Seeing the Gospel: Orthodox Icons and the Visual Language of Faith (NCB’s Radix Live)

We live in a visual age. Screens catechize us daily, shaping how we see the world, ourselves, and even God. But what if the Church has always possessed a visual language of its own: one not designed to distract, but to reveal?It’s an interesting question – timely, too.

In this Radix Live conversation, Eve Tibbs reflects on her gloriously illustrated book Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons (2025) and invites us to rediscover Orthodox icons as more than religious art. Often described as “windows into heaven,” icons are theological proclamations in color and form – visual interpretations of Holy Scripture that draw viewers into the Kingdom of God.

Hosted by Matthew Steem, this event features dialogue between Eve Tibbs and Christian contemplative and essayist Arthur Aghajanian. Aghajanian writes and speaks at the intersection of visual culture and theology, examining how images guide imagination and influence our perception of reality. Together they consider how icons shape Christian imagination, how beauty forms belief, and what it means to “see the Gospel” in a culture saturated with competing images.…

Bradley Jersak’s Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction (NCB’s Radix Live)

Across the Western Church, a seismic shift is underway. Assumptions are being questioned, inherited frameworks are cracking, and for many, faith itself feels unsettled. This moment has come to be known—sometimes anxiously, sometimes triumphantly—as “deconstruction.” But what if deconstruction is neither a collapse nor a cure-all? What if it is, instead, a threshold?

In this Radix Live conversation, Jersak reflects on his book Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction, exploring what faith might look like after cherished certainties are shaken—but not abandoned. Drawing from memoir, theology, philosophy, and the Christian tradition, Jersak invites us to consider how deconstruction, when approached wisely and communally, can actually become a pathway toward deeper communion with God rather than an exit from faith.

Rather than rushing to rescue belief or cheer its dismantling, Jersak patiently “deconstructs deconstruction” itself. He engages voices from across time—from Moses and Paul to Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, and Simone Weil—showing that this unsettling process is not new, nor is it faithless.…

Living in the Book of Common Prayer, with Julie Lane-Gay

In a world governed by speed, productivity, and distraction, many Christians (us!) long for something steadier—a way of prayer that can hold the whole of life. We rush to work, share coffee with friends, collapse into bed at day’s end, and hope, somehow, to sense God’s presence in it all. Yet prayer can often feel elusive, as though God were distant rather than near.

In this live conversation, Julie Lane-Gay reflected on her award-winning book The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer and invited us into a deeper way of inhabiting time, prayer, and grace through the Book of Common Prayer. Rather than offering a history or technical guide, Lane-Gay shared how the Prayer Book quietly forms us—shaping our hearts, ordering our days, and anchoring ordinary Christian life in Christ.

Drawing on personal stories, insight, and lived practice (which she writes about ever so beautifully), Julie explored how liturgical prayer resists cultural hurry, re-forms our desires, and roots us in God’s larger story. Along the way, the conversation touched on formation, community, catechesis, the church calendar, and why praying with the Church—across time and place—mattered now more than ever. Hosted by Radix editor Matthew Steem, this event featured Julie Lane-Gay in conversation about a way of prayer that was slow, communal, and profoundly hopeful.…

Formed to Lead: An Author Event with Jason Jensen by NCB’s Radix Live

What does it mean to lead like Jesus?

In a world that prizes charisma and control, Formed to Lead invites us to rediscover leadership rooted in humility, prayer, and spiritual depth. Author Jason Jensen draws on decades of experience in ministry and leadership formation to explore how the Holy Spirit shapes leaders from the inside out—through vulnerability, discernment, and faithful dependence on God.

Grounded in Luke 3–4, Formed to Lead offers a fresh vision of leadership that mirrors Jesus’ own journey: resisting the temptations of power, embracing the disciplines of solitude and surrender, and leading from a posture of love. Jensen helps readers discern how divine calling, character formation, and communal accountability weave together in truly Christ-shaped leadership. Sounds pretty timely right?!

This Radix Live event offers a space to reflect and dialogue about how spirituality and leadership intersect in today’s complex world. Together, we’ll consider questions like:
• How do we discern the Spirit’s movement in our leadership and communities?
• How can humility and courage coexist in faithful leadership?
• Why is the Sabbath actually really important?

Whether you serve in a church, nonprofit, or any sphere of influence, Formed to Lead offers wisdom for those seeking to grow in integrity, compassion, and trust in God’s guidance.…

Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible (An Author Event by NCB’s Radix Live)

Grant’s work invites us to ask searching questions: What does Bible study look like after inerrancy? Do you have to give up Scripture when you no longer believe in its literal interpretation? Can you still call it sacred while renegotiating your relationship with the church?

In Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, she wrestles with these questions in a lyrical and deeply personal commentary on Genesis—offering readers a fresh vision for encountering God in Scripture, even as faith continues to shift and evolve.

Michael Barram, always warm and thoughtful, will bring his trademark curiosity, expertise in biblical studies, and engaging questions to the conversation. And, as always, there will be time for audience participation.…

Banquet of Belonging: Faith, Food & the Psychology of Healing: A Radix Live Conversation with Jeannie E. Celestial

A Conversation with Psychologist & Best-Selling Author Jeannie E. Celestial

Many from marginalized communities suffer from the mental health impacts of oppression and discrimination. Dr. Jeannie Celestial, co-author of Clinical Interventions for Internalized Oppression, shares her discoveries about possibilities for healing, particularly among women of color, through the lens of mental health practices and Christian faith. In this, Dr. Celestial explores the role of "food as medicine," which richly informs The Filipino Instant Pot Cookbook, her culinary offering that has sold worldwide.

Dr. Celestial is a licensed clinical psychologist, currently serving in the San Francisco Unified School District through RAMS, a large social services agency in the Bay Area. She has over two decades of experience in healing and transformational practices. She employs EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), Brainspotting, CBT, ACT, and other modalities in her work. Dr. Celestial earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University, with emphases in Clinical Neuropsychology and Meditation and Psychology.…

Liberating Scripture, with Michael Barram and John R. Franke: An Author Event by NCB’s Radix Live

What if the way we read scripture is part of the problem?

This Radix Live event offers a chance to learn about how we can join a growing, creative, justice-minded conversation on what it means to read scripture missionally in today’s world.

In Liberating Scripture: An Invitation to Missional Hermeneutics, authors Michael Barram and John R. Franke proposed a bold rethinking of biblical interpretation. Rooted in the “mission of God” and informed by postcolonial and postmodern insights, their work invited readers to unshackle the Bible from the theological and cultural chains that often distort its liberative power.

This live conversation explores how Liberating Scripture reframes the why and how of biblical interpretation. The book offers an accessible yet groundbreaking introduction to “missional hermeneutics”—a fresh approach to reading scripture through the lens of God’s ongoing mission of justice, healing, and reconciliation. Rather than treating the Bible as a static set of doctrines, this perspective emphasizes dynamic, community-rooted engagement. How do our cultural assumptions shape the questions we ask of scripture? How might diverse voices and global experiences help us decolonize Christian witness?…

“Just Making” with Mitali Perkins: An Author Event by NCB’s Radix Live

Why should we make art while injustice and suffering wreak havoc? How can we justify making beautiful things? Author Mitali Perkins isn't afraid of hard questions about justice and art. She knows that the creative life can seem selfish. As the daughter of immigrants, she studied toward a career of eradicating poverty and knows the internal voice that challenges: "How dare you retreat to your studio to create?"
Yet Perkins learned that writing fiction wasn't setting aside her passion for a better world but pursuing it. In Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives, she offers a justice-driven perspective unique among books on creativity. "My ancestors are village Bengali women who made beautiful things but didn't dare to dream of art as a career," she writes. Women across the globe have crafted beauty and order amid chaos, war, and deprivation, and Perkins turns our attention to what we learn from them.
Just Making introduces us to strategies such as forgetfulness in flow, tenderness in trauma, and crossing borders.…

From Solitude to Solidarity: Ron Dart on Evelyn Underhill and the Contemplative Path (NCB’s Radix Live)

What does contemplation have to do with the everyday life of faith? And why does it matter now?

Words like stillness, centering prayer, silence, meditation, attention, and contemplation were finding renewed resonance in Christian conversation. But what did they actually mean—and what did they mean for the rest of us? In this interactive online event, Ron Dart explored how the contemplative path is not a spiritual luxury for the few, but a vital calling for the many—a way of seeing, praying, and being that Evelyn Underhill might have called "the education of the whole person."

Ron introduced Underhill, one of Christianity’s most respected guides to the inner life, and reflected on her wisdom for our anxious and noisy age. Drawing from her writings, he unpacked why contemplation is not only personal but communal—not withdrawal from the world, but a way to be more deeply present in it. The event also…

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