Shifting Culture

In this episode, Merideth Hite Estevez joins me to talk about what happens when a lifetime of chasing excellence quietly empties out the joy that started it all. We dig into the idols hiding inside performance and perfectionism, why she redefines art not as a talent for the gifted few but as something anyone can do out of love, and what it means to create as an act of worship instead of proof of worth. It's a conversation about shame, recovery, and the spiritual thread running through every creative act - whether you call yourself an artist or not.
Dr. Merideth Hite Estevez is a coach, educator, oboist, and author of The Artist’s Joy. Through her workshops, her award-winning podcast Artists for Joy, and her one-to-one coaching, she is a spiritual space-maker for artists, leading thousands in various fields to creative recovery. Dr. Estevez has performed with top orchestras and holds degrees in oboe from The Juilliard School and Yale School of Music. Her writing, which Publishers Weekly calls “expansive and joyful,” illuminates the spiritual journey of the artist. Her next book, Art Is How God Loves Us, debuts in July 2026. She hails from Abbeville, SC, but now lives in Metro Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Rev. Dr. Edwin Estevez, and their two children.
Merideth's Book:
Art is How God Loves Us
Merideth's Recommendation:
Counterweights
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

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America turns 250 this year, and we'll tell the old story again. But where does it actually start? Daniel Hawk traces our founding back past 1776 to the Doctrine of Discovery that gave Christian powers the right to seize "unclaimed" land, and to a reading of Genesis that turned wilderness into property and the people already here into obstacles. We talk about the myth of innocence: the belief that we are fundamentally good, that the brutal parts didn't happen or didn't count. It let us justify almost anything, and it left violence in our bones. We talk about how Scripture was used to take land and how it reads differently from underneath empire, about Canada and South Africa beginning to face their histories, and about what real repair asks of us - slow, relational, measured in generations. As we mark 250 years, this is an invitation to be honest about the first half of the story before we write the next.
L. Daniel Hawk (PhD, Emory University) is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. Aspects of his work on biblical narrative take a postcolonial turn in books such as Joshua in 3-D: A Commentary on Biblical Conquest and Manifest Destiny and as coeditor of Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations.
Daniel's Book:
Undoing Manifest Destiny
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

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Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below
Bring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingculture
Go to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books
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In this episode, I talk with Kristin Lee about what happens when a faith begins to crack, and whether the breaking might be the start of something truer. We get into kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery with gold, what it costs to ask the questions we've been warned against, and what the church on the margins can teach the rest of us about following a marginal Jesus. What emerges is a picture of faith that doesn't hide its fractures but lets them become the places where the light gets in.
Kristin T. Lee is a writer whose work has appeared in Christianity Today and Sojourners, and a primary care physician serving Boston's Chinatown community. She writes about faith, culture, books, and solidarity at The Embers. Her passion all the best books you've never heard of (and some that you have) via book reviews and reading groups on Instagram @ktlee.writes. Lee's work is informed by her experiences as an adoptive mother, host to refugees, and friend to those affected by incarceration.
Kristin's Book:
We Mend With Gold
Kristin's Recommendation:
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTube

Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below
Bring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingculture
Go to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books
Support the show

In this episode, I talk with Kyle Strobel about what's actually happening when God feels distant. Most of us start with passion - prayer comes easy, Scripture comes alive - and then a season arrives where the lights go out and we assume we've failed or been abandoned. Kyle offers a different reading than abandonment: the dryness isn't punishment or absence, but the desert where God weans us off the feeling and teaches us to abide. We get into the moralistic temptation that follows - how we turn disciplines, service, and even devotion into ways of managing God rather than meeting him - and why we have to relearn to live by faith and not by sight.
Kyle Strobel is the director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, who writes and teaches in the area of spiritual formation. He is the author of many books, most recently the co-author of the book, When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near (with John Coe). Kyle regularly speaks at conferences, church trainings, and serves on the preaching team at Redeemer Church. He can be found at KyleStrobel.substack.com.
Kyle's Book:
When God Seems Distant
Kyle's Recommendation:
A Lifting Up for the Downcast
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

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Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below
Bring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingculture
Go to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books
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In this episode, Michael Rhodes claims the gospel is inherently political, and "the Lord reigns" was never just a private comfort but a statement about who actually runs the world. We name the two instincts that keep so many of us stuck: retreating into a safe bubble or chasing the halls of power, and why a more holistic approach is necessary. And we get practical: city council meetings, speed bumps, a libertarian business owner whose whole politics quietly rearranged once he started hiring single moms. In a moment when faith and politics have collapsed into the culture war, this feels like a third way, or a faithful way - a politics you can practice this week, on your own street, as a small taste of the beauty of the Kingdom of God.
Michael J. Rhodes (PhD, Trinity College / University of Aberdeen) is lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of several books, including Reimagining Biblical Politics, Just Discipleship, Formative Feasting,and Practicing the King's Economy (with Robby Holt and Brian Fikkert). Rhodes (an ordained EPC pastor) and his family currently live in South Auckland, where they are part of an intentional community engaged in Christian community development.
Michael's Book:
Reimagining Biblical Politics
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTube

Support the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below
Bring meaningful conversations about home, belonging and loving your neighbor to your friends, family or small group. Download World Relief’s free conversation cards at worldrelief.org/shiftingculture
Go to eerdmans.com and use promo code CULTURE40 for 40% all books
Support the show