Looking Over Life

James and Shawn share another FWIW episode with the LOL audience. We look at the seventh and final habit of the book and close out what was a rather long book review.

In this habit, we discuss how important it is to take care of oneself before being able to do the important things in life. We looked at the four categories Covey gives of Physical, Mental, Social/Emotional, and Spiritual care.

How do you find balance in taking care of yourself, considering these categories? Do you have any specific advice or tips? Please send us an email.

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

Shawn and James have another Q&A conversation. We talk about how James isn't really a science person after all and why Shawn decided to move to Peru. James also teaches us how to make and Indian dish.

Please be sure to share this episode with a friend. It really helps us out.

And if you have any questions for us, send us an email!

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

James and Shawn talk about death and separation and the feelings that go with it. James recently experienced a loss in his family and was pondering thoughts of death and life, so we decided to take some time to talk about it together.

We hope this conversation can be meaningful to you, as well. If you have any thoughts you could share with us, please send us an email. We'd love to hear from you.

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com

Shawn and James talk about artificial intelligence. We spend a good bit of time focusing on ChatGPT and its potential effects on society and the church. Will we become even more lazy and dumb as a society now that we have yet another crutch to lean on?

We also had a bit of fun having the bot write some short stories based on our prompts.

Have you been using a chatbot like this? What do you think of it? Maybe you have some stories or other pieces to share with us. Send us an email!

James and Shawn look on the bright side. We flip the coin and talk about what excites us for the future.

Shawn again took a more narrow, personal view of the future and got choked up thinking about it. James was again more focused on the broad view of society and the church and where trends may take us. Did you know there are good and hopeful things coming out of Millennials?!

We'd love to hear what makes you optimistic for the future. Do you see something on the horizon that buoys your spirits? Send us an email.

Shawn and James pretend to be grumpy old men. We talk about some of the things we see in the future that give us concern.

James focused mainly on big-picture societal issues that make him worried about the future of the church, the country, and the world. Shawn was more focused on his circumstances as they relate to the church and community in Peru and what the next five to ten years may bring.

What are the things that worry you about the future? What would you say are the top three things you're pessimistic about? Send us an email.

James and Shawn have a Q&A for themselves with questions intended to stump each other.

This was a fun episode for us to do, and we may do it again, but we would like your help. Do you have a question or several that you would like to hear talked about? Please send us an email!

And don't forget to answer the bonus question.

Shawn and James talk about their plan for better Bible reading. We discuss what we've tried over the years and what we've found works for us. James brought a number of downloadable resources for easy Bible plans while Shawn tried to humblebrag without seeming to.

What is your plan for Bible reading this year? Do you have a favorite or most effective method? Please let us know. Send us an email.

James and Shawn go over their yearly themes. We do a quick review of our themes for 2022 before we dig into what we want 2023 to look like.

If you have a yearly theme, please let us know what you'll be doing. We would love to hear from you and gain some inspiration from your story.

Shawn and James wrestle with the difference between needs and wants—Black Friday and Christmas aren't helping here.

We ask for your input. How do you define these terms in practical ways? What are your applications or values? Did James make the right choice to buy that home wifi thingy? Send us an email.

James and Shawn welcome Christopher Slabaugh to the podcast. The subject was ostensibly to talk about history, which we did! But we may have taken a few different bunny trails along the way, such as discussing how best to prepare for the apocalypse.

Do you like history? What is your favorite time period? If you had to leave this time period for another, which would you choose? Let us know by sending us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

Shawn and James discuss the idea of living churches, comparing to the church of Sardis found in the Book of Revelation. Of course, James had to make a science lesson out of it! So, we drew parallels between the definition of physical life that biologists use and the definition of spiritual life that the Bible uses.

We wrapped it up with an answer from Shawn: You—on your own!—can infuse life into your church. Are you up to the task?

We're looking forward to your feedback. What did we miss or get wrong? What is your experience? Send us an email.

James and Shawn do a bit of crossover work by bringing some of their FWIW content to the LOL podcast. We look at the fourth habit "Think Win/Win" from Stephen Covey's popular 7 Habits book, giving everyone a peek at what we talk about in the FWIW podcast for our Patrons.

What is your relationship paradigm? How can you make your interactions at work, at church, at home Win/Win scenarios? Is that even possible? We talk about some of what has worked for us as we look at Covey's direction.

Do you have any stories about how you made a Lose situation a Win/Win? We'd love to hear about it. Send us an email.

