Is Christian parenting a strict formula to execute, or an art form to practice?

In a culture that bombards Christian parents with exhaustive 10-step checklists and uniform blueprints for family life, it is remarkably easy to accidentally provoke or exasperate our children. This week, Dr. James Spencer, PhD and Dr. Ashish Varma return to the podcast to look at fatherhood through the lens of scriptural wisdom rather than cultural anxieties.

True biblical wisdom doesn't produce recipe-followers; it forms adaptive disciples. Pulling from the book of Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, and the letters of Paul, James and Ashish discuss why parenting requires holy improvisation—a pastoral sensitivity that allows a father to receive his children exactly as they are and adjust his training to fit their unique design.

In this episode, we discuss:

1. The "Chopped" Mystery Basket: Viewing your child's distinct traits as raw ingredients that require expert, customized care.
2. The Education Fit: An honest, non-judgmental look at public vs. private schooling, and why identical principles led both hosts to entirely different local schooling choices for their kids.
3. Healthy Friction vs. Exasperation: Learning how far to push a child to build resilience without crossing the line into crushing their spirit.
4. The Long Game: Moving past the urge to "fix" every behavioral issue instantly, focusing instead on building the profound, long-term trust your children will need well into adulthood.

Form your character, drop the rigid checklists, and learn to enjoy the beautiful, improvisational calling of being a dad.

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To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

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The Southern Baptist Convention just passed a constitutional amendment restricting women in ministry — and the implications reach far beyond the SBC. In this episode of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer and co-host Ashish Varma sit down with Dr. Beth Allison Barr, historian, Baylor professor, and author of The Making of Biblical Womanhoodand Becoming the Pastor's Wife, to break down what happened, why it matters, and where evangelical Christianity may be heading.

Beth traces the amendment's path from 2022 to its overwhelming passage in 2025, explains why Al Mohler's role was decisive, and unpacks the striking inconsistency at the heart of the SBC's position: the same ecclesiology used to avoid accountability for sexual abuse was set aside the moment women's roles came to a vote.

We also go deeper into the historical forces behind this moment, from the fundamentalist-modernist controversy to decades of seminary curriculum that have shaped an entire generation of Christians who have never encountered a different reading of scripture. If you've wondered how complementarianism moves toward biblical patriarchy, Beth explains exactly how that progression works and why it isn't accidental.

The conversation also takes up the coordination problem: the SBC has Desiring God, the Gospel Coalition, and institutional momentum built over decades. Those committed to keeping these conversations open and honest largely do not. That gap matters, and we name it directly.

Topics covered: SBC constitutional amendment, women in ministry, complementarianism vs. egalitarianism, Al Mohler, biblical womanhood, evangelical polarization, church history, Beth Allison Barr

Check out Beth's Substack at bethallisonbarr.substack.com, and her books: The Making of Biblical Womanhood and Becoming the Pastor's Wife.

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To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

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What does it actually mean to be a male disciple of Jesus? And why does so much of what gets called "biblical masculinity" look more like cultural bravado than anything Jesus modeled or taught? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Kutter Callaway, associate professor of theology and psychology at Fuller Seminary and author of Theology for Psychology and Counseling, to dig into those questions.

We talk through how we got here, because this didn't just appear out of nowhere. There's a history, a response to the feminist movement, the Promise Keepers era, and now a political and technological moment that's made a certain vision of masculinity almost impossible to avoid. The tragedy is that the answer to real male loneliness has been, in so many corners of the church, a kind of machismo that has very little to do with the Jesus of the Gospels.

We get into how certain exegetes have tried to make Jesus a model of masculine strength in ways the text doesn't support, the structural inconsistencies in how the SBC has applied its ecclesiology, and why discipleship, not dominance, is the frame we actually need. Kutter's closing point, that we need to ask not "what's wrong with you" but "what happened to you," is something worth sitting with.

Check out Kutter's work at kuttercallaway.com and his Substack, The Wrong Kind of Christian, at kuttercallaway.substack.com.

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To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

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