Complex Creatures

About Complex Creatures

Exploring Spirituality and the common good

Publisher

Jarrod Longbons

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 Oct 2024

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

47 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   No Golden Age: Jarrod Longbons reacts to Ryan Burge on the Church, Decline, and What Comes Next

   What if the story the church tells about itself has always been wrong? In this debrief episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with producer Alan Barnes for a candid conversation following the annual Craddock Lectures at Peachtree Christian Church — this year featuring political scientist and data researcher Ryan Burge, professor at Washington University in St. Louis and author of The Vanishing Church. Burge's numbers are sobering: mainline denominations are in the sharpest decline in American religious history, and he doesn't see it reversing. But Jarrod isn't so sure the math tells the whole story. Watch the talk this references in 2 parts: https://youtu.be/LmsgshftzQU https://youtu.be/2c0OqXjSWMk Together they dig into: Why the "golden age" of mainline church was mostly a myth — and what the data actually shows How the collapse of voluntary association culture (Rotary clubs, civic organizations, and yes, denominations) explains more than the theology does The movement church vs. the institutional church — and why vibe matters more than people want to admit Why the Assemblies of God is growing while the Disciples of Christ is losing ground fast Belong before believe — and what that actually means for how communities form The case for micro churches, dinner churches, and planting in someone's backyard Jarrod's takeaway: the hope of the world isn't in churches growing. It never was. But hunger is an open door, and right now, there's a lot of hunger. #ComplexCreatures #RyanBurge #TheVanishingChurch #ChurchDecline #MainlineChristianity #CraddockLectures #MicroChurch #ChurchPlanting #BelongBeforeBelieve #Discipleship #FaithAndPolitics #AssembliesOfGod #GraphsAboutReligion #ChristianPodcast #TheologyAndCulture

2. 

   23 Sept 2026

   The Snake Made Us Human: Joe Gordon on Fear, Scripture, and Creation

   Today's episode begins with a confession: many of us don't like snakes. For some of us, that is putting it mildly. Snakes slither through our nightmares and our sacred stories alike, from the serpent in the garden to whatever might be under the next rock on the trail. But what if fear is only part of the story? Jarrod is joined by Dr. Joe Gordon, Professor of Theology at Johnson University, a teacher and writer, and one of the most thoughtful people he knows on the relationship between Christian faith and the created world. Joe has spent years helping students think deeply about God, the Bible, humanity, and the rest of creation. One of his most enduring fascinations is not an abstract doctrine or an obscure theological debate. It is snakes. The conversation ranges from the suburban St. Louis garden bed where a four year old Joe first saw a snake, to primatologist Lynne Isbell's argument that our eyesight and our brains were shaped by our long relationship with venomous snakes, to Genesis 1 and the claim that the deepest line in the creation account is not between humans and everything else but between God and everything God has made. Along the way: why Joe teaches theology outdoors, what a bioblitz on a 320 acre campus can do for a doctrine class, why an American lawn is ecologically worse than a desert, and why English ivy on a Georgia hillside is not the same thing as ivy on a thousand year old English wall. It is a surprisingly hopeful conversation. Joe suggests that a flourishing world is not one stripped of mystery or danger, but one where we learn to inhabit creation with humility, curiosity, and even affection for creatures very different from ourselves. If snakes make you uneasy, stay with us. This isn't a conversation that asks you to love snakes overnight. It is one that treats misunderstood creatures with a kind of redemptive care, and asks whether the world God made might be stranger, richer, and more beautiful than we imagined. If this conversation is helpful, please like, subscribe, and share it with a friend. #ComplexCreatures #CreationCare #Theology #Snakes #Herpetology #CreatureTheology #Genesis #ChristianEcology #Appalachia #GreatSmokyMountains #Copperhead #Biodiversity #PublicTheology #SpiritualityAndTheCommonGood Short set for Instagram or Threads: #ComplexCreatures #CreationCare #Theology #Snakes #Biodiversity #Appalachia

3. 

   16 Sept 2026

   The Purple Church Is Gone: Ryan Burge on Polarization and American Faith

   What happens to a country when the church stops being the one room where people who vote differently still sit together? On this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons talks with Ryan Burge, a political scientist, former pastor, and researcher at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, whose new book is The Vanishing Church. Together they trace how the moderate congregation hollowed out, why that is bad for democracy and not just for church people, and what the rural mega church is really doing to the small churches around it. They dig into the 1990s sorting that nobody noticed until 2000, why people actually leave church, the dairy farmer who taught Ryan how to be a father, and the humility of a preacher who ends a sermon with "but I might be wrong." Go to church to learn how to be a human being. #ComplexCreatures #RyanBurge #TheVanishingChurch #GraphsAboutReligion #ChurchDecline #ReligionAndPolitics #AmericanChristianity #Polarization #ReligiousPluralism #ThirdSpaces #ChristianPodcast #FaithAndCommunity #SpiritualPodcast

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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