This week, I want to ask you a question that has stayed with me for years. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” Well then, if we are the light of the world, why is everything so dark? That question became the doorway for this entire conversation. Not a conversation about blame or shame, but a conversation about what light is actually for.

I believe we have often mistaken our role in the world. We have treated light like a weapon instead of a rescue mission. We shine it in people’s faces to expose them rather than upon their path to help them find their way home. I am convinced love is the true illumination. Love is the beam. Love is the North Star. And if darkness still surrounds us, perhaps it is because we have forgotten how to love well.

In this episode, I talk about the difference between prosecutors and priests. Prosecutors expose wounds. Priests help heal them. I do not believe we are here to condemn a hurting world. I believe we are here to become radiant enough that people stumbling through fear, confusion, addiction, despair, and loneliness can finally see a path forward.

I also spend time unpacking what I call the pervasive and ubiquitous inclusivity of a divine entrepreneurial love. A love that refuses exclusion. A love creative enough to meet humanity in all its complexity. A love willing to walk into the woods carrying light, not to shame the lost, but to bring them home.

So take a deep breath with me. Inhale love. Exhale gratitude. And then get out there and do something beautiful. Let your presence light new light in the hearts of others. Because the world does not need more people flashing lights in each other’s eyes. The world needs people willing to illuminate the path.

On this episode, I’m inviting you to slow down with me and think about something I believe we need now more than ever, and that is the power of beauty. Not surface beauty and not decoration, but the kind of beauty that grows out of a life grounded in love. I’ve come to believe that lesser values than love easily devolve into BS, and I’m just not willing to live that way anymore.

We’re living in a moment shaped by division, anger, and a whole lot of finger pointing, and I don’t think rage is going to lead us anywhere worth going. Instead, I want to challenge you to join me in what I’m calling a beauty movement. A movement away from the ugly that’s getting done to death and toward the everyday practice of choosing love again and again.

That means learning to live humanely with each other even when it’s hard. It means forgiving more than feels reasonable. It means resisting the pull to divide the world into us and them. And it may even mean letting ourselves grieve the condition of our times instead of trying to shout our way out of them.

I truly believe the most beautiful thing we can do is love the people we meet today. Be present. Be kind. Let beauty shape your steps and your words and your choices. So let’s get up and go do something beautiful together, because oh baby ugly is getting done to death.

In this episode I ask a simple question: are you going to live for love, or are you going to die by hate?

I grew up in a church tradition where people were often asked to decide whether they were going to heaven or hell if they died that night. I understand the intention behind that question, but after more than fifty years of pastoral ministry, I’ve come to believe there’s a better question to ask: how are you going to live today?

When Jesus taught us to pray, he didn’t teach us to pray about escaping earth and going somewhere else someday. He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That means heaven is something we begin living now by choosing love.

In this conversation I invite you to consider changing your address today if your life has been shaped by resentment, division, or hate. Because when we live by love, we really live. When we live by hate, something inside us starts dying.

If you want a different destination, then change your address today. Choose love. Choose heaven on earth.

In this episode I return to the foundation of everything I am trying to do here each week. Love creates value where there might not otherwise be value. The way you choose to love shapes the quality of your life and the lives of the people around you. Nobody can love the way you love, so the question becomes what you will do with that gift.

I talk about three essential principles that guide this whole journey. Love creates value. Each of us has a unique fingerprint of love to offer the world. And the human condition itself is hardwired to love and to be loved. When we live into those truths we begin to see how love strengthens us emotionally, spiritually, and even physically.

I also reflect on Mother Teresa’s powerful insight that there is more hunger for love in this world than there is for food. That is not sentimental language. That is a challenge to how we live right now in our homes, our relationships, and even in our nation. Love is not agreement or weakness. Love is the work that keeps us alive.

So today I am inviting you again to lean into love on purpose. Do not wait for a better time or a better mood. Tell someone you love them. Choose kindness. Choose presence. Choose the holy habit of love and watch what begins to change around you.

