Unhurried Living | Helping Christians Rest Deeper & Lead Better

We live in a world that can leave us feeling scattered. Our attention goes in one direction, our responsibilities in another, while our minds race ahead into the future or circle back into the past.

 

In this episode, I explore a different way of living: a life increasingly gathered around one Center. Drawing on Eugene Peterson’s reflections on the oneness of God, Joan Chittister’s description of the Benedictine practice of Statio, Bonaventure’s story of Brother Pacificus, and Paul’s vision in Ephesians of becoming a dwelling place for God, we’ll consider what it means to move from fragmentation toward presence and from restlessness toward the peace of Christ.

 

Perhaps an undivided life isn’t something we achieve through greater effort. Perhaps it is something God forms in us as we learn to be where we are, receive the grace of the present moment, and allow our scattered lives to be gathered into his life.

 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn or learn more about Unhurried Living programs on their website. 

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

What if your life isn’t something to rush through, but something to walk through… with intention, awareness, and God’s presence?

 

In this episode, Gem invites you to rediscover the ancient idea of pilgrimage, not as a trip you take, but as a way you live. Drawing from her experience leading pilgrimages in Italy, she shares how the spirit of pilgrimage can reshape your everyday life.

 

You’ll explore simple, grounded practices that help you:

• Set meaningful intention in your daily life
• Engage honest self-reflection that leads to love
• Live open, aware, and willing to God’s invitations
• Deepen your relationship with God without striving
• Cultivate presence in a hurried world

 

This is not about adding more to your life. It’s about learning how to walk differently through the life you already have.

 

If you’ve been feeling rushed, disconnected, or spiritually dry, this episode offers a gentle and grounded way forward.

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Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more on the Unhurried Living website and her new book, Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

We live in an age of constant distraction. Our bodies may be in one place while our minds race somewhere else, leaving us physically present but mentally and emotionally absent. What might help us recover a more attentive, peaceful way of living with God?

 

In this episode, Alan talks with pastor and author Jay Y. Kim about his new book, The Pace of Peace: Distraction, Attention, and the Gifts of an Examined Life. Drawing on the ancient Ignatian practice of the Examen, Jay describes a path from absence to presence, striving to gratitude, reactivity to reflection, pride and shame to confession, and self-will to trust in God’s will.

 

Together, Alan and Jay explore why peace has a pace, how our attention is shaping the people we are becoming, and why experience alone doesn’t necessarily make us wise. They also talk about the relationship between control and fear, the importance of reflection and discernment, and how the Examen can become more than a spiritual practice at the end of the day. It can help form a more attentive way of living throughout the day.

 

If you find yourself distracted, reactive, or moving too quickly to notice what God is doing in and around you, this conversation offers a gracious invitation to become more present to God, to others, and to your own life.

 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn or learn more about Unhurried Living programs on their website. 

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

 

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life rarely unfolds the way we imagined. In those moments, many of us tighten our grip, while pushing, trying or angsting ourselves into stress or unhealth.

 

In this episode of the Unhurried Living Podcast, Gem welcomes author and speaker Vivian Mabuni for a thoughtful conversation about surrender, trust, and learning to live with open hands before God.

 

Drawing from her book Open Hands, Willing Heart, Vivian shares honestly about the challenge of saying yes to God in difficult seasons and how deeper peace often emerges not through striving, but through yielding ourselves more fully to his care and leadership.

 

Together they explore:

• Why control and striving quietly shape our spiritual lives
• How surrender becomes a pathway to peace and purpose
• Trusting God when life does not go according to plan
• The difference between mechanical faith and relational intimacy with God
• Finding courage and joy in uncertain seasons

 

This conversation offers gentle wisdom for anyone navigating disappointment, transition, anxiety, or the longing to follow Jesus in a more grounded and wholehearted way.

 

If you’ve been carrying pressure, trying to hold everything together, or wondering how to trust God more deeply, this episode will encourage you to loosen your grip and rediscover the freedom of open-handed living.

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Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more on the Unhurried Living website and her new book, Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

What if the Old Testament law was more spacious than we imagine?

 

In this episode, Alan Fadling explores a surprising question: How much time did God set aside in Israel’s calendar for worship, rest, celebration, and remembrance?

 

Weekly Sabbaths. Annual festivals. New Moon observances. A sabbatical year for the land. Jubilee. Taken together, these rhythms reveal a God who was not forming a people around relentless productivity, but around worship, trust, gratitude, and enoughness.

 

Alan reflects on Israel’s struggle to receive this gift, our own modern “burnout economy,” and the striking connection between Sabbath and freedom from slavery. Perhaps rest is not merely recovery from working too much. Perhaps it is part of the spacious life God intended for us.

