Marshall Keeble (1878 - 1968) may be the most accomplished and influential Church of Christ preacher of all time. For decades, he preached all over the world, baptizing as many as 40,000 and planting hundreds of Church of Christ congregations. Today, hundreds of Church of Christ elders and ministers trace their own Christian ancestry back to Keeble.

What makes this story even more remarkable is that Keeble did most of his work in the Jim Crow South, where legal and social norms limited what he could do and say. Sometimes, Keeble preached at the risk of his own life.

Marshall Keeble is one of the greatest preachers of all time, but like all great preachers, his legacy is more complicated than it seems at first look.

Dr. Edward Robinson, a "spiritual grandson" of Keeble, is author of Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the United States 1914 - 1968. In this episode, Robinson explores the harder questions about Keeble's ministry and what the present-day Church of Christ has to learn from one of its all-time greats.

Link to Bobby Ross's Christian Chronicle story on the new Marshall Keeble exhibit that opened in 2026 at Jackson Street Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee

To learn more about how to join a Thrive cohort, contact Dr. Sears here.

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If surveys are on point, burnout is epidemic among professional and volunteer ministers in congregations everywhere. Not only does burnout end ministries, it damages churches and families as well. It's a major problem that congregations and ministers brush off or put off at their own peril.

In this episode, Dr. Darrel Sears (assistant professor of Bible and ministry, York University) defines "burnout," shares his own experience with it in ministry, and talks about how churches and ministers alike can head it off and recover from it. He also introduces Thrive Network, an online small group-based ministry where ministers help each other prevent, and recover from, burnout.

Link to Eliza Rohda's Christian Chronicle story on Dr. Sears's Thrive Network

Link to Dr. Sears's dissertation (free online) that focuses on the causes and cure for minister burnout (includes many books and other sources for further study)

Link to Christina Maslach's research on burnout (referenced in the interview)

Link to Resilient Ministry (Burns, Chapman, Guthrie) (referenced in interview)

To learn more about how to join a Thrive cohort, contact Dr. Sears here.

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Many Church of Christ members have preached or testified before thousands at various places and times, but Captain Victor Glover is one of the very few who spoke to an audience of billions. And he is the only one to do it from more than 200,000 miles away from earth.

From April 1 - 10, 2026, Glover and three other astronauts completed a 500,000-mile round trip that took them beyond the moon and farther into space than any human beings have ever traveled. NASA's Artemis II mission captivated 8 billion people on earth and gave Glover a stellar pulpit from which to draw humanity's attention to God.

In this episode, Capt. Glover opens up about what he felt, learned and thought during his journey beyond the moon. He also shares what being on the moon mission taught him about community, grace, love and what it means to be part of humanity that inhabits earth.

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Max Rogers (Chatham Church of Christ, Chatham, New Jersey) is an Ivy League-educated economist who never imagined that he would every try online sports gambling, let alone get hooked on it. But one $5 bet soon turned to hundreds of bets and thousands of dollars in losses.

In this episode, Rogers talks about how his experience with online sports gambling exposed him to how this is a fast-growing problem for Christians and churches in the United States.

Link to Wager for More: A Christian Perspective on Online Sports and Casino Gambling by Max Rogers

If you or someone you love has a gambling problem, click here for the National Problem Gambling Helpline

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Church of Christ folks sometimes have an uneasy relationship with church history outside of the New Testament. In a tradition that esteems the Bible as the singular authority and pattern for the church, it may feel weird or wrong to explore church history from other sources.

Dr. Dyron Daughrity is a Church of Christ kid who not only grew up to be a local Church of Christ minister, he became a historian. And not just a historian; Dr. Daughrity recently became the next president of the American Society of Church History.

In this episode, Dr. Daughrity argues that the project to restore primitive New Testament Christianity encourages knowing the history of the church in the 2,000 years between Acts of the Apostles and today. He also makes the case for Church of Christ folks exploring their more recent roots in the Stone-Campbell Movement. For fun, he reveals the characters and events in recent Church of Christ history that may not be household names, but are worth knowing and studying.

Link to Dr. Dyron Daughrity's faculty biography at Pepperdine University

Link to The Bible: Our Final Authority, the latest book by Dr. Dyron Daughrity

Link to Dr. Daughrity's author page at amazon.com

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On Wednesday, April 1, four astronauts blasted into space for a historic mission to the far side of the moon. The pilot, Captain Victor Glover, is a Church of Christ member who often speaks of his faith with candor and clarity. As the BBC reported, Captain Glover took his Bible with him more than 250,000 miles from Earth.

This episode is a replay of Captain Glover's May 2023 conversation with The Christian Chronicle Podcast, when NASA first announced that he would be part of the Artemis II mission to the moon.

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Church of Christ lifers may remember Churches of Christ in the United States, an annual directory of, you guessed it, all Church of Christ congregations in the United States. The last edition came out in 2018.

In 2024, The Christian Chronicle, Heritage 21 Foundation, Siburt Institute and 21st Century Christian formed a partnership, the Church Research Council, to resume publication of Churches of Christ in the United States.

But making a directory of Church of Christ congregations is not as easy as it may seem. First, there is the challenge of tracking down 10,000 to 12,000 independent congregations across 50 states and territories.

Then there's the fact that some congregations will resist participating for a variety of reasons, including how creating a directory feels "denominational" to congregations that avoid anything that resembles that label.

And then there's the harder question of all: What is a "Church of Christ" and who gets to decide?

In this episode, Dr. Suzie Macaluso, the lead researcher on the Churches of Christ in the United States project, talks about the challenges and implications of the directory on how Church of Christ folks imagine themselves and how they relate to one another.

Link to Cheryl Mann Bacon's Christian Chronicle story on the challenges of compiling a new Churches of Christ in the United States

Bible scholar and prolific book-writer Rubel Shelly returns to talk about his two new books on heaven and hell. In this episode, he explains why heaven and hell may not be what most Christians always imagined them to be.

Link to Heaven: Why It May Not Be What You Have Always Heart, by Rubel Shelly

Link to Hell: Why It May Not Be What You Have Always Heard, by Rubel Shelly

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