If you'd like to hear the previous chapters of this discussion or the continuation of the series, join us on Patreon.

Shawn and James talk about Cal Newport's method for organizing life using four buckets. You all know that James is a fan of Cal Newport's, so it is no surprise that James schools Shawn on this method for thinking about life and self-improvement. 

We discuss Cal's classic four of Craft, Community, Contemplation, and Constitution as well as some ideas of our own. It's a simple way of looking at the various categories of life and giving each one focus for a time to improve who you are.

Do you have a system for self-improvement or planning? Maybe you use Cal Newport's method or a version of your own. We'd love to hear about it. Please send us an email.

Also, you'll find James's foray into Not-Space-Science interesting: Biomimicry.

James and Shawn talk about gratefulness and how to instill the value into our children. We talk some about the book by Kristen Welch, Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World, but we mostly just share our thoughts and experiences on what we've learned or are learning about gratefulness.

We're certainly grateful for our listeners and your feedback. Please send us an email with ideas for James's science corner or with any feedback about the topic of gratefulness.

Shawn and James talk about the glorious James Webb telescope! Well, we mostly talk about the pictures that James Webb has been sending back.

James—our James—has been very excited to talk about these photos. Shawn mostly stays quiet with his mouth hanging agape, but we do try describe our visual experience in this audio medium. Check out the links below to get a look at what we were enjoying.

Do you have a favorite James Webb photo? James would be delighted for you to share it with him and tell him a bit about what it means to you, and Shawn will agree that it is pretty. Send us an email.

James and Shawn welcome guest Naoma Lee to talk with them about life as a single. 

It was a fun conversation going over the difficulties and the perks of being a single person. Naoma gave us some tips for how married folks can related to their single friends, and she even gave some suggestions for messages preachers should and should not preach!

Let us know what you think of the conversation. If you're a single, what has your experience been like? Do you have any tips or resources you could suggest? Send us an email.

Shawn and James beg for listener support before talking about why we find it so difficult to change. We discuss the idea of whether or not we are naturally good or if there is actually need to change, and if so, how we go about changing ourselves.

There's a good bit of philosophical talk, but we try to give some practical tips that you can put to practice on yourself.

How do you find self-work or self-improvement? Do you have any life hacks you can share with us? Please send us an email.

And if you would like to support the podcast, look us up on Patreon or recommend the podcast to a new listener. Thanks so much for your support!

James and Shawn talk about writing... on a podcast. Is that weird?

James tried correcting Shawn about the butterfly effect, but Shawn rose to the challenge and proved he knows things!

We both enjoy writing and writing-adjacent things, so it was fun to have a conversation about the topic. We discussed why we write and why we think we need more contemporary writers. We went over some of our techniques for getting writing done and give you all some tips for making your writing a bit better.

We shared some favorite books on good writing with each other and gave you a request to send us some of yours. We're looking forward to your suggestions! Send us an email.

James and Shawn are back again, this time to talk about having babies!

As James mentions in the episode, we know this can be a tricky topic to navigate, but we hope you find the conversation interesting. We're sure that you may hold different views than we do, so we'd be glad to hear from you. Send us an email with any feedback or critiques. 

In this episode, we look a bit at the Quiverfull movement as it is active in the States and try to compare that with the heart God has for children. Some questions we ask are, "How big should a family be? Is God okay with us not having children or having very small families? What are children for?" We aim to put a bit of nuance into a conversation that can be somewhat polarizing at times.

Share this episode with a friend and get their thoughts on it, too. We look forward to your responses.

To hear the Patron episode where we first discussed this topic, visit our Patreon page.

Shawn and James welcome another James to the podcast. James Shank joins us to talk about fasting—at last!

We look at an old email from a listener and talk together about what fasting is or should be. We also discuss some of our own experiences with fasting and what we have learned along the way.

Thank you for your patience with us while we took a bit of a break. We're trying to gear back up and get back on schedule, hopefully. Our Patrons have been enjoying occasional episodes along the way, but we haven't had the time for a full LOL episode. We're excited to get back to it.

We're glad we had a listener email to prompt this episode. If you would like to hear your idea discussed, you can also send us an email for us to consider.

James and Shawn go on a bit of a ramble. We talk about the scale of everything and what orders of magnitude are before giving an update of our yearly themes. Shawn "lost" his phone, but a chivalrous lady in a corn field gave it back to him—it's a wild story. We then give everyone a heads up on our schedule over the next several months so that you can know what to expect.

