This episode is my third interview with Dr. Laura Lengnick about her book, Resilient Agriculture. In my blogspot for the second interview, at the request of Dr. Lengnick, I clarified that the discussion in the second interview was recorded in June of 2024 before the impact of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina toward the end of September, 2024, and was not a response to that event. However, Dr. Lengnick agreed that at a time which allowed for recovery and healing, some reflection about Resilient Agriculture in light of the event of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina was important and appropriate. Particularly important for that reflection includes Dr. Lengnick’s understanding of the concept of “bouncing forward” rather than “bouncing back” or “building back better.”

That time, nearly one year after the Hurricane Helene event, has come. So I welcome back Dr. Laura Lengnick.

Dr. Lengnick is the author of Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Foods Systems for a Changing Climate. This book will be the basis for these interviews.

Laura is the founder and principal of Cultivating Resilience which works with organizations of all kinds to integrate resilience thinking into assessment, operations and strategic planning. Trained as a soil scientist, Laura has 30 years of experience as a researcher, policymaker, educator, activist, and farmer. She has broad federal policy expertise gained through work as a U.S. Senate staffer, a USDA-ARS researcher, and a lobbyist advocating for sustainable agriculture in the U.S. Congress and was a lead author of the 2013 United States Department of Agriculture’s report, Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation.

You can learn more about Cultivating Resilience and Laura here:

cultivatingresilience.com

In this interview a reference was made to effort called Regenerative Agriculture. Dr. Lengnick sees that effort as providing tools for Resilient Agriculture, but believes that that the work she and others are doing with Resilient Agriculture goes beyond Regenerative Agriculture. You can learn more about Regenerative Agriculture here:

commonground.org

kissthegroundmovie.com

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

In this episode, Amy Cantrell returns to speak of her life’s work and calling.

Amy Cantrell lives in Asheville, North Carolina and is founder and Co-Director of BeLoved Asheville dedicated to creating home, health, equity, and opportunity for all.  BeLoved is a community of people putting love into action every day.  We bring people from all walks of life together to create innovative solutions to some of the most challenging problems of our time:  housing and food insecurity, poverty, lack of healthcare, systemic racism, and climate change. BeLoved’s projects includes:  BeLoved Villages of deeply affordable homes; rapid relief, community health, and vaccination equity efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic; the first homeless/formerly homeless Street Medic Team in the nation; Racial Healing & Cultural Organizing; creating healthy food access through Free Farmers markets, Plants for the People  and community gardens; as well as advocacy campaigns around affordable housing, homelessness, food equity,  gentrification, and systemic racism. Our projects work at the intersections of community, creativity, and equity. Amy was school educated at Converse College (BA) and Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, GA (MDiv.) and was “street educated” at the Open Door Community in Atlanta and at BeLoved Asheville. In 2020, she passed the NASCLA national licensing exam and became a general contractor to help support BeLoved’s project to build deeply affordable homes. She received the Western North Carolina Peacemaker of the Year in 2017 and was recently named one of the USA Today Network’s Women of the Year, 2024.   Recently, she co-led BeLoved’s response to Hurricane Helene serving 15,000 people daily across Western North Carolina’s impacted zones in the aftermath of the storm. BeLoved became the largest local rapid response group in the wake of Helene supporting equitable responses including Well Check teams and Flush Brigades to support elders and people with disabilities. Hike teams hiking miles to remote areas. Creating temporary water infrastructure for communities, schools, and childcare centers. Sharing 67 tiny homes on wheels as immediate temporary shelter. Currently, BeLoved is doing 30 home repairs and has started their first whole home replacements as well as building a new BeLoved Village in Swannanoa. BeLoved has been featured in stories by ABC News/Good Morning America, PBS News Hour, CBS, NBC,MSN, Accuweather, the Washington Post, and People Magazine. She is married to Adrienne Sigmon and loves being mom to twin 11 year olds, Myla and Eleecia.  She loves the color purple, playing guitar, making art, and studying movement history.  Find her on Facebook and Instagram @Amy Cantrell and @BeLovedAsheville  For more information about BeLoved Asheville, visit www.belovedasheville.com.

