God did not create work to be drudgery, but due to the effects of the Fall and our sinfulness, work can definitely not be what it should be. But that does not mean that work is all bad.

In fact, work is where we often find purpose and joy.

Dr. Chip Roper is the Founder and President of the VOCA Center. The VOCA Center is a faith-based organization that brings God's wisdom to your work through teaching, coaching, and leadership development.

It recently partnered with the Barna Group to conduct a research survey to discover what brings joy and what brings challenges in the contemporary workplace. This “Life@Work 2025 Report” is free to download here.

Our conversation with Chip Roper:

* We discuss practical strategies to increase joy at work for both workers and leaders.

* The study discovered that the majority of U.S. adult workers (7 out of 10) say that they experience joy more than half the time they’re at work.

* What brings us joy at work includes (1) work relationships, (2) our achievements and purpose, and (3) helping others and making a difference.

* Workers who derive their primary satisfaction from helping others are nearly 3 times more likely to experience high levels of joy compared to those motivated primarily by financial rewards.

* Gen Z and Millennial workers seek meaning beyond the paycheck and find joy in helping others in and through their work.

* While relationships with people bring joy at work, what’s ironic is that this is the same category that scored high on what creates challenges at work.

Scroll down to learn more about Chip Roper.

Thanks for listening!

If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Chip Roper

Dr. Chip Roper is the Chief Solutions Officer and President of the VOCA Center. He earned a Doctorate of Ministry from Missio Seminary and an Executive Coaching Certification from Columbia University. He coaches business leaders, drawing on his 30-plus years of experience in Profit & Loss leadership.

The way of Jesus is for organizations to nurture flourishing individuals and societies.

But many of us have experienced the devastating effects of a toxic work environment.

This is not the way God meant organizations to run. From the ancient Old Testament Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and his Apostles, everything in life is meant for universal flourishing, or Shalom.

Our guest is Dr. Justin Irving, Professor of Christian Leadership at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. His newest book is titled, Healthy Leadership for Thriving Organizations: Creating Contexts Where People Flourish (Baker Academic, 2024), In it, he provides theological foundations for healthy Christian leadership in for-profit corporations, nonprofits, and churches. He also provides insights from interviewing over 200 executive leaders.

In our discussion, we discuss:

* Leadership for human flourishing

* Cultivating healthy teams

* Delegation for the good of the people we lead and for the organization

* What hinders good organizational communication

* How to measure how healthy an organizational culture is

* How to be sure that every aspect of an organization aligns with the organization’s values and beliefs

In our conversation, we discussed the Good Place Operating System (GPOS), from The Good Place Institute, for which Bob Robinson is a Partner Consultant. The GPOS is a systematic approach to clearly stating a purpose and mission in a charter, to build all the systems in an organization to align with the charter, and then to measure success on business dashboards. If you’d like to explore implementing an operating system meant for kingdom purposes in which people are valued, communities flourish, and profits are made for these regenerative purposes, connect with Bob by emailing him at [email protected] .

Scroll down to learn more about Justin Irving.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Justin Irving

After serving for 20 years at Bethel Seminary in a variety of faculty and administrative roles, Dr. Justin Irving now serves as Professor of Leadership, Chair of the Department of Leadership and Discipleship, and Director of the Ed.D. program at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. Check out his Purpose in Leadership blog. Dr. Irving is a member at Sojourn Church Midtown in Louisville, Kentucky. He is married to Tasha, and they have five children.

Would you consider buying Dr. Irving’s books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore? They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about the book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

Some people are lucky enough to get paid to do what they love. But many are not.

In You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful, (Brazos Press, 2025), award-winning author Karen Swallow Prior has encouraging news: If you pursue the good, true, and beautiful in all your work, you will find your greatest fulfillment.

In this conversation, we discuss:

* The difference between passion and calling. How does this help us make vocational decisions?

* What are the various callings we have, not just in our 9-to-5, but in all of life?

* How does our context determine our callings, including when and where we live, who is in our lives, and what needs arise?

* How are our callings from outside ourselves, often in the service to others?

* How can we find meaning in every role, regardless of what our career is?

* How can we reintegrate our vocational lives through truth, goodness, and beauty?

Our discussion will help anyone and everyone who wants to know that our daily work, ordinary though it may be, can fulfill a higher calling to God. You will gain a renewed sense of purpose, knowing you are created for virtue in all that you do.

Scroll down to learn more about Karen Prior.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Karen Swallow Prior

Dr. Karen Swallow Prior is the 2025-26 Karlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. She has been a reader and a writer her entire life. She earned her PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has taught at Liberty University and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She has written or co-written several books, including study guides for some of the greatest books in British literature.