If you don't want to miss out on hearing from us, you can always sign up to get the FWIW episodes for Patrons. And don't forget to let us know what you're doing for a yearly theme or goal. Please send us an email.

Shawn and James talk about how institutions can get in the way of the gospel of Jesus. We discuss how all the trappings of the church as an institution can actually hinder the gospel and keep people away from coming to Jesus. How different are modern church institutions from the Pharisees Jesus condemned? Why is the church on the decline? Why is religion dying in the west?

If you have any answers to our many questions or any feedback about our discussion, please send us an email.

James and Shawn go over their yearly themes. We first look back at how we did with our themes from 2021 before discussing our new themes and goals for the year ahead.

If you have a yearly theme, please let us know what you'll be doing. We would love to hear from you and gain some more inspiration.

James and Shawn talk about feeling middle-aged. The conversation covers the excitement over a new stove range to grumpiness over the way Gen-Z disregards punctuation and the meanings of words. It's been a hot minute since we've been able to talk, and we literally knocked our heads against the wall until we were through.

We also looked at an email question from listener Sonya about fasting. We'll be reading the book God's Chosen Fast in preparation for a future episode. Please join us.

What's your take on changing language and punctuation usage? Do you use periods in your texts? Let us know in an email!

Shawn and James talk about why they have so many things to do. We discuss our thoughts on productivity and how that can lead to overwhelm. We also talk about feelings of overwhelm and how we deal with them.

Stay for the end because we answer a listener's question on how older single people should view tithing. We'd like to hear your thoughts on that, so please let us know.

If you have a question we could discuss on the podcast, please send us an email.

James and Shawn talk with John R. Perfect about conspiracy theories. 

What are they anyway? What makes them so prevalent or easy to swallow? We talked about whether or not a particular person may be more susceptible to believing conspiracy theories and what we can do to avoid falling into that trap ourselves.

What do you think about conspiracy theories? Are there any particular ones in your community that seem especially strong? Why do you think that is? Send us and email with your thoughts. We'd be glad to hear from you.

Shawn and James talk about friendship. This is an Episode Out of Time, meaning that it was recorded out the flow of episodes you've been listening to. When was it pulled together? When was it recorded? When was it edited? No one knows....

We start off the episode reviewing our Digital Declutter from earlier this year before moving into a discussion on what it means to be a friend and how to go about finding friends. Do you know how many hours to make someone your best friend? Listen to find out.

It would be great to hear from you about your friendships. Do you have a best friend? If so, how did you become best friends? Please share your friend-making tips and tricks. James really needs your help!

James and Shawn welcome Andrew Crider back to the podcast.

We discuss leadership. What is it? Who does it? Is it even necessary? These and many other questions are contemplated.

We also do a lightning round of leadership qualities we think every leader ought to have. Which ones did we miss, or do you think there is one that is more critical than another? Please let us know!

Sneak peek For What It's Worth episode!

Shawn and James are glad to have Andrew Crider back on the podcast. This is actually the episode we recorded for our Patron-only podcast For What It's Worth, but we decided to let you all have access to it this time. 

In this episode, we talk about what it means to be in the center of God's will—or if that is even a possibility. What do you think? Please send us your feedback. You can reach us at our email or on our website.

Please share the podcast with a friend. We like seeing more downloads, which means we have more listeners.

James and Shawn talk about their Bible reading. We look at the various methods we've used over the years for reading the Bible and talk about why we choose to read it in the first place.

We also discuss our favorite translations and formats, including reading-format versus study-format Bibles.

How do you go about your Bible reading? Do you have a favorite translation? Let us know!

Shawn and James talk about money matters, specifically about giving. Why is it that churches often struggle to pay for the various programs of the church? What is tithing, and should we be giving a certain amount?

We talk about giving in various seasons of life and how that could look. It is fascinating to do the math and see just how much a little giving grows when everyone contributes.

James and Shawn talk about technological developments from the beginning of time up through the near future. In this episode, we go all over the place, looking at amazing technologies that range from the humble garden hoe to flying cars! 

You may hear some background noise, but that's because we were able to record together, in-person for the first time. We were pretty excited for the opportunity, and we hope you enjoy the conversation.

If you have any thoughts about modern technology or the history that brought us here, please send us an email.

Shawn apologizes for the upload delay and offers and explanation.

We hope to return to normal episode uploads soon.

Shawn and James finish their review of the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. In this episode, we look at the second section of the book in which Cal presents practices to fill time gained through the digital declutter.

