The Goodness of God

Ten years ago, Central UMC in Galveston restarted with four people, a young pastor, and a dream to be more connected to their community. Instead of building a mountain of plans, the got to listening and learning. Out of that came a mission to serve folks without homes and folks who for whatever reason don’t fit into church as normal. They rip out half the pews, replaces those with couches, started a bike repair ministry, worked with the local med school to open a full service clinic, built a ton of relationships, and became the keepers of even more stories. Their journey is tale of what is possible if you dig openheartedly into your specific context. 

Support their work:

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God sure does seem to love a good irony. The blind man sees Jesus most clearly and walks away from the encounter completely healed and inspired to follow Christ. However, due to his faith, he had a different kind of wellness long before his direct encounter with Christ. His soul knew God so intimately that he lived spiritually well even as his blindness limited other aspects of his life. Our world today has these same kind of people, who see God clearly even though no one believes them. We should have better hears to hear.

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Lovett Weems Jr. and F. Douglas Powe Jr.'s book Sustaining While Disrupting leans into the tension of trying to do something radically different with church. You have all these people tied and attached to the old way being. However, you need to be doing things that are radically different to reach folks who aren't interested in what you are doing. Navigating that requires intentionally leading folks challenging, listening, communicating, and cheerleading in equal measure.

Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation

https://www.amazon.com/Sustaining-While-Disrupting-Congregational-Innovation/dp/1506479200/

Lewis Center for Church Leadership

https://www.churchleadership.com/

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Job throws what might get described as a temper tantrum, and God responds. God doesn't zap Job or judge Job harshly. God doesn't really answer Job's question either. God simply states that God is in fact God, and Job very much is not. This ancient pondering on human suffering and the feeling of divine absence ends in mystery. God works on a scale that we cannot comprehend, and, on some level, we must all work through that.

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Jesus doesn't place a limit on discipleship. He call us all to live after his example and give everything that we have. As humans, who are not in fact God, we need to walk more carefully. We can do great harm, when we substitute our own voice for the voice of God. Christians are all called to absolute devotion, but we each have the responsibility to discern it for ourselves.

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Contemporary worship, as we know it, is like 25-30 years old at this point, yet it's still receiving this same criticism that it did at the beginning: "Isn't this just a concert but with the name Jesus added?" This time, the criticism is coming from a new generation. Joshua Abraham, a writer for Texas A&M's student newspaper, The Battalion," levels the "all concert, no substance" argument at the Breakaway, a contemporary concert meets Bible study on the A&M campus. It all raises uncomfortable questions about emotional manipulation, group think, and discipleship. It also makes one wonder, what is next for worship?

"Opinion: You don’t like Breakaway, you just like live music: Is supplemental practice enough for salvation?" by Joshua Abraham

https://thebatt.com/opinion/opinion-you-dont-like-breakaway-you-just-like-live-music/

"Contemporvent"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDNpscDSqpU&ab_channel=DUSTOFFTHEBIBLE

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God upended the entire cosmos for love of us. What are we doing in respond? God suffers willingly, everyday, for love of us? Do we even come close to matching God with reciprocal passion? Romance may seem an odd angle to approach to the Letter to the Hebrews, but Scripture contains a long tradition of interpreting God's relationship with humanity in romantic terms. Approaching it this way, we have this lover willing to everything for us. Are we willing to do anything in response?

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God isn't a character in the Book of Esther, yet it's all about doing what God wants. It's a realistic telling of uncertainty and needing to act, when you don't have all the confirmations that you want. God has arranged things in perfect order, but Esther and Mordecai can't see the full picture. They act. It works. God's people were saved, and God's will was done. We too live in that situation most of the time. We don't always know and have to discern as best we can.

We Don't Talk About Haman (Maccabeats)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjmLkEcaUAA&ab_channel=Maccabeats

Purim Song (Maccabeats)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJInVvJSZg&ab_channel=MaccabeatsChannel

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Love UMC, in Baytown, Texas, was born out of a sudden need for a United Methodist witness in a city that was once well served. Right now, they are a scrappy new church start that first met in a decked out barn and now meets at a local college and various locations around the community. At the core of their vision is an inclusive theology that leverages the power of diversity. Suburbs and suburban churches can quickly become tiny boxes of conformity and uniformity. Love UMC strikes out in a totally different direction. What if every kind of person could find a home in a church?

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Humans seem dead set on claiming every advantage possible. The greater the power that they have merely raises the stakes of what they will try to claim. God has literally all the power in the universe. Jesus as a God among us contained that power. How did he use it? He died for us rather than demanding a life of advantage.

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Jesus was just as human as we was divine. He was God among us, but he felt and had all the same instincts as every other human - including the instinct towards self preservation. In calling Peter, "Satan," we see some of that instinct bleeding through. Across the Gospels, we see Christ wrestle with this idea that he is to die That struggle opens up for us an opportunity to witness the true character of Christ, and to understand that God always invites rather than force.

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Lovett Weems Jr. wrote a fascinating dive into the statics behind the growth in small churches. That is that 70% of all churches now have less than 100 regard attenders, and that the median church size in most denominations has shrunk. Many tiny churches have closed, but many have an opportunity to remain viable. The big question is how to do you do and remain actually focused of doing the work of the church. There is a real place for small, intimate, nimble churches who do vital ministry and let folks have a deeper connection with the people that they worship with. Sharing more than prayers is a way to start - coming together in networks of small churches to do more and take the edge off the isolation.