At the age of 96, Luci Shaw is a prolific poet, writer, and editor as well as being a photographer. With 19 volumes of poetry and one on the way, 8 books, and two children’s books, Luci has spent a lifetime sharing her gift and love of writing. Along with her first, now late, husband Harold Shaw, she was a co-founder of Harold Shaw Publishers where she was senior editor and eventually President. She has been an English stylist for the popular Biblical translations and paraphrases The Living Bible, The Message, and Today’s New International Version. Luci has been an adjunct and summer faculty and a frequent guest lecturer at colleges and universities. In addition she has been a popular workshop leader. She is currently Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in many journals like The Christian Century, Christianity Today, and Sojourners.

Luci describes herself as a Christian who is a poet and not a Christian poet.

She was a long-time friend of, co-author with, and editor for Madeleine L’Engle.

To learn more about Luci, go to her website at lucishaw.com

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

My guests for this episode introduce us to an updated version a type of organization which has been around since the late 1880s, but which most of us have never heard of or know anything about. The type of organization is a Settlement House. The updated version is modeled in a Settlement House one of my guests founded and the other has helped strengthen and sustain. It is called The Good Neighbor House and is located in Waco, Texas. As my guests will discuss, in its updated version, a Settlement House offers local communities, towns, and cities a resource to strengthen the peaceful bonds of it residence; it offers our nation a resource to strengthen the practice of our democracy; and it offers Christian churches a resource for fulfilling a key mission and mandate of the Church’s work–that of showing hospitality to the stranger. In considering the current challenges of both our nation and the churches in the U.S., Settlement Houses can provide a relevant and needed contribution, and are thus something worth knowing more about and considering.

The founder of the Good Neighbor House, Dr. Laine Scales, has been on this show before. Laine is Professor and PhD Program Co-Director for the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. She completed 15 years as Associate Dean in Baylor’s Graduate School from 2004-2019. Her scholarly work led to her appointment as co-director of Baptist Scholars International Roundtable (BSIR). Laine is the author of All That Fits a Woman: Training Southern Baptist Women for Charity and Mission, 1907-1926 and co-author/co-editor of several works, including the 6th Edition of Christianity and Social Work: Readings in the Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice, and Christian Faith and University Life: Stewards of the Academy. Her research interests include doctoral education, history of Baptist women in social work and missions, and rural social work. Laine‘s research on historical settlement houses led her to establish Good Neighbor Settlement House in Waco Texas, a social innovation experiment in nurturing community through an intergenerational experience of the arts, music, education, recreation, and worship.

Tyler Mowry is a PhD candidate and in the Department of Religion and a Content Specialist on the Learning Design team at Baylor University. He has participated in a number of community development efforts, including K–12 educational advocacy in Bogotá, Colombia and West Chicago, IL, and urban agricultural development in East Atlanta, GA. Tyler is a member of the board of trustees and the maintenance team, which is responsible for care of the building and grounds at the Good Neighbor House, and his family and church are frequent users of the space.

You can learn more about Good Neighbor House in an article title, “Good Neighbor House: Reimagining Settlement Houses as a Response to Contemporary Community Challenges,” in Chapter 3 of Christianity and Social Work: Readings on the Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice, Sixth Ed., by T. Laine Scales and Michael S. Kelly. Direct link to the article can be found here:

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

This episode will be the first in a series that explores how the Church and the Christian faith is doing globally. In each episode I will have a guest from a different country or area to talk about the Christian experience and the Church’s challenges in the place of my guest.

My guest for this episode is Dr. Bennett Uche Enyioha. Dr. Enyioha is an experienced Baptist pastor, author, educator, and leader. He is an Associate Professor, having taught at various theological seminaries and colleges in Nigeria. For ten years he was the president of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Kaduna, Nigeria. He has served in leadership positions both in the Nigerian Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance.

