May 05, 2026

Why Therapy Can’t Replace the Church

57 minutes

You will find many books on the biblical and practical importance of the local church. I wrote one myself a few years ago with Jonathan Leeman called Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. But few books can match the way Brad Edwards shows us the need for the church amid rampant anxiety, division, and individualism. Not only our churches but even whole societies would be transformed by implementing the wisdom found in this book, called The Reason for Church.

Brad is the church planter of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado. His debut book has been justly acclaimed. He won the 2025 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award and also finished first in the Church and Pastoral Leadership category. He was the winner of The Gospel Coalition's award for First-Time Author that year as well. I’m grateful that he joins me now to talk about everything from authority and institutions to anxiety and whether unity should be the goal for a church.

In This Episode:

00:00 – Opening: power, trust, and the temptation toward conformity

00:26 – Introducing Brad Edwards and The Reason for Church

01:41 – Ranking the causes behind declining trust in church authority

04:05 – Accountability, social media, and the limits of online justice

08:25 – Churches, institutions, platforms, and marketplace logic

11:17 – What changes people’s minds about the need for church?

13:27 – Church planting in Boulder County and Colorado’s anti-institutional culture

17:01 – Therapy culture, spiritual abuse, and what the book could not fully address

22:19 – Institution building, movements, and building a remnant

26:30 – Technology, schedules, and the challenge of spiritual formation

29:09 – Individuality versus individualism

34:39 – Should unity be the goal of a church?

37:49 – What surprised Brad most about becoming a pastor

39:21 – AI, agency, and the future of formation

43:07 – Hartmut Rosa, resonance, gambling, and the desire for control

46:55 – AI, education, responsibility, and authorship

52:05 – The church as remnant and refuge in a changing world

53:19 – What pastors want their congregations to know

56:41 – Closing and Gospelbound outro

Resources Mentioned:

The Reason for Church by Brad Edwards

Rediscover Church by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman

Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam

Yuval Levin’s work on institutions

Bully Pulpit by Michael J. Kruger

GIRLS® by Freya India

The Reason for God by Tim Keller

Center Church by Tim Keller

Dominion by Tom Holland

Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah

The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa

PostEverything, Brad Edwards’s podcast with John Homsher

Harper’s Magazine article on young AI founders

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By The Gospel Coalition, Collin Hansen

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