"5 Ways Forward for Very Small Congregations" by Lovett Weems Jr.

https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/6-ways-forward-for-very-small-congregations/

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The interaction between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7 is profoundly baffling. He definitely call her a dog, and not even a nice kind of dog, and she then quips back at him. They depart friends? Her daughter certainly receives the healing love of God. So, what do we do with all of this? It is dark humor, or cultural bias, or an example of Christ growing as a human, or an example of the humility that we all should practice before God? Maybe, it's all of that. Whatever it is, it certainly shows the breadth of God's love.

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God's people (literally anyone who has claimed that title over the centuries) have a shockingly long history of hypocrisy. We seemingly live for the opportunity to judge others for their behavior even as we live in a wildly ungodly ways. Sure, our New Testament antagonists, the Pharisees, get called out for it here, but Christians picked up that mantle and ran with it in a 2,000 year long unbroken streak. Blessedly for us, God isn't like that. God sees your motivations and offers grace rather than judging you on your execution.

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This week, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by the Rev. Dr. Elaine Heath to talk about amazing Farmastery (Farm + Monastery), Spring Forest, where she is the Abbess and now lead farm worker. All of this grows out of a lifetime of various streams come together for her from being a young girl finding peace on a neighbor's farm, to being a professor of evangelism leading innovative urban ministry, to meeting a Kenyan pastor who is also a farmer. It all leads to an open ended, open minded, creation and creator focused spiritual community that is part working CSA, part new monastic community, and part safe and healing space for anyone in need of such a thing.

Elaine's Website:

elaineaheath.org

Spring Forest's website:

springforest.org

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The ancient temple in Jerusalem was more than a power symbol of God's importance. It contained at least a piece of God's presence. God is everywhere, but God also setup a specific outpost there in the Holy of Holies. In claiming a physical throne for God's self, God powerfully illustrates the true way of things. God reigns. God should be the one who reigns in our own lives as well.

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We launched all our podcasting-y stuff around a year ago, and we've learned a lot in that time. We've figured out how to make content without overloading us. We learned that it's bad when all your studios are constantly over 90 degrees. We started making TikToks. And, we learned that we need to take the next leap into becoming a Christian media company.

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King Solomon ascend the throne and immediately impresses God. He choose wisdom to serve the nation rather than something that was good for himself. Solomon reaches this conclusion despite growing up during his family's darkest period. He overcomes his background and shows humility and wisdom - even before God grants his request.

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Village UMC wanted to do something new. Nash Carey had a whole model of ministry to reach a whole different group of folks by running a comic book store as ministry. They came together to open an Oklahoma City comic book store, owned by Village UMC, and operated by Nash. It's an amazing take on getting out beyond the church walls, taking something you know and love, and creating meaningful, Spirit filled, and life giving community. They clearly have been given great power, and they are definitely using responsibly.

"See inside the opening of Sanctuary Comics & Games second location in Oklahoma City." by Bryan Terry

https://www.oklahoman.com/picture-gallery/news/religion/2024/08/03/sanctuary-comics-games-opens-its-second-location-in-oklahoma-city/74640218007/

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King screw up....royally....again. His actions and inactions lead to a rebellion, the death of two of his sons, and the slaughter of 20,000 of his own subjects. However, this story is as much about what doesn't happen as what does. God does reject David. If we extrapolate this out, God is a God of grace. We too can royally screw up, and God will still love us.

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Much like Heart Disease in the human population, the shocking rise in church insurance costs over the last four years is the unsexy and even boring sounding thing killing churches. A combination of inflation, a pandemic, climate change, and massive empty facility have combined into what the Associated Press describes as a "perfect storm" to make insuring churches next to impossible. Churches are regularly seeing a 4x increase in insurance costs - in just a single year. That dramatic a shift that quickly puts ministries and overall stability at risk.

"How a perfect storm sent church insurance rates skyrocketing" by Bob Smietana

https://apnews.com/article/church-insurance-skyrockets-storms-disasters-2035fbdbb8cff8e03b1efc8f49eb5c94

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What does it mean to be like King David? In so many ways, King David and King Saul are a lot alike - military victorious, popular leaders, profoundly flawed. Both make decisions that turn out tragically for themselves and their families. The confrontation between the prophet Nathan and King David gives us a key window into the difference. When called out by God's voice box, David repents and finds redemption. This is something that we can all do.

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Pastor Trey and his son, Thomas, report back on their field trip to St. Lydia's in Brooklyn. It's a dinner church with a storefront location and a focus on intentional simplicity. They provide an amazing example of what can happen, when you focus on your context, don't try and solve all the world's problems, but find a lane where you can do something powerful.

Learn more about St. Lydia's:

https://stlydias.org/learn/

Support St. Lydia's:

https://stlydias.org/support/

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King David messes up...royally. He peeps on a woman. He has his way with said woman. He monkeys with battlefield strategy to try and cover up his indiscretion. When that fails, he commits murder in the first degree. We can easily write this off as, "David is just bad, actually." This avoids the real question. How different are we from David?

