Conversing with Mark Labberton

Church planting is thriving at the very moment the church faces a crisis of credibility. What if the problem isn't too few churches—but too narrow a vision of what church is for?
In this episode with Mark Labberton, Brad Brisco reflects on church planting shaped by Christology before strategy, mission before institution, and incarnation before programs. Together they discuss missionary imagination in the modern West, co-vocational ministry, alternative expressions of church, micro-church networks, church growth assumptions, vocation and work, justice and proximity, and what it means to return—daily—to the ways of Jesus.
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Episode Highlights
"We need to help church planters think less like pastors starting a Sunday service and more like missionaries engaging a unique context."
"If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don't need more of those."
"Mission isn't really ours. It's about what God's already doing."
"We can say we're gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus."
"The only way the church gets this far off is by being void of the ways of Jesus."
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About Brad Brisco
Brad Brisco is a missiologist and church planting leader, trainer, and writer who has spent more than twenty-five years coaching and resourcing church planters across North America. After beginning his career in the restaurant industry, Brisco entered ministry through church planting and later joined Send Network, where his work has focused on alternative expressions of church, co-vocational leadership, and missionally engaged discipleship.
He also serves on the national leadership team for Forge America Mission Training Network. Brad is the co-author of "Missional Essentials," a 12-week small group study guide, "The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run" and "Next Door As It Is In Heaven."
He is widely known for challenging church growth assumptions and for advocating Christ-centered, incarnational approaches that integrate faith, work, and neighborhood life.
Brisco remains closely connected to decentralized microchurch networks and innovative models of mission in urban contexts.
Follow him on X: https://x.com/bradleybrisco
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Helpful Links and Resources
Missional Church Network https://www.missionalchurchnetwork.com/
Send Network https://sendnetwork.com
The Shaping of Things to Come – Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost https://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Come-Innovation-Mission/dp/1565636597
Permanent Revolution – Alan Hirsch https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Revolution-Apostolic-Imagination-Practice/dp/0470907746
Tampa Underground https://www.tampaunderground.com/
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Show Notes
Church planting boom alongside institutional church crisis
Restaurant business background shaping entrepreneurial ministry instincts
Conversion, seminary, and inherited assumptions about "real" ministry
Early confusion about church planting as a category
From planting one church to training planters nationally
Church defined beyond buildings toward embodied communities
"If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don't need more of those."
Missionary context of the modern West
Do we need more churches or more ways of being church?
Underserved neighborhoods and unengaged people groups
Declining interest in traditional church programs
Airplane anecdote exposing attractional church assumptions
"You just need a really good sound system and a good speaker."
Mission versus Sunday-centric church planting
Christology–missiology–ecclesiology framework
Jesus shaping mission before shaping church
"Most church planters start with ecclesiology rather than the ways of Jesus."
Church growth movement assumptions challenged
Recapturing the missionary nature of the church
Church as sent people, not religious service provider
Incarnational presence in neighborhoods and workplaces
"Mission isn't something we do over there."
Participation in the mission of God
"The mission isn't really ours—it's about what God's already doing."
Individual salvation versus communal discipleship
Robust Christology beyond the cross alone
Incarnation, life, resurrection, and kingdom shaping mission
Brokenness, proximity, and responsibility for place
Mission as communal, not individual activity
Bi-vocational and co-vocational ministry distinctions
Marketplace calling as missional advantage
Sacred–secular divide challenged
Time constraints forcing alternative church models
Team-based leadership as non-negotiable
Theology of work as essential formation
Financial freedom reshaping church planting incentives
Fully funded models drifting toward attractional pressure
Co-vocational longevity and sustainability
Microchurch networks and decentralized leadership
Tampa Underground as proof of concept
Mission-first communities addressing justice and brokenness
"Mission is the mother of adaptive ecclesiology."
Diverse expressions emerging from contextual mission
Established churches learning from church planting frameworks
Incremental versus wholesale institutional change
Sending churches supporting new expressions
Calling the church back to the ways of Jesus
"We can be gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus."
