Dating and Friendship: Episode 915
The Boundless Show
Focus on the Family
4.7 • 772 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How dating impacts other relationships, plus navigating changes in your doctrinal beliefs, and a commitment-phobe’s guide to serving at church.
Featured musical artist: Abandon
Roundtable: Maintaining Friendships While Dating
It happens all too often: You have great friendships and a robust social life. You’re involved in church and maybe even have a mentor. But soon after you start dating, things change. You spend more and more time with your bf or gf, and other relationships start to fade. You don’t think you have time for them. You’re so caught up in this new person that other people take a back seat. Some changes are expected, but what does it look like to date and navigate engagement in a way that still preserves the other important relationships in your life? Our panel weighs in.
Culture: Why Doctrine Matters
A listener recently contacted us, saying some of their Christians beliefs on secondary issues have changed since childhood. Now they’re wondering how to have conversations about these topics (baptism, worship styles, election, etc.) with their friends and family members. Pastor Mark Bates shares how to approach doctrinal topics with grace while keeping your focus on unity in the body of Christ.
True Community: The Biblical Practice of Koinonia
Inbox: I Want to Serve but Am Afraid to Commit
Our listener wants to start serving at church but is afraid to commit to a church home. What’s the core issue here? Pastor Vince Hoppe offers advice.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Boundless Show. Well, hey, friends, welcome to this week's episode of The Boundless Show. This is Lisa Anderson here with you. |
| 0:17.7 | Let me give you a little bit of the scoop of what is coming up later on in the show. |
| 0:22.4 | For our inbox, we are answering a question submitted by someone who said, I want to start |
| 0:29.5 | serving in church and not just be a consumer, but I'm afraid of committing to a church home. |
| 0:35.8 | So this is a little bit of a push-pull, you know, kind of one |
| 0:39.4 | takes the other. So Pastor Vince Hoppe is actually going to be here to answer that question. |
| 0:45.2 | And then for our culture segment, Mark Bates, also a pastor, joins us to talk about another issue, |
| 0:52.1 | another question that was actually submitted by one of you listeners, |
| 0:55.6 | about why it's important to know theology and actual doctrine for ourselves. And from the church |
| 1:02.8 | we attend, does it matter even if it's non-salvific? And then is it appropriate to move to a |
| 1:09.5 | different church as your views change and what that |
| 1:12.1 | looks like? So great discussion with Pastor Mark Bates. Okay, here we are for our roundtable. |
| 1:18.4 | We are going to talk about that transition in dating, engagement into marriage, and how friendships |
| 1:26.2 | change, if in fact they do. So we have got, |
| 1:30.3 | first of all, I'll introduce Lauren, our summer intern. Hey, Lauren. Hi, Lauren. It is so good to |
| 1:36.1 | have you here. Thanks for having me. Okay, Lauren literally got engaged the day before she started |
| 1:41.6 | her internship with us, which is good, and it's still held. |
| 1:46.1 | So that's encouraging. |
| 1:47.2 | Yes, thankfully. |
| 1:48.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:49.0 | Going strong. |
| 1:50.1 | Well, to find out if that's actually true and get his perspective, we also have Brock, her fiancé, here. |
... |
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