Dr. Nicole Massey Martin is a strong voice in the American Christian movement with decades of experience at the executive level. She currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Christianity Today, and currently hosts The Disrupters podcast (a CT production). Beyond her roles with CT, she is an author, preacher and teacher -- a solid academic, with degrees from Vanderbilt, Princeton and Gordon-Conwell. She is the founder and Executive Director of Soulfire International Ministries, with a mission of helping pastors, churches, and young leaders thrive. Dr. Massey is a member of Kingdom Fellowship AME Church in Maryland, and she has a word for us today about bringing the crucifixion and resurrection into our daily vocations as followers of Jesus. This is a deep and meaty conversation. I hope you listen. 

If you listen to this podcast even occasionally, you know that I love discovering "treasures in a field" -- people I didn't know before who I'm just now discovering, and who are full of wisdom and goodness. Well, I just found another one! Christopher Lohrstorfer, VP of Academic Affairs at Wesley Biblical Seminary (and pastor of a local church, too!)  is the author of Learning to Breathe: Mastering the Art of Spiritual Respiration. It is all about how to the faith is designed to be lived out. We breathe in the presence and power of God, going deep into the Spirit. Then we breathe out the life God calls and equips us to lead. This pattern -- breathing in and breathing out -- breeds healthy followers of Jesus, which is what we all want more of. So this is a good one, friends. Listen all the way through. 

Reverend Doctor Petey Bellini is brilliant and faithful and deeply spiritual and that’s what makes conversation with him so good. He is an interdisiplinary academic, which a gift to the rest of us. It means he can connect the dots between the seen and the unseen, and he does so in the most accessible way. In his latest book, he writes about the intersection between neuroscience, emotional health and spirituality. This is a good one! 

Rev. Dr Christian Selvaratnam serves as the Dean of Church Planting at St. Hild College, York, England. He is also the founder of the Centre for Church Planting at St. Hild and works extensively with Seedbed to train pastors and planters. He has decades of experience on staff with Alpha International, as Head of Alpha UK and and as its National Director. He has planted churches and written books, including The Craft of Church Planting: Exploring the Lost Wisdom of Apprenticeship, Why Plant Churches? Theological and Practical Reasons, and Alpha as a Church Planting Tool (London: Alpha International, 2017). He is a good friend through Asbury and a solid follower of Jesus. It is a privilege to have him sharing on the Art of Holiness about church-planting, Alpha and other things. 

I love finding treasures in a field. Finding Doug Koskela and his work was delightful. He serves through the Free Methodist Church as a professor at Seattle Pacific University, where he teaches Wesleyan Theology, epistemology of theology, vocation and ecclesiology. His is a member of the Wesleyan Theological Society and author of three books. Today, we’ll focus on his latest, The Radiance of God: Christian Doctrine through the Image of Divine Light. We will also dip into the content of a forthcoming book – Made Known to Them: An Invitation to the Study of Theology – which is an invitation to the study of theology, mainly for beginners, framed by the Emmaus road story in Luke 24. Watch for it at the end of this year. 

Winfield Bevins is some of everything good. He is a church planter who planted both a church and a network before taking on the role of Director of the Center for Church Multiplication at Asbury Theological Seminary. He has since stepped out of that role to lead Creo Arts, a non-proift dedicated to fostering creativity within the Church. Winfield is a prolific writer with books to his credit about Anglicanism, discipleship in the home, church planting, and the creative arts. As others have said, Winfield is a hands-on creator of ideas, books, churches, movements, icons … all of it spreading joy and Jesus. 

Dr. Chris Bounds, professor of theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, has literally written the book on holiness … or should I say books. His most recent, co-authored with Matt Ayers and Caleb Friedman, is called Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology. But wait! There’s more! Dr. Bounds has also done laudable work in the area of worship and has written a book together with Constance Cherry and Mary Brown called Selecting Worship Songs: A Guide for Leaders. In fact, he tells me he has collaborated over the years with Constance Cherry, one of the foremost scholars on worship, and interim President of the Robert Webber Institute for Worship Studies. She has written multiple books on the subject of worship leadership, including The Worship Architect: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services. So that’s the kind of person Chris is collaborating with as he delves into the study of worship. And that’s what we wanted to talk to him about today. I hope you listen. 

Dr. Ellen Marmon serves Professor of Christian Discipleship at Asbury Theological Seminary. For years, she served on the leadership team of Asbury's Doctor of Ministry program, and helped so many pastors work their way through dissertation projects. She has lived the discipling life through and through, so it is a pleasure to introduce her to the Art of Holiness community. We talk about the culture of discipleship, evangelism, and some other things. I hope you listen. 

This episode drops on the first day of the Mega-Manila Annual Conference, where Dr. Luther Oconer presides as Conference Superintendent in the Global Methodist Church. So its fitting that we should listen to him today and get excited about the kind of faith and leadership that is leading that Conference.  Luther Oconer currently serves on the faculty of Asbury Theological Seminary, as an officer with the Wesleyan Theological Society, in addition to his role within the GMC. His focus as an academic is on movements … like the Holiness movement, the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, and church renewal in general. His book, Spirit-Filled Protestantism: Holiness-Pentecostal Revivals and the Making of Filipino Methodist Identity was awarded the Wesleyan Theological Society’s Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book of the Year Award in 2018. We wanted to talk to Luther because he not only has studied Spirit-filled Methodism, but has lived it, so we hope you learn that's good a lot from this episode. 

Some of our best podcasts have been with historians, and today will be no exception. This is a great conversation. Beth Allison Barr is The James Vardaman Endowed Professor of History professor at Baylor University, specializing in Medieval and Early Modern England, Women’s History, Medieval Sermons, and Church History. She received degrees from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Baylor University. While she has written extensively on the historic role of women, especially in medieval England, her best selling books have focused on women in the evangelical world. If you haven’t read The Making of Biblical Womanhood, that’s a must read. And releasing in March … on pre-order through Amazon .. is Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. I’ve had a chance to preview the book, and my goodness … what an insightful study of the relationship between the decline of women’s ordination and the rise of the pastor’s wife. 

Oh, and we reference a blog I wrote some time ago on the ESV. Find it here.