Show Notes
In this milestone episode, Derek reflects on the journey of Peaceable and Kind, 100 episodes exploring what it means to follow Jesus in a way marked by peace and kindness. Rather than introducing a new topic, this episode looks back at the themes, questions, and conversations that have shaped the podcast so far, from spiritual formation and Scripture to politics, reconciliation, and the life of Jesus. At the heart of it all is a vision of becoming people who reflect the character of Jesus in a fractured world.
Derek revisits key movements in the podcast, including early teachings on prayer and formation, thoughtful engagement with cultural and political tensions, and a deep theological dive into the cross and resurrection especially through the atonement series and engagement with The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge. He also highlights the importance of the Nicene Creed, the rhythms of the Christian calendar, and the formative power of stories, literature, and imagination.
A major highlight of the podcast has been its 23 interviews, conversations with pastors, authors, and theologians that embody humility, curiosity, and a shared pursuit of truth. These dialogues reflect the core heartbeat of the podcast: listening well and learning together.
As the episode looks ahead, the direction remains clear: continue exploring Scripture, engaging culture, and pursuing the way of Jesus with depth and honesty. The goal is not easy answers, but faithfulness to the way of Jesus
Key Themes
Christlikeness as the goal of spiritual formation
Scripture as a formative story, not a weapon
Faithful engagement with politics and culture
Reconciliation, justice, and the church as a place of belonging
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as central
The value of historic Christian faith and sacred time
The role of imagination and storytelling in spiritual growth
Read Derek’s Essay “Questioning the Just War Assumption”: https://missioalliance.org/questioning-the-just-war-assumption/
Check out the Merch Store: https://derek-vreeland-shop.fourthwall.com/
Has Peaceable and Kind been meaningful to you? Support the show by:
Leaving a review
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Order Derek’s new Bible Study Series, God in the Neighborhood:
Book 1: Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us || https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
Book 2: Crucifixion: 8 Lessons on How God Saves Us || https://amzn.to/459bNUk
Book 3: Resurrection: 8 Lessons on How God Restores Us || https://amzn.to/40T0sp0
Learn more about Derek’s work as a pastor and author: https://derekvreeland.com
Interact with Derek on Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, or Facebook
Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back. To another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and this is an important episode. We are celebrating 100 episodes. Here on Peaceable and Kind. And I’m glad that you have joined me for this one. If you’re not already a subscriber, let me encourage you to do that wherever you’re listening to this podcast. And if you would leave us a rating or review, that would help a lot. We have now produced and released 100 episodes. And so if you have been along for the ride from the beginning, from episode zero, Or if you’re new to Peaceable and Kind, I would love to have you celebrate with me by leaving a rating and review. That would be fantastic. I’m so excited that we are here, and I’ve had lots of different ideas of what I wanted to do on episode 100. So I thought we’ll just take a look back. and sort of forecast for the future where we’re going. How about that? But when I started this podcast I did not know exactly what I was doing. I am not a professional podcaster. I am a Pastor, I’m a teacher, I’m an author, and my life is made up of people and words. And so I’m preaching and teaching. I am writing. I have a substack that I probably need to resurrect. Because people keep subscribing to my Substack even though I haven’t written anything for years. But my life is just filled with words. I have words, I have thoughts, I have ideas. And so I never set out to start a podcast. It was actually my brother who said to me, you should start a podcast. And so I appreciate his encouragement, his support. Uh, it’s because of my brother Jeff that I’m even here with the Peaceable and Kind podcast. But from the beginning, I didn’t really have a master plan. But I’ll give you a little peek behind the curtain. When I was setting out to plan the first couple of episodes, so I knew that it would be called Peaceable and Kind. I knew that I would talk about the things that sow seeds of peace and kindness in our world. But when I was laying out the first episodes, Like when I did episode one in my list of episodes, I called it 001 I wanted three digits because from the beginning I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great if we get to a hundred episodes? And here we are. And there’s no plans of shutting this thing down any time soon. But realize that when I started, I I did want to continue to produce episodes. I just had no idea what I was