Skip to content Cultivate: How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit in You (with Dr. Rich Kannwischer) May 7 · 57 min ...more
Cultivate: How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit in You (with Dr. Rich Kannwischer)
May 7, 2026 · 57 min
Haley and Dustin are joined by Dr. Rich Kannwischer, pastor of Peachtree Church in Atlanta, Georgia and author of Cultivate: How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit within Us.
Richard shares his powerful hope story from early in his ministry about a tragic moment that left him questioning himself, his calling, and whether he had failed.
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May 7, 2026 · 57 min · Hope Talks Podcast Videos
Haley and Dustin are joined by Dr. Rich Kannwischer, pastor of Peachtree Church in Atlanta, Georgia and author of Cultivate: How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit within Us. Richard shares his powerful hope story from early in his ministry about a tragic moment that left him questioning himself, his calling, and whether he had failed. ...more Show the full description Show less Haley and Dustin are joined by Dr. Rich Kannwischer, pastor of Peachtree Church in Atlanta, Georgia and author of Cultivate: How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit within Us.
Richard shares his powerful hope story from early in his ministry about a tragic moment that left him questioning himself, his calling, and whether he had failed.
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In this video 0:00 Anchoring Hope Through Trials11:17 From Professional to Beloved Son23:56 God the Gardener: Bearing Fruit36:58 Training vs. Trying: Practical Cultivation49:15 Overcoming Barriers to Transformation
Anchoring Hope Through Trials 0:00 This longing that you feel to be a different kind of person is not going to happen automatically, but it is going to happen under God's grace. And he wants you to start living0:12 for what you're for and not just what we're against and what we're supposed to avoid.0:17 Welcome to Hope Talks. We're your hosts. I'm Haley Scully along with Dustin Anderson, and we wanna give you every reason for hope for every challenge in life because hope means everything.0:33 Dustin, it is guest day on Hope Talks. And, you know, we were just explaining this to our guests, and I wanna just say this really quickly. 1 of the reasons that we love having guests on Hope Talks is0:45 to hear various hope stories. When did people put their hope in Christ? We all have such a unique walk, such unique testimonies, and they've been so encouraging to hear those over the years.0:57 So that's why we have guests. Tell us who our guest is and a little bit about it.1:01 Yes. Today, we have, doctor Richard Conwisher with us today. So first, I just wanted to welcome you. Welcome. And Great1:08 to be with you guys. Thanks, Dustin. Thanks, Hailey. It's great to be with you guys.1:13 Thank you.1:13 Yeah. So he is the senior pastor of 7000 member, church in Atlanta, Georgia. That's Peachtree Presbyterian Church and been a pastor for over 25 years, in Texas,
1:25 California, and, New York. Just really passionate about, helping people understand and apply God's word to their everyday lives and also the author of the book that I have here, Cultivate,
1:37 How God Grows the Fruit of the Spirit Within Us. And I gotta say I'm in the middle of it. I'm at, LovejoyPeace and it is just a phenomenal book. I highly recommend it. It's just a great blend
1:49 of biblical insight, really just engaging storytelling, but also a lot of good kind of practical application and exercises. And so I'm hoping we get into, fruit of the spirit today.
2:01 Yeah. Well, I liked what we said earlier. It's a mix of Tim Keller and Max Lucado. Like those styles, people we really relate to those types of so bringing a new voice that can
2:13 engage with us and entertain us and take us deep into God's word and into the fruits of the spirit. I think that's a great mix. So welcome, doctor Kahnwisher.
2:22 So good to be with you today. And, and I gotta tell you, you guys are so encouraging. I just I feel like we should hop on this call on a regular basis just so I can feel the turn of it right out of the gate.
2:33 Okay. We'll
2:33 have our team set up a weekly meeting.
2:35 That's right. We're in. So, you know, like I said, we, we kind of start every episode just asking our guests a time that they really learned what it meant to put their hope in Christ. And so some people that's like the
2:47 moment that they accepted him as savior and as Lord and they understood it and they hit the ground running. And then for a lot of us, it was maybe a trial in our lives or some later experience where we're like, okay,
2:57 this is what anchoring myself to Christ as my hope. This is what that looks like and means. So before we kind of get into cap cultivate, what would a hope story be that you would share with us today,
3:09 Richard?