We discuss effective leisure activities—including long showers—and how we've been applying some of the practices in the book. James is replacing ceiling fans he forged in his own backyard, Shawn is still waiting for his baby to arrive (Spoiler alert: She came after we recorded.), and all the dogs in Peru conspire to bark at the same time as we record.

We're looking forward to hearing how your digital declutter is going. Please send us an email!

James and Shawn work through the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

In this episode, we look at the first section of this book and discuss the principles behind digital minimalism. We both committed to going through the digital declutter ourselves for a month. We talk about the things we’re giving up and why.

Perhaps you would like to join us by going through the steps of the declutter yourself. If you go through the digital declutter, please send us an email and let us know how it went for you.

Shawn and James talk about what community means to them and what it might mean to God. 

Shawn pronounces German words poorly from the inside of a fish tank while James keeps the conversation on track as we consider what Christian Community is or should be. We discuss ways to improve our community—though we’re sort of scared to actually try them. 

What does community mean to you? How is your community doing community? Let us know!

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok—James and Shawn tackle social media. 

This topic is a minefield in the current digital landscape, but we wanted to talk about how it is affecting us as individuals, as communities, and as a society. 

Is social media good or bad? How does God feel about social media? Can I use it as a tool? 

We want to hear from you. Do you use social media? Your answer is probably yes, because data shows the majority of the world is on social media now! So, the question may be, how do you use it? Please send us an email. 

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

This is part two of the conversation with Josh Nisley from Faith Builders. 

In this episode, we go further into the pros and cons of higher education for Christians and consider how we can serve God with our minds.

We'd like to hear from you. Please send us your feedback or suggestions or even your education story.

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com

James and Shawn welcome another guest to the pod. Josh Nisley is a lover of education and has a lot to say about it. 

We delve into the risks and rewards of higher education and consider our perspective of the Conservative Anabaptist point of view regarding education beyond grade school.

This is a two-part podcast, so you’ll be seeing the conclusion released in Episode 8. As always, we’d like to hear from you. If you have feedback or if you would like to share your own education story with us, please send us an email.

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

Shawn and James talk about having Covid and enjoying food and missing the sense of taste and smell.

Warning: You may not want to listen to this episode on an empty stomach! You might end up feeling hungry. 

From steaks to soups and a lot in between, James and Shawn go over some of their favorite dishes. Also, James teaches Shawn what a hotdog bun is.

Please send us some recipes to try! And if you have a friend who eats food, go ahead and share the episode with them.

Email: lookingoverlife@gmail.com

James and Shawn enjoy having a guest on the podcast. They talk with Andrew Crider about what it's like to be a missionary to a foreign country.

Have you ever eaten intestine soup or chicken head soup? How about a plateful of honey? And what does that have to do with being a missionary? What is a missionary, anyway?

James quizzes Andrew and Shawn on their experiences in Guatemala and Peru. From hauling firewood up a ravine by strapping it to your forehead, to going for a swim with a cow at night, the hosts share stories and discuss ideals about mission life.

We'd like to hear from you. What did you think of having a guest on the podcast? Do you have any topics for us to discuss?

Email us: lookingoverlife@gmail.com

Did it rain before the flood? What sort of apple did Eve give Adam? How many wise men visited the manger where Jesus was born? And what color eyes did Jesus have?

James and Shawn go deep—maybe too deep—into some common misconceptions from Bible stories. Where do these misconceptions come from, and how do they permeate our culture?

Do you know of any more misconceptions? Send us an email and let us know about them!

Email us: lookingoverlife@gmail.com

Shawn and James discuss differences in personalities. Are you sanguine or choleric? Black bile or phlegm? Introvert or extrovert? 

A good bit of the discussion looks at the Myers-Briggs personality theory. Share the episode with one of your friends and take the tests together. You might find out things about each other you never knew before! 

Email us: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

James and Shawn talk about their reading habits and personal reading trends. They also look at the current climate of reading in society. 

Also, Shawn tried to teach James how to say a word, and James attempted to explain the difference between power and energy—Shawn still doesn't get it. Note from James: Hoe moe GEEN ee us is a correct pronunciation. See Merriam-Webster's homogeneous and homogenous. 

Email us: lookingoverlife@gmail.com 

In which James and Shawn try their hands at being podcasters.  

The topic is yearly themes and how they differ from New Year's resolutions. What is a yearly theme? How do you make one? What makes for a successful year? 

Email us: lookingoverlife@gmail.com