doing. or where it would go. And so what’s happened over this year plus of producing these episodes Is essentially I I just talk about whatever I am reading or thinking about Many episodes have come just from what I’m currently writing. As you know, last year I wrote a three-book Bible study series, The God in the Neighborhood. Bible studies. And so a lot of the episodes were just a lesson I was writing in one of the Bible studies, and I wanted to talk more than just what I had written in each lesson. And so that’s why I’m not doing seasons, and I have done these little mini series Like during Lent, we went through The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge. Way back I did a series on the Nicene Creed because I had read and interviewed Glenn Pacium. I had read his book on the Nicene Creed, uh, What’s a Christian Anyway, and interviewed Glenn. And after that I thought, yeah, let’s do a little mini-series on the Nicene Creed. And that was simply because I had just read his book and I see values in the creed and and learning and practicing and and using within our prayer and worship and liturgical life, the creeds. So yeah, there’s been no master plan. This is just me and a microphone talking about what I’m thinking about today. So as we are celebrating 100 episodes. What I’m thinking about today is where we have been. So I want to revisit. The themes, the questions, the books, and the conversations that have given shape to the first ninety-nine episodes of this podcast And I have seen as I reviewed where we’ve been so far, I have noticed different themes that have emerged. Typically, pastors and writers have genres or they have particular themes that just reverberate throughout what they do. And so for me as a pastor and teacher and author, the themes of spiritual formation, the themes of discipleship. The themes of making theology applicable, these are all themes that I’ve seen in these previous ninety-nine episodes. So Let’s review, let’s walk back through a couple of different seasons of episodes, and uh let’s just talk about where we have been and then towards the end of this episode. I’ll talk just a little bit about the future. But this is a celebration. That’s what we’re doing today. We’re celebrating a hundred episodes and I’m happy to announce that as a part of this celebration I have launched a merch store. So I have five collections in my merch store and there are shirts and stickers and hats and hoodies. And I started the merch store simply because I had words. I had ideas. I had actually shirts that I wanted. that didn’t exist. And so I launched the merch store not to make a lot of money. I’d have no aspirations of making any kind of money from the merch store outside of making enough money where I can get some of my own shirts. So there are five collections. We’re going to put a link to the merch store in the show notes. You can click that link. You can explore the different collections. The featured collection is the Learn War No More Collection. And this was a theme, a slogan that had come to me. particularly at this time when the United States went to war with Iran. And I I’m I’m an anti-war person. I just posted a few weeks back on my social media accounts an article that I wrote 12 years ago called Questioning the Just War Assumption. And in that, I talk about my evolving understanding of war and the Christian response to warfare. Because early in my pastoral days, I made the assumption that the just war theory Was the de facto position of Christians? Of course, Christians defend war when war is justifiable. So you can read that article. I will put a link in the show notes to that article so that you can read it if you want. But I talk about when I was a youth pastor, this is where I started in ministry, some twenty six years ago. And this was uh when the United States uh went to war with Iraq. This was George Bush. This was the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out uh not to be reliable intelligence. And when we went to war in Iraq, I remember standing before the students in my youth ministry, and I basically gave them A student version of the just war theory. And I’m not going to go into detail. You can Google and learn more about the just war theory. Essentially, it’s saying there is justifiable war uh if there’s no other options, if the warfare is proportional, um there’s lots of different stipulations. And I I so I believed in that. I believe that there was a time that Christians need to stand up and and rally around the troops and let’s go to war when that war is justifiable. As I continued to grow as a Christian, as I grew to understand things theologically, I just began to see the weaknesses of just war theory. I also began to embrace Christian nonviolence. And so today I’m neither a just war theorist, neither am I a pacifist. Um this podcast is called Peaceable and Kind. So I’m peaceable. I believe in the peace teachings of Jesus. I believe in peacemaking as a part of our DNA as followers of Jesus, but I’m not a pacifist because pacifism is the adherence to a moral theory that violence is never acceptable. And while I’m not a violent person, Uh, I