3:10 Yeah. I love the opportunity to be able to talk about the living hope that that I have in God and in Jesus Christ. And there was a time for me when that was really tested. I was already a pastor,
3:22 and I was the senior pastor of a church up in the New York City metropolitan area. And I had walked through 9 11 with that church. It had been a really difficult kind of chapter in the life of just
3:34 carrying the load and praying. Our our community, it was like we lived through a world war in that moment. In fact, statistically, in the the area where I lived, it was the same number of people that died during World
3:45 War 1 and World War 2 then died on that 1 day. And so it was, you know, being 27 years old, leading and serving a church at that moment, it was a trial by
3:57 fire, but I felt like I had just started to get through that when a guy from the community set up an appointment. I didn't I didn't know who he was. He wasn't a member of the church, but he lived in the town where
4:09 we were. And, you know, I I wasn't just a pastor. I mean, sometimes when you live in a smaller community, like a bedroom community, it you're kinda like a village priest. Right? And so he came in. I shoved it in
4:20 between a variety of meetings. There were, you know, questions about God, questions about prayer, questions about heaven, or just some of the basics, things that I could have answered in my sleep. And he left
4:32 my office. And then tragically that night, he went home and he killed his wife and his son, and then he threw himself in front of a train. And I woke up the next morning. This is old enough
4:44 where you're still looking at newspapers. I woke up the next morning to see the newspaper to see what he had done, and it shattered me. I just God, you put that person in my office.
4:56 What kind of failure am I that I was I didn't see it. I I didn't help him. And, I began to fall apart. And it's the first time I
5:08 wanted to throw in the towel in ministry and just questioned the validity of who I was and what God was calling me to do. Well, as it turns out, I had already pre
5:20 committed and prepaid for a doctoral seminar in Southern California that was at a monastery. And there was a man by the name of Dallas Willard who was leading that spiritual retreat.
5:32 Oh. And as a component of that retreat was spiritual direction. And Dallas didn't always do the spiritual direction with every single person, but because I showed up I think he felt sorry for me. Because I showed up in
5:43 such a bad state, he wrapped his arms around my soul and began to put the pieces of my life and my calling back together. And it was
5:55 during that time where I discovered when he was helping me pray through that, rediscover Mhmm. The hope that we have in God, that I discovered that phrase that that it the hope is an anchor for our soul all the
6:07 way into the holy of holies. And that my life was tethered to something that was so substantive and so real and so eternal that not even a
6:19 tragedy like this separated me from the hope that we have in God. And so it was 1 of those moments where if you had caught me an hour before I discovered that news, I would have told you
6:31 about the hope that I had, but my hope needed to be anchored. It needed to be deepened. And it was through that hardship and that somebody came alongside me and put the
6:42 pieces of my soul back together.
6:44 That is unimaginable. Yeah. It's so difficult to consider, and I'm just so sorry that that happened. A weight of responsibility
6:57 that pastors feel so much as they're shepherding people and as they're leading in those ways. How how did how were you able to
7:08 redefine your responsibility in that man's life as you looked for hope and kind of healed from that happening?
7:18 Well, the reorientation for me was Dallas showing me that I'm not a church professional. First of all, I'm a beloved son. I'm adopted. Like, what is my true identity?
7:31 And Mhmm. Yeah. If so if my identity is I'm a church professional, then, yeah, I'm a failure. But if my identity is a son and if my identity is rooted in the grace of
7:43 God, if my worth is not in my own or in my success, what am I to be about? So there was this radical reorientation about me being good and
7:54 effective in leading a church in terms of programs and worship services and things like that to say, I need to be first and foremost, a a steward of people's
8:06 lives. And does does their life, and this gets to the kind of the point of why I wrote the book cultivate, does their life bear the fruit of the spirit? Does my life bear that? Does theirs
8:18 and paying attention more to that than typical paradigms of success and failure that we pay attention to all the time.
