Trinity Forum Conversations

• Leading for the Kingdom with Nicole Massie Martin

  What does redemptive leadership mean? As Christians, we have a unique calling: not just to lead, but to serve. What does this look like in today’s culture, and how can we serve as leaders and foster an environment of abundant grace and joy wherever we are?Christianity Today’s Dr. Nicole Massie Martin helps us to understand how we can nail outdated models of leadership to the cross, and what it will take to replace them with Biblical ones:“We need to nail to the cross what is a very secular understanding … of [power, ego, and performance], so that what is resurrected through Christ might be redemptive and bring glory to God and good to the people that we lead.”This conversation is from an Online Conversation recorded in May 2025. We hope this conversation will inspire you to identify the ways you lead, and how you can step further into leading with grace, humility, and joy.Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter ScazzeroKilling Comparison: Reject the Lie You Aren’t Good Enough and Live Confident in Who God Made You To Be, Nona JonesGo deeper into the issues discussed in this episode with these Trinity Forum Readings:How Much Land Does a Man Need?; Leo TolstoyA Man Who Changed His Times; William WilberforceLetter from Birmingham Jail; Martin Luther King, Jr.Who Stands Fast?; Dietrich BonhoefferNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Frederick Douglass

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• Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan

  What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way:“Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attentiveness is listening and caring and noticing, cherishing, savoring, being awestruck, these things that we feel in a relationship. I am deeply loved by this person because they notice me. I think that that’s how God’s built it. And we can’t get that if we’re moving too fast, if we’re in a hurry.”This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2023. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time. If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.As we ponder the spirituality of walking, our fall Trinity Forum Reading features naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s ruminations on the art of walking, with an introduction by Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder. Stay tuned for pre-ordering later this week, and join our membership to receive a copy mailed directly to you.Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:AristotleSøren KierkegaardJean-Jacques RousseauGod Walk, by Mark BuchananSimone WeilThe Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku KoyamaWanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca SolnitKnowing God, J.I. PackerKai MillerRelated Trinity Forum Readings:Pilgrim’s Progress, by John BunyanPilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie DillardGod’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley HopkinsLong Walk to Freedom, by Nelson MandelaBrave New World, by Alduous HuxleyRelated Conversations:A New Year With The Word with Malcolm GuiteMusic, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi FloydPursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda QuinnReading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten WilsonGet tickets for The Rabbit Room's Housemoot.To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcasts/ and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.

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• Beth Moore: Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives

  Our theme for this episode is “Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives,” and our guest is the author and speaker Beth Moore. Drawing from her bestselling memoir, Beth helps us work through a challenge we all may face at various times: maintaining resilience — and faithfulness to our vocations — in the face of hardship:“I’d come to a point where I thought, oh my goodness, I see this. I get what Jesus is doing here, whatever it might be. I had this compelling to share it, and I have throughout my whole adult life.”This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2025. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time. If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.Go deeper into the topics discussed in this conversation with these Trinity Forum Readings:Pilgrim's Progress; John BunyanThe Long Loneliness; Dorothy DayA Spiritual Pilgrimage; Malcolm MuggeridgeConfessions; St. AugustineThe Children of Light and the Children of Darkness; Reinhold Niebuhr

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• Story, Culture, & the Common Good with Marilynne Robinson

  Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’re focusing on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.Today’s episode concludes our summer series. Our guide today is the acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson, author of the Gilead series, and much else. In this episode, originally an Online Conversation recorded in 2020, Marilynne reflects on the art of writing as a means of exploring truth and engaging questions around learning to live well, to love others, and to create a home and community, in our fractious world:“The unique brilliance of a human being … is something that we tend utterly to disparage, demean, utterly fail to notice … every person lives out a [life] beautiful, complicated, inaccessible to other consciousnesses. And it is sacred.”And if this conversation resonates with you, consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too. Marilynne Robinson's Novels | Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, Jack, Reading GenesisArticle in Breaking Ground from our event.Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:Marcel ProustRalph Waldo EmmersonPaul HardingWalt WitmanWilliam FaulknerJohn CalvinJonathan EdwardsMoby Dick, by Herman MellvillePiers Plowman, by William LanglandRelated Trinity Forum Readings:Sacred and Profane Love | A Trinity Forum Reading by John Donne Bulletins from Immortality | A Trinity Forum Reading by Emily Dickinson Confessions | A Trinity Forum Reading by Saint Augustine Brave New World | A Trinity Forum Reading by Aldous Huxley Marilynne Robinson is a novelist, essayist, and teacher, one of the most renowned and revered of living writers. Her novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Lila, and Home have been variously honored with the Pulitzer Prize, National Books Critics Circle Award (twice), a Hemingway Foundation Award, an Orange Prize, The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the Ambassador Book Award. She's also the author of many essays and non-fiction works, including her work, “Mother Country”, and her essay collections, “Death of Adam,” “Absence of Mind,” “When I was a Child I Read Books,” “The Givenness of Things,” and “What Are We Doing Here?”. She's the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to her writing has spent over 20 years teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, as well as several universities.

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• Creativity, Reconciliation, and Flourishing

  Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.Guided by theologian and musician David Bailey and concert pianist and chamber musician Mia Chung, this episode explores the concept that music involves mutual support, balance, and give and take among musicians to create a cohesive experience.And we reflect on how Christian communities can apply these principles of collaboration and harmony to create faith communities that are transformative:To the extent that the arts can actually cultivate that practice of incorporating the right hemisphere and in communication with the left, it's always together, you know, they're, complimentary. I think we can benefit each other in terms of community formation, but even benefit our own intellectual lives and the amount of joy we experience living in this world. - Mia Chung If this work resonates with you, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a society member.This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in June, 2024. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.Learn more about Mia Chung and David Bailey.Episode Outline00:00 Introduction to Trinity Forum Conversations00:34 Exploring Music and Christian Community01:36 Cherie Harder on Cultural Challenges02:55 Welcoming David Bailey and Mia Chung04:41 David Bailey's Musical Journey06:56 Mia Chung's Musical Formation10:44 The Role of Arts in Reconciliation13:19 The Power of Music in Community Building23:17 Reintegration and Reconciliation at MIT28:52 Challenges and Practices for Reconciliation30:10 Digital Discipleship and Secular Influence30:44 The Importance of Fasting and Listening32:33 Engaging Differently as Followers of Jesus33:28 The Role of Technology in Information Consumption34:18 Post-COVID Convening and Empathetic Listening37:25 The Power of Music and Emotional Expression40:04 Silence and Contemplative Practices44:43 Artistic Collaboration and Reconciliation51:19 Final Thoughts and EncouragementAuthors and books mentioned in the conversation:Arrabon: Learning Reconciliation Through Community & Worship Music, by David BaileyRelated Trinity Forum Readings:Hannah and Nathan, by Wendell BerryPainting as a Pastime, by Winston ChurchillThe Four Quartets, by TS EliotLetters from Vincent Van GoghSpirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWhy Work?, by Dorothy SayersThe Loss of the University, featuring the works of Wendell Berry and Jacques MaritainTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.

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