Spiritual Formation at Global Scale, with Gary Haugen and Kevin Jenkins
Conversing with Mark Labberton
How can a Christian humanitarian organization keep Christ at the center of its mission while working in the world’s most difficult places, with thousands of staff spread across dozens of countries and cultures? Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, and Kevin Jenkins, former president and CEO of World Vision International, both understand their organizations to be foundationally Christian. But even in ministries where you would expect spiritual formation to be at the center, it takes work to help large global teams live up to their mission. Speaking with Mark...
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Permanent Questions: Celebrating Ten Years of Conversing, with David Brooks
Conversing with Mark Labberton
What if the deepest problems in American life were pre-political? It’s often said that “culture is upstream from politics”—meaning that what we see in political news, speeches, ads, debates, and elections is symptomatic of a deeper cause. The conflicts, troubles, injustices, and sufferings that many people experience as political are more likely rooted in moral and spiritual crises. This week’s episode marks ten years of Conversing, which launched on October 8, 2016. To celebrate, Mark Labberton is joined by David Brooks, a staff writer at The Atlantic and presidential fellow...
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A Ukrainian Pastor on Faith, Hope, and the Terror of War, with Fyodor Raichynets
Conversing with Mark Labberton
War has wracked Ukraine for 1,678 days—outlasting both World Wars. In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Fyodor Raichynets—a theologian at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, pastor of a church in Bucha, and a military chaplain serving on the front lines in Kyiv—explains what it is like to be under near-constant drone and ballistic attack and how that has affected his faith, memory, and experience of time. War has reshaped the way he loves, forgives, and serves; it has induced a fear even to hope. Together, they discuss trauma as a national condition and the temptation...
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Attention, Agency, and Power, with David French
Conversing with Mark Labberton
In a country splitting apart over so much, three words point toward a better way to live: attention, agency, and power. David French returns to Conversing to take up all three. A New York Times opinion writer since January 2023, French writes from a conservative theological background about law, culture, religion, and armed conflict, and has found himself writing directly into the middle of divided hostilities. French comments on how attention, agency, and power took shape in him, and how each gets distorted by partisan fundamentalisms (on both the right and left) built to shut conversation...
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Reclaiming Civic Agency, with Michael Wear
Conversing with Mark Labberton
Underneath all the political polarization, rage-baiting, punditry, and aggression, there is a crisis of civic agency. American citizens feel politically disempowered and undermined. And the effect, over time, will be that we lose our ability to self-govern. What is needed is a path between belligerence and withdrawal. In this episode, Michael Wear (Center for Christianity and Public Life, author of The Spirit of Our Politics) joins Mark Labberton to discuss provocation and political effectiveness; the value of gentleness in public life; concrete signs of hope in local political action; the...
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Loud Justice, with Sharon Cohn Wu
Conversing with Mark Labberton
“It is not just that God has a heart for justice,” says Sharon Cohn Wu (International Justice Mission), “it is that it is inextricably his character and cannot be otherwise, and that it is so perfectly married with mercy and grace that we somehow survive.” Sharon Cohn Wu has served for more than twenty years with IJM, where she is now regional president of North America. A lawyer (JD, Harvard Law), she has spent her career calling for “loud justice”—that is, visible, swift, community-wide accountability—using the criminal justice system and political will to help IJM achieve...
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Win or Lose, Run for Something, with Jeanelle Austin
Conversing with Mark Labberton
In February 2026, Jeanelle Austin filed for Minnesota Senate District 62. She started canvassing her district during a polar vortex, and persisted through triple-digit summer heat. And in August she lost in the Democratic Primary. In this episode, she sits down with Mark Labberton to reflect on what this experience has taught her about power, democracy, and what citizenship and neighbor-love means in the South Minneapolis neighborhood where she grew up. The executive director of Rise & Remember—the nonprofit that preserves the memorial at George Floyd Square—Austin followed a...
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Women, Misogyny, and the Bible, with Beth Moore
Conversing with Mark Labberton
Growing up, Beth Moore was taught that 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 were the whole of what scripture had to say about women: submissive and silent. The founder of Living Proof Ministries and one of the most widely read Bible teachers in America, Moore objects to a hermeneutic limited to those passages. In this episode, Mark Labberton revisits his 2018 conversation with Beth Moore, recorded in the months following her viral open letter, “A Letter to My Brothers.” Almost 10 years later, debates over women in leadership and whether women are free to use their full gifts in the full...
