Good Faith Podcast
Listen in as host Curtis Chang is joined by curious and insightful guests as we explore life, faith, and culture.
The After Party Course
The After Party is a course, workshop, and worship album that helps Christians move toward a Jesus-centered approach to politics.
Campfire Stories
Listen in for a special series from the Good Faith podcast where listeners share their personal stories of real transformation.
Good Faith Blog
Periodic reflections, stories, and insights written to help friends who follow Jesus make sense of the world.
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Every church has a discipleship curriculum, whether it picked one or not.
Gary Haugen has spent thirty years watching what happens when sincere people never get help thinking through hard things, and his worry about the American church isn`t that people believe the wrong things, it`s that so many pastors have quietly left the hard conversations to cable news and the feed, and something is always willing to take that job.
Catch our conversation with Gary before a new episode drops tomorrow.
The most dangerous thing you can do with a gift is protect it.
In the parable of the talents, the servant who buries what he was given is the only one the master gets angry with, and Gary Haugen points out that his reason was not laziness, it was fear of getting it wrong. Thirty years into fighting modern slavery, Gary told us the thing he hears God saying most often is don`t be afraid of this, because you can`t be brave and safe at the same time. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.
They targeted 50 children. They got 38 out. Gary Haugen never saw the other 15 again.
He`s been doing this work for 30 years, and what we didn`t expect was how much of our conversation ended up being about the ones they didn`t reach. Not strategy. Grief, and what you do with it so it doesn`t take the fight out of you.
Swipe for the 6 practices that keep him in it, including the one his whole organization stops working to do twice a day.
Has the Modern Slave Trade Met Its Match? with Gary Haugen is out now. If you`re tired in your own corner of this work, start with this one.
God never actually answers the question. Moses asks who he is to go to Pharaoh, and it`s a fair question. One man, an empire, no leverage. And God doesn`t come back with a list of reasons he`s qualified. He just says, "I will be with you."
Gary Haugen pointed us to this in our conversation about 30 years of fighting modern slavery. You don`t get an answer to "who am I to take this on." You get a promise that you won`t be doing it alone. He says that`s what carries his team through the cases that go wrong and the kids they don`t reach in time. Don`t miss our latest episode.
Gary Haugen`s hero was Desmond Tutu. He watched him wade into a mob that was about to burn a man alive and put his own body between them.
But the thing that formed him most was smaller. He also got to see Tutu discouraged. Frustrated. Ordinary. And he came to believe that the praying women in those same South African churches, the ones nobody ever recognized, are the most highly regarded people in the kingdom of heaven.
"God can do really marvelous things in the world through very, very common people."
Gary`s conversation with Curtis about slavery, miracles, and prayers that don`t get answered the way you want is out now. Don`t miss it.
We often ask what AI is doing to our brains. But what is it doing to our hearts, souls, and minds?
To be able to cognitively offload may feel nice now, but Andy Crouch encourages us to consider what this new tool could be doing to us as time goes on. Our next episode in our AI series is coming soon, so be sure to catch up on our last episode with Andy Crouch!
Nearly 50 million people are living in slavery right now. Gary Haugen thinks it could end in our lifetime.
He`s spent 30 years at International Justice Mission (@ijm) proving that isn`t naive. When local justice systems actually enforce the law and take care of survivors, slavery drops 70–85%. But the part that stayed with us was what he said about everything strategy can`t cover: "What does it mean to lead the pursuit of a miracle? Because if it`s a miracle, it means you can`t do it on your own."
We`re huge fans of Gary and the rest of our friends at IJM, and were thrilled to sit down for a conversation. This episode is one you don`t want to miss!
It works like a doom loop. The reasonable people get tired and step away, which hands more ground to the loudest voices, which makes the next reasonable person want to leave too. Nobody decides to hand over the room. It just empties, one exhausted person at a time.
In this week`s episode, David French makes the case that staying in is its own kind of faithfulness—even when checking out would be so much easier. If you`ve been tempted to walk lately, what`s kept you in?
Everyone`s talking about democratic socialism like it`s about to take over America. David French did the math, and the panic doesn`t add up.
In three minutes, he breaks down what the DSA actually is, how small it really is, and why the version you`re being fear-mongered about on cable news barely resembles the real thing. Turns out the thing worth watching isn`t the policy at all.
Watch, then tell us: did this change how you`ve been thinking about it?
It`s not the most comforting line, but it might be one of the most freeing. So much of our anxiety comes from the quiet assumption that things are supposed to be easy, and that something has gone terribly wrong when they aren`t.
In this week`s episode, David French offers a steadier way to stand: no reading of Scripture entitles us to victory in our lifetimes, but every reading calls us to act justly in them. We`re not promised pleasant times. We`re just asked to be faithful in the ones we`re given.
When the prophet Elijah was worn out and afraid, he was convinced he was the last faithful person left. God`s answer surprised him: there were seven thousand others he`d never even seen, still standing, still faithful.
In this week`s episode, David French offers that same reminder to anyone who feels politically homeless right now, worn down by the noise and sure they`re the only one who hasn`t picked a side. His encouragement: there are far more of you out there than you think. You`re just not as loud, and not as alone, as it feels.
If you`ve ever felt like the last reasonable person in the room, this one`s for you.
Does it help to know there are more of you out there than you think?
"We have to stop measuring policies by intentions. Intentions do not equal results." — David French
It`s one of the lines that stuck with us most from this week`s episode. So much of our politics runs on how much we care about a problem, as if caring is the same thing as solving it. But good intentions have paved plenty of roads that led somewhere no one wanted to go.
David and Curtis sit with the harder, humbler question: not just what do we hope a policy does, but what does it actually do?
Where have you seen good intentions lead somewhere you didn`t expect?
