Whether you’re seeking personal growth or to deepen your relationships, authors Janet and Paul Chilcote share transformative insights drawn from 50 years of ministry, mission, and marriage in their new book, "On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek."
Guests: The Rev. Janet Chilcote and the Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote
- Discover and/or order "On Love" at Cokesbury.com.
- Paul Chilcote is a prolific author, in addtion to being a United Methodist pastor, theologian and respected Wesley scholar. Learn more about Chilcote and his other titles.
- Janet Chilcote, a United Methodist minister, currently serves as a volunteer staff member for Zoe Empowers.
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This episode posted on July 4, 2025.
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Transcript
Prologue
Whether you're seeking personal growth or to deepen your relationships, authors Janet and Paul Chicote share transformative insights drawn from 50 years of ministry, mission and marriage in their new book, “On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek.”
Crystal Caviness, host: Hi, my name's Crystal Caviness and I'm your host for “Get Your Spirit in Shape”.” I'm so excited to be here today with two people that I consider friends, definitely colleagues in the ministry of The United Methodist Church, and we're going to talk about a new book that they have out. It's titled “On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek.” I'm here with Reverend Janet Chicote and Reverend Dr. Paul Chicote as well. So welcome.
Rev. Dr. Paul Chilcote, guest: Thank you. Great to be back. Crystal, wonderful to be here.
Crystal: Yes, Paul is no stranger to “Get Your Spirit in Shape.” We've had him on multiple times to talk about Charles Wesley, John Wesley, hymns of Charles Wesley, books that he's written. But today feels really special because he's here with his wife who they're celebrating 50 years of marriage this year. Congratulations. Thank you. And they're here as co-authors for this book. And Janet, I believe this is your first time authoring and definitely the two of you together. It's a first time collaboration.
Rev. Janet Chilcote, guest: Absolutely. We thought this was a great year for this to happen, so we're really excited to do this together.
Crystal: Yes. Well, before we jump into the conversation, I'd love to take just a minute and let the two of you share with our audience just a little bit about yourselves.
Janet: Thanks. Well, it's kind of a long story and the next book I'm going to write is called “So Many Lives” because I've had quite a few different ones. But I'm a mom of five daughters, grandmother of eight, and I started my career as a pediatric nurse practitioner. I had the joy of being a missionary in Africa working with children, and so children have really been at the core of my life, especially vulnerable children, unhoused families and orphans in Africa. So currently I'm retired from serving as a United Methodist pastor and I am volunteering on the staff of Zoe Empowers, which is an orphan empowerment mission of The United Methodist Church that I've been part of for about 20 years now. So that's a little synopsis.
Crystal: Thank you, Janet.
Paul: Yeah, for me, I mean I think I used to use www to kind of summarize my life. Wesleys, I've been a lifelong Wesley scholar, both John and Charles, and I've always tried to get Charles out from the shadow of the older brother John, let Methodist and people within the larger church know about these two amazing men of God and women. My early scholarly work was on women in early Methodism and Janet's already shared. We have five daughters. I've been surrounded by women in my life, which has been a great thing. I love the girls and Janet of course, and it's been a wonderful part of my life. Then the world. Janet and I have had the opportunity to be in Africa on two occasions as missionaries of The United Methodist Church in Kenya and then in Zimbabwe where I was a founding faculty member of Africa University. But we've lived in England for a number of times and most recently at Cambridge where I continue to serve as a research fellow at Wesley House. Boy, it's been such an amazing life in terms of opportunity and travel and building friendships literally all around the world.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that. And I didn't realize you were a girl dad, and definitely that's a puzzle piece now that I've put in that explains a lot of your work. The three of us met on the Wesley Pilgrimage in the summer of 2022, and that was such a transformative time for me, and I appreciate your ministry, Paul, especially through that as you've served as a leader for the Wesley Pilgrimage for several years. And Janet and I, it was a real privilege for me to get to know you as you were also a pilgrim and we bonded over our love for particularly Kenya, but also the continent of Africa. So I want to just start off with Janet. You alluded to that this seemed like a good year or a good time to write the book, but why did you choose to write this book together?
