Practicing Humility in a Narcissistic Age - A Conversation with Mandy Smith and Dennis Edwards
Our Podcast Episode of the Week. (And a few other bits of news. )
The Old Testament scholar and public theologian Walter Brueggemann died yesterday at the age of 92. In remembrance, we shared our 2014 interview with him (conducted by
). Also, if you aren’t very familiar with Brueggemann’s work, I highly recommend checking out our Introductory Reading Guide to his Books.And in other news, my series on Neil Postman’s classic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, will resume in the next week or so. You can catch up on that series here:
"Words are Entrusted to us as Equipment for our Life Together"
Language matters, and is the basis for a culture of civil discourse that is as vital in the church as it was in the earliest chapters of U.S. history. What we need instead is communities that take the written word seriously and who are committed to the sort of conversation that flows from this deep commitment to the written word.
One of the new things that we’re doing here on Substack in 2025 is highlighting an episode from The Englewood Review of Books podcast archives each week.
The previous featured Podcast episode in this series:
The Reading Life of Children - A Conversation with Mitali Perkins and Erin Wasinger
In celebration of Children’s Book Week, we share this 2020 episode featuring author Mitali Perkins, who has written numerous books for children and adults, and Erin Wasinger, who at the time was our Children’s Book Editor.
Our Podcast Episode of the Week for this week is one of our newest episodes, a timely conversation on humility that I hosted with Mandy Smith and Dennis Edwards.
I sat down with two first-time guests, Mandy Smith and Dennis Edwards, at the recent Missio Alliance Awakenings event. I brought them together because their recent work shares a thematic connection of exploring “humility,” which is the foundation of their conversation. They talk about their experiences as ministry leaders, biblical and theological dimensions of humility, and how their work pushes us towards specific practices to cultivate humility in our lives.
Mandy Smith is a pastor, author and speaker who, after living and ministering in the US and UK, now ministers in her homeland of Australia. She is a cohort co-leader for the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination and regular contributor to Missio Alliance. Her latest book is Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God (NavPress). Dennis R. Edwards is associate professor of New Testament as well as vice president for church relations and dean of North Park Seminary, Chicago. He has worked in urban ministry for over three decades, including serving as a church planter in Brooklyn and Washington, DC. He is author of the recent book, Humility Illuminated: The Biblical Path Back to Christian Character (IVP Books).
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What stood out to you in this conversation? Drop us a comment below.