think there could be times where I would become violent to uh defend somebody. I’m not planning on doing that, but I just I’m not interested in moral theory. I’m interested in moral virtues. And I believe Christian nonviolence is a virtue that as we practice non-retaliatory, non-violent peacemaking, that it forms peace within our hearts So anyway, you can read the article if you want to, but that’s some of the backdrop to this featured collection, Learn War No More. So go check that out if you’re interested. But let’s review where we have been. So when I started this podcast, I began with two simple questions. What does it mean to be peaceable? And what does it look like to be kind? So you can go back and and listen to the first couple episodes where I define from a Christian, Jesus-centered perspective what does it look like to be peaceable? as well as what does kindness look like? I define kindness in terms of mercy in motion. So both the concepts of of a peaceable life and a life filled with kindness is action-oriented. So we do a lot of talking about scripture and theology. But for me, true Christian theology is not just an intellectual exercise, but theology, what we believe and say about God, is something that we live out. When Bible knowledge or theological knowledge only remains in our heads, we are being malformed. Because certainly God wants to renew our minds. Certainly there is a process of learning and growing theologically. But for me, it doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t change how we live. For me Christianity, this religion that grew up around the early Jesus movement, is first and foremost a way of living And so piety, that is our heart’s devotion, liturgy, the form and shape of our prayer and worship life Theology, again, what we believe and say about God, these are all important, but they’re only as important as they shape how we live. This is what we see in the New Testament church, in the first century of the church, really the first three hundred years of the church, Christians were known first and foremost By how they live their lives. And of course, I’ve talked recently about hypocrisy, the problem of Christian hypocrisy. And the way that we recover from our hypocrisy is becoming whole integrated persons, so that what we believe gets lived out in our lives. And so I start with defining what is peaceable and giving shape to it and what it looks like to be kind. And that theme does reverberate moving forward through these previous 99 episodes That as we learn and grow through books and theology and exploration of scripture, it is shaping how we live. And so early on in the podcast, I was talking about topics like masculinity. We did dip into politics now and again. This is not primarily a political podcast. But politics are unavoidable for followers of Jesus. Because politics Is that the subject of discussing how we are to live together? Politics has a real ancient root. The Greek word polis means city. That’s where we get the English word politics. It’s if we’re going to live in a city, if we’re going to live in a society. And so for ancient Greece, these were city-states, but in modern times we think about nations, not just individual cities But politics is how can we live together? And how can we live together for the common good? For the ancient Greeks, I’m thinking about Aristotle here, politics ultimately was how shall we govern ourselves? in such a way to produce the common good, what Aristotle called eudaimonia Which is sometimes translated happiness. It’s better translated human flourishing. And I know politics are controversial Uh here I am, Captain Obvious. Politics can be divisive. I know that. And so some Christians choose to completely remove themselves from any kind of political dialogue. And I I see that as problematic because here’s what happens If as a Christian you take everything you know and believe about God and all your study of Scripture, and if it’s only for our individual internal formation, and we never allow that theology to shape our politics And there there becomes a void in our political imagination. Here’s what I see happening over and over and over The politicos, the worldly politicos on the right or the left, they swoop in and they’ll give you a political imagination. In other words, if you think that the entirety of the Christian life is about you and your personal relationship with Jesus, and it’s only about forming your heart, But then that has nothing to do with how we live together. You’re going to fall under the seduction. of the political right and the political left. One or the other is going to dominate your thoughts about politics. Hey friends, I want to pause this episode for just a moment to let you know that Resurrection, 8 Lessons on How God Restores Us, the third and final book in the God in the Neighborhood Bible study. series is out now. Go to the show notes for ordering information. And so here at Peaceable and Kind when I’ve dipped into political themes It is all rooted in understanding how we can allow Jesus to shape our political imagination. And so I am am pigeonholed on both sides of the political spectrum, depending