Janet: It really came from Paul asking me to do some looking at chapters as he was writing, and then I got excited because I have guess I'd say life experiences that can add into the practical side of what the topics were. And so it just naturally came that I was like, well, what about this? Let's add this, and I have this story and that story. And then he said, well, why don't we just write the book together? So that kind of evolved as just sharing, and I've read a lot of his manuscripts over the years and this time we really were both retired and able to have time to do that.
Crystal: Thank you for sharing that. And I guess I should back up just a minute and explain to our listeners the book. The subtitle is 20 Lessons for the World We Seek And part of the description, and I'll just read it, it says, turn a hostile interaction into a moment of genuine connection. Find hope even in challenging circumstances. Listen in ways that make others feel truly valued. Create spaces of welcome in an increasingly isolated world, discover joy in simplifying your life. Those are big goals. And yet also in the preface, these are simple ways. So they're simple ways with really big transformative outcomes. How in the world did you come up with 20?
Paul: Yeah, there's a backstory behind the one that Janet just shared about our collaboration on this, and I had addressed the Council of Bishops and the president of the United Methodist Publishing House was there and put a little book into my hands by Timothy Snyder entitled "On Tyranny." And actually that little book became kind of the template for what we wanted to do on love, a book on tyranny that has a certain ambiance, doesn't it? Well, that is a fabulous book, by the way. And so Brian and I talked about it, and so the 20 lessons are the same, on the same pattern, and we wanted to do something that was brief, not cumbersome. So each chapter or lesson as we call them, is fairly brief. It's not a lengthy read and all of them end in practice. How do you practice this? And a part of those early conversations I had with Brian were around concerns that many of the readers of Abingdon books and other books, upper Room, et cetera, concerns that people have had in this unbelievably polarized time in which we live questions like, how do I talk to my parents? Given the political divide in our family, I can't even talk to my parents anymore or my brother or my sister or siblings. So we wanted to do something. How do you live out an authentic life in Christ for a time such as this? And I've been convinced for quite a long time now that practices are the absolute key to how we live out a life of love. So these lessons or practices became kind of the orienting principle of this little volume.
Crystal: And that's very Wesleyan, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I know we cannot talk about all 20 today, but I was intrigued by the lesson that you titled Adopt a Pattern of Life, and I want to talk about that because it's something I honestly had never really considered, but that one lesson alone seems really transformative, not just for the people around you but for your own life. So I want to dive into that one just a little bit and maybe you can explain it to our audience.
Paul: Sure. Do you want to jump into that first, Janet, or shall I take a shot?
Janet: You can go for that one.
Paul: Well, what just immediately came to mind Crystal was Janet and I literally have just been out in the garden, and Janet loves to garden. So we were out there just doing some weeding and basic maintenance and picking some unbelievable lettuce, by the way. And we were out there and we have these metal trellis that we wanted to use. And that brings me back to this lesson because these practices, these lessons in the book, in that chapter that you just mentioned, I think it's the second chapter. Yeah. Adopt a Pattern of Life. These patterns of life are like trellis, these actions in which we engage function as trellis to help us grow in the right direction, to keep us growing in the direction of love of God and love of neighbor. That's the purpose of a trellis. A trellis is just there, a scaffolding as a direction finder for us. And I think that chapter uses the image of a trellis. So we develop a pattern, a trellis for a life, and it's usually a lot of different practices. It's not just one. We may have a favorite, but it's a lot of different practices that work together in that way.
Crystal: Speaking of that, do each of you have a favorite? Maybe all, maybe all are the favorites?
Janet: A favorite? What a favorite chapter.
Crystal: A faborite chapter? Yeah, A favorite lesson, yes.
