This summer, The UpWords Podcast is spotlighting local leaders shaping faith and community life in Madison. Host Dan Johnson sits down with Jon Anderson, founder and executive director of Collaboration Project, to talk about what happens when churches stop working in silos and start loving their neighborhoods together. Jon traces the winding path from twenty years of local pastoral ministry to launching a nonprofit he once swore he'd never start, shares how COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd became unexpected catalysts for church collaboration, and unpacks why Collaboration Project now organizes its work around neighborhoods rather than issues or denominations. Along the way, Jon tells the story of a chance lunch conversation that turned into 1,200 free prom dresses for high schoolers, reflects on 25 years of Madison Missions and a decade of the Kingdom Justice Summit, and offers a biblical definition of justice rooted in shalom. He closes with a hope for what Dane County's church could look like ten years from now.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Jon Anderson — Founder & Executive Director, Collaboration Project

Jon served as a pastor in the Madison area for twenty years before launching the Collaboration Project in 2019. He has a passion for serving the local church and encouraging it as it serves the most vulnerable. Jon has a history of starting programs centered on engaging the church in local service. He helped begin Madison Missions, a local youth service camp that engages hundreds of students every summer. He also co-founded the Kingdom Justice Summit, which annually brings together hundreds of people from dozens of churches around Christianity and justice in our city. 

RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED 

• Collaboration Project — connecting Dane County churches to love their neighborhoods together
• Kingdom Justice Summit — annual local gathering exploring biblical justice, hosted at Upper House
• Madison Missions — Collaboration Project's local youth service camp, celebrating its 25th summer
• BibleProject's "Justice" video — referenced by Jon as a helpful primer on biblical justice

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Thank you for listening to The UpWords Podcast. We wanted to send you a quick message to let you know that we will be moving to every-other-week podcast releases in July and August this summer, and returning to weekly podcast releases in September. Have a blessed summer!   

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What do evangelicals mean when they talk about “supporting Israel” — and how did Jewish–Christian dialogue evolve from centuries of suspicion into the conversations happening today?

In the third installment of our series built around the Last Questions of Faith community lecture, host Jean Geran welcomes historian and author Dan Hummel for a wide-ranging conversation on Christian Zionism, evangelical theology, and the hard, patient work of talking across big religious differences. Dan traces the roots of Christian support for Israel — from post-Holocaust theology and the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate to Billy Graham’s 1969 meeting with the American Jewish Committee — and explains how dispensationalism shapes the way many evangelicals read Israel into biblical prophecy.

Along the way: why Christian Zionists are an organized minority rather than the evangelical majority, how the U.S.–Israel relationship has been deliberately cultivated over decades, and what a more generous, substantive interfaith dialogue — one that includes the more conservative voices in each tradition — might actually look like.

GUEST BIO

Dan Hummel is a historian of U.S. religion and the author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (Eerdmans, 2023) and Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations. He is the Director of the Lumen Center at the SL Brown Foundation, and is a co-host of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast. His research and writing focus on Christian Zionism, evangelical theology, and the history of U.S.–Israel relations.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Book — The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism (Eerdmans, 2023), foreword by Mark Noll
• Book — Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations
• Mentioned: Amy-Jill Levine (A.J. Levine), New Testament & Jewish studies scholar; earlier in this series
• Mentioned: Nostra Aetate (Second Vatican Council, 1965); E.P. Sanders; N.T. Wright; Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What if many of us have been taught to read the Bible in a way it was never meant to be read? In this special live event recorded by Upper House, BibleProject co-founder Tim Mackie returns to Madison — the city where he earned his PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at UW–Madison and pastored at Blackhawk Church — to share the story behind one of the most widely used Bible-teaching resources in the world.

Tim traces the origins of BibleProject to a coffee-shop conversation with his old college friend Jon Collins, a successful maker of animated explainer videos who had quietly become a “post-Bible Christian.” Their shared question — how do you engage Scripture well? — became the heartbeat of the project. Tim contrasts the “reference book” Bible many of us inherited (turn to the right verse, find the answer) with a richer vision of Scripture as ancient Jewish literary art designed to form wise, mature human beings over a lifetime.

Along the way, he unpacks seven core convictions that have guided BibleProject from the beginning — three about where the Bible comes from, and four about what it is for — closing with the practice of meditation (the Hebrew hagah) and an invitation to try again with Scripture, whatever your history with it.

Whether you’ve loved the Bible, struggled with it, or aren’t sure what to make of it, this conversation offers a fresh invitation to see Scripture as a unified, beautiful, and transformative story that leads to Jesus.