8:26 I what's coming to mind even in that too is we can see that in ministry. I love the the shift of thinking of a church professional to back
8:38 to a discipler and and what your identity is and what God would be pleased in you for or what you're responsible for, but also exactly what you just said. I think you could pick that up and put it over parenting.
8:50 You could pick that up and put it over, you know, in every kind of role and responsibility that we have getting back to what is our true identity in Christ. It sets us free
9:02 from some of the chains of other roles we may have or other expectations or responsibilities where I can imagine people would feel crushed by that. I've been a
9:14 counselor and I haven't had that exact situation. That's very unique, but very similar situation that ended in the death of somebody within who I was working
9:26 with at the time. And just having to consider what our role is, where God is and the questions. Why didn't he prevent this? Or why didn't he speak
9:38 to you even in that moment so that you had understanding to stop this somehow? Like all of the what ifs kind of go through our minds in those times. And it's incredible that you
9:49 went from that into someone as powerful and as strong as Dallas Willard. I mean, like, that's Not a
9:56 bad mentor to have.
9:57 Not a bad mentor. I mean, there is a a hush that goes over the room, I think, even when people say his name a lot of times.
10:04 And what he began to rebuild in me through spiritual practices, put scaffolding around my life for me to become, a
10:15 stronger person as as a result. And I didn't realize how flimsy my hope was until it had really been tested like that. Listen, you were talking about,
10:27 like, you can overlay this with a family. You know, Gary Thomas wrote that great book on sacred marriage where the subtitle is worth the price of the book. What if marriage was designed to make us holy instead of happy?
10:38 Like, if what's the purpose of my marriage? The purpose of my marriage is a laboratory of love. The purpose of my marriage is not to meet my needs. The purpose of my marriage is for me to become more like Christ.
10:50 What's the purpose of my family? The purpose of my family is to become a laboratory of love and joy and peace and patience. And how can we cultivate? How can we develop? Dallas would put it this way. He says, yes,
11:02 God is certainly in the business of getting people into heaven, but his primary aim is getting heaven into us. What am I doing in partnership with God for for heaven to be cart become part of the reality
11:14 of who I am?
From Professional to Beloved Son
11:17 Yeah. That's amazing. That's part of the beauty from Ashes. You know, going through the struggle, you learned so much and it it grew you and deepened you. It's part of the the blessing that he'll do
11:28 when we go through such difficult things.
11:31 Yeah. Before you you started to kinda tease the book a little bit, and I do wanna get into that, but I did wanna ask just a little maybe clarity or insight. This was kinda early
11:43 on after you were kinda called into ministry or early on as a pastor. And I just wanted to ask, like, as as a new pastor back then, like, what was that like, and what do you think was,
11:55 like, the biggest shift in how you approached the ministry after that experience? Because I imagine, like, it's a very difficult lesson to learn, but it's Mhmm.
12:07 I
12:07 would think it's probably something good to learn early on in ministry.
12:12 I certainly came back to my job in an entirely different frame of mind in the sense of that. I didn't wanna just be the kind of person that was really good at delivering a
12:24 polished sermon, or I didn't wanna be a, you know, competent at walking alongside a family in grief. Again, that professional mindset was graduate. I graduated
12:36 from seminary, went right into it. And then when when you really think about what does it mean to shepherd people under the the lordship of Jesus Christ, what does it mean to
12:48 be partnering with the spirit and keeping in step with the spirit and helping the flock to be able to do that as well. It was it was a total I saw my people differently. It's interesting. 1 1 of
13:00 the people on staff said, Rich, beforehand, I knew how called and gifted you were after that moment. I knew how much you loved us.
13:11 And
13:13 so that it was 1 of these things where, oh, okay. This is, I was doing this with good intentions, but all the wrong way. Mhmm. And it's not about are you
13:24 skilled. It's you can really become the kind of person that is filled with these these qualities in partnership with God. And so I was spending more time
13:36 with myself in terms of trying to become the kind of person that God had in mind and reflecting more of the image of who he is.
13:44 I really like that.