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The Human Heart, with David Anderson
Conversing with Mark Labberton
Our hearts are restless, says Saint Augustine, until they find their rest in God. The biological science and the spiritual metaphor are in agreement here. Over the course of billions of beats, our hearts never stop to rest. Your magnificent heart exchanges or pumps your entire blood volume, just over a gallon, every single minute. (Athlete hearts can pump up to 10 gallons per minute!) In this episode, Mark Labberton discusses matters of the heart with his close friend Dr. David Anderson, a cardiologist of four decades who trained at Johns Hopkins and helped launch one of the first...
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The God of the Unfinished, with Walter Brueggemann
Conversing with Mark Labberton
The Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann said, is an old text that simply refuses to stay old. “It reads like it was written yesterday.” For him, God offers no artificial closure, but is active in the meantime, and at peace with the “unfinished.” Walter Brueggemann died on June 5, 2025, at the age of ninety-two, and his own influence is unfinished. This episode is from the Conversing archives: a conversation Mark Labberton hosted with Brueggemann at Fuller Seminary for the 2015 Fuller Forum “Justice, Grace, and Law in the Mission of God.” Brueggemann was an Old Testament scholar for...
info_outlineIn a season of national disorientation, Mark Labberton replays a luminous conversation with Quaker writer and contemplative Parker J. Palmer, whose voice from a few years back still sounds like it was recorded this morning.
"What matters is faithfulness."
In this episode with Mark Labberton, Palmer reflects on contemplation as penetrating illusion and touching reality, and how that work shows up in vocation, suffering, and public life. Together they discuss the difference between true and false crosses, mistaking the vessel for the treasure, and why wholeness isn't perfection. They also examine the pre-political work of weaving civic community and what the church owes a fractured democracy.
Episode Highlights
"Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."
"Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."
"On the other side of a gift often lies a pothole that we have to watch out for."
"Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."
"It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."
About Parker J. Palmer
Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist focused on education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. A Quaker, he holds a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley and is founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His ten books—including The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, Healing the Heart of Democracy, and On the Brink of Everything—have sold nearly two million copies in ten languages. He has received fourteen honorary doctorates. Learn more and follow at couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer and parkerjpalmer.substack.com.
Helpful Links and Resources
Parker J. Palmer (Center for Courage & Renewal): https://couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer/
Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer: https://parkerjpalmer.substack.com/
The Growing Edge podcast: https://www.newcomerpalmer.com/podcast
On the Brink of Everything (most recent): https://couragerenewal.org/library/on-the-brink-of-everything-grace-gravity-and-getting-old/
The Courage to Teach, 20th Anniversary Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Teach-Exploring-Landscape-Anniversary/dp/1119413044
Henri Nouwen Society: https://www.henrinouwen.org/about-henri-nouwen
Show Notes
- Replaying a conversation amid national turbulence
- Quaker writer, contemplative, activist; PhD, UC Berkeley
- Founding the Center for Courage & Renewal
- "Sage" reframed as hunger—writing born of unanswered questions
- Berkeley in the sixties; community organizing in DC
- Discovering Thomas Merton "a year after he died"
- Writing as contemplation, not downloading of ideas
- How institutions tend to squelch the contemplative impulse
- Contemplation defined by function, not technique
- "Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."
- Maureen and her daughter—a contemplative without a cushion
- Henri Nouwen at L'Arche Daybreak—known as a fellow human
- "Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."
- True cross vs. false cross; culturally imposed pain
- Three deep dives into clinical depression
- "Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."
- Treasure in earthen vessels—protecting the vessel as sin
- Bridge-building: a Jewish chancellor calls about a "Christian book"
- Taos high desert: "It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."
- Moral judgment without speaking "in the name of God"
- Pre-political work—Burke's "little platoons," Lincoln on danger from within
- Divide-and-conquer politics as betrayal of the church's calling
#ParkerPalmer #Contemplation #Quaker #Vocation #Wholeness #CivicEngagement #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.