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Ryan Burge, on his Substack Graphs About Religion, did a statistical survey of nonreligious people in conjunction with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It folks from outside of church world digging into what is up with folks who are outside of church world. Some of their findings should be deeply convicting. Most of the folks who left religion did so before the age of 25, and the main reasons that they cite for leaving is religious people not living up to the religion that they claim to profess. We've got some work to do to be better.

"We Asked the Nones a Bunch of Questions About Leaving Religion" by Ryan Burge

https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/we-asked-the-nones-a-bunch-of-questions

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David wants to build a Temple. It seems like a good enough idea. It honors God. It's the kind of thing that kings do. God says, "No." It's a perfectly fine idea, but it drills down to one of the key factors in a life following God - doing God's will only. We can fairly easily tell the difference between morally right and morally wrong, at least most of the time. We don't always do it, but we know. However, a life of faith, like with David, means not just doing morally right things but doing the specific morally right thing that desires for us to do. The trick is discerning what that is.

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Christian writer, David Zahl, put out "Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What To Do About It" in 2019, and it dives deep into all the new, and bad, religions that have grown up to replace a wanning Christianity in the West. Also, he argues that most Christianity, at this point, barely resembles the grace filled power of the true faith. It's instructive for us all to give us focus and drive to not just keep churning out new laws for us all to fail to find justification within.

David Zahl's Bio:

https://mbird.com/staff/

Link to buy the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Seculosity-Parenting-Technology-Politics-Religion/dp/1506467644/

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King David puts on quite a spectacle - dancing in the priestly equivalent of his underwear. People take notice. Some think better of him, and some think way less. If you choose to believe that David did this out of a genuine desire to please God (and God alone), we have a model to follow. Do your own version of dancing, and do it only for God.

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The Well Church NYC creates an fascinating blend of Christianity, wellness retreats, yoga, and meditation with an explicit to reach the average New Yorker that doesn’t know that they’re looking for anything resembling Jesus. For some, their specific blend of influences may feel worryingly out of bounds or pushing up against the boundaries, but for The Well, they feel at home in it. As we go into new areas and push new ideas, we all must wrestle with what is sacred and what is contextual.

RNS Article: A church where wellness meet spirituality (by Ellie Davis)

https://religionnews.com/2024/06/17/a-church-where-wellness-meets-spirituality/

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In scene one, Jesus gets rejected by his hometown crowd. In scene two, he sends the Disciples out with a warning that the same may happen to them. This pairing feels deliberate on the part of Mark, but it's not often how we talk about evangelism, ministry, or pushing forward the Kingdom of God. We make the sales pitch, "Get out there!" This is an important message, but we don't often pair it the way that Jesus did with the message, "It may be extremely difficult and painful."

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We talked about churches as some of the most stuck in the mud organizations imaginable. So, what do we do, when they need to make huge changes to survive? Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily have built their careers leading churches to just that, and it involves getting as many voices in the room, actually reckoning with the problem, and sitting with it slightly too long to let the Spirit do the work through the congregation.

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Humanity seems set on inventing new and interesting ways to exclude people from the joys of community. In Christ's time, the focus was on "uncleanliness." In the 21st Century, we've moved on from that specific concern and simply came up with new ways. Either way, none of that stuff separates you from God's love, and Jesus didn't let it stop him from showing love. Perhaps, we should act likewise.

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This is more ranty than usual. The State of Louisiana enacted a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be placed on the wall of all classrooms in Louisiana public schools (including public universities). Politics aside, if our goal as a faith is to engage and build relationships with an increasingly skeptical world, this will not reduce their skepticism. While more people will see the Word of God because of this, it seems unlikely to build positive relationships.

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Hell may be other people, but so is the Kingdom of God. It can be far easier to endure sticks and stones that words uttered at you or whispered behind your back. Church brings with it all the problems of people and their imperfections. However, God intends us to gather people together to grow, share, and endure. Paul bore a lot pain in his ministry, but the pain that inspired him to write a letter was emotional - inflicted on him by the Corinthians. He manages to keep his heart open and challenges us to do the same.

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Rev. Matt Stout, Dungeon Master and Pastor, of Game Church joins the show this week to tell the tale first hand of starting a Fresh Expression, in a game store, center around prayer and a legitimately good D&D campaign. It's all a place where he feels that he belongs. It's a world that he understands. So, he can uniquely reach people by connecting his love of Jesus, his love of people, and his love of rolling dice to tell a story with your friends.

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Jesse leaves David out of the big meeting with the prophet. Samuel looks at David's oldest brother and thinks that he's seen God's king. God saw differently. God chose David. We have these visions of what Godly leadership must look like, but we should start looking at the leaders that God keeps choosing. They seldom fit the human envisioned model.

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Fresh Expressions, creating small, focused, creative, meaningful pockets of religious community beyond the church walls isn't meant to be one more thing on the pastor's schedule. It's not meant to be pastor led at all. Normal lay folks should be one the ones taking lead, and the pastor serves as trainer, permission giver, and recruiter. This has deep roots both in New Testament history and in Methodist history. We are all meant to go and make disciples - in our dog parks, in our tattoo parlors, in our coffee shops.