on what I’m saying. People will will say, Oh, you’re just, you know, into all of that, you know, right wing stuff, or you’re a progressive and you’re only interested in liberal political theory and and honestly, I’m only interested in the politics of Jesus. See, Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is God’s politics, it’s God’s governance, it’s God’s administration. And so I’m only interested in the politics of Jesus. And I want my imagination when it comes to politics to be shaped by Jesus and Jesus alone. So we’ve dipped into politics now and again, but a lot of the early themes in the podcast were really about spiritual formation. Again, that is one of my deep wells. I think and write and study a lot in the area of spiritual formation. And so I did a number of fun podcasts on topics like Patience as the pathway to peace. Stanley Hauerwas once said that war is impatience. And I think it’s true. So if we are to grow as peacemakers in a very polarized and divided world, we have to learn the lessons of patience and we need to become patient people. Again, I’m interested in the formation around patience so that we can live as patient people. War is impatience. Fighting, arguing, clamoring, all of that is because we get impatient. So I did an episode about patience. Number of episodes have come out about prayer, talk about prayer through suffering and hardship. There’s a whole episode on the Jesus prayer. Which to me is very foundational, learning to pray the simple 10-word prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. Uh also did a number of episodes early on on gratitude, on living an unhurried kind of life. I did a number of episodes on the practice of slowing down and paying attention to the presence of God. There’s a time back in 2024 that I took a two-week break. Um a two-week break from church work, from any of my writing commitments. Uh I took a two-week break from producing podcasts. And a part of that two-week break was to put into practice what I had been talking about. And that is slowing down. Rhythms that are contemplative, that are focused on the presence of God. And so after that two-week time There were then future podcasts that came out because again, I’m doing these episodes based on what I am reading and writing and thinking about. And so early on in 2024, early 2025, a number of the episodes were on those formational themes. of patience, of silence, of solitude, of simplicity, of slowing down and reminding ourselves what is most true about God, and that is God is ever present. And then of course there have been plenty of episodes that are just deep dives into scripture. I came to faith in a Southern Baptist evangelical context. My spiritual journey sort of moved from the Southern Baptist world into the charismatic Pentecostal movement and now I’m sort of in this strange convergence of traditions in this sort of what Robert Weber called the ancient future. So today I’m I’m really post-evangelical. I’m kind of in this neo-sacramental movement where I just want to take the gifts from all of the different traditions in the body of Christ. So I’ve learned uh from the contemplative tradition, from Benedictine spirituality, from Eastern Orthodox spirituality, but then I’ve also held on. to some of those treasures that are in the Pentecostal Charismatic movement, as well as in the Southern Baptist and Evangelical movements. And so for me, the great gift I received as a teenager in a Southern Baptist church was a love for the Bible. And I I’ve lost none of that love. I would say now, at fifty one years old I love the Bible more than when I was a teenager. And I just so appreciate those Southern Baptist mentors and teachers and pastors that instilled in me a love for Scripture. Now my understanding, interpretation, and application of Scripture has ebbed and flowed, it’s changed, it’s morphed, it’s it’s evolved. And so how I read, study, and apply scripture today is different than how it was 35 years ago. But my love for the scriptures. And when I say love, I mean just in my own devotional life. Like I have a process of of morning prayer. It’s very structured. And in morning prayer, there’s a Bible reading section. Now, I’m going to be honest with you, there are mornings I get distracted or I get hurried. I’m trying to live an unhurried life But I get distracted, I get unhurried, and sometimes I miss morning prayer. And I don’t beat myself up over that. I don’t get upset. Um but when I go a day or if I even go two days, I miss it. And and to be frank, what I miss the most Is my time in scripture. And so I just want to keep my life close to the story that the scriptures are telling. And so I love devotional reading. I love the more in-depth scholarly academic. theological study of scripture. And I also love how reading scripture draws my heart closer to God. And it sounds pretty elementary, but it’s just my experience. St. Thomas Aquinas talked about four different meanings or four different senses of scripture. He talked about the literal historical, but then also the spiritual readings. There is a a number of different spiritual readings of scripture One of those senses or