13:46 So then to kinda get into the book a little bit, would you say you kind of wrote this as a bit of, like, a bit more of like a is it a response to something more personal you were working through or is
13:58 it kind of like a you noticed this kind of thing in pastoral ministry? Or or was it kind of a mix of both of just wanting to understand this concept of the fruit of the spirit and how God's
14:09 cultivating us?
14:11 Yeah. It really came out of a discontent in the sense of that I think if you go up to the typical Christian and you say, what does a Christian do? Or what are they all about? They they would probably
14:23 default to saying, you know, well, it's important to go to church on a regular basis. It's important to read the Bible. It's important to maybe be in community. And none of those things are bad. They're just not what the
14:35 goal is. Like so the first command that we have, we can nerd out on this a little bit. The first command we have in the Bible is to be fruitful. Now certainly in its, like, its narrowest sense, that
14:47 means the blessing of the next generation. But you get later in the Bible where Jesus says, I've chosen you. I have appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit will that will last. Well, clearly, he's not talking about
14:58 procreating at that moment. He's talking about us becoming particular kind of people. When you get to the end of the Bible, and at the end of the Bible, it's talking about how this tree of life with the leaves that are
15:09 bearing fruit in every season, and and that the the purpose of that is for the healing of the nations. And so there's this golden thread. The first thing that the Israelites bring back from the
15:21 promised land are these this giant cluster of grapes to see the fruitfulness of the promise of God. So woven through the whole scripture is this idea we are called to bear fruit. That is what
15:33 we are called to do. Well, then the question is, what is, what does fruit look like? What is a life that bears fruit actually entail? And so people have and this was true in my
15:45 congregation. This was true for me. Like, what what is the target? What's the end? And it's to become a particular kind of person. And that's where I feel like I wanna rescue the fruit of the
15:57 spirit from just being a vacation bible school curriculum. I mean, this is real. It's for adults too. It's who am I becoming is the operative question. And I think we we
16:08 we're way over programmed and we're way under discipled by Jesus Christ.
16:14 1 other thing to kinda nerd out on a little bit, because I love that thread that you just laid out throughout scripture of just like that idea of fruit bearing and cultivating. And I love too how you opened your book
16:26 with kind of, like, 1 of the primary ways we know God is as a gardener. That's kind of how we're introduced to him. And there was something about that that was just like, I never thought about that before. So I was
16:38 wondering if you could just kinda walk that thread a little bit out because, yeah, even though it's right there in Genesis, I was just like, oh, he's introduced to us as a gardener. Like, that's
16:50 something Yeah. Fundamental about that.
16:52 There is. It's it's I mean, it is the baseline, and we're so adrift from this because we live in urban environments and there's nothing wrong with that, but we just kind of miss the metaphor.
17:05 And, and that God's identity is, I mean, he rolls up his sleeves, he gets in the dirt with us, and he is taking that dirt and breathing life
17:16 into it to to grow something. I mean, this is right out of the opening chapters of Genesis 1 and 2. This is the picture that we have. And then in Genesis 3, even in the midst of the fall, God walking in the cool of the
17:28 evening in the garden, God is building a garden. And then eventually that culminates to Jesus saying, you'll know they're my disciples by the way that they bear fruit.
17:40 And being able to say a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. And so we don't tend to think about what is my life developing?
17:52 What am I producing? This stuff is hard to measure, but I can guarantee you, my wife and children can tell you if I'm becoming a more patient person. So we do. We miss the the nature of God
18:04 as gardener. Listen, I learned this at college 1 time with a good friend by the name of Gabe Knapp, who obviously you guys know of Gabe because of his sister that works as
18:14 your producer. Christina. And,
18:16 so shout out to Christina in this. I was in a bible study with Gabe in college. I remember this. It was later in college, and we were reading the parable of the sower, and he's talking about throwing all the different
18:26 seeds in all of these different ways. And a bunch of his city slickers, I mean, we're just, like, throwing in all these insights on the tax and asking questions. And Gabe's just sitting there because Gabe grew up on a
18:36 farm in Nebraska. Ord, Nebraska. Shout out to Ord, and I'm sure the huge listener fool that's there.
18:41 Shout out.
