Recent Research
Fear Rewired: From Brain Panic to Trained Courage
Fear hijacks the brain before you can think. Courage is trained action, not fearless personality. Stress, rightly held, sharpens rather than shatters.
Soul Talk
The Soul in the Age of Simulation
AI can assist Scripture—but cannot discern truth or Spirit. When innovation outruns wisdom, formation becomes collateral damage. Simulated souls force a haunting question: what is real spirituality?
Recent Research
When AI Starts Shaping Souls
AI is becoming a spiritual guide—are we noticing? Chatbots offer connection—but may erode real relationships. As AI companions rise, human love quietly reshapes itself.
In The Field
Ministry in the Machine Age
Pastors face a choice: leverage AI or be shaped by it. Faster ministry tools risk slower, deeper pastoral presence. The future church hinges on who forms whom—pastors or machines.
Podcast
EP002 – Tremper Longman
Tremper Longman III — one of the most prolific and trusted Old Testament scholars of his generation — joins John for a conversation about the parts of Scripture that trouble us most, and why sitting with that trouble might be more formative than explaining it away.
Podcast
EP001 – Tyler Staton
Tyler Staton joins John for the first conversation in Formation's history. This is a conversation about the ancient and the empirical, and how sometimes we may look for formation in all the wrong places.
Soul Talk
Attending Through the Arts
The arts are instruments of formation that shape our attention and reorder our desires.
In The Field
Art, Beauty, and the Work of Formation
When artistic practices become practices that form the soul.