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No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

260: Unabridged Interview: Nicholas Ma

No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

Lee Camp

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.8555 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is our unabridged interview with Nicholas Ma. What if the goal of disagreement isn’t to win, but to stay in relationship? After producing the smash hit documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” on the life of Fred Rogers, filmmaker Nicholas Ma had one lingering question: Where is the kindness and acceptance that Mr. Rogers embodied in today’s divided world? He found the answer in his latest documentary, Leap of Faith, which follows 12 pastors as they navigate the deep theological and cultural challenges that divide them. Nicholas discusses the process of making the film, the unlikely friendships that developed, and the quiet power of sitting with another person’s pain. Key Ideas: -Love Beyond Understanding True friendship grows when we learn to love the parts in others that we cannot understand. -Stay Present in Pain Transformation often begins not by fixing or debating, but by sitting with another’s pain and bearing witness together. -Choose Relationship Over Certainty Clinging to certainty can make our worldview fragile, while embracing the unknown creates space for growth, faith, and connection. -Endure the Process of Change Meaningful change requires time; like any deep human process, it cannot be rushed without losing its depth. -Practice Proximate Care Human flourishing begins locally—by loving our neighbors well and cultivating communities of care where we are. ⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for abridged episode with Nicholas Ma⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Join NSE+⁠⁠ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable. No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, religion and spirituality, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠  Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello friends, Lee C. Camp here. You're listening to No Small Endeavour. This is our unabridged

0:07.0

interview with filmmaker Nicholas Ma. Some of you will know Nicholas' work from his remarkable

0:14.0

production work for the documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor, on the great story about Fred Rogers,

0:20.0

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

0:21.7

And then after that, as you'll hear in this particular interview, Nicholas said he was kind of left with a question that people kept asking him, where are the Fred Rogers of today?

0:30.8

And so with that sort of lens, he began wondering, looking around, trying to find maybe some of today's Fred Rogers,

0:39.4

if you will. And he came upon a story from the Wall Street Journal about this pastor in Grand Rapids,

0:44.9

Michigan, who was trying to help bring together people in their differences and see if they could

0:50.7

find some sort of way to hold together. And so he then went and spent a year in Grand Rapids,

0:57.8

Michigan, as this particular pastor brought together 12 other pastors, all from markedly different

1:04.5

sets of convictions with serious differences among themselves and followed just to see what would happen. It's really a moving

1:12.6

documentary. I found myself tearing up at least three different times watching and I found it quite

1:16.9

moving. It's not going to give you any easy settlement of questions that you might have, but instead

1:22.1

it does paint a very compelling picture of what it might mean to be in relationship when you have substantive disagreement.

1:30.3

I found it deeply moving. Here's our great conversation with filmmaker Nicholas Ma.

1:36.0

Hello, friends, Lee Seacamp here. There is, as you may have noticed, no shortage of content in the world.

1:42.6

Opinions, endless, outrage, plentiful.

1:46.2

Deep wisdom and thoughtful perspective, slightly harder to come by.

1:50.3

That's part of why we created the NSC notebook.

1:53.5

It's our weekly email from the world of no small endeavor with reflections on a good life,

1:58.6

behind-the-scenes insight into our interviews, and quotes that stuck with me long after those conversations ended.

2:05.9

You'll also get a curated list of what I'm reading, watching, and listening to books, movies, music, and other things I think are actually worth your time.

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