In this episode of I’m Alive to Love, I want to talk with you about something that sits right at the center of our lives. How do we arrive as our authentic self through love. So many of us spend years sending the actor out on stage because we have been hurt, disappointed, or afraid. Today I’m inviting you to come back to your truest self and let love be the guardian of your heart.

From the very first breath we take as a baby, every one of us is searching for love. Our story keeps being written every day by what we receive and what we give. I want to help you see how your life story has been shaped by kindness and by pain, and how you still have the power to write the next chapter with courage and compassion.

We also talk about something very practical. The daily habits of love. Kindness, generosity, patience, courtesy, forgiveness, and joy. These are not abstract ideas. These are the ingredients that shape your story and the stories of the people you meet along the way.

My hope for you in this episode is simple. That you rise and shine as your authentic self and choose love again today. Because love never fails, and even one small act of love can change someone’s story, including your own.

In this episode I’m talking about what the book of James calls the royal rule of scripture which is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I believe that one command helps all the rest of the Bible make sense.

James challenges us in a direct and uncomfortable way. He asks whether we are showing favoritism to people in what I call the costumes of power while quietly moving those in weakness or poverty to the margins. If the royal rule really is love then how we respond to the least of these reveals what we actually believe.

I reflect on how churches including ones I have served have sometimes been drawn toward influence endorsement and appearances instead of toward the wounded presence of Christ among the poor. That is not an abstract idea for me. It is something I have had to confront personally over a lifetime in ministry.

So this episode is an invitation to notice where power has become attractive to us and where love may have been set aside. It is also an encouragement to return to something simple and beautiful which is learning to see Jesus in the people right in front of us and learning to say with intention and honesty I love you.

Let’s explore together what it really means to live by the royal rule of scripture and do something beautiful in the world today.

On this episode, I continue my conversation about love and the spiritual refugees - the 45 million people in this nation who have stepped away from the church but have not stepped away from spirituality. After pastoring for decades, I retired not to escape the work, but to go back and find out what went wrong and to listen. I believe this is a grand time for the church in America to recover what has been lost, and that begins with love and with paying attention.

As I look back over my own life and ministry, I’m willing to own my part. I regret that I spoke too often in the language of church instead of the language of the world around me. Because of love, we cannot assume people should understand us. Because of love, we must do the heavy lifting of communicating in ways people can actually hear and receive.

Many people are still deeply spiritual, but they have walked away from what I call “church incorporated.” They grew wise to manipulation, shame, pressure, and systems that no longer helped them live with freedom and dignity. My calling now is not to tell them to come back, but to listen—to learn from them and to help recover what has been lost with kindness, honesty, and compassion.

The biggest mistake we make is thinking we still have time. Be present. Be kind. Love more. Love now. Speak the language of the people you meet, regulate your heart even when you disagree, and find a way to look people in the eye and say the three most holy words in the human language: I love you.

I’m Bishop Randy Dean, and I’m here because I believe we are alive to love and everything else can drift into something hollow if we’re not careful. I don’t want to waste your time with anything I don’t truly mean. I want to make one connection with you, and that connection is love. If you’re new here, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, and let me share what I’m seeing in our world when it comes to spirituality in America.

I’ve been giving my life to reaching people I call spiritual refugees, the millions who have stepped away from organized religion but not from spirituality itself. These are people I deeply love. My calling is simple. I’m going after the one, just like the shepherd Jesus described, not to fix them or send them back, but to love them and listen. That’s it. No agenda, no pressure, no attempt to pull them back into something that may have hurt them.

What I’ve heard in their stories is real pain. There is trauma tied to institutions, to leadership failures, to exclusion, to systems that lost their way. At the same time, I’ve seen leaders exhausted and overwhelmed trying to keep something afloat that may already be sinking. And through all of it, I keep coming back to this. If love isn’t the center, if love isn’t the only thing we’re offering, then we’ve missed it.

So my role now is not to rebuild institutions. My role is to love and to listen. To bear burdens. To sit with people where they are. I believe if we ever find our way forward, it will be through a return to love as the only creed that matters. Until then, I’ll keep showing up this way, inviting you to breathe, to be present, and to say the words that can still change everything. I love you.