Janet: I would say probably mine is about empathy because I really think that's at the core of love, empathy, and listening, those two things. And I guess being involved with children, so much of my professional and personal life, that's the point of connection. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about people that children don't have empathy and they're just selfish little beings who want their own way. But I think really children come with that instinctive empathy for others, and we also can teach that by the way we live and through gentle parenting, through eye contact, through actually stopping and listening and engaging into their world. And that's a really good way to treat others in any situation, whether adults or children, to just take the time to think about their world and into it in a listening way. So I guess that's been kind of a core practice of my life with children and adults.
Crystal: I love that because with children too, you can see how they just instinctively can be gentle. If there's a new baby in the family or a pet, they for the most part are very careful and quiet and it's real tender. So I just really love thinking about that, something that's in us and life, sometimes your circumstances will, if that's not being modeled, I that can go away or be lessened. But I love thinking about how that's something that's in our core and just nurturing that is such a beautiful expression and a beautiful practice. Thank you. Yeah. Paul, how about you?
Paul: Boy, it's really hard for me to pick one, but one that keeps surfacing in my mind, so I'm going to go with that one maybe that is my favorite is create beauty. The world that surrounds us, I'm going to say right now in particular, there's an ugliness about it that's just really difficult to live with day by day. So I think creating beauty is a really important practice in our lives. And I think in this chapter I allude, or I think I actually quote a friend that I made at a conference, an African-American jazz artist and theologian in the Chicago area, a Julian. And we were talking, we just happened to be on the same train getting back into Chicago, getting back to our homes. And so I had a nice opportunity to talk on the train and we talked. I asked him about how do you approach the creation of this beauty and just a fabulous conversation.
Our daughter, Rebecca, is an art therapist, and the healing power of art that we've seen, heard her stories is just phenomenal. And truth to be told, if you look around, there's beauty everywhere. You can't escape it if you simply open your eyes and look for beauty. Don't just let those moments pass, but actually open your eyes and look for the beauty that surrounds you. And of course, one of the most important places to find that beauty is in people. And Janet and I love diversity. I want that word on this broadcast. We love diversity, we love inclusion, we love equity. This is a part of what it means to be a child of God. So there is beauty in all of that. And that's something, my goodness, that's something to celebrate.
Crystal: I remember living in Los Angeles, when I lived in Los Angeles for a time, I flew back home to North Carolina and as we were landing there was green fields around and I'd been in L.A. and it's not green unless you're watering it nonstop. And I remember thinking there were 30 different shades of green just in the grass as we were landing. And so when you were talking about diversity, I mean God's creation is nothing but diverse. I mean, it's all of so much diversity. So I love thinking about how do we include all of that diversity in our lives so that we can appreciate so many more levels of God's creation. That is a really a beautiful practice as well. As I read the book, I was thinking the book is “On Love” and subtitled “20 lessons for the World We Seek.” But it felt like it was about personal transformation too. How did those intertwine?
Janet: I actually think as you engage in practices of love, and I mean one of the things we talk about a lot with each other is just how much joy we get from encouraging other people and bringing happiness to others. And people just don't realize our culture is so selfish that we're transforming our lives with the love of God, we're transforming our persons and we're becoming more loving people as we engage in these kinds of practices that seem counter-cultural in our kind of get ahead and get more kind of world. But it actually is the way that we grow spiritually to become more like Christ as we engage in doing the things that Jesus did in our own lives.
Paul: Yeah, I think there's a certain reality too that the most important things, or maybe the starting point of most everything in our lives is interior. It's inside of us individually, and probably people listening to this have a multitude of different attitudes about humanity, that humanity is totally depraved or humanity. We just learn to do bad things, whatever. And regardless, everything kind of begins inside our own soul, our own mind, heart. That's where it begins. So transformation is simply change, isn't it? I mean, transformation means change or the New Testament transformation or conversion means to be turned around. It's kind of passive in a way that things around us turn us around, things us change us on the inside and enable us to see things we didn't see before to hear things we didn't hear before. So change is an inevitable part of life. It's there all the time. So transformation is at the heart of what it means to be human, let alone Christian. We're all in the business of transformation, and I think that's God's primary business, isn't it?