Would you consider buying Karen’s books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore? They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about these books on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

After another day of trying to meet deadlines and working on projects, you’re again dissatisfied with how much you did or how well you did it. Then you go home, grab a bite to eat, and then go to your kid’s concert or sporting event. When you come back home, you see that big house chore that has been waiting for weeks. You sigh and drop into bed thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get more done?” We are constantly colliding with our limitations.

And we think that it is because we are fallen, sinful people. But what if? What if our limitations are a gift from God, that this is part of the very good part of being a created being? What if we are not supposed to carry the burden of trying to be something we are not and cannot be?

Our guest on this episode is theologian Dr. Kelly M. Kapic. He’s written a book that addresses this guilt we all experience when we feel that we should always be doing one more thing. Its title is You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why that’s Good News (Brazos, 2022). This book has won a number of awards, including Christianity Today’s Book of the Year award in the category of Popular Theology.

Scroll down to learn more about Kelly Kapic.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Kelly M. Kapic

Kelly M. Kapic is Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College, where he has taught since 2001. With a PhD in Systematic and Historical Theology from King’s College University of London, Kapic has written or edited over fifteen books.

His earlier work includes Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering, A Little Book For New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology, and The God Who Gives: How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story. He also completed two volumes with the economist Brian Fikkert: Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty isn’t the American Dream and A Field Guide to Becoming Whole: Principles for Poverty Alleviation Ministries. His upcoming release will be Christian Life (in the New Studies in Dogmatics series of books from ‎Zondervan Academic).

We recommend purchasing these books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about these books on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

The murder of Charlie Kirk has shaken both political and faith communities. It is fortunate that we interviewed Shirley Mullen a couple of months ago. We are glad to provide that interview now. She encourages us to take up the courageous middle in the midst of the kind of polarization that has led to this kind of violence.

We are experiencing increased suspicion and animosity in our churches, our workplaces, and even our families. It has also led to a false sense that our options are limited to choosing only one side.

When we look around us, we see people so extremely confident that they are absolutely right and that the opposition is not only absolutely wrong, but downright evil.

Is there a better way? Are Christians called to be peacemakers and bridgebuilders? And can they do that without jettisoning our core convictions?

Into the fray comes Dr. Shirley Mullen and her new book, Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future (Baker Academic, 2024).

Scroll down to learn more about Shirley Mullen.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Dr. Shirley A. Mullen

We welcome Shirley Mullen, who served as president of Houghton University for fifteen years before retiring in 2021. After receiving two doctorates (one in history from the University of Minnesota and the other in philosophy from the University of Wales), she spent four decades in the field of faith-based liberal arts education, serving as a professor, residence life director, chief academic officer, and president. In her role as president of the college, she led her institution to a place where students and faculty could be courageous in creating space for people to be in the courageous middle.

She continues to invest in the next generation of leaders through mentoring and serving on the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, the Jericho Road Community Health Center, the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the 1st Amendment Partnership.

We recommend purchasing this book from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about this book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

Do you feel that our isolating individualism, nonstop injustices, consumerist lifestyles, or everyday monotony are suffocating your soul?

Our guest, Wesley Vander Lugt, believes what breathes life into us is something that we can easily miss or dismiss: BEAUTY.

His book is Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith That Breathes (Eerdmans, 2024). Here is not your ivory-tower theologian; his PhD is in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts. Wes shows how beauty can break us out of self-centered malaise, promote healing and hope for our broken world, and re-enchant our lives. Wes believes that Beauty is as essential to our souls as oxygen is to our bodies.

Here is the poem that Wes cites in the podcast:

Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman

God goes, belonging to every riven thing He’s madeSing his being simply by beingThe thing it is:Stone and tree and sky,Man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing He’s made,Means a storm of peace.Think of the atoms inside the stone.Think of the man who sits aloneTrying to will himself into the stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing He’s madeThere is given one shadeShaped exactly to the thing itself:Under the tree a darker tree;Under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s madeThe things that bring Him near,Made the mind that makes Him go.A part of what man knows,Apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing He’s made.

Scroll down to learn more about Wesley Vander Lugt.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Wesley Vander Lugt

Wesley Vander Lugt is the Director of the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness and Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte.

His publications include Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breathes (Eerdmans, 2024), A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault (IVP Adademic, 2024), Living Theodrama: Reimagining Theological Ethics (Routledge, 2014), Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition (co-authored with Kelly Kapic), and Theatrical Theology: Explorations in Performing the Faith (edited with Trevor Hart).

We recommend purchasing these books from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. They are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about these books on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

On this episode, we welcome back our friend, Erica Reitz, who has been helping young men and women transition out of college for several years. The transitions that 20-somethings experience in the years after college are some of the most stressful, unstable, and uncertain times we can ever experience.