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Even the good Biblical kings weren't great. The bad ones were truly terrible. In 1 Samuel 8, God and the prophet Samuel both know, deep down, that having a king won't go well. They warn the people. The people still want a king. God intended for it to just be God and the people - with little separation. The people wanted something else. So often, we do too. We appoint people to tell us what God wants. This can go well, but often, like all our friends named Ahaziah, it goes badly. We all need to directly seek God and hold one another accountable.

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It's easy to get a clear image in your mind of what a church is. It's got a sanctuary, sound system, parking lot, classrooms, kitchen, kids area, youth area, and if you're really ambitious, more activity space. in those spaces, we do the churchy things: worship services, Bible Studies, small groups (or whatever cool rebranding that you've given them), meals, meetings. We build more boxes. We repeat the activities. Some glad morning, Christ returns. A growing movement of folks are asking the important questions, does church have to look like this, and do we have to keep doing the same things? In trying to answer that question, a pastor in Georgia is running a Christian themed Dungeons and Dragons group that building meaningful community, and a group in North Carolina are running a farm as a farm, as an intentional Christian community, and as a same place for various members of their community to feel at home.

"Game Church grows connections, shares Jesus"

https://www.sgaumc.org/advnewsdetail/game-church-grows-connections-shares-jesus-18348448

"With strawberries and goats, a ‘farmastery’ reaches out to its neighbors"

https://religionnews.com/2024/05/30/picking-strawberries-and-feeding-goats-a-farmastery-reaches-out-to-its-neighbors/

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As humans, we like simplicity and black and white choices. Do this, and it's good. Don't do that because it's bad. We turn the faith into that too. God clearly says do this, and God clearly says don't do that. It doesn't actually work that way, but we sure want it to. In reality, Jesus lived the spirit behind the Law - love God and love neighbor, and when letter of the Law conflicted with its spirit, he chose love.

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Churches, generally, have WAY more space than they need. We invested heavily in real estate for a hundred years, and for a lot of us, that investment didn't pay off. So what do we do with it all? Well, there are a lot of organizations literally dying for want of space, so if you invite in the right partner, tens of thousands of square feet can get re-deployed for the Kingdom. However, as with all relationships, you've got to love your new partner and stay in love with your new partner. Otherwise, it can all fall apart.

Near Chicago, a Lutheran church finds new life at the YMCA, by Bob Smietana

https://religionnews.com/2024/04/19/near-chicago-a-lutheran-church-finds-new-life-at-the-ymca/

The Mix at White Rock UMC

https://wrumc.org/the-mix

Spring Community Church

https://www.springcc.org/shsucharterschool

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Nicodemus gets given one of Christ's all time greatest lines, John 3:16. Modern Christians have adopted it as a go to verse for understanding and hope. God loves. God moved first on our behalf. It's not clear how far Nicodemus gets down his faith journey. He's certainly not Christ's enemy, but he's no outspoken defender either. It may be an unsatisfying ending for such a great line, but it is a realistic faith journey. We don't always get the clean resolutions that we seek.

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Campus ministry can no longer just be Youth Group 2,0. A lot of the folks arriving on college campus never went to Youth Group 1.0. We need new models, and one pastor doing just that is Rev. Kyle Tremblay of the Wesley Foundation at Lamar University. He joins Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily to talk about how to build a truly inclusive space, demonstrate love that invites, and ministry with Gen Z.

Find out more about the Wesley Foundation at Lamar University and support its ministry:

https://www.thewesleyfoundation.com/

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We seem like to act like we have two truly important holiday, Christmas and Easter, but in reality, we have a third: Pentecost. The decent of the Holy Spirit kicks off the era that we still in live, where the Holy Spirit moves among us, binds us together, and empowers us to do something. It's an amazing gift that we got that day - one that we continue to have. We should value it and us it accordingly.

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The Human Flourishing study follows 200,000 people across a couple of dozen countries, and they plan to do check in with the same people for years to come. As the name implies, the study wants to capture how people feel about their lives and what factors influence that feeling. This first run of the study found something interesting about religious life. Being a part of a religious community measurable improved the sense of flourishing in those studied. It's almost like living as God intended has a real impact on people lives.

Here is a link to the summary of the study:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/642680/global-study-aims-uncover-humans-flourish.aspx

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Christ's ascension changed the nature of God's work in the world. The Disciples could no longer observe what was happening. They had to shift to taking a much more active role. That's still the case. God sends us power, grace, and ability, but we have to do something with it. If you feeling like something is missing in your faith life, ask yourself, how are you putting that faith into action?

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Campus ministry, like a lot of things in former times, had an understood model. Student would need something like a youth group 2.0 to be a part of during college to hopefully prevent a break in their Christian journey. This has changed. The bulk of students now arrive on college campuses without an previous church experience, and if anything, on a more amorphous spiritual journey. This will need new models for working with college students, but it's also a bellwether for what church as a whole will need to become.

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To call love a "commandment" should probably means something more to us than it seems to. In the Old Testament, a quick way to become a hero was to die for the sake of following God's law. If all of that love got summed up in a command to love, do we treat it with the safe seriousness? Would be die for the sake of love? We like to wave God's instructions at others, but will we take on the most core commandment ourselves?

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The postponed 2020 United Methodist General Conference being held in 2024 just ended and A LOT happened. The headlines most places focus on the end of the same-sex marriage ban, the lifting of the ban on ordaining LBTBQIA+ folks , and a more regional structure. It's more than that though. It's a move a way from a rules based way of living together to hopeful one more full of grace, peace, and flexibility.

