagined social architecture might compel the next generation's trust.

4. We believe in the transformative power of encounter—encountering reality, encountering those unlike us. Loving enemies is bedrock for Comment, hospitality core. We are champions of the difficult room. We believe in the deeper truths that can be discovered when different life experiences and distinct sources of wisdom are gathered around one table. We intentionally publish arguments with which we disagree, including those who don't hail Christ as Lord, not for the sake of pluralism without conviction, but because Christians have always better understood the contours and depths of their faith when crystallized through exchanges with strangers turned friends.

5. We believe Christianity is perpetually on the move. There is no sacred capital. While the audience we serve is navigating a North American context, we serve this audience from an understanding that Christianity is an intercultural, polyglot religion. At a time of rising religious ethno-nationalism, we insist that no culture can claim to represent the true form of Christianity, and we actively seek for our authors and partners to reflect the global reality of the church.

6. We believe there are different ways of knowing—that the thinker and the practitioner have equally valuable wisdoms worth airing, that relationship and context matter for the ways in which we perceive reality, that the child with Down syndrome perceives truths that a Nobel Prize winner cannot, and that there is a need for those who inhabit these myriad ways to share space and learn how to pursue understanding—perhaps even revelation—together.

...

Our theory of change takes its cues from the garden, less the machine. We are personalists, not ideologues. We follow the logic of Jesus's mustard seed, of yeast transforming a whole pile of dough, of the principle of contagiousness and change happening over generations. We believe in the value of slow thought. We are skeptical of the language of scale in growing spiritual goods. While we wish to be savvy in unmasking the either/or reactivity of our age and will always call out dehumanizing trendlines, we are fundamentally animated by the creative impulse, by a philosophy of natality expressed through hospitality. This feels especially important in this time between eras when no one knows what's next, and we need one another to recalibrate, to reflect, and to shape a hopeful future.