Formation with John Ortberg

How are we to remain curious about God? John Ortberg and Jackson Lane return to Formation’s debut conversation with Tyler Staton for the first installment of Footnotes, a new post-show where we get to examine John’s thoughts after each episode. 

Tyler’s sincerity in Formation episode 001 led John to examine his own life: his relationship with humor, transcendence, and even marriage. Listen for a conversation about keeping wonder alive, what marriage reveals in us, and bringing our real desires and doubts to God.

About this Footnotes Episode:
Footnotes is Formation’s post-show, where John and Jackson revisit the ideas and questions raised in the main podcast. FN001 follows How God Gets Our Attention & the Pace of Formation ft. Tyler Staton | EP001 and includes excerpts from that conversation. Tyler’s reflections provide the starting point; John and Jackson explore what stayed with them and where those ideas lead in ordinary life.
What this Conversation Explores:
How learning can become worship, and why knowing the expected answers about God can crowd out curiosity, openness, and wonder
What Tyler’s black bear encounter reveals about transcendence, and why John connects the loss of that sense of reality with a deeper loss of meaning
Dallas Willard’s understanding of a word as a spiritual entity, and how language allows us to share meaning even when we struggle to name what we experience
Why marriage exposes withdrawal, anger, and defensiveness that other relationships may not, and what John wishes he had learned sooner about serving
The difference between surrendering to God and making ourselves appear more surrendered than we are, especially when a prayer carries disappointment or doubt
Eleanor Stump’s concept of “willed loneliness,” and how avoiding the work of self-awareness can keep us from the connection we want with God and other people

Resources Mentioned:
Loving God with All Your Mind — Neal Plantinga
Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis
A Secular Age — Charles Taylor
Hearing God — Dallas Willard
Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering — Eleanor Stump

Related Episode:
How God Gets Our Attention & the Pace of Formation ft. Tyler Staton | EP001
https://www.formationpodcast.com/ep001-tyler-staton/

About Formation:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped.

Connect with Formation:
Website: www.formationpodcast.com
Newsletter: www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe
Socials: @formationjohn
If this conversation gave you something to think about, we'd be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.
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What if the most important thing you bring to work isn’t your résumé, your expertise, or even your ideas?

Ron Johnson helped transform Target, built the Apple Store alongside Steve Jobs, and later became CEO of JCPenney. Across a career spent reimagining some of the biggest names in retail, he came to believe that your most important contribution at work is something no résumé can capture: your inner voice. It’s the perspective you discover when you get still enough to realize what you actually believe.

In this conversation with John Ortberg, Ron talks about learning to hear that voice beneath all the others, what Steve Jobs taught him about honesty, and how success can make it harder to recognize what is actually driving you. He also reflects on the failure at JCPenney, the question his father asked that he couldn’t shake, and the words from Psalm 23 that met him in a season of isolation.

AMA OPPORTUNITY:

Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com.
One question per person, screenshot required.

WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES:

• Why Ron believes the most important thing you bring to work is your inner voice
• What Steve Jobs taught Ron about telling the truth as a form of kindness
• Why solitude matters when you’re trying to hear what you actually believe beneath all the voices around you
• How a garden changed the way Ron thought about leading people and helping them flourish
• The three-hour interview with Steve Jobs that changed the course of Ron’s life and eventually led to the Apple Store
• The ideas behind the Genius Bar and the Fifth Avenue Apple Store that never sleeps
• Why Ron left Apple for JCPenney, and the question his father asked him: “How much success do you need?”
• How failure, isolation, and “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” changed Ron’s relationship with ambition

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius — Ron Johnson and Zander Nethercutt
• A Return to Love — Marianne Williamson
• The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace — M. Scott Peck
• When We Are Seen: How to Come Into Your Power–and Empower Others Along the Way — Denise Young
• My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir — Lewis Smedes

ABOUT FORMATION:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.

CONNECT WITH FORMATION:

Website: www.formationpodcast.com
Newsletter: www.formationpodcast.com/subscribe
Socials: @formationjohn

If this conversation gave you something to think about, we’d be grateful if you shared it with someone else who thinks intentionally about the things that matter most.

Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.

Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)

This year the Nicene Creed turns 1,700 years old, and Glenn Packiam thinks it might be the most important thing the modern church has forgotten how to use. In this conversation, John and Glenn talk about the difference between hope and comfort, how the ancient world considered hope a weakness, and why the Creed's insistence on saying "we believe" instead of "I believe" might be the most countercultural thing a Christian can do today.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Glenn Packiam is the Lead Pastor of Rockharbor Church in Costa Mesa, California, and a Senior Fellow at Barna Group. He is the author of several books, including his newest, What's a Christian, Anyway?, which explores how the Nicene Creed can guide a confused and fractured church back home.Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person; screenshot required.

WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES

Why the ancient Stoics considered hope a moral weakness, and why the resurrection flips that on its headThe difference between hope and comfort, and why John and Glenn think the church has confused the twoWhat the boat metaphor for faith reveals about setting down your oars without losing your place in the crewWhy the Creed says "we believe" instead of "I believe," and what that costs a culture built around personal validationWhy only 48 percent of people say they trust pastors, and how Glenn thinks the church should respondThe King Charles coronation story that reframes what it means to swear allegiance to JesusWhy "deconstruction" isn't really about doctrine, but about a whole story and communityGlenn's answer to the question, "What does Jesus see about the church that you don't?"

RESOURCES MENTIONED
What’s a Christian, Anyway? — Glenn Packiam
This Is Not the End — Glenn Packiam
The Intentional Year — Glenn and Holly Packiam
The Intentional Year Journal — Glenn and Holly Packiam
The Divine Conspiracy — Dallas Willard
The Denial of Death — Ernest Becker
Reflections on the Psalms — C. S. Lewis
Salvation by Allegiance Alone — Matthew Bates
Tell It Slant — Eugene Peterson
On Bullshit — Harry Frankfurt
The Adult Hope Scale — C. R. Snyder

CONNECT WITH GLENN
glennpackiam.com

Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow Formation at formationpodcast.com and @formationjohn.Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)

What happens when the person managing everyone else's anxiety is the most anxious one in the room?

Steve Cuss joins John for a conversation that starts in a childhood home in Western Australia and ends up inside the emotional wiring of every leader, marriage, and church staff meeting. Steve talks candidly about growing up in a household run by unpredictable anger, the confidence he built on a foundation of fear, and the hospital chaplaincy that stripped all of it away.

What emerges is a working theology of anxiety: how false needs hijack good intentions, how reactivity spreads through a room sometimes before it's even known, and why the most important thing any leader can offer their people is a well self.

What this conversation explores

• How Steve's childhood shaped a lifelong pattern of enmeshment, and how confidence can be built entirely on top of fear
• What hospital chaplaincy taught Steve about false needs, and why the ones that feel most real in the moment are the most dangerous
• The difference between reactivity and response, and how to take your own pulse before walking into a hard room
• Edwin Friedman's idea of a differentiated self, and what it looks like to be close to someone without absorbing their anxiety
• Why every false need has its own gospel, and why none of them can ever deliver freedom, peace, or love
• How churches and leaders can offer differentiation instead of certainty in a polarized culture
• Why Steve calls a well self the greatest gift any Christian leader can offer

Resources mentioned

• Managing Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss
• The Expectation Gap by Steve Cuss
• A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman
• Thomas Wingfold, Curate by George MacDonald
• Formation Podcast episode with Gary Haugen, referenced by Steve as a formative conversation

About Steve Cuss

Steve Cuss is a pastor and the founder of Capable Life, where he trains leaders to manage stress and improve relationships. He is also the author of Managing Leadership Anxiety and The Expectation Gap.

https://stevecusswords.com

AMA opportunity

Leave us a review for a chance to ask John a question on an upcoming episode. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person, screenshot required.

About Formation

Formation explores the science and soul of spiritual formation, bringing together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week.

https://formationpodcast.com
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)

Since Formation launched, we've talked about giving our listeners the chance to have their questions answered by John. This is that episode. No guest this time, just John and Creative Director, Jackson, working through the questions you sent in when you left a review, on everything from predestination to spiritual abuse to what AI is doing to his own attention span.
Want your question answered for the next one? Leave us a review for a chance to ask John anything about spiritual formation or life with God. To enter, follow the podcast, leave your review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over with your question to editors@formationpodcast.com. One question per person; screenshot required.
WHAT THIS CONVERSATION EXPLORES
How John reconciles predestination in Romans and Ephesians with passages that affirm God's desire for all to be saved
Why God's omniscience doesn't mean God always chooses to know everything, and what that has to do with honoring our agency
What historic Christian writers understood about the unconscious mind long before Freud made it popular
Why the language of "spiritual formation" replaced "Christian education," and what that shift says about how people actually change
The anxiety John has noticed in himself as AI makes more and more instantly possible
What spiritual abuse actually looks like, and the difference between confession as a healthy spiritual practice and confession used as a tool of coercion
How to keep trusting God when you can't control what happens to the people you love most
John's advice for Christians who feel politically alienated from their own church
Why John believes the local church and parachurch ministries cannot survive without each other
A first look at John's next book, on living beyond a culture of contempt
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Dynamics of Spiritual Formation, Richard Lovelace
Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke
The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Agnes Sanford
Leanne Payne
Tyler VanderWeele and the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard
Joni and Friends
Become New
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Formation at formationpodcast.com and @formationjohn.

Formation is produced by Become New, a community dedicated to helping you grow spiritually, one day at a time. Subscribe for daily teaching from John Ortberg at becomenew.com/subscribe.
Would you do us a favor? Make sure you're following the podcast. (It helps the show reach more people.)