Since his retirement, Dr. Enyioha has worked to establish the B. U. Enyioha Foundation for the purpose of assisting gifted students that need resources to make possible their education, helping hospital patients with their hospital expenses, and establishing a lectureship that will be a resource for educating the people and churches of Nigeria. For enquiries about the Foundation, its work, and how to contribute and donate to the foundation, contact Dr. Enyioha at either:

[email protected]

[email protected]

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

As I did in my spoken intro to this episode, I want to begin this blogspot with a clarification. The interviews that have made the two parts and episodes with Dr. Lengnick were done in early June. You may know that beginning September 24 the rain from Hurricane Helene began to come through the area where I live, which is in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just east of Asheville, North Carolina. The primary impact of that event occurred on the night of September 26-27. It was devastating and in many places it was catastrophic. I posted Part 1 on September 24, the day the rain began. It is just now that I am able to post Part 2. My original intention was to post this episode a week after posting Part 1.

Because both of these interviews on Resilient Agriculture directly speak to the issues that bear on the impact of Hurricane Helene, Dr. Lengnick wanted to make sure that you, my listeners, understood that these interview were made 3 months prior to the impact of the hurricane and not as a response to it.

However, some reflection in light of the ideas and principles of Resilient Agriculture upon the event of Hurricane Helene needs be provided. Dr. Lengnick has graciously agreed, when the time is more appropriate, to return for a third interview, especially to speak about her understanding of the idea of bouncing forward rather than bouncing back. We will look forward to that interview.

In this episode, Laura talks about her experiences in having been active in promoting Resilient Agriculture for a while now, she speaks about the importance of stories to the promotion of Resilient Agriculture and tells us some stories, and she provides a very helpful list of things we non-agricultural folks can do to participate with and in Resilient Agriculture.

Dr. Lengnick is the author of Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Foods Systems for a Changing Climate. This book will be the basis for these interviews.

Laura is the founder and principal of Cultivating Resilience which works with organizations of all kinds to integrate resilience thinking into assessment, operations and strategic planning. Trained as a soil scientist, Laura has 30 years of experience as a researcher, policymaker, educator, activist, and farmer. She has broad federal policy expertise gained through work as a U.S. Senate staffer, a USDA-ARS researcher, and a lobbyist advocating for sustainable agriculture in the U.S. Congress and was a lead author of the 2013 United States Department of Agriculture’s report, Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation.

You can learn more about Cultivating Resilience and Laura here:

cultivatingresilience.com

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

In this episode and the next I interview Dr. Laura Lengnick about resilient agriculture. Resilient agriculture is a step beyond sustainable agriculture and is being developed as a correction to industrial agriculture and in response to climate change.

Dr. Lengnick is the author of Resilient Agriculture: Expanded and Updated Second Edition: Cultivating Foods Systems for a Changing Climate. This book will be the basis for these interviews.

Laura is the founder and principal of Cultivating Resilience which works with organizations of all kinds to integrate resilience thinking into assessment, operations and strategic planning. Trained as a soil scientist, Laura has 30 years of experience as a researcher, policymaker, educator, activist, and farmer. She has broad federal policy expertise gained through work as a U.S. Senate staffer, a USDA-ARS researcher, and a lobbyist advocating for sustainable agriculture in the U.S. Congress and was a lead author of the 2013 United States Department of Agriculture’s report, Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation.

You can learn more about Cultivating Resilience and Laura here:

cultivatingresilience.com

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

This episode checks in with Choristers Guild. I began my ministry in church music in the late-1970s and early 1980s, and Choristers Guild was a primary source I turned to for wonderful and high-quality children’s Christian music. Back then, church music was organized around graded choirs and music ensembles. But during the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the “seeker” churches grew rapidly and with them the use of “contemporary” Christian music. During the 1990s “contemporary” Christian music became dominant. The result, often, was the loss of graded choir programs.

In its origins, Choristers Guild had a strong focus on children’s music. This episode seeks to learn of the state of things in church music and how Choristers Guild is navigating the challenges of the current situation with Christianity in the United States and music ministry.