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Love. Love. Love. Love. This text repeats the word love to a comical degree. It's like every other word, but the repetition makes the point that love sits at the core of it all - literally. At the center of creation sits a being described as the motivating force of love. God is love. Love has such power because it carries with it the very power of God. Love is a verb. It motivates and moves. Love is also universal, so all of humanity has known some of God in their lives. We just need eyes to it, and hearts open to share the love of God with others.

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Pastor Trey is in Charlotte, North Carolina for the United Methodist 2020 General Conference being held in 2024. That is its actual name. One of the hot topics that the delegates are working on is worldwide regionalization. This sounds like some sort of bureaucratic shifting, but it actually a fundamental reordering of the denomination toward contextual ministry across its global reach. It's a way to let Africans be contextual to Africa, and Americans to contextual to Americans. It leans into a future where the local needs define what ministry looks like.

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Sheep die for the sake of the shepherd's way of life. Similarly, kings are served. They aren't servants. Jesus turns all of those things on their heads. In being the Good Shepherd, he turns shepherding on its head just as he turns kingship on its head. We should at some point start conceptualizing a better reality than they one we create for ourselves. The one that God creates for us was made for us by the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

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This week Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by author and speaker Paul Nixon. He spends his life helping churches find new life, get weird, and get going. Just this week, he put out a totally revised version of his book "I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church," because he wrote the first edition in 2008 and clearly saw that we live in a totally different world now. His work and this conversation are great reminders that modern ministry has to be specific to a context and a mission field. One size no longer fits all.

I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church:

https://www.amazon.com/I-Refuse-Lead-Dying-Church-ebook/dp/B0CYMCTD96/

Weird Church:

https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Church-Welcome-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0829820345/

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A lot of energy gets poured into declaring Scripture super important. It is, but what if you have a hard time connecting with what it contains? As with a lot of things, you're in good company. The Disciples had been hearing endlessly from Christ, before he died and rose, about the Scripture surrounding his journey. Only now, staring the resurrection in the face do they have a mind to contain it. Connecting with Scripture, like so many things in the life of faith, is a journey but one that we should at least be actively working on.

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ChatGPT and its friends the other Large Language Models promise a lot of things and have a near religious fervor in the tech sector. They offer a way to lift the burden of creative work with just a simple prompt. The writing part of church is a huge sink of time. Could AI be the answer to massively overworked preachers? No. Not if we want to actually make real connections with real people.

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Thomas gets the bad reputation, but all four Gospel lay out the elaborate series of proofs that Christ offers after the Resurrection. We get these windows into the Disciples processing it in real time, and even with literal Jesus literally in front of them, they struggle. Jesus chides them by blessing those who don't have such direct access - us. Rather than judging our doubts, Jesus blesses that coming to faith can be a difficult journey. Maybe, we should take the same approach with each other.

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We live in a world where human attention is the most valuable commodity on the planet. Many trillion dollar corporations derive their income solely off capturing your attention and selling the data it generates to others. This has only made the church growth question harder. We're not only up against the normal distractions of life, but Meta, Google, etc. and their never ending drive to hoover up at much of our time and attention as possible.

Overview of the Attention Economy and Addiction Mechanics:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

Human Attention is now more valuable than oil:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/05/06/the-worlds-most-valuable-resource-is-no-longer-oil-but-data

Netflix declares competition with sleep:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/netflix-competitor-sleep-uber-facebook

Center for Humane Technology:

https://www.humanetech.com/

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John relays one of the most important events in human history, the rising of Christ from the grave and the defeat of all the cosmic forces that put him there, with a series of intimate and personal interactions. Two men race to his the empty tomb. A woman weeps in a garden, and Jesus calls her by name. This intimacy is also about the power of God. God is not a distance ruler, although God has more power any king. In God's infinity, God has infinite time to call us each by name.

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Money holds back a lot of great church ideas. The costs of staff and buildings make church way less nimble than it could be. You might have a great idea, but if it can't help with the cost problem, you might not be able to do it. Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily look at an article on the joy, health, and nimbleness that from a shift to part time clergy. Could it be a healthier model for all involved?

"Full-time ministry drains too many clergy and church budgets. Part-time pastors can help." by Jeffery MacDonald

https://religionnews.com/2024/03/14/full-time-ministry-drains-too-many-clergy-and-church-budgets-part-time-pastors-can-help/

"Fresh expressions needed in funding, too," by Jim Patterson

https://www.umnews.org/en/news/fresh-expressions-needed-in-funding-too

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The week leading up to Jesus's death on a cross is one of wild extremes - the height of entering in triumph, the ignominy of a cross. It's meant to remind us of the depth of God's love for and God's fundamental ability to empathize with us, God's creation. It also shows us just how all encompassing God's grace is. Christ went through absolute horrors on behalf of the crowd that subjected him to it.

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The future of the Church is happening in a Night Club in Nashville. Christians in their late teens, twenties, and thirties are dancing together, praying together, and experiencing tremendous joy. This amazing thing is being put on by a group of seven entrepreneurial and deeply faithful men, who seem to know what the human soul longs for and what makes a good Night Club experience. The Cove can be instructive for anyone trying to make church happen. Stick to what you know. Recognize that folks ain't coming into our buildings. Create an opportunity for genuine connection.

