What is the future of the Church and who actually gets to decide? In this episode of The Dialog, we wrestle with the tension between God’s intent for the Church and our human tendency to organize, systematize, and protect what feels familiar. From early church leadership models to modern megachurch expressions, we keep circling back to the deeper question beneath it all: what is the Church actually for?

We talk through how traditions are formed, how good ideas slowly turn into unquestioned dogma, and how being just a little off course can create serious drift over time. Along the way, we touch church history, Catholic and Protestant differences, cultural relevance, and the danger of turning methods into mandates. We also challenge the modern habit of critiquing churches from a distance, without relationship, humility, or real context.

At the center of it all is the Great Commission. If the Church exists to make disciples, then the real question is whether our structures are producing spiritual maturity or just activity. This isn’t a debate or a takedown. It’s an honest search for truth and an invitation to rethink how we build the future of the Church together.

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Why you MUST believe in Santa Claus is not about a man in a red suit or flying reindeer. It is about what Santa represents. Hope. Generosity. The belief that good people still exist and that giving can be done for no reason other than love.

In this Christmas episode, Josh and Nick explore the real story of St. Nicholas of Myra. A man shaped by loss, faith, persecution, and courage. They unpack the history behind Santa Claus, from secret gifts to standing against injustice, including the famous moment at the Council of Nicaea. Along the way, they wrestle with what it means for something to be real, why people stop believing in good, and how innocence is often lost long before childhood ends.

Christmas is the reminder that Jesus came to bring hope into a broken world. But it is also a reminder that we are set apart to carry that hope forward. To be generous. To be courageous. To be the kind of people others can still believe in.

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In this episode of The Dialog, Josh Craft and Nick Surface explore why values alone are not enough to build a meaningful life. While most people choose values based on comfort, happiness, or how something feels in the moment, those values often shift with circumstances. Josh and Nick argue that values must be anchored to virtue, principles that are always good, always true, and always right, if they are going to produce lasting fruit.

Drawing from philosophy, psychology, history, and Scripture, the conversation unpacks how modern culture turned comfort into a guiding value and how that shift has shaped everything from decision making to health, money, and relationships. Using real world examples and personal stories, they show how small internal criteria quietly guide behavior over time, often leading to unintended consequences when those criteria are not rooted in truth.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to examine what actually governs their decisions. It challenges them to move beyond feelings as a compass and begin aligning their lives with virtues like wisdom, discipline, humility, and generosity. When values are built on virtue, they stop drifting and start shaping a life that endures.

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In this episode of The Dialog, Josh Craft and Nick Surface explore one of the hardest challenges in modern life: learning to see beyond your own perspective. They look at how personal experience, political identity, social media algorithms, and inherited traditions can trap us in echo chambers where our beliefs go unchallenged. From stereotypes to broken friendships, they unpack why it has become so difficult to admit “I might be wrong” and why humility is essential for finding truth.

The conversation then shifts into one of the most debated topics in Christianity: prosperity. Josh and Nick walk through the Old and New Testament definitions of wealth, blessing, dominion, and sufficiency, using Scripture, original language, and historical context rather than cultural assumptions. They show how biblical prosperity is not about comparison or greed but about learning to take responsibility, grow, and have more than enough so you can meet the needs of others.

Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to confront the limits of their own thinking, reevaluate the traditions they’ve inherited, and let Scripture shape their understanding of truth, prosperity, and what God really intends for their lives.

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In this episode of The Dialog, Josh Craft and Nick Surface explore one of the most overlooked truths of modern life: you don’t see the world as it is, you see the world as you are. From subconscious programming to presuppositions, they unpack how your earliest experiences, cultural environment, and unexamined assumptions quietly shape how you think, respond, and interpret everything around you.

Drawing from NLP, Stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy, neuroscience, and Scripture, they trace how humans form mental shortcuts: filters that feel like “truth” but are often inherited, emotional, or unchallenged. Josh and Nick discuss why adults struggle to question their beliefs, how different cultures expose our blind spots, and why intellectual humility is the foundation of personal transformation.

The conversation leads to a central question: Who taught you to think the way you think, and do you like the fruit of that thinking? Whether the topic is money, faith, identity, or truth itself, you can’t move toward what God says is true until you’re willing to admit that you might be wrong. This episode is an invitation to examine your map, locate where you actually are, and begin the journey toward truth with open hands and an open mind.


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In this episode of The Dialog, Josh Craft and Nick Surface confront a tension nearly everyone feels at some point: Why doesn’t my life look like I thought it would? From the “life blueprint” we’ve absorbed from culture to the quiet disappointment of unmet expectations, they explore how comparison, insecurity, and timing shape the way we interpret our own story.

Drawing from the lives of Moses and David, along with insights from Viktor Frankl and Epictetus, Josh and Nick reveal a challenging but freeing truth: God doesn’t activate you — He redirects you. Instead of waiting for clarity, calling, or a burning-bush moment, Scripture shows us that God meets us as we work. Purpose begins not in perfect circumstances but in faithfulness to what’s already in our hand.

This conversation unpacks why comfort is often mistaken for calling, why small beginnings matter, and how meaning isn’t discovered but assigned through the way we choose to show up every day. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re supposed to be doing, or whether you’re already behind, this episode offers a grounded, biblical perspective on purpose, effort, and the way God shapes a life.