My guests are Katie Houts and Mark Burrows. Katie has worked with Mark in editing some of his music pieces.

Katie Houts is the Sacred Choral and Curriculum Editor for Choristers Guild. Serving CG since 2013, Katie curates and edits sacred choral anthems, collections, musicals, curriculum, and teaching resources; she also serves on the faculty of the Choristers Guild Institute. She studied music at Wartburg College (Waverly, IA), where she majored in Church Music (Organ) and Religion. She has served in ELCA, UCC, and UMC congregations as Director of Music, Worship Curator, Organist, and Children’s Choir Director.

Katie is a published composer, professional accompanist, and a frequent clinician at sacred conferences throughout the country. She currently serves on ACDA’s National Committee for Composition Initiatives, working to support and champion the work of living choral composers.

Katie is based in Salt Lake City, where she leads choral ensembles throughout the community, including Rise Up Children’s Choir – Utah’s premiere contemporary vocal performance group for ages 6-18. She conducts RUCC’s intermediate ensemble, Rise Up Ignite, and is the assistant director and accompanist for the advanced mixed children’s choir. She also teaches second grade music and directs the 5th and 6th grade choirs at Wasatch Charter School (Holladay, UT).

What Choristers Guild and other publishers say about Mark Burrows is this:

Mark Burrows (b. 1971) is a composer and clinician whose works are published by many major houses, including The Lorenz Corporation, Shawnee Press, Abingdon Press, Choristers Guild and Warner Brothers. Several works, such as the Gettin’ Down with Mama Goose Series, The Body Electric, and Outside the Lines top many best-seller lists.

Known to little listeners as “Mister Mark” he tours the country performing concerts for children and families. His three children’s albums – You’ve got a Song, Go Ape!, and Go, Galileo! – have won a total of nine national awards. His songs can be heard on XM Radio, and one song, Amazon Rock, was recently recorded by Nick Records for a Dora the Explorer album.

Mark is currently the Director of Children’s Ministries at First United Methodist Church – Fort Worth, Texas, where he leads the weekly Children’s Message, a monthly worship service for families called Children First, and directs the 65-voice Youth Choir.

Mark received his undergraduate degree in music education from Southern Methodist University, and his graduate degree in conducting from Texas Christian University. He lives in Fort Worth with his wife, Nina, and their two daughters, Emma and Grace.

What Mark prefers to say about himself is this:

Mark loves traveling the country reminding people how amazing they are and how, together, they can do amazing things! While Mark does not have perfect pitch, he does have “perfect dynamics.” He can tell, just by listening, if a piece of music is loud or soft. Mark loves cinnamon rolls and tacos but can’t stand peas. He’s a Ravenclaw, and he adores classical music (especially Haydn for his sense of humor). Current musical acts he’s into right now are Lake Street Dive, Jon Batiste, and Cosmo Sheldrake. He owns 10 pairs of Converse high-tops, but sometimes he mix-matches to make even more pairs! Mark lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife Nina. And he occasionally feels sorry for himself that their daughters, Emma and Grace, have moved away to college so they can become a nurse and music therapist respectively, and save the world.

The use of Mark’s anthems, Seeds, and I Am Home, is with permission from Choristers Guild.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

This episode is Part 2 of my interview with Jeffrey Stout on democracy.

In Part 1 Dr. Stout explained the different ways democracy has been understood throughout history, he gave us two definitions of liberty and freedom, and he spoke of the seven virtues he believes are essential for citizens to develop in order to participate in maintaining a healthy democracy.

In this episode, Dr. Stout discusses the threats that presently exist to our democracy here in the United States and then develops the roll we have as citizens to respond to these threats and to insuring that our democracy thrives.

Dr. Stout is Professor of Religion, Emeritus at Princeton University. He is a theorist and historian of democratic culture. His work is concerned with ethics, religious thought, political theory, law, and film. The two of his books that I draw upon for these two episodes are Democracy and Tradition, and Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America. His two lectures which I draw from for these interviews are his 2017 Gifford Lectures titled ‘Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King’ and his 2022 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture on Jurisprudence titled ‘The Tree of Democratic Liberty.’ Both of these lectures can be found on Youtube.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

This episode is Part 1 of my conversation with Professor Jeffrey Stout about our democracy.