meanings or readings of Scripture, according to St. Thomas, is the anagogical reading of Scripture Anagogical comes from a Greek word, which means to climb or ascend. In other words, there’s times when I’m reading scripture that I just feel my heart drawn to God. Because a lot of times in my devotional reading, my everyday prayerful reading of Scripture, I I’m not doing theology. So I’m not bothered, for example, when I’m in the Old Testament. Because sometimes the reading in the Old Testament. It’s hard to see Jesus in it, particularly, you know, some of the real hyper violent passages. I have this habit of of drawing sad faces in the margin of my Bible when I’m reading something that just doesn’t look like Jesus. But I’m not bothered by it because even in those difficult passages in the Old Testament, I can’t explain it, but somehow my heart is being drawn to God. And so, yeah, we have done a lot of episodes where we’re doing a deep dive into scripture. I’ve done episodes on how to use the Bible kindly. This is a recurring uh line or thought I’ve used in teaching and writing, and that is that scripture is too sacred to become theological bullets in our guns. You know, sometimes people like to use scripture as a way to to shoot down their enemies, right? Like, no, I understand Christianity correctly. And here’s a couple Bible verses that we fire off And scripture is too sacred for that. So I did this one episode on how to read and use scripture kindly. I’ve done episodes on the the storyline of the Bible. I had a wonderful conversation with my friend Marty Solomon. uh of the Bema podcast on becoming people of the text. That’s a a line from Marty. uh such great episodes where I just do a deep dive into scripture And then, of course, we’ve also done justice-oriented episodes. And for me, justice and politics are not necessarily the same thing, at least, not Politics in its popular imagination. Some people associate justice with political platforms or political parties. But for me, justice belongs to the people of God. Justice is a Bible word. The Psalms say that God loves justice, that the very foundation of God’s throne It’s justice and righteousness. So we’ve talked about uh racial healing and reconciliation. I’ve talked about conflict resolution. Early on, I did my overview of relational conflict resolution, how to communicate. Your feelings when you’re upset with a spouse or a family member or someone you go to church with To me, these acts of justice are very close to the heart of Jesus. We make peace in a broken world by practicing conflict resolution and forgiveness. And then a number of episodes, as I looked back Focus on Jesus. From the very beginning when I was baptized at eleven years old And then when I really began to take my faith seriously when I was fifteen years old, it was all about Jesus And that’s been a thread that continues today. Of course, I wrote an entire book called Centering Jesus, which is about keeping Jesus at the center of everything we do. And so I have utilized the church calendar to talk about Advent, preparing for the Christmas celebration. I’ve done episodes on incarnation, on the resurrection of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, and how Jesus is leading us towards new creation. I did a number of what I would call mini series on atonement. I’ve done a lot of reading, research, writing, and teaching. on atonement, on the meaning of the death of Jesus. Most recently, again, we walked through Fleming Rutledge’s massive theological work on atonement. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Um, we did uh the nicing creed. I mentioned that just a little bit ago. I I love doing that kind of like theological foundations walking through the ancient creeds. And in response to walking through the creeds I did a handful of episodes on the work of the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit’s doing in the church. And and of course, because spiritual formation is so important to me Um, I have just fallen in love with the church calendar. And so lots of different episodes where I talk about the various seasons. Currently, we’re in Easter tide. We are still celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. And Easter tide is going to lead us to Pentecost. And Pentecost is when we remember the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us followers of Jesus. We can’t get too far from the Spirit, but I love how the church calendar From Advent to Pentecost tells and retells the story of Jesus And then, of course, there have been the episodes where I just talk about books, books that I’m reading. Of course, I read The Lord of the Rings. And so we’ve just most recently been walking through The Lord of the Rings. I I’ve read the trilogy for the first time and absolutely loved it. Kick myself that I waited this long to read The Lord of the Rings. In fact, the next episode, we’re still gonna be in Middle Earth. The next episode after this one, we’re gonna stay there But other books that I have uh been reading, I talk about, uh, do some work in one of the episodes on Aristotle. I’ve spent the last 18 months or so uh researching for the