Credibility gap between Jesus and the church today
Recalibrating discipleship for public faithfulness
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#ChurchPlanting
#MissionalChurch
#FaithAndWork
#Discipleship
#ChristianLeadership
#PublicFaith
#Vocation
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Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Christian faith has been politicized. Arguably, this is not new. But what we see in America and other societies has a jarring impact for those who seek a credible public Christian faith. To examine how Christian faith has been politicized in recent years, preacher and public theologian Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove joins Mark Labberton, asking what moral resistance requires in this authoritarian moment.
"I couldn't know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice."
In this episode: Wilson-Hartgrove reflects on his Southern Baptist formation, his political awakening, and a conversion that reordered his understanding of Jesus, justice, and public life.
And: Trying to understand Christian nationalism, authoritarian power, poverty and race, moral fusion movements, just war theology, the discipline of prayer, and how churches can reclaim biblical values for the common good.
Episode Highlights
"I couldn't know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice."
"The radical separation of faith from justice was a way my faith was stolen from me."
"We are in an authoritarian crisis that tells its own version of reality."
"Christian nationalism offers an alternative reality that very sincere people come to trust."
"Prayer interrupts the liturgy of consumerism and gives us another story."
About Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and public theologian working at the intersection of Christian faith, moral movements, and public life. He serves as Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy and has spent more than two decades in faith-rooted movements for social change. A longtime collaborator with Bishop William J. Barber II, he has helped articulate the Moral Movement's moral framing of poverty, race, and democracy. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of multiple books on public faith, justice, and Christian discipleship, and a co-creator of the widely used prayer resource Common Prayer. He lives in North Carolina, where his work remains grounded in local churches and communities.
Learn more and follow at jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com and @wilsonhartgrove
Helpful Links and Resources
Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506484136/Revolution-of-Values
Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne) https://www.zondervan.com/p/common-prayer/
White Poverty (with William J. Barber II) https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469661927/white-poverty/
Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy https://publictheology.yale.edu/
Show Notes
– Growing up in rural North Carolina tobacco country; The Andy Griffith Show based on his former community
– Southern Baptist formation, scripture memorization, and the King James Bible
– Moral Majority era shaping faith and politics
– Early ambition to serve Jesus through political power
– Greyhound trip to Washington, DC with grandfather
– Becoming a Senate page at sixteen
– Working in the office of Strom Thurmond
– Encountering the racial subtext of American politics
– "There was a distance between Sunday school and what was practiced"
– Learning how southern politics realigned after civil rights
– Leaving partisan politics searching for faithful public life
– Disorientation and not knowing another way to be Christian
– Meeting a preacher shaped by the civil rights movement
– Discovering a faith that named injustice without condemnation
– "I needed another way to be Christian in public"
– Colorblind theology and segregated church life
– Conversion as seeing Jesus and reality differently
– Faith reordered by relationships, not ideology
– Christian opposition to the Iraq War
– Traveling to Iraq during U.S. bombing
– "According to just war theory, this wouldn't be a just war"
– How common sense changes over time
– Christian nationalism and manufactured moral narratives
– Alternative realities formed by trusted information sources
– "We are in an authoritarian crisis"
– Mutual aid, churches, and local resistance
– Poverty as a moral and political vulnerability
– Prayer as resistance to consumerist liturgy
– Common Prayer and the rhythm of scripture
– "Prayer gives us another story to live inside"
#JonathanWilsonHartgrove
#Authoritarianism
#PublicFaith
#ChristianNationalism
#MoralMovement
#FaithAndJustice
#CommonGood
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

As violence erupts around the world, how must we respond to those who worship power? In Venezuela, global power has reshaped lives overnight, and Elizabeth Sendek and Julio Isaza join Mark Labberton to reflect on faith, fear, and Christian witness amid political upheaval in Latin America.
"It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol."
Together they discuss how experiences of dictatorship, displacement, and pastoral caution shape Christian responses to invasion and regime change; the relationship between power and idolatry; the moral realities that come with violent and nonviolent action; fear and pastoral responsibility; the global impact of diaspora and migration; how prayer informs action; and how the church bears faithful witness under ruthless power.
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Episode Highlights
"It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol."
"Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis."
"Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace."
"They are very cautious, because they are not sure who is in control."
"We should not normalize violence just because it has always existed in history."