Associated Press article about the Cove:

https://apnews.com/article/religion-christian-dance-club-youth-nashville-da3ed45aa9ee39b1114ff132515a960e

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In the game of telephone that plays out in John 12, God ends it by speaking directly. As, Peter and James and John in the Transfiguration, now, a whole crowd gets the literal voice from Heaven. And, the story ends with them all getting it! Right? Not so much. One of the struggles that we all run into in a path to belief is a desire to God to hit us over the head with it, and then, still missing it when God does.

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Pastor Trey continues his conversation with Rev. Raegan Seaton, Senior Pastor of Montgomery UMC, had the journey that her church is on after a painful church split. What they have found is that by leaning into casting as wide a net as possible, being as inclusive as possible, and making sure that everyone knows that they are welcome, God is opening doors that they never thought possible.

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The free gift of God's grace is an incredibly powerful offer. We know that we need to do better, but better always exists just out of reach. With God's grace, we can truly heal. It helps too if we're honest about our need for God's grace. It shows others that they are not alone and truly what God's power can do in their lives.

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The Corinthians seemed to find Paul lacking - not in understanding of God but in the cultural markers of success. They go one step further and question is calling because he just doesn't look right to them. This dangerous logic is something that we keep doing today. We like leaders who make the numbers go up, but the wisdom of God works in way beyond our understanding. What looks foolish to us may be the very power and presence of God.

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(Editor's Note: We had a posting issue with the original version of this episode, so here is the corrected version)

If you like 123 million of your follow earthlings watched the Kansas City Taylor Swifts defeat some other team, you probably saw an ad for Jesus that centered on "He Gets Us." This is part of a many tens of millions of dollars effort to rebrand Jesus as not a hater. Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily delve into who made these ads, how people react to them, and what they tell us about the attractional model of getting folks to church.

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Pastor Trey is joined by Rev. Raegan Seaton, Senior Pastor of Montgomery UMC, to share her experience of leading a church after a close vote split the church in two. There certainly have been trials and tribulations, but the core of the Montgomery UMC story is one of hope, of healing, and of what God can do in our midst, when you can only move forward.

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Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily reflect on the editorial in Comment Magazine, "Church, Where Are You?" by Anne Snyder, and how folks feel that the Church has abandoned it's role in uniting and brining depth to existence. Folks are finding it in other places because the human need for those things is part of God's design. The Church is failing at the other part of the divine plan - that the Church would answer those needs.

"Church, Where Are You?" by Anne Snyder

https://comment.org/church-where-are-you/

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in trying to pull together the totality of the God and humanity story into one 16 chapter letter, Paul sets up Abraham as the example of what righteousness through faith looks like. It wasn't what Abraham did that really counted. Abraham, like us, got counted as righteous (despite not actually being righteous) because he chose to believe that God could do the impossible. For him, God then did the impossible. The 100 year old man becomes the father of many nations. God can and will do the impossible for us as well - make us whole and heal our world.

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The story of Noah's Ark is true if you really think about it. Sure, we love the cute animals. The giraffe's head peaks up above the roof. It's so adorable. We leave out the millions of dead bodies floating the water around the ark. You can read it as history, but that starts to call into question God's goodness. Or, you can read it, way less literally, as a hyperbolic parable about human frailty and God's mercy.

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Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by the amazing Tod Bolsinger, whose book Canoeing the Mountains has become one of the leading texts to teach pastors to lead effective change. He gives insight into helping congregation cope with change, how to preserve through the change process, and how to face the fact that we are all working in a world that we were never prepared for. We have to lead change because for 1,700 years, the church played on home turf. We don't anymore. We need new types of leaders, and Tod's vocation has become equipping those leaders.

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No, Christ's transfiguration on a mountain top, long ago, wasn't a sitcom, but like a sitcom, how it plays out should show us how real life plays out. Jesus doesn't stay up there. He doesn't stay all glowed up. Instead, he goes back to looking the way he did and plunges back into the grit of life. The complete grandeur of God suffer alongside us. We too don't stay on mountain tops. We end up in valleys. Christ showed us that it be like that sometimes and gives us strength to make it through.

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Imagine a world where there is nothing but retirees as far as the eye can see. That's the world of The Villages, the Florida retirement community that is also one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country. The Bubble by filmmaker Valerie Blankenbyl delves into this surreal world and finds what lies at the hurt of the phenomenon: a sense that society has left them behind.

While a world full of retirees describes The Villages, it also describes a good number of our churches. We too have become a haven for an older population that the world forgets or rejects. The question becomes, not just how to be become younger but how to be multigenerational?

Watch the full film for free here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0nqJ1yrrg&ab_channel=VICE

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Paul didn't have the luxury of massive buildings or cultural cache. Instead, he had to reach people by actually getting to know them, building relationships, and showing them the love of God. In an era, where our own culture cache ain't doing what it used to, maybe, we too should embark on the remarkably simple endeavor of loving people where they are and seeing what God does with it.

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All groups develop their own insider language. In technical fields, this can be super useful. Why say the whole thing, when everyone knows what you're talking about? In church, this just makes things even more inaccessible to folks who might not know that they belong. How we talk can play a huge role on whether someone will see us as humans and feel like that can be a part of what God is doing.