next book I want to write. I’ve been reading and researching Aristotle, so I talked about that. And a lot of the books that I have loved have then led me into conversations. Here in the first 99 episodes, we’ve had 23 different conversations with pastors, authors, theologians. And a lot of time it’s just because I read their book and I then I just want to talk to them. And most of the authors I’ve reached out to have said yes to an interview. There are some, I’ve read some books. And I’m gonna leave them unnamed, but I recently read a book that I absolutely loved and I reached out to the author and she ghosted me. She didn’t even respond. I followed up with a second email and I made sure I got her email write and I said, I loved your book. Will you come on my podcast so we can talk? Never heard from her. But Uh I just so appreciate the twenty-three interviews I’ve done with twenty-two different people. Tim Wild Smith I interviewed twice about two different books that he wrote. And I have future interviews planned, but I love those conversations. In one sense, I would love to have a podcast of just interviews. But everyone does that. And honestly, it takes some time to schedule and plan these interviews. Honestly, they’re just a little bit more challenging. than what I’m doing right now. And that is talking directly to you about what’s on my heart, what’s in my mind. but I have appreciated a number of the authors that I have interviewed are friends. My very first interview was with Tommy Brown, who’s a fellow Nav Press author and has become a good friend. Uh and I appreciate that. Uh episode 50 was a conversation with my friend Santosh Nainen, uh, who’s a pastor in Canada. I had another interview with my good friends Rodney Bradford and Alan Pertil. And I told them we’re going to have to do another Podcast interview. So that’s coming up in the future. I need those guys back. We’ve been friends for 20 plus years, and we’re pastors in different areas of the country. Uh Alan is in North Carolina. Rodney is in South Carolina. I’m in Missouri. We’re in different traditions. I’m non-denominational. Rodney is a Reformed Baptist. Uh Alan is Presbyterian ordained in the PC USA. And uh so we come from different backgrounds, but we have a shared love for Jesus and the church and scripture and theology. Gotta have those guys back on. So a number of the interviews I have had are with friends that I have known for years and years, but I’ve also met some new people and hopefully introduced you. to some authors that you are unaware of. And so when we step back And we look at where we have been. And so you might be wondering what ties all of this together justice and prayer and theology and books and scripture and conversations. What is the center? What is the unifying principle? And here it is, and it will not surprise you. The unifying center of the Peaceable and Kind podcast is Jesus. I am still fascinated by Jesus. I am still devoted to following Jesus. I’m still interested in Jesus. Sometimes when I see problems within the church, the fracturing and the division and the politicalization of pockets of the church, when I see Again, moral failures and abuse within the church when I when I tend to fall in despair, what brings me out is, yeah, there are problems, but at least we got Jesus If we can hold on to Jesus, if we can keep Jesus at the center, if we can form our lives around Jesus, then we’re going to be okay. And so this is it for Peaceable and Kind. Peaceable and Kind is a Jesus podcast. And I hope as you have Been with us, maybe not for a hundred episodes, but some episodes, hopefully, you are growing in your love your fascination and your desire for Jesus. That is what I’m hoping to do with these podcasts in the past. And as we look towards the future, I want to continue to do the same thing. No, I do not have a master plan. Again, I’ll pull back the curtain. I have one episode planned after this. And what is yet to come is still even unknown to me. But here is the commitment I make to you We will continue to explore the scriptures, we’ll continue to engage culture, we’ll continue to learn from others, and together we will continue to pursue Jesus, to learn to walk in the ways of Jesus. We’ll keep asking questions We’ll keep resisting easy answers. We’ll keep doing our deep dives. But all of it is about keeping our focus on Jesus and living lives marked by peace and kindness. So as I wrap up episode 100, let me say thank you Thank you for listening. Thank you for engaging. Thank you for being a part of this journey. And wherever you are today in your spiritual journey. And whether you’ve listened to all 99 now 100 episodes or just a handful, let me leave you with this. Follow Jesus. Trust Jesus. Walk in his ways. Become a person of peace in a world of conflict. Continue to become a person of kindness. in a culture of contempt and insults. That’s my prayer for you as we move forward and continue Releasing weekly episodes here at Peaceable and Kind. Well, that’s the end of this episode. Thank you for joining me for this celebration.
Derek Vreeland: Go in peace. And be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.