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About Elizabeth Sendek
Elizabeth Sendek is a theologian and educator specializing in Latin American Christianity, theology and power, and the church's public witness under political violence. Her work draws from lived experience across Latin America, particularly contexts shaped by dictatorship, corruption, displacement, and ecclesial resilience. She has taught theology in academic and pastoral settings, engaging questions of ethics, political theology, and Christian responsibility in fragile societies. Sendek is widely respected for her ability to connect historical memory, biblical theology, and contemporary crises, especially regarding migration, authoritarianism, and Christian hope. Her scholarship and public engagement consistently emphasize prayer joined with concrete action, resisting both naïveté and cynicism. She speaks regularly to churches, students, and leaders seeking faithful responses to power and suffering.
About Julio Isaza
Julio Isaza, born in Colombia, is married to Katie Isaza and is the father of Samuel and Benjamin. He served with the Covenant Church of Colombia from 1995 to 2006 and later earned a master of divinity degree in Chicago, where he lived for six years. Between 2012 and 2015, he worked in the formation of university students and young professionals with Serve Globally in Medellín, Colombia. From 2016 to 2025, he served in peace-building processes in conflict areas of Colombia and also as a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, teaching in the areas of missional theology, cultural context, and holistic impact strategies. During this time, he also worked with Indigenous communities in the Colombian rainforest, engaging in oral theology initiatives. His work has focused on holistic discipleship, theological education, and peace-building. He holds a master's degree in Conflict and Peace from the University of Medellín and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology and Peace at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in England. A US citizen, he resides in Minnesota with his family, where he is writing his doctoral dissertation titled "Cultivating Integral (Biblical) Peace in a Context of Socio-environmental Violence."
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Helpful Links And Resources
Princeton Theological Seminary https://www.ptsem.edu
Psalm 73 (New International Version) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+73&version=NIV
Brownsville Covenant Church (David Swanson) https://www.brownsvillecovenant.org
Christians for Social Action https://christiansforsocialaction.org
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Show Notes
News of Venezuelan invasion and presidential extrication
Awakening to international headlines and Colombian news coverage
Power displacing morality and theology
"It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place."
"We have chosen our idol."
Violence beyond headlines and unseen civilian consequences
Personal stories from Caracas neighbourhoods and bomb damage
"You see in the news about Maduro taken, but you don't see the consequences of what happened."
"Some of her family was killed in Caracas because of the bombs."
Childhood shaped by armed conflict in rural Colombia
Guerrilla groups, military raids, and forced displacement
Paramilitary violence and state-backed terror in towns
"When I was a child, I would draw helicopters and militaries killing each other."
Conversion shaped by studying the life of Jesus
"When I began to study the gospel, I thought that Jesus's way is not a violent way."
Pastoral caution under volatile political regimes
Fear shaping Christian speech and public silence
"For the sake of my congregation, I cannot voice any opinion."
Churches continuing ministry amid uncertainty
"They agreed that this time is an opportunity to share the gospel of hope."
Prayer as resistance and sustenance
"Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis."
Prayer joined with embodied action
"Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace."
Long histories of dictatorship shaping Latin American theology
Skepticism toward purely academic liberation theology
Credibility rooted in lived solidarity with the poor
Diaspora pressure and forced return narratives
"Now people say Venezuelans can go back to their own country."
Xenophobia and fear within host communities
Displacement as ongoing trauma for migrant families
Scripture shaping hope amid cynicism
"When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply, till I entered the sanctuary of God."
Refusing to normalize power's violence
"Our call is not to normalize it, nor to declare it an act of God."
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#FaithAndPolitics
#LatinAmerica
#ChristianWitness
#PowerAndViolence
#Venezuela
#ChurchAndState
#PublicTheology
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

What happens when a long pastoral calling ends, friendships fade, and the church faces cultural fracture? Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer (42 years in ministry at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, CA) joins Mark Labberton for a searching conversation about retirement from pastoral ministry, loneliness, leadership, and the meaning of credible witness in the Black church today.
"Ministry can be a lonely business."
In this episode, Bishop Ulmer reflects on the stepping away after four decades of pastoral leadership, navigating aloneness, disrupted rhythms, and the spiritual costs of transition. Together they discuss pastoral loneliness, friendship and grief, retirement and identity, church leadership after elections, authenticity versus attraction, political division in congregations, and whether the church still centers Jesus.