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Prophets know God's truth. We are told to head them. We tend to ignore them, and in doing so, get the order of the universe completely out of whack. Prophet don't speak their words. The good ones speak for God, and God should be at the center of everything that we do. In a world absent a singular prophet, we must first choose to follow in all that we do and, then, discern what that actually means.

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Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily welcome Dr. Ashley Boggan, General Secretary for the United Methodist General Commission on Archives and History. She's an expert in who the people called Methodist have been in the past and through the rhyming ways of history has a vision for how it can shape who the church can become. She presents a clear thesis. John Wesley chose to be "vile," to go places that he'd never thought that he'd go. Maybe, we should get back to being vile as well.

Amazing free Methodist History curriculum: https://umhistoryhub.teachable.com/

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Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by Dr. Ashley Boggan, from the United Methodist General Commission on Archives and History to talk about Jonah, our Biblical prophet of fishy fame. Jonah's words shake loose change in Nineveh, but he wants to mad about the whole experience. Accountability can be incredibly important. Nineveh gets changed by it. Jonah wants all that grace from God for himself.

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61 years later, Martin Luther King Jr.'s challenge to white clergy still rings true and still stings. It can be all too easy to push away the problems of the world, when those problems don't impact you directly. It can also be difficult to discern the right way to actually make an impact and when is the right time to get run out of town for standing up for what is right. It involves living into a strange tension between activism and cowardice and loving people so that can here the challenge to change.

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Calling gets complicated in the real world. We like the stories of God calling folks in clear, often audible ways. It doesn't work that way for most people. We like to think about how God has a special task for us. It sounds great. It all gets a lot more difficult, when we then need to be faithful to that task. Samuel and Eli show us those complications. A young man needs help to understand his calling. An older man has to face that he's missed the mark.

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Karen Swallow Prior, a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an opinion piece for Religion News Service, comparing organizational and institutional change with romantic relationships. You shouldn't get into a relationship thinking that you're going to change someone. That is great human relationship advice, but does it hold true for how we should approach the Church?

Read the article here:

https://religionnews.com/2023/11/20/dont-go-into-a-relationship-or-institution-thinking-you-can-change-them/

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The story of the Magi (AKA the Three Wisemen, AKA the Three Kings, AKA Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar) matters profoundly because it brings the Gentiles into the fold. Whatever their names were and how ever many of them there were, they set out on a dangerous and uncertain journey to worship a king. They were motivated in the extreme by what they saw. May we all respond the same way.

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Anna and Simeon see what God is doing, when it doesn't look like anything at all. Infants are born somewhere in the world every 4-ish seconds. Yet, Simeon and Anna had profound religious experiences encountering the infant Christ. They could see through the unlikely visual to the deeper more profound movement of the Spirit. May we all have the same eyes to see the movement of God in even the most unexpected wrappers.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily have big plans for 2024. It's time to put some ideas into action!

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A lot of things can never go back to the way that they were, but our relationship with God can. God's grace is more than a simple pardon. It's an opportunity for complete restoration. This sits at the core of who God is - across both the Old and New Testaments. So, this Christmas, we celebrate God's gracious story.

Also, as this is the last show of 2023, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily run down the top 5 things that they learned about how to restart a church in the 21st century. The answers may just surprise you.

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Sometimes, God changes things all at once. We wait and wait and wait and think nothing will ever change. Then, in an instant, God changes everything. The arrival of Christ is one of those moments. God's people waited for hundreds of years, with no sign of change. Then Christ shows up, and the world shifted on its axis.

Also, Pew Research put out a study looking at new ways to talk about spirituality and religion. Turns out, the vast majority of people are still spiritual in some way, shape, form. This shifts what it means to have faithful conversations with an increasingly non-religious world.

Pew Research Center: Spirituality Among Americans

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/

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God's people arrive back in Jerusalem from exile, and all is not well. The city lies in ruins, and even though they're back, it still fees like God has turned God's back on them. They weren't the first or last group of people to experience this particular kind of disappointment. You think the one thing will make all well, but it doesn't turn out that way. It does work out for them, eventually, but we get this honest and reliable reaction first.

And, when we find ourselves in those kinds of places or working to rebuild a church (and automatically find ourselves in that kind of place, we have to take care of ourselves. That way, we can care for others.

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At the end of Matthew 25, Jesus portrays the judgement as a separation between those who served others and those who didn't. This is also a way of looking at faith. We are meant to have a faith that motivates, that produces action, that leads us to care for the people that God cares for.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily watched the Righteous Gemstones, and while, yes, this is perhaps an untraditional pieces of media for a show that opens with Scripture, it something that should deeply challenge anyone in the work of growing a church. Whose glory are you working for (says the rated TV-MA send up of modern church)?

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The Parable of the Talents applies to humans and churches alike. God has poured out incredible gifts, and we keep not using them for God's purpose. Then, we wonder why things aren't going well. We have to move beyond scarcity to see the abundance of God's gifts.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by the crew from Grace UMC in Palestine, TX, Pastor Jimmy Calvert and Sister Brandy Dudley, to hear about their ways of reaching new folks and inviting them in.