 

In this episode:

• The surprising amount of rest built into Israel’s calendar
• Why Israel struggled to practice the sabbatical year and Jubilee
• What Sabbath has to do with freedom from slavery
• Why our burnout economy makes these ancient rhythms newly relevant
• How rest becomes an apprenticeship in trusting God
• What these rhythms might mean for the way we live and lead today

 

“Slaves don’t get Sabbaths. Free people do.”

 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn or learn more about Unhurried Living programs on their website. 

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Most of us have experienced teaching that gives us a lot to think about, but doesn’t necessarily change much how we live. In this conversation about spiritual formation and Christian leadership, Alan and Gem explore why transformation rarely comes through information alone.

 

Through their years leading retreats, workshops, and the PACE leadership cohort at Unhurried Living, they have discovered that growth often happens in quieter ways. It unfolds as people learn to listen to God, reflect on their lives, and share honestly with others.

 

In this episode, they talk about the rhythms that help learning move from the mind into the soul. These include practices like solitude and silence, offering teaching in smaller portions, creating meaningful interaction, allowing a spacious schedule, and paying attention to the dynamics within a group.

 

If you lead retreats, facilitate small groups, serve in ministry, or simply desire a deeper life with God, this conversation offers insight into how thoughtful learning environments can support lasting spiritual growth.

 

You may discover that the way we gather and learn together matters more than we often realize.

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Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more on the Unhurried Living website and her new book, Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

 

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

What does it mean to become an apprentice of Jesus—not just as an individual, but as part of a community shaped by the kingdom of God?

 

In this episode of the Unhurried Living Podcast, Alan Fadling is joined by friend and colleague Matt Fogle for a thoughtful conversation with Keas Keasler about his new IVP Academic book, Kingdom Apprenticeship: Dallas Willard’s Formational Theology and Missional Vision.

 

Together they explore Dallas Willard’s understanding of spiritual formation, grace as both pardon and power, the church as a community of discipleship, and what it means for ordinary Christians and ministry leaders to become people who increasingly reflect the life of Christ. Whether you’re a pastor, church leader, or simply longing for deeper transformation, this conversation offers a hopeful vision for becoming apprentices of Jesus in every area of life.

 

In this episode you’ll discover:

• Why spiritual formation is about more than gaining knowledge
• Dallas Willard’s vision for grace, discipleship, and transformation
• How the church becomes a “school of life” where people learn to live in God’s kingdom
• Why formation is both deeply personal and profoundly communal
• Practical encouragement for pastors and ministry leaders seeking lasting spiritual growth

 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn or learn more about Unhurried Living programs on their website. 

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Why can two people experience the same conversation, meeting, or problem so differently?

 

In this episode, Gem talks with Enneagram teacher, management consultant, and executive coach Joey Stabile Schewee, author of When Working Together Doesn’t Work, about what’s happening beneath our behavior and why understanding how we process the world can transform our relationships.

 

Joey explores the Enneagram’s three Processing Centers: Doing, Feeling, and Thinking, including what she calls the “processing divide.” She also unpacks the three stances, Independent, Responsive, and Solitary, and how they influence our relationship with time, our reference point, and the ways we engage with others.

 

Then Joey walks through all nine Enneagram types, offering a brief, accessible description of each and helpful clues for recognizing your own type.

 

Whether you’re new to the Enneagram or have been using it for years, this conversation offers practical insight for greater self-awareness, healthier communication, and more gracious relationships at work and beyond.

Connect with Joey on IG @enneagramparents

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Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more on the Unhurried Living website and her new book, Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Over the years, more than one person has described the ministry of Unhurried Living as prophetic. For a long time, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that assessment.

 

In this episode, I reflect on insights from Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way and an observation from recovery historian Ernest Kurtz that helped me see prophetic ministry in a new light.

 

We often remember the dramatic moments of prophets like Elijah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist. But what if their hidden seasons were just as important as their public ones? What if the margins, rather than the center, are where God does some of his deepest work?

 

Together we’ll explore:

• Why prophets are often formed in hidden places
• What life on the margins can teach us about God
• How solitude helps us resist the assumptions of our culture
• Why weakness and dependence are central to spiritual formation
• How an unhurried life can quietly challenge our culture’s definitions of success

 

Whether you’re leading, serving, recovering, or simply seeking a deeper life with God, this reflection offers an invitation to rediscover the living center around which all of life is meant to turn.

 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn or learn more about Unhurried Living programs on their website. 

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

In this episode of the Unhurried Living Podcast, Gem reflects on a childhood memory of dandelions and clover to explore a deeper question: how do we decide what is a weed and what is a flower in our lives?

 

Gem considers how interruptions, disappointments, and detours may actually be opportunities for spiritual growth and fullness of being.

 

If you are longing for deeper Christian spiritual formation, a more peaceful response to life’s disruptions, and a fresh perspective on what feels unwanted, this conversation will guide you toward a more spacious and grace-filled way of living.

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Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more on the Unhurried Living website and her new book, Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Learn about PACE: Certificate in Leadership and Soul Care

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.