Episode Highlights
"Ministry can be a lonely business."
"[Boy, pointing to a church] Is God in there? [Pastor] Sometimes I wonder."
"There's a Moses in you that will see farther than you'll go."
"The tension is authenticity versus attraction."
"Jesus is the answer for the world today."
About Kenneth C. Ulmer
Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer is Bishop Emeritus of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, where he served as senior pastor for more than four decades. A nationally respected preacher, civic leader, and mentor, Ulmer played a significant role in the spiritual and economic life of Los Angeles, including the preservation of the Forum as a major community asset. He has been a prominent voice in conversations about the Black church, urban ministry, and faithful Christian leadership amid cultural and political change. Ulmer continues to teach, preach, and advise leaders while reflecting publicly on vocation, aging, and wisdom in ministry.
Learn more and follow at https://www.faithfulcentral.com
Helpful Links And Resources
Faithful Central Bible Church: https://www.faithfulcentral.com
Conversing with Mark Labberton: https://comment.org/conversing
Credible Witness podcast: https://faith.yale.edu/credible-witness
Show Notes
Long pastoral tenure ending after more than four decades of leadership
Friendship formed through shared grief and the loss of trusted companions
Prayer, friendship, and ministry forged "on our knees" at Hollywood Presbyterian
Loss of regular companionship revealing unexpected loneliness and aloneness
"Ministry can be a lonely business."
Absence of trusted friends exposing a deep relational void
Final sermon titled "I Did My Best," echoing 2 Timothy imagery and the words on Kenneth Ulmer's father's grave
"I fought a good fight" as closing vocational reflection
Disrupted spiritual rhythm after forty-one years of weekly preaching
"My rhythm is off."
Identity shaped by Sunday coming "every seven days"
Question of where and how to worship after stepping away
Public recognition colliding with uncertainty about purpose
Therapy as a faithful response to grief and transition
Energy and health without a clear channel for vocation
Question of "what do you do now?" after leadership ends
Seeing farther than you will go as a leadership reality
Deuteronomy 34 and Moses viewing the Promised Land
"There's a Moses in you that will see farther than you'll go."
Passing vision to a Joshua who will go farther than he can see
Grief of cheering from the sidelines while no longer on the field
Wrestling with authenticity versus attraction in church leadership
John 12:32 and the tension of lifting up Jesus to draw others
"The tension is authenticity versus attraction."
Fear of entertainment, production, and celebrity eclipsing Christ
Question of whether churches are built on preaching or personality
Political polarization dividing congregations and pulpits
Question pastors must ask: "Who am I going to be after this ballot?"
Kingdom identity beyond donkey or elephant, only the Lamb
"Holding up the bloodstained banner" as faithful witness
Doors of the church open—how wide are they, and for whom?
Concern for credibility after the benediction and after the election
Civic engagement without surrendering theological center
Preserving community good beyond church walls and buildings
Forum purchase as economic stewardship, not church expansion
Question of whether God is still "in that house"
How much of the God inside gets outside into the neighborhood?
Jesus as the enduring answer amid cultural confusion
Worship song, "We Offer Jesus"
"Jesus in the morning, Jesus at noonday, Jesus in the midnight hour."
Call to be the extended incarnation in ordinary life: "You are the temple."
"Who are you turning away that he [Jesus] would not turn away?"
#KennethCUlmer
#PastoralLeadership
#ChurchAndCulture
#CredibleWitness
#FaithAfterRetirement
#AuthenticityVsAttraction
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Can joy be anything but denial in a rage-filled public life? Michael Wear joins Mark Labberton to reframe politics through the kingdom logic of hope, agency, and practices of silence and solitude. As 2025 closes amid political discord, we might all ask whether joy can be real in public life—without denial, escapism, or contempt.
"… Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing."
In this conversation, Michael Wear and Mark Labberton reflect on joy, hope, responsibility, and agency amid a reaction-driven politics. Together they discuss the realism of Advent; the limits of our control; how kingdom imagination reframes anger; hope beyond outcomes, dignity under threat, and practices (including silence and solitude) that restore clarity.