Check out more of Pastor Jimmy and Sister Brandy's work:

Facebook.com/PalestineGraceChurch

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Christians sure can be quick to jump to the end times' talk. Just about any turn of the news cycle can promote someone from some corner of the Christian world to declare the end neigh. Is this a healthy way to live? Is that how Christ wants us to be ready for his eventual return? Maybe, not.... Instead, maybe, we should use the reality of an unknown end, at an unknown movement, as motivation for discipleship and being a church worthy of the name.

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Live your faith genuinely - not for show. It can be easy, when you live everything else for the likes, to add your faith life into that column. We are not the first people to have this issue, and why you're living your faith may not change your actions. God care about your motivation.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by Pastor Robert Burke to talk about his life as the pastor of a new church start in Amarillo, Texas that may be born out of a denominational crisis but seeks to be a faith home for everyone.

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We call it the love commandment, love God and love neighbor, because its a, you know, commandment. Jesus claims his authority as God among us, and says, what his audience already knew. God loves, so we love. This should be of fundamental orientation - the way that we direct our entire existence.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily watched the movie Jesus Revolution, about the birth of the Jesus Movement back in the 1960s and 1970s, to maybe see if we are seeing history repeat itself.

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For generations, we've been sold the idea that the stuff that we accumulate will mean something down the road. We can buy for it a high price, keep it, and sell it for a higher price. This process will bring us peace and security - except when it doesn't. This isn't God's priority for us. Instead, God call us to invest in God's Kingdom - our relationships in the world.

Also, Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by Luke Edwards, Associate Director for Church Development for the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, who also has a new book out called Becoming Church: A Trail Guide for Starting Fresh Expressions, to talk about fresh ways that churches can invest in the relationship building process.

Check out more of Luke's work: https://www.thelisteningchurch.com/

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How are you doing in this stressed out world? Is it crushing you, mind, body, and soul? The story of the Golden Calf is certainly about idolatry, but the Hebrew people were also incredibly traumatized and stressed. Like the rest of us, they weren't exactly at their best. This doesn't make idolatry okay, but it does mean we need to be cognizant what's going on and find ways to help us all be a little less stressed.

Also, the Associated Press did a huge project on Nones around the world. It reveals a lot of the places where organized religion has fallen short of the mark and that spirituality remains a strong part of the human experience.

https://projects.apnews.com/features/2023/the-nones/index.html#:~:text=These%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cnones%22,numbers%20of%20people%20are%20secular.

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The Ten Commandments have two sections - how to love God and how to love neighbor. Keep to the love neighbor section is that we have to actually mean it, when we love neighbor. It's not enough to simply not kill them or to avoid taking their stuff. We cannot let even a psychological barrier come up between us and our neighborhood (even in a age of shocking levels of polarization).

Also, the worship songs that we sing matter. The example of Porter's Gate shows us that not all our songs produce good fruit for folks suffering from mental illness, and we can and should do better.

https://religionnews.com/2023/09/21/the-porters-gate-album-bridges-gap-between-mental-health-and-faith/

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Christianity went from a ragtag group of brave missionaries to a global force within a few hundred year. It totally transformed the religious landscape of the Greco-Roman world. Certainly, the Holy Spirit was the wind in their sails, but it involved a lot of direction action and risk taking by people like Paul, who took the leap and went on the journey. This early Christian way of life hit a roadblock, when it started pushing up against economic interests in Ephesus, but this scene in the Theatre of Ephesus only draw out how God's power made this whole thing happen.

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Humans crave hierarchies. We like winners, losers, and getting a higher status than the next guy. We want exclusive villas at exclusive festivals. We want to rise up a ladder. God doesn't seem to value any of that. Instead, the first are last, and the last are first. Everyone gets the same reward in God's Kingdom. You cannot buy a higher tier. For churches, this means that all can serve, and all can be served. Church is ministry "with" not ministry "to."

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The escaping Israelites find themselves between an advanced military and the ocean. They probably would have rather had a rock and hard place. Yet, God shows up in a reality bending way, shifting an entire sea to create a way. That same way making ability is our lives as well, but as churches, we have to learn to use it faithfully and responsibility.

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Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily are joined by Shawn Winburn and Shaun Sandefur from the Spiritual But Not Religious podcast to deep dive on church conflict, how it can bleed into everyone's spiritual life, and how to make church more a place for more kinds of people. Do you want more young folks in your faith community? Shawn and Shaun do a show on that, and the answer may surprise you! Actually be a decent and humble church.

Want to hear Shawn and Shaun's show?

https://www.youtube.com/@SpiritualNotReligiousPodcast

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In Scripture Talk:

Moses gets God's name, and God gets to work kicking Pharaoh's butt using Moses as the mouthpiece. Exodus isn't a hero's journey. It's God thoroughly wiping the floor with Pharaoh and remaining present with God's people from that moment forward. We should remember that we have power in our corner too.

In How to Restart a Church

The church may be back from the pandemic, but pastors are not. Pastor Trey and Pastor Emily look at Alexander Lang's blog post on why he left the ministry, see how it resonates with their own experience, and consider what to do about the great pastor resignation.

Alexander Lang's Post: https://www.restorativefaith.org/post/departure-why-i-left-the-church

Summary of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research Study: https://religionnews.com/2023/09/05/giving-is-up-at-churches-and-people-are-back-but-clergy-are-thinking-about-quitting/

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