Changing us in the direction of love, reorienting our lives, situating, that's a word that Walter Brigman used a lot and he died fairly recently, just a phenomenal figure on the landscape of Christianity. God situates us so that we can be more loving people. I love that image.
Crystal: I love that image too, and I don't want to not talk about this. We already said you're celebrating 50 years of marriage. You wrote in your book that from the onset of your marriage, you adopted this. I am calling it a theme, maybe it's a pattern, whatever. And was we live to love. That's such a powerful, I mean, just a kind of this bold statement that you, I would love to just hear more about how you came to that. I know it was based in a Bible verse or you wrote that it was based in a verse, but how did you come to that and then how has that really popped up throughout your 50 years of marriage?
Paul: I'm sure that was Janet's idea because she's much better at this than I am. So you go ahead, Janet.
Janet: Yeah, I think, I mean at the core of our relationship from the beginning was our love of God and our desire to serve God. And we love because God first loved us. So I've seen over and over throughout our lives, if a person has never felt loved, how will they know God? How will they know how to love? And so that kind of was the theme for our, and still is for our life together, that we live a life of love and we help others to feel that God loves them through our love. And we've had that experience not only with our own children, but with other people that we've known and who have maybe been a little difficult to love, but yet underneath that was woundedness and never having felt loved. And I mean, love is a transformative power. We can attest to that in our own family, in our own.
Let's take a moment out of our conversation to talk about apportionments. Let's be honest. When you hear apportionments, you might think, is that just a church budget thing? We get it. It sounds like accounting, but here's the truth. It's actually a story of ministry, mission and multiplication. Apportioned giving is how your small offering becomes part of something much bigger. That means supporting churches in underserved communities. That means funding seminaries, hospitals, and disaster response teams. That means reaching people you may never meet but who know God's love because of you. It's not about how much it's about all of us showing up together. You're part of a church that is united in impact. That's a story we're sharing and a story worth being part of. It starts with you and your faithful generosity. We are the people of The United Methodist Church and together we are united in impact visit resource umc.org/united in impact to learn more. Now, back to our conversation.
Crystal: And one of the things I really liked in the book is that you talk about love as a verb. I mean you talk about, and all of these lessons are verbs. So this is not meant to, it's not a passive. This is not a book that's about passivity. It's about going out there and doing these things. And you also said you can't do 'em all at the same time. There's some pacing to it, which I really appreciated because I was looking at the list and I'm like, there's a lot here. So tell me how you came. Just all the verbs. I loved that. Let's talk about that just a minute, because that's so engaging.
Paul: When I was a doctoral student, Frank Baker was my doctoral advisor, and the first recommendation he made to me in terms of my writing is he said, let the verbs do the work. Would've a lot of adjectives, a lot of flowery language. And he said, no, you simplify that. Make the verb, put the emphasis on the verbs. And life really is about those verbs, isn't it? Life is about doing, it's about action. And as we say, actions, those actions speak louder than words. So it is, the book is oriented around those actions. And again, you're absolutely right. I mean, who could do 20 of these things every day? You can't. And maybe a person reading on love, maybe one practice in this that they've never thought of before, will become a favorite of theirs and shape them from the point they read the book onward in their lives.
So there's a lot there. Maybe like the questions you have to ask us in front of you, you probably won't get to all of them. That's right, that's right. So we won't get to all these actions, all these practices, all these lessons. But boy, there's a constellation there. When I started the work of constructing this, and with Janet alongside me, I started with traditional Wesleyan, works of piety and works of mercy. One of the things you'll notice in the book is that it's not distinctively Wesleyan. In other words, it doesn't wreak with Methodism because it's really intended for a readership much beyond the Methodist scope of things. It's for anybody, Christian or otherwise, who simply once, as the subtitle says, 20 lessons for the world we seek, what's the world we seek, A loving, compassionate, cooperative kind of life. Shalom, I think is the best word. Now, I've walked so eloquently all around that I forgot what the question was.
Janet: I was going to just add in about the verb with an example, and that is related to marginalized people. And one of the things that we've done with our own children and grandchildren is helping them to witness and be part of friendship with marginalized people. For example, we've had both Paul's parents and my mother live with us in our home to be cared for in their later years. And we have wonderful memories of our children, like our little daughter who was three coming and bringing a stuffed animal and tucking it in to papa's bed who had Parkinson's. And at night she would go in and kiss him goodnight. And recently with my mom living with us and our grandkids coming over, and we've encouraged them to always greet her and give her a hug and talk to her. And it's just been a way that they've been able to now feel comfortable with older people, which a lot of children don't get that experience. And then there's the distance and fear. And the same with unhoused families. We've always taken our kids to volunteer with family promise and to spend the night at the church and give breakfast to other families who were there and just see people as people. And of course, life in Africa did that in a big way for our kids. But love is active, love is an action. It's not just saying, we need to be nice to people who are different from us. No, they have to experience and know what that is.
Paul: Many people think of love as something really lofty and idealistic, kind of floating up in the cloud somewhere. The purpose of our book is to bring this down into your living room, into your kitchen, into those spaces where you live most of your time throughout the course of your life. So these are highfalutin, lofty kind of things to think about. These are simple, simple actions that you can do in the course of the day that help make the world into the place we really do seek it to be.
Crystal: And when you're going through the 20, I mean, some are more challenging to be real honest, including the marginalized and the stigmatized. That's simple, but it might be more challenging. But then there's fill your heart with love. I mean, well, it's possible. That's the hardest one of all, but that's the one it seems you could have the most control over making that happen. And that one by itself it feels like would just ripple out and help these other practices take place. And you're right, though this is not particularly a Christian book. This is a book about kindness and love and humanity, and I really love that. One of the things I also really appreciated is that you have some suggested books, suggested readings after each chapter, and you included children's books. And Janet, I'm sure you had something to do with that,
But you almost never see that on a book list that's meant for these adult books. And there are always children's, and I thought, what a special family moment that can be to bring those in. And I knew almost all of the books. There are excellent books of course, but I really appreciated that you included that. And then also there's a companion guide with questions scripture. I mean, I read it by myself of course, but it's also meant for group study if wanted. And I can see where a lesson a week could be really a very popular, important time for a small group or a Sunday school or a youth group or lots of ways out there. So I love the format of that. Well, before or as we kind of finish up today, is there anything we didn't talk about? I mean, I wish we could have gone one by one because they're so strong and they're so important. But I definitely want to give you an opportunity if we didn't talk about something you were just really hoping we would, that we can do that now.
Paul: Well, there is one that I would like to say just a word about, and that's drawn actually from our baptismal vows as Christians. And the verb is resist. So resist evil, injustice and oppression is the name of the lesson. And we live at a time, again, I want to say of kind of resurgent evil and injustice in our world. And so many people are experiencing oppression. And I'm not talking about somewhere over on the other side of the world I'm talking about in our backyards. So I think that's a particularly challenging lesson for us to learn, but there it is. It's drawn literally right out of our baptismal vows. In other words, this is what Christians, this is what those people who claim to be following the way of Jesus are called to do. They're called to resist evil injustice and oppression. So that's one facet of this that I wanted to make sure I said,
Crystal: Thank you for that, Paul.
Janet: And yes, I have one very simple practical advice to give from all the times I have sadly been at parks and playgrounds with my grandkids and seen so many children look to their parent, look, I'm climbing this slide. Look, I'm doing this. And the parents all have their faces down looking at phones, eye contact conveys love. Look at your children, put your phones away when you are having time with your kids or your spouse because where your eyes are, that's where your heart is, and they know it and they feel it, and they feel the pain of you don't care enough to look at me. So that's my advice for any parents who are listening and sit around the table and eat meals together. It's such a critical time for love in the family.
Crystal: That's really important. Janet, thank you for sharing that where your eyes are, that's where your heart is. I love that so much. And man, that is true. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the last question I'm going to ask each of you is to share how you keep your own spirits in shape. It's a question that we ask all of our guests on the podcast, and I loved hearing what our different guests have to say, and I think it's really encouraging as we talk about all the various ways that we can keep our spirits in shape.