Where the Bible is from:

• Collaborative literature — human authors and God’s Spirit meeting, not passive dictation.
• Unified literature — one interconnected story leading to Jesus.
• Ancient literature — written for us, but not to us; context matters.

What the Bible is for:

• Messianic literature — every theme sets up and finds fulfillment in Jesus.
• Communal literature — designed to be read aloud together over a lifetime.
• Wisdom literature — forming us to discern good from bad, not just memorize answers.
• Meditation literature — hagah: slow, repeated reading that rewards a lifetime of return.

Tim Mackie is co-founder and lead scholar of BibleProject. He holds a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a degree in theology from Western Seminary in Portland. His research focused on the manuscript history of the Bible and the formation of the biblical canon — including his dissertation on the book of Ezekiel, with particular attention to the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls. After years of ministry as a local-church pastor (including at Madison’s Blackhawk Church and later Door of Hope in Portland) and as a professor at Western Seminary, Tim now serves as lead scholar and creative director at BibleProject. He lives in Portland with his wife, Jessica, and their two sons.

https://bibleproject.com/ 

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This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Too many Christians, Jerry Sittser says, sit at a banquet table and eat only one food. In this episode, host Tressa Spingler talks with theologian, historian, and author Dr. Jerry Sittser — professor emeritus of theology at Whitworth University — about the newly revised edition of his book Water from a Deep Well and the spiritual inheritance many believers overlook.

Drawing on the monks’ rhythm of life, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the mystics, and the great tradition of historic orthodoxy, Sittser invites listeners to rediscover something ancient rather than chase something new. He reflects on inhabiting time rather than spending it, beginning the week with rest, the practice of silence (“get up to slow down”), and what the early church can still teach a hurried, distracted age.

The conversation turns honest and personal as Sittser — who lost his wife and a daughter in an automobile accident — describes suffering not as something to overcome or avoid but as something to step into and find God within. It’s an invitation to live in the tension of beauty and sorrow, and to take the small first steps toward a deeper, well-rooted faith.

YOU WILL LEARN

• Why so many Christians “eat only one food” — and what the full diet of historic Christianity offers
• How a January course at a snowed-in mountain camp became the seed of Water from a Deep Well
• The monks’ gift of rhythm: inhabiting time instead of consuming it, and beginning the week with rest
• The Desert Fathers and Mothers — stranger, funnier, and wiser than they first appear
• Union of relationship vs. union of absorption: a healthier way to read the mystics
• Suffering as an inevitable part of discipleship — and the soul’s capacity to hold beauty and sorrow at once
• Where to begin when you feel spiritually dry: small, meaningful, deep first steps

GUEST BIO

Dr. Jerry Sittser is professor emeritus of theology and a senior fellow at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, specializing in the history of Christianity, Christian spirituality, and religion in American public life. The author of nine books — including A Grace Disguised, The Will of God as a Way of Life, Resilient Faith, and Water from a Deep Well — he has spent decades helping Christians recover the wisdom and deep roots of the historic church for everyday life.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Jerry Sittser’s website: https://www.jerrysittser.com/
• Water from a Deep Well (revised edition): https://www.jerrysittser.com/books
• Practicing the Way podcast series with John Mark Comer: https://www.practicingtheway.org/podcasts/practicing-the-way 
• More episodes & SLBF Studio at Upper House: https://slbf.org/studio

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Jean Geran sits down with biblical scholar Seth Whitaker to explore a question at the heart of Christianity's origins: how do Jews and Christians read Scripture differently—and what holds their interpretive traditions together?

Drawing on his doctoral research at the University of St Andrews on the use of the Psalms in the book of Hebrews, Seth argues that the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews wrestling with their own religious heritage in light of the Messiah. Rather than a clean break, he traces a story of deep continuity — one in which the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the same God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Jean and Seth examine why the Old Testament can feel “more vengeful” than the New, and why that contrast is more caricature than reality. Seth offers a striking image: Scripture is not a flat plain where every verse carries equal weight, but a landscape of mountains and valleys, with high peaks of revelation — like God revealing himself as “abounding in steadfast love” at Sinai — that give us a vantage point on the harder passages.

