2016 Episode 42

Show open: guest intro and charity plug

The show opens from the Pathway studios with in-studio musical guest Chris Acres, who has just released his first full-length album, Nowhere Home (out November 15). A host previews the night: live acoustic songs, the album's story arc, Boova's declined Christian flash-mob invitation, and a film crew that followed Boova for a DMACC documentary. The open also carries a plug for Many Hands For Haiti and Samaritan's Purse-style gift catalogs (with a comedy riff about trading-card chicken sponsorships), and Mike tells about deciding to read the book of Job with his six- and nine-year-old daughters.

In-studio performance: 'Waiting All My Life'

Guest Chris Acres performs 'Waiting All My Life' live in the studio on acoustic guitar. The performance runs about three minutes, and the hosts react afterward with dance jokes and compliments on its soundtrack feel.

The making of Nowhere Home

Acres explains how this first full-length album differs from his EPs: he brought in outside ears, working with mixer Brett Baird (who has mixed for Kings Kaleidoscope and Citizens and Saints), trading three to five mix bounces per song. He describes the album's light story arc — a person leaving home asking 'what is home?' — and how the closing track 'The Beauty,' featuring his wife's voice, resolves it: home is wherever your people, mission, and calling are. The hosts play a taste of 'The Beauty' and muse on how musical taste changes with age and coming to faith.

'The Beauty,' Polynesian navigators, and the candy riff

Acres explains the imagery behind 'The Beauty': his wife as his anchor after she traveled early in their marriage, and the album opener 'Nowhere Home,' which pictures a Polynesian long-distance navigator casting off alone — the album's most obscure reference, per the hosts. The conversation veers into Ben and Mike's old Des Moines indie-film audition story (landing an unpaid gas-station-robbery extra role and writing a drumsticks-on-a-stool 'soundtrack'), a Moana joke, and an extended riff on Clark bars and cherry mash candy.

Blogging, Facebook, and 'pastor Ben's' reading lists

The hosts tease Acres about his infrequent blogging — two or three posts in two years — and his father-in-law Wayne, who kindly labels posts with estimated read times. Conversation turns to Facebook culture: Acres mostly observes rather than posts, and the hosts joke about Ben's dense 'for your light reading' Facebook posts — including a letter from Ignatius to the Philippians — and how intimidating that content can feel.

Social media and the loss of reasonableness

Starting from Philippians' 'let your reasonableness be known,' the hosts argue social media has licensed unreasonableness: an inflated sense of self, venting without digesting, and a thousand inch-deep friendships instead of deep ones. Stories include a Facebook friend who turns out to be a stranger ten years older, a foul-mouthed poster one host hides and unhides every six months, and a family technology ban over Thanksgiving to reset on what they are thankful for. Tim Brand's point from last week's Many Hands For Haiti visit is recalled: on mission trips people fall in love with the community, not the location.

Boova's flash-mob-for-Jesus debate

Boova recounts a Snapchat invitation to join a Christian flash mob; he answered 'no and no' — not interested, and not a good singer — then spent ninety minutes debating the friend about whether singing worship songs in public actually spreads the gospel. He argues worship is about giving God worth, not an evangelism tool, and offered instead to sit on the sidelines and talk with anyone who had questions. The hosts agree in substance — one calls it 'hit people with the bag of seeds' — noting such events can work but are not normative; Jesus' own pattern was relational.

Boova's DMACC documentary testimony

Boova tells how, on the six-year anniversary of his mother's suicide (November 7), he answered a DMACC email seeking students' stories of depression, anxiety, and suicide awareness, was selected as one of three or four students, and spent a day being interviewed and filmed for a federal suicide-prevention program that may go beyond DMACC. He describes praying not to make it about himself, telling the film crew plainly that Jesus Christ is why he is alive, and hoping he said Jesus' name often enough that editors cannot cut it out. The hosts reflect that God answers prayers for peace with God-sized, unexpected answers ('how about a film crew?'); Mike connects it to reading Job with his daughters and realizing 'we are Elihu'; and Boova describes 'purge journaling' — writing prayers down to later see how God answered — and teaching youth group that a testimony is 'God's story through us.'

'Come A Long Way' and the album hinge

Acres introduces 'Come A Long Way' as a song born from looking back and realizing how far he has come with the Lord, then performs it live in the studio. Afterward the hosts discuss physical versus digital albums — one host's car only plays CDs — and Acres explains 'No More Crying,' the album's upbeat hinge song written for someone going through a rough time, pointing to the promise that someday there will be no more tears.

Dear LFTP: resentment toward a boyfriend's son

• A woman in a new relationship resents her boyfriend's 10-year-old son and does not want to spend the next eight years raising a child who isn't hers — what should she do?

Mike reads a listener letter from a woman who moved in with her boyfriend — who has sole custody of his ten-year-old son, Jordan — for financial reasons, and now resents the boy, dreads him coming home from school, and asks whether to break up. Mike answers first with unusual honesty about his own slow attachment to his daughters, then advises she bow out: her heart is not in it, and she took a shortcut to the ends while skipping the means. Another host agrees, framing it as choosing ends over means — the opposite of how followers of Jesus are known. They then read Secular's answer: if the father is really 'the love of your life,' he and his son are a package deal — and, in a postscript, assure Jordan the leaving is about her, not him, so he will not blame himself.

Parenting honesty coda

The hosts close the letter's aftermath with a candid parenting riff: one host jokes he struggled to bond with each of his own children for their first three months, while another describes praying through his impatience with his 'jazzy,' high-energy daughter and learning to celebrate who she is rather than molding her. The point: honesty about the struggle — with each other and with God — beats pretending, and the prize is the Lord, not parental image.

Outro: 'No More Crying' send-off and December teaser

The hosts announce they will send listeners out with 'No More Crying' by Chris Acres, plug chrisacresmusic.com, Spotify, and possibly physical CDs down the road, and ask listeners to leave reviews wherever they get the tunes. A host shares a church moment: many people drawing different takeaways from the same section of Philippians. They tease an author visit coming in December, then close with the show's benediction: 'be faithful in the means. God will handle the ends.'