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In this episode of The Dialog, Josh Craft and Nick Surface ask a deceptively simple question: Are your relationships transactional or transformational? From mass layoffs and shareholder capitalism to marriages and friendships, they explore how modern culture has quietly trained us to treat people like costs instead of investments — and what that does to our souls, our communities, and our view of success.

Drawing on Scripture, Aristotle’s idea of hamartia, and the biblical law of sowing and reaping, Josh and Nick unpack why we so often approach relationships asking, “What do I get out of this?” instead of, “What am I called to give?” They dig into generational patterns of thinking, how we inherit our default philosophy of relationships from our families and culture, and why true transformation begins when we see people as entrusted to us, not leveraged by us.

If you’ve ever felt tension between “protecting your peace” and actually loving people well, this conversation will challenge the way you think about marriage, friendship, leadership, and the purpose of every relationship in your life.

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For centuries, humanity has wrestled with the nature of truth — from Plato’s “forms” and Aristotle’s “good” to Jesus’ claim, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

In this episode, Nick and Josh trace how the deepest ideas of philosophy and religion reveal the same thing: every search for truth is ultimately a search for God.

They discuss Plato’s ideal “form of the good,” Paul’s conversation in Athens, and the ancient Jewish concept of Derek Yahweh — the “way of God.” Then they bring it all together through the lens of Jesus’ promise of living water — a metaphor for the Holy Spirit and the spiritual hunger within every human beingThe Dialog - Episode 5_otter_aiThe Dialog - Episode 5_otter_ai.

This is not a lecture — it’s a conversation that moves from philosophy to personal encounter, from the abstract to the alive.

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In this conversation, Nick and Josh pull on one of the deepest philosophical and spiritual threads in human life: the tension between blame and ownership. From the ancient world to our modern systems of government and welfare, they examine how cultures have drifted from personal responsibility toward collective dependence — and how that shift affects the way we understand poverty, justice, and even discipleship.

This isn’t about assigning guilt. It’s about asking: When we stop taking ownership, who really ends up in control? 

Central Questions

• Why does blame feel easier than responsibility?
• What does Jesus’ call to “repent” — to change our thinking — have to do with ownership?
• How does blaming government, culture, or circumstance quietly strip us of freedom?
• Can you be materially wealthy but mentally or spiritually poor?
• What does true compassion look like when it doesn’t remove accountability?

Core Ideas & Themes

1. Whatever You Blame Controls You Blame gives away your agency. Whether it’s the government, your boss, your past, or your parents — the more power you assign outward, the less you hold inward. Ownership, even of pain or failure, is the doorway to freedom.
2. Ignorance and Responsibility As Josh notes, “Ignorance isn’t a defense — not in court, not before God.” The conversation wrestles with whether our society’s obsession with fairness has unintentionally taught us that not knowing or not trying absolves us from consequence.
3. The Shift from Equality to Equity Nick and Josh explore how the modern language of “equity” often masks a deeper problem — a belief that outcomes should be managed for us rather than earned through growth and wisdom.
4. The Poverty of the Mind Drawing from Jesus’ words in Matthew 11, the hosts question whether poverty is more often a mental and spiritual state than a financial one. When Jesus said the gospel was “preached to the poor,” was He changing their circumstances — or their thinking?
5.  From Rome to Now: The Loss of Ownership The discussion traces how early Christians shocked the Roman world by taking ownership of care for the weak and abandoned — not because the government told them to, but because they believed it was their divine responsibility. Somewhere along the way, modern culture outsourced that virtue.

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In this episode of The Dialog, hosts Josh Craft and Nick Surface explore one of the most persistent illusions of modern life — the pursuit of happiness. Is happiness something we can ever truly achieve, or is it the wrong target altogether?

Through a thought-provoking blend of Stoic philosophy, biblical truth, and Eastern wisdom, Josh and Nick unpack what it means to stop treating life like a problem to solve and start seeing it as a reality to experience. Drawing on insights from Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Romans 8:28, and Epictetus, they confront the modern obsession with control and certainty — and reveal why peace and joy are found not in mastering circumstances, but in mastering the mind.

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In this episode of The Dialog, hosts Josh Craft and Nick Surface dive into one of the most deceptively simple questions in human history: Is happiness really worth pursuing?

From Aristotle’s eudaimonia and Stoic virtue ethics to biblical joy and modern dissatisfaction, this conversation explores how ancient philosophy and timeless Scripture converge on a radically different understanding of happiness. It’s not about chasing feelings — it’s about becoming the kind of person who lives in harmony with truth, virtue, and reason.

Drawing on Socrates, Aristotle, Musonius Rufus, and Romans 8, Josh and Nick uncover how logic, faith, and human flourishing all connect — and why joy, not happiness, might be the truer measure of a meaningful life.

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In the premiere episode of The Dialog, hosts Josh Craft and Nick Surface invite you into a deep, thought-provoking conversation about what it means to seek truth in a world obsessed with being right. Drawing on the timeless wisdom of thinkers like Socrates, Kierkegaard, and Musonius Rufus, they explore how philosophy, theology, and history can illuminate the questions that modern life still hasn’t answered — questions about happiness, purpose, and how to live well.

This episode challenges one of the most uncomfortable but liberating truths: growth begins when we realize we’re wrong. Through lively discussion and honest reflection, Josh and Nick show how humility, curiosity, and meaningful dialog are the keys to discovering truth and building a “winning philosophy of life.”

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