The conversation also draws on a previous UpWords episode with AJ Levine to consider what Christians might learn from Jewish interpretive practices: the “70 faces” of Scripture, a comfort with multiple readings, and the practice of reading sacred texts in community as a guard against going off the rails. Seth closes by tracing how rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity gradually defined themselves over and against one another — shaped by events like the expulsion of Jews from Rome, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the Bar Kokhba revolt — and why he encourages readers to approach the Hebrew Bible less like a prophecy-fulfillment checklist and more like an ongoing dialogue.

Whether you've wondered how Christianity emerged from Judaism, struggled with the difficult passages of the Old Testament, or simply want a richer way to read sacred texts, this conversation offers thoughtful insight and plenty to ponder.

YOU WILL LEARN

• Why every New Testament author was a Jew making sense of an inherited tradition — and why that changes how we read Christian origins
• Eschatology as a central interpretive lens: how “the last things” reshaped the way early believers read their Scriptures
• The same God, not two: pushing back on the ancient Marcionite split between the God of the Old and New Testaments
• Sinai as a “mountain peak” — God's mercy to the thousandth generation versus judgment to the third and fourth
• Scripture as mountains and valleys, not a flat plain of equal-weight proof texts
• Love and judgment appear in both Testaments — including in the Psalms and in the teaching of Jesus
• The “70 faces” of Scripture and what Christians can learn from Jewish interpretation in community
• How the early church's patience, love, and care across class lines set it apart in Rome
•  Three historical turning points that drove Judaism and Christianity apart: the expulsion of Jews from Rome (49 CE), the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), and the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE)
• The Septuagint, Isaiah 7:14, and how competing authoritative texts shaped competing interpretations
• Reading the Hebrew Bible as a dance and dialogue rather than a prophecy-fulfillment checklist

ABOUT THE GUEST

Seth Whitaker is a New Testament scholar who completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews, where he worked with David Moffitt on the Epistle to the Hebrews. His research focuses on Christian origins and how the New Testament authors interpreted the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. His book, Eschatology and the Use of Psalms in Hebrews: Songs for the Last Days, is published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark in the Library of Second Temple Studies.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Eschatology and the Use of Psalms in Hebrews: Songs for the Last Days — Seth Whitaker (Bloomsbury T&T Clark)
• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church — Alan Kreider
• Previous episode of The UpWords Podcast with AJ Levine on Jewish and Christian readings of Scripture

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What do you do when the church — the very community that's supposed to reflect the love of God — becomes a source of real pain? Host Dan Johnson sits down with Scott Bessenecker, author of Bad Religion, Good News: An Honest Guide to Spiritual Disappointment, for an unflinching conversation about church hurt, institutional failure, and the long road toward healing.

Drawing on four decades of campus ministry with InterVarsity, Scott shares about being both a victim and participant in the church's sins, the role of self-examination in avoiding the spiral into deconstruction, and why honesty about the church's failures doesn't have to mean abandoning Christian community altogether. He also reflects on his own experience with disappointment with God — including his recovery from a stroke — and what it means to discover that God's presence in grief may be more powerful than miraculous rescue.

Whether you've been wounded by a leader, disillusioned by an institution, or are simply trying to maintain an honest and hopeful faith, this conversation offers both clarity and compassion for the journey.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What prompted Scott to write Bad Religion, Good News
• Being both a victim and a participant in the sins of the church
• Why self-examination is essential to navigating disappointment without becoming toxic
• The difference between deconstruction and honest disappointment
• How to talk openly about the church's failures without dismissing its good
• The hard work of forgiving an institution that may never apologize
• Scott's personal experience with a stroke and finding God in grief rather than rescue
• When it's time to leave a church community — and how to do it well
• Signs of spiritual hunger in the current generation of young adults
• What a healthier American church might look like in a decade

GUEST
Scott Bessenecker is a longtime ministry leader and author who spent four decades with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. His new book, Bad Religion, Good News: An Honest Guide to Spiritual Disappointment, invites readers into honest conversations about the church's failures — and how to find deeper faith on the other side.

RESOURCES

https://heraldpress.com/9781513817644/bad-religion-good-news/

https://slbf.org/studio

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What would it look like if the church took seriously the 80,000 hours most people spend at work over a lifetime? In this conversation, host John Terrill sits down with Matt Rusten — pastor-turned-vocational-discipleship-advocate and author of Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work — to explore one of the most neglected dimensions of Christian formation: our everyday work.

Matt shares the story of Tom Nelson — founder of Made to Flourish — who famously confessed to his congregation that he had been "committing pastoral malpractice" by equipping people for a minority of their lives while ignoring where they spent most of their time. That confession became the seedbed for an entire movement, and it shapes every page of Matt's new book.