Janet: Well, besides playing with grandkids, which is of course the number one way, playing with children, holding babies, et cetera. One of my daily practices is I've recently started listening to Lectio 3 6 5, which isn't a devotional app that has readers who are very diverse, and it's always got a great theme for the week. So I try to listen to that in the morning, but I'm not much for sitting. I'm kind of a more active type person. So I like to just listen while doing a little mini workout or today I was out in the garden pulling weeds and just listening to the birds, and that's a prayer place for me is my garden because I feel like the connection to growing things and vegetables that I can share. But today was really interesting because the Lectio reading was from second Corinthians five about reconciliation, and one of the last things he said in the reflection was, God is calling you to go back to walk with God in the garden. And there I was in the garden fresh in the early morning and it was like, yeah, it was just a special for you. Walk with God in nature. God will find you there.
Crystal: I love that.
Paul: Well, in those last couple statements, Janet has used my verb several times actually, and that is walk and walk in nature. This is, I think one of my most important places of peace and just kind of recentering and focusing is just walking and particularly walking in the beauty of nature. And I heard from of all places, John Tesh, I think on the radio one day in the car, said that studies have demonstrated that when you walk with someone, it bonds your relationship together in ways that are unconscious. So moving in the same direction with another human being creates a bond of unity. So walk and even better walk with someone you love, walk with someone you love, and that will simply deepen the love that you have for each other. Which reminds me, Janet, we really need to get a walk.
Janet: We've got to get out there on our, yeah, we've done this for years and we love walking together, and it has been a really important place for us to experience love.
Crystal: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. And I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't just acknowledge, Paul, you've had an extremely prolific year as an author, and I want to give you a moment. We'll, definitely on the episode page, we'll put a link to the Cokesbury pages with your new books, but I want to give just a moment to talk about those since we have you here if you'd like.
Paul: Well, thanks Crystal. Yeah, it has been kind of crazy in some ways. Bit of a whirlwind. It kind of launched with multiplying Love and many of these books that I've written most recently, they're all about Love Crystal, and it's not something I planned. It just kind of organically happened that way. So multiplying Love and then cultivating Christ-Likeness is a companion volume to that. So if Multiplying Love creates a vision of the church for a time like this, then cultivating Christlikeness is about how you live that out. It's a more action oriented book in that regard. The Fullest Possible Love is my effort to kind of hold together and reflect upon my connection with the Benedictine community as a Benedictine Oblate and my Wesleyan Methodist connections. So it looks at common themes in those two great traditions. And I have a new book that'll be out just next month with Upper room books entitled Transformed by Grace, and this is a parallel volume to my praying in the Wesleyan spirit, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. So it's another translating John Wesley's sermons into the forms of prayer, and then also including some Charles Wesley hymn material with that, but more praying in the Wesleyan spirit.
Crystal: Well, I'm just so happy to see that you're just resting now in your retirement.
Paul: I've told so many people there is no such thing as retirement. It's only redeployment.
Crystal: That's right. Well, I'm just so grateful to you both for being a guest here and for writing on love. I just think it has so it is so accessible. That's what I really appreciated about it. It's really accessible at all levels of, like I said, I think this would be great for youth groups or whatever. So thank you for giving us the gift of the book and also for the gift of your time today. I sure do appreciate you being here.
Paul: Thank you, Crystal. Great pleasure to be with you.
Epilogue
That was Reverend Janet Chilcote and the Reverend Dr. Paul Chilcote discussing their book, “On Love: 20 Lessons for the World We Seek.” To learn more, go to umc.org/podcast and look for this episode where you'll find helpful links and a transcript of our conversation. If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me at a special email address just for “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listeners, [email protected]. If you enjoyed today's episode, we invite you to leave a review on the platform where you get your podcast. Thank you for being a “Get Your Spirit in Shape” listener. I'm Crystal Caviness and I look forward to the next time that we're together.