Episode Highlights
"Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing. … Joy is not a technique to then get people to do what you want them to do."
"God's Kingdom is the range of his effective will."
" Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say."
"Our will is effective and those things in which our will is not effective."
"The pattern of domination and violence is an old one."
About Michael Wear
Michael Wear is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan nonprofit that contends for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. He has served for more than a decade as a trusted advisor to civic and religious leaders on faith and public life, including as a presidential campaign and White House staffer. He is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life and Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America. Learn more and follow at https://www.michaelwear.com.
Helpful Links and Resources
Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics https://www.zondervan.com/9780310367239/the-spirit-of-our-politics/
Michael Wear, Reclaiming Hope https://www.thomasnelson.com/9780718082338/reclaiming-hope/
Center for Christianity and Public Life https://www.ccpubliclife.org/
A National Call to Silence and Solitude https://www.silenceandsolitude.org/
Dallas Willard: "Personal Soul Care" https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/personal-soul-care
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited https://www.beacon.org/Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-P1781.aspx
Show Notes
End of 2025, cusp of Christmas; fraught public moment; joy as the lynchpin for faithful presence in politics and public life
Joy held with pain, suffering, complexity
Refusing denial while trusting a God who relentlessly pursues the world in love and hope
Joy intertwined with hope, responsibility, agency
Where does responsibility end and faithful agency begin?
"Willard would say joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing."
" It is very difficult to have joy if you are taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility."
Public life as joyless space; lacking imagination for joy amid provocation, antagonism, and constant political showmanship
"If there are places in our life where we can't conceive of joy, it's a problem with our view of God."
Misplaced responsibility, misplaced hope; joy collapses when taking on burdens that aren't ours and treating agency as ultimate
"God's kingdom is the range of his effective will."
"We each have our own little kingdoms … where what we say to be done is done."
Politics reveals limits; a clarity about what we can do, what we can't do, and what we must import into the rest of life
"Our will is effective, and there are things in which our will is not effective."
"Faithfulness is not the ability to determine a righteous outcome … to everything in which our lives touch."
False responsibility, obscured agency
Are we taking charge of what isn't ours while ignoring the real choices we do have?
"That's a recipe for joylessness."
Poked and prodded by provocations; entertainment, antagonisms, and helplessness normalize reaction and justify complicity
Anger as political fuel
Many assume that raising your voice is the only faithful posture inside the public arena.
"I've had people respond to me: 'How am I going to get anything done in politics without anger?'"
"Political imagination has been taken over by a political logic as opposed to a kingdom logic."
Relearning responsibility and agency; hope not grounded in our effectiveness, but in what God is doing beyond our reach.
"Ultimate hope lies outside of the range of our effective will."
"It is in that realm in which we are perfectly safe."
Hope is for a life that pervades all things.
"So when your hope is in the right place, you can hope for a whole range of things."
" Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say."
Hope and joy "when your back is against the wall"
Allen Temple Baptist Church: Joy at the margins of culture
Fannie Lou Hamer
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
First Presbyterian Church in Evanston, IL
Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics
Psalm 23 as distress-psalm: Enemies are still present, yet God leads beside still waters and cares most in greatest distress.
"Take off the old self with its practices and put on the new self."
"Put on Christ now in a way that will affect everything around us."
Herod: The paranoid leader
Advent into Christmastide—what it means to dwelling in Emmanuel
"This is why the incarnation is such an extraordinarily important cornerstone: It's that God enters in through Jesus into our world, in a world in which, yes, there may be great praises in heaven and on earth from those who understand something at least of who he is and what he's there to do. But it also lands him in a world of immediate physical and familial vulnerability of political and social, if not military, violence."
Are we protected from vulnerability, or living in precarity?
The pattern of domination and violence
Refusing forgetfulness as 2026 approaches with fresh pressures and fresh calling.
National call to silence and solitude; disinvesting from reactionary instincts to engage the world with renewed vision and clarity. silenceandsolitude.org
"Silence and solitude… can infuse your public activity with right vision and right clarity."
#MichaelWear #MarkLabberton #ChristianPublicLife #ChristianPolitics #SpiritualFormation #Joy #Advent #SilenceAndSolitude #Hope #PublicWitness
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.