Together, John and Matt trace the biblical arc from creation to new creation and show why work — far from being a necessary evil — is woven into the fabric of what it means to be human. They discuss four postures Christians take toward workplace engagement (boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage gloves, and work gloves), unpack a powerful framework for pastoral care drawn from the stages of enchantment and disenchantment in Ecclesiastes, and offer practical handles for how sermons, small groups, and outreach ministries can begin integrating a theology of vocation — without creating new programs or hiring a "faith and work pastor."

Whether you are a pastor, a church leader, or simply someone wrestling with purpose in your daily work, this conversation offers both grounding and hope.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• The origin story of Made to Flourish and the "pastoral malpractice" confession that launched a movement
• Why faith and work discipleship is a biblical, historical, and pastoral priority
• A creation–fall–redemption–new creation framework for understanding work
• Four postures for cultural engagement: boxing gloves, latex gloves, camouflage, and work gloves
• Lessons from Lesslie Newbigin and Tim Keller on mission, vocation, and the local church
• Practical tools for pastors: preaching, small groups, outreach, and vocational formation
• The enchantment–disenchantment–re-enchantment cycle and how the Gospel reframes work
• Made to Flourish's three initiatives: Common Good Magazine, Scatter, and pastoral residencies

 GUEST

Matt Rusten — Executive Director of Made to Flourish; author of Pastoring for Monday (IVP, 2026)

LINKS & RESOURCES

Pastoring for Monday (IVP Press)

Made to Flourish

Common Good Magazine

More episodes & podcast offerings — SLBF Studio

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What does it look like when a Jewish New Testament scholar sits down with a Christian host to talk about how two ancient traditions read the same texts — and reach such different conclusions? That's exactly the conversation host Jean Geran has with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine in this wide-ranging episode recorded in Madison, Wisconsin.

AJ Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and one of the most respected voices in Jewish-Christian dialogue today. She recently joined us for our Questions of Faith event in Oshkosh and spent time in Wisconsin as a scholar in residence at First United Methodist Church in Madison.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• How growing up Jewish in a Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts led AJ to a lifetime of studying the New Testament
• Why the Torah is said to have "70 faces" — and what that means for how Jews and Christians approach interpretation differently
• What Jews and Christians share in terms of canon, prayer, and Scripture — and where they meaningfully diverge
• AJ's surprisingly practical take on salvation, Torah-observance, and whether Jews worry about getting into heaven
• Why Jesus used parables — and why he rarely explained them
• The difference between Jewish communal identity and Christian individualism, and what each tradition can learn from the other
• Baseball vs. football: a memorable analogy for understanding Jewish and Christian orientations toward time, memory, and the future
• The Hebrew concept of tzaddik (the righteous one) and what it means to bless the city you're in
• Whether shared stories can bridge religious and cultural divides — and AJ's honest, unsentimental answer
• Lament as relationship: what Tevye, the Psalms, and Job have in common, and why arguing with God keeps us in the conversation

GUEST
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science, and the author of numerous books including Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi and The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

This week on The UpWords Podcast, we're bringing you something a little different — and we think you're going to love it.

We're sharing the first episode of a brand-new podcast series from the Lumen Center and SLBF STUDIO: American Evangelicals, A History Podcast. Hosted by historians John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra, this series takes a thoughtful, deep dive into one of the most talked-about religious movements in American history.

In this opening episode, they start with a deceptively simple question: What is an American evangelical? Beginning with the extraordinary story of Nathan Cole, an ordinary Connecticut farmer who rode twelve miles on horseback in 1740 to hear George Whitefield preach, the historians trace the origins of what would become a world-shaping religious movement.

LEARN more about the series - https://slbf.org/americanevangelicalspodcast

Along the way, they discuss:

• The Bebbington Quadrilateral — the four markers historians use to define evangelicalism: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism
• Why the "new birth" or born-again experience is so central to evangelical identity
• George Whitefield's remarkable celebrity and his transatlantic influence
• How evangelicalism was, in its early form, a disruptive and progressive movement challenging established religious authority
• The complex relationship between the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution

If you've ever felt like the word "evangelical" is confusing, contested, or a little loaded, this conversation brings real historical clarity. This is episode one of a three-part introduction to evangelicalism — with much more to come in the series.

SUBSCRIBE to the podcast in your favorite podcast app - https://americanevangelicalsahistorypodcast.buzzsprout.com

And if this episode resonates, share it with someone who wants a deeper, more nuanced understanding of American evangelical history.

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour