Exploring the Difference Between Success and Fruitfulness

What Really Matters with Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth

Ours is an age that values and valorizes productivity, speed, and scale, and emphasizes precise and perpetual measurement and management of those markers. A whole range of organizations, including nonprofits, and even churches, as well as individuals believe that what is valuable is empirical and measurable, and that those measurements show us what's real and what really matters. 

Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth today offer a radically different way of seeing the world. They assert that it is not the empirical but love that is, in their words, the highest way of knowing and the trustworthy basis of the imaginative and creative good. They argue that the small aspects of life, whether it's cooking or gardening, music making, hospitality, or family matters–those things that often seem not to matter so much are actually what matters most. It's an invitation toward fruitfulness, and a new way of understanding and living:

“Fruitfulness is what God talks so much about what Jesus talks so much about and it is really something that he is doing in us and with us as we turn towards him. We can't really measure it. We can't really see it. We don't tally it up for ourselves. It's more of a trust that if we walk in the faithful path that God has for us, we can trust that there is a fruitfulness and that it's God's to measure. And I think there's a real freedom in that.” - Andi Ashworth

We hope this conversation sparks your creativity and encourages you to look differently at the small matters of life that matter a lot.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth here.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Martin Luther King Jr.

Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring, by Andi Ashworth

Wild Things in Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children, by Andi Ashworth

Why Everything That Doesn't Matter Matters So Much, by Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth

The Call, by Os Guinness

Steven Garber

Francis Schaeffer

Frederick Buechner

Eugene Peterson

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Babette's Feast, by Isak Denison

Hannah and Nathan, by Wendell Berry

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

Bright Evening Star, by Madeline L'engle

Letters from Vincent Van Gogh

Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan
Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura
Connecting Spiritual Formation & Public Life with Michael Wear
The Kingdom, the Power & The Glory with Tim Alberta
A Life Worth Living with Miroslav Volf
Towards a Better Christian Politics
Christian Pluralism: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.