UL Podcast #230: Ancient Sources for Spiritual Renewal (Andrew Arndt)

Today, I’m sharing a recent conversation with Andrew Arndt about his book Streams in the Wasteland. In it, he shares the ancient wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers who journeyed to the wilderness to seek a closer journey with Christ. Andrew shares some of the parallels between their experience with Rome then and our experience today. 

I was first introduced to the desert fathers and mothers in the late 1980s when I read Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary. It was his sharing of the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers, especially about solitude, silence, and prayer, that launched me on a very different spiritual trajectory than the frantically busy one I’d been on up until then.

Andrew Arndt is the lead pastor of New Life East, one of seven congregations of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Prior to joining New Life's team, he served as the lead pastor of Bloom Church, a network of house churches in Denver. He is the host of the Essential Church podcast, a weekly conversation designed to strengthen the thinking of church and ministry leaders. Andrew received his MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and is currently working on his DMin with Western Theological Seminary. He has written for Missio Alliance, Patheos, The Other Journal, and Mere Orthodoxy. He is the author of Streams in the Wasteland and All Flame. Andrew lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Mandi, and their four kids.