It’s so refreshing to hear a group of believers validate concerns, questions, and doubts, while encouraging nuanced conversation. I love a Christian podcast that is self aware, and not only thinks critically, but asks the listeners to also think critically and be thoughtful. It hits hard topics but maintains hope; that’s a balance that can be hard to find in Christian podcasts. Often I encounter the extremes of either pushing for blind faith, or total deconstruction and abandonment of faith- but this calls for neither of those things. It’s very thoughtful.

Really love the attitudes on display here. Most people rush to answers so it’s refreshing to hear thoughtful discussion by people willing to sit in the tension of exploring questions.

Totally misses the mark. This podcast claims to want to reach young adults who are evangelical adjacent, or people who’ve distanced themselves from the church, while being steeped in the most evangelical cultural jargon. This communicates a message of conformity- “hey, come adjust to us and our tribe’s customs/jargon” instead of actually “meeting people where they’re at”, speaking their language, showing care and empathy for issues important to them. The language used by one of the more problematic cohosts in particular comes off as pretentious, nonchalantly writing off genuine concerns people of their target audience have as “basic and easy” if you just “do your homework”. Must be nice for it to be so easy. It’s not hopeless, because these guys or whoever came up with this came to the conclusion that these questions and this need exists. Christian nationalism is a problem and there are people who want more out of the faith than the nominal cultural “Christianity” that is prevalent today. That being said, the execution is very poor here (not the production value; it’s excellent, especially for an evangelical product). I would recommend the following to the hosts/leadership: 1) educate yourself on the history of your culture, its impact and how your culture is perceived (Tim Alberta’s newest book is a great place to start), 2) take an introspective look at your personal biases, how they are informed by your culture and how that informs your vernacular/jargon, 3) prepare better - a more focused approach on specific issues/sub issues. Know exactly what you’re going to talk about, map out the specific examples and metaphors you might/could use; bonus: this will create more content for you, and 4) drop the evangelical jargon. Good luck!