18:42 And, and, Gabe's just scratching his head and he goes, who farms like this? Nobody throws seed indiscriminately like this. Seed is valuable.
18:54 It's expensive. Yeah. And so the generosity of God in what he's trying to cultivate and how him throwing these seeds out, My mind exploded in that moment because I didn't
19:05 know anything about agriculture. And
19:09 Yeah.
19:09 But there's this image that's there right in the Bible of God gardening, cultivating, getting into the dirt with us and helping us to grow is a partnership
19:21 with God and his spirit.
19:23 Right. Why do you think we we grow out of you you mentioned earlier, you wanna bring the fruits of the spirit kind of out of the little kids Sunday school
19:35 song, and I do have the song literally going through my head right now. Yeah. Constantly. I'll sing it a lot to my coworkers after this. But why do you feel like we kind of grow out of
19:47 that and it starts being in our minds about so much more or doing or being so much different boil than boiling it down to the fruits of the spirit?
19:59 Yeah. You can't grow the fruit of the spirit in the soil of the self. I'm a say that again. You can't grow the fruit of the spirit in the soil of the self. And so as we get older and
20:11 more sophisticated, we feel like we've graduated past this. But in reality, Paul gives us this list of the fruit of the spirit in partnership with the the ways of the flesh. And and it's all about our
20:23 self orientation. This is hard work. I mean, we think it's for kids, but, like, have you I mean, have you ever tried to be more kind? That's hard. You can't do
20:35 these things by just will powering it. This is not a personality indicator. You can't say like, hey, well, I'm not very patient, but I am faithful. No. No. No. This is 1 fruit. It's not
20:46 the fruits of the spirit, plural. It's the fruit singular. It's 1 fruit, and we're all called to embody these dimensions of what the character is. This is what
20:58 the character of God looks like when it's being genuinely lived out in the life of a person, a family, a workplace. God doesn't let us off the hook and say, just teach this to your kids. We ought to ask some
21:10 really difficult questions about it.
21:12 That really hurts my feelings, Richard. I literally was just thinking if he brings up patience, I'm walking out. I'm walking
21:19 out if he talks
21:20 about patience.
21:21 Not me. We're parents.
21:23 I mean, the Holy Spirit's always listening. Right? There's so many of us that we love the Lord, and we want to be everything he wants us to be. And we
21:35 put up the scriptures on the wall. He has a plan, and we love him and all the things. And then there are so many Christians, parents, moms, wives, husbands,
21:47 friends, professional church employees, all of us, and we still have such emotional and hard struggles that we go through. You know, we talk a lot about
21:59 emotional well-being and mental health, and and people are trying to figure out, you know, what vitamin to take. Are we deficient in d? Is that why I'm lacking joy? Or, you know, where do I do I need to get
22:10 more exercise? Is will that help me have peace? We're trying to fill in all of the blanks, but I like what you're saying. You know, this kind of gets back to identity. And so
22:22 how do we begin to feed and nurture and grow those fruits of the spirit once we're so grown that we think we're past all of that? How do we
22:34 reengage?
22:35 Yeah. Well, first of all, you just need to know there's a limitation to what you're gonna be able to do by trying harder. This has to be a partnership with God. It has to be rooted in his grace. If this becomes about
22:47 performance as opposed to the personhood of who I am, you're just not gonna get very far. You could try and you might see a little bit of, moving the needle, but you're not going to get to the
22:58 destination of a life that is bearing these kinds of qualities. Paul gives us the road map. He he tells us 3 different things. He tells us the first thing that we need to do is
23:10 kinda remember who we are or whose we are. Then the second thing we need to do is that we need to crucify any of the stuff in us that just needs to die. And then
23:22 the third step that he tells us is to keep in step with the spirit. So this is the pattern of spiritual transformation. It starts with remembering who we are and whose we are, what God has done for us in
23:34 Jesus Christ. It then moved towards what is it in me that I'm holding onto that I need to let go of and to let die any kind of selfish desire that I'm clinging
23:45 to. And then as you let go of the ways of the world, then you're able to start to keep in step with the spirit. So that's the overall pattern of these things happening. If we're willing to just keepShow more
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