There is a broad conviction that our democracy here in the United States is in crisis. In my mind, Dr. Stout is one of the most important scholars of democracy and also one of the best guides for us learning what we, as citizens, need to understand and do to improve our democracy and maintain its thriving.

Dr. Stout is Professor of Religion, Emeritus at Princeton University. He is a theorist and historian of democratic culture. His work is concerned with ethics, religious thought, political theory, law, and film. The two of his books that I draw upon for these two episodes are Democracy and Tradition, and Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America. His two lectures which I draw from for these interviews are his 2017 Gifford Lectures titled ‘Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King’ and his 2022 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture on Jurisprudence titled ‘The Tree of Democratic Liberty.’ Both of these lectures can be found on Youtube.

My own commitment to democracy and religious liberty is rooted in my Baptist heritage.

The kind of Baptist community into which I was born and to which I grew up to embrace, articulated its beliefs in a document called The Baptist Faith and Message (TBFaM. The edition I am using is 1971). Principal among those beliefs is ‘soul freedom’ as Baptist historian, Walter Shurden, calls it in his book, The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms (TBI), or as Baptist theologian, E. Y. Mullins, calls it in his book, The Axioms of Religion, ‘the competency of the soul in religion (TBFaM p.8).’

For Baptists of my ilk, this soul freedom is rooted in the nature of God and subsequently in the nature of who we are as individuals. God is free and in creating us as individuals, God created us in God’s image. This image in which each of us is created gives to each of us freedom, equality, dignity, and worth. Freedom of thought and choice are essential for true relationships, fellowship, and communion. These freedoms are the basis by which we are able to love. Thus, soul freedom is what empowers us to be able to respond to God, to enter into true relationship with God and to love God. It is also the means by which we can relate to and love one another.

As free and equal individuals before God, we each are thus free and equal before one another–any and all others—before any and all people and any and all organizations. But having this freedom also includes responsibility and accountability. We become responsible and accountable for our thoughts and choices.

Soul freedom is both exclusive and inclusive (TBFaM p.8). As Shurden defines it, Soul Freedom is the affirmation of the inalienable right and responsibility of every person to deal with God without or to the exclusion of the imposition of creed, the interference of clergy, or the intervention of civil government (TBI p.23). But, as The Baptist Faith and Message says, it includes all elements of true faith (TBFaM p.9).

Thus Mullins lists six axioms:

The theological axiom: The holy and loving God has the right to be sovereign (and is thus free).

The religious axiom: All souls have an equal right to direct access to God.

The ecclesiastical axiom: All believers have a right to equal privileges in the church.

The moral axiom: To be responsible a person must be free.

The religio-civic axiom: A free Church in a free State.

The social axiom: Love your neighbor as yourself.

As The Baptist Faith and Message says, religious liberty does not rest upon a legal document of a political state…A free state does not create religious liberty. It only recognizes and respects it. But religious freedom is essential in the making of a free state (TBFaM pp 141-142).

It continues to assert that in a free state, religious liberty means the right of every person to worship or not worship as that person’s conscience dictates. It means equality before the law in all matters relating to faith or unbelief (my paraphrase) (p.141). My Baptist ancestors were always equally passionate about defending the freedom of unbelievers as much as believers.

As I and Baptists like me understand it, in a community of equals—any community of equals including any faith organization and any form of civic government, democracy is the rightful and essential means of decision making.

The Baptist Faith and Message states, ‘Religious liberty is not religious toleration. Religious toleration is a privilege granted by people (and I will add, by power). Religious liberty is a right bestowed by God. For liberty involves responsibility and demands inner and personal controls (TBFaM p.141)’. Although others throughout our nations history have not grounded this definition of liberty in the theology I have just outlined, they nevertheless share this definition. This definition becomes important to a better understanding of democracy.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.