Jeff Chu: Good Soil

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when a journalist-turned-seminarian finds God in a pile of rotting vegetables? You get Jeff Chu—writer, pastor, and accidental theologian of compost.

In this tender and funny conversation, Jeff and Kate talk about what it means to be changed—by grief, by love, by the kind of calling that makes zero practical sense. They talk about complicated families, appropriate smallness, and what it means to belong to one another in just-because texts, foreign potato chips, and a rice cooker packed in a suitcase. Sometimes resurrection doesn’t look like a clean slate. Sometimes it looks like compost. Hope grows slowly. But oh, it grows.

In this conversation, Kate and Jeff discuss:

Why God’s call often doesn’t add up (and still won’t leave us alone)
The theology of compost: how death, rot, and loss make way for new life
How to live like we are beloved—even when life doesn’t feel that way
Why small, ordinary graces are how we build the world we want

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, is this an okay time?
0:03.2	It's your girl Dylan Mulvaney, and I am inviting you to my weekly cocktail party and my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour, brought to you by Lemonada Media.
0:12.3	Life is stressful and there is so much darkness in the world, I think we could all use a little bit of trans joy.
0:18.0	So join me every week as I interview some of my favorite A-list celebrity friends
0:22.4	and gurus and, of course, the dolls, while we sip and spill the scalding hot tea. So put your
0:28.4	worries aside and join me at the Dillon Hour. You can listen on Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get
0:33.2	your podcasts. Love you. Hi, everyone. I'm David DeCovny. Join me on my podcast, Fail Better, where we use failure
0:42.2	as a lens to reflect on the past and analyze the current moment. I speak with makers and
0:47.5	performers like Rob Lowe, Rosie O'Donnell, and Kenya Barris, as well as thinkers like
0:52.3	Kara Swisher and Nate Silver, to understand how both
0:55.6	personal setbacks and larger forces impact our world. Listen to fail better, wherever you get your
1:01.6	podcasts.
1:06.5	This is Everything Happens, and I'm Kate Bowler. What happens when a journalist turned seminarian, turned farmer, starts seeing theology in compost?
1:16.5	Well, you get Jeff Chu, writer, editor, and accidental theologian of dirt and grace.
1:23.2	Jeff is the kind of friend who will fly across the country with a rice cooker in his suitcase
1:28.3	because hospitality, much like faith, should be completely excessive.
1:34.3	Today we talk about vocation and belonging, about what it means to love people who might not ever love us the way we wish,
1:43.3	and about how sometimes the best theology lessons
1:47.0	comes from a pile of rotting vegetables.
1:50.0	If you've ever felt stuck in a story that no longer fits
1:54.0	or wondered if small acts of love that you offer the world really matter,
1:58.0	this conversation is for you. Jeffie? Hey. This is your very favorite
	...

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