Erica Young Reitz is the author of After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships, and Faith (InterVarsity Press, Revised Edition, 2025). It has been republished in a revised edition this year by InterVarsity Press. No book on the market deals with the after-college years so thoroughly and so practically.

Scroll down to learn more about Erica Young Reitz.

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Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Erica Young Reitz

Erica Young Reitz is the founder of After College Transition, an organization that helps higher education professionals, church leaders, and college ministers equip students to thrive after college.

Her experience working with college students has included teaching advanced writing at Penn State and serving in campus ministry with the CCO (Coalition for Christian Outreach), as well as directing Senior EXIT. She holds an MA in higher education from Geneva College with a research focus on the senior year transition. Erica serves as a leadership development specialist for Bartell & Bartell, helping individuals and teams uplevel their leadership and unleash their organizational potential. Erica lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband, Craig, and their two children.

You can purchase Erica’s book from our partner in ministry, Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Byron and Beth Borger are eager to serve God’s people with great books. Order online through their secure server or call 717-246-333. Mention that you heard about this book on the Reintegrate Podcast and get 20% off.

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor.

On a previous episode, we had a blast talking with him about his last bestselling book, Redeeming Your Time. Be sure to go back and listen to that episode. What was impressive about that book was how, even though very practical, it was so clearly written on a strong biblical foundation.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You're Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

Here at Reintegrate, I often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

Scroll down to learn more about Jordan Raynor.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Jordan Raynor

Jordan Raynor’s other books that help us reintegrate faith and work include Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive, Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do and Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk.

He has also written two children’s books (The Royal You, and The Creator in You) and a weekday devotional (The Word Before Work).

Jordan’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.

Be sure to check out Jordan’s fascinating podcast, Mere Christians, where he interviews people from a wide variety of vocations about how they reintegrate faith and work.

Jordan lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and their three young daughters.

For this episode, we have one of our favorite guests: Jordan Raynor.

On a previous episode, we had a blast talking with him about his last bestselling book, Redeeming Your Time. Be sure to go back and listen to that episode. What was impressive about that book was how, even though very practical, it was so clearly written on a strong biblical foundation.

His latest book is The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You're Not Sharing the Gospel) (Waterbrook Press, 2024)

Here at Reintegrate, I often discuss overcoming the false dualism between the sacred and the secular. I love how Jordan Raynor plays with those words in the title. We might want to call it “secular work,” but God calls the work of normal everyday workers, not just overseas missionaries or pastors, sacred work.

Scroll down to learn more about Jordan Raynor.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Jordan Raynor

Jordan Raynor’s other books that help us reintegrate faith and work include Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive, Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do and Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk.

He has also written two children’s books (The Royal You, and The Creator in You) and a weekday devotional (The Word Before Work).

Jordan’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.

Be sure to check out Jordan’s fascinating podcast, Mere Christians, where he interviews people from a wide variety of vocations about how they reintegrate faith and work.

Jordan lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and their three young daughters.

We know that quiet is an essential aspect of the spiritual life, that we need to leave the craziness of our hurried and frenzied lives and find the deep peace of being in God’s presence. But in our busy lives of deadlines and distractions, of screens at work and at play, this seems abstract and impossible.

David Loughney and Bob Robinson welcomes Sarah Clarkson to the podcast. She writes regularly about literature, faith, and beauty. Check out her Substack, From the Vicarge, where she writes about “suffering and beauty, theodicy and theology, imagination and the luminous grace of real, disciplined wonder.”

Her latest book is Reclaiming Quiet: Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention (Baker, 2024). In it, she tells her story of trying to overcome anxiety and hurry by cultivating a life of holy attention, an inner quiet of paying attention to God in the everyday aspects of life.

Scroll down to learn more about Sarah Clarkson.

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:

Thanks for listening!

Please share this podcast with your friends. Your hosts are Dr. Bob Robinson and David Loughney. For further resources on reintegrating all of life with God’s mission, go to re-integrate.org.

Sarah Clarkson

Sarah loves reading many novels, listening to a great deal of music, and drinking as many cups of coffee and tea as she can get away with in a day. She’s married to Thomas, a priest in the Church of England, and they have four children, Lilian, Samuel, Lucie, and Elanor. They live in (and she does her writing from) an old English vicarage in Oxford.

Sarah Clarkson on Instagram.

Sarah has also authored This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness (Baker, 2021), Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life (Tyndale Momentum, 2018), and The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming (Tyndale Momentum, 2016).

Sarah’s books can be purchased from independent booksellers Byron and Beth Borger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore. Go to their secure order form, mention you heard about Sarah’s books on the Reintegrate Podcast, and receive 20% off your order! If you have questions or need more information, contact Byron here. Or call Beth and Byron at 717-246-3333.