Podcasts about Methodism

Crowhill and Pigweed drink and review a Sweet Baby Jesus chocolate peanut butter porter and discuss a question that's challenged churches and society for centuries. Should religion and politics mix?Using a collection of social issue position papers published by the United Methodist Church as a starting point, the conversation explores the history of Methodism, from John Wesley's "heart strangely warmed" experience and the Holy Club at Oxford to the circuit riders who helped spread the movement across the American frontier. Along the way, they examine how Methodism became deeply associated with social reform, including efforts against slavery, drunkenness, and other social ills.The discussion then turns to modern political issues, including immigration, worker justice, climate change, the death penalty, abortion, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Crowhill and Pigweed consider how churches apply biblical principles to contemporary policy debates, where the line between moral teaching and political advocacy should be drawn, and whether clergy are always equipped to speak authoritatively on complex public issues.A recurring theme is the idea that movements formed in crisis often institutionalize a crisis mentality. If a religious movement was born by confronting genuine social problems, does it eventually develop a habit of searching for the next great cause? And does that tendency sometimes lead churches to exaggerate modern problems by comparing them to historic struggles such as slavery, Jim Crow, or the civil rights movement?It's a wide-ranging conversation about faith, public life, church authority, social reform, and the challenges of living out religious convictions in a deeply political age. Plus, as always, there's a beer review to get things started.

In this episode, I am joined by Ryan Barnett, Chief Operating Officer of the Mid-Texas Global Methodist Church Conference, to discuss the recently released book Christ for All: Every Methodist an Evangelist, which Ryan edited. Our conversation explores the theological and practical vision behind the book and why evangelism sits at the very center of historic Methodism.We also reflect on why this book is being received so well at this particular stage in the life of the Global Methodist Church. As Ryan explains, the GMC's emerging identity and shared theological commitments have created space for renewed clarity and common purpose around evangelism, something that proved difficult in earlier denominational settings. We conclude by looking ahead to the future of the GMC and what it might mean to move forward with unity, missional focus, and confidence in the church's calling.Youtube - https://youtu.be/rklZ6k6TEOMAudio - https://andymilleriii.com/media/podcastApple -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-to-the-story-with-dr-andy-miller/id1569988895?uo=4Here's a link to the book from the show - https://a.co/d/06qWGpCsIf you are interested in learning more about my two full-length video-accompanied courses, Contender: Going Deeper in the Book of Jude andHeaven and Other Destinations: A Biblical Journey Beyond this World , visit andymilleriii.com/coursesAnd don't forget about my most recent book, Contender, which is available on Amazon! Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching - Recently, I updated this PDF document and added a 45-minute teaching video with slides, explaining this tool. It's like a mini-course. If you sign up for my list, I will send this free resource to you. Sign up here - www.AndyMillerIII.com or Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching. Today's episode is brought to you by Wesley Biblical Seminary. Interested in going deeper in your faith? Check out our certificate programs, B.A., M.A.s, M.Div., and D.Min degrees. You will study with world-class faculty and the most racially diverse student body in the country. www.wbs.eduIf this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a review! For more from Andy Miller III, visit andymilleriii.com or follow @andymilleriii on X.Thanks too to Phil Laeger for my podcast music. You can find out about Phil's music at https://www.laeger.net

Rev. Jonathan Brown 05/11/2026 Sometimes the things that become central to who we are begin as a surprise. They do not always arrive with a clear plan, a perfect explanation, or a sense that we understand exactly what we are saying yes to. Sometimes a door opens, an invitation comes, a possibility appears, and only later do we realize that something important in us began to take shape there. When Francis came to us at eleven, he spoke very little English. I spoke no Spanish. Katy knew a bit. And DC Child and Family Services seemed to consider a person bilingual if they had Google Translate on their phone. Every day, I thank God because his young mind has been able to adapt to our language, while I still find myself cursing Duolingo. And since Francis became part of our family, he has also become an accomplished cyclist. He has won two Under 19 series championships, and he spends his free time training to get better. At our local bike shop, someone told us he was a unicorn because he fell in love with cycling even though his parents were not already obsessed with it. This was not a family culture he simply inherited. It became his. One day after a race, I was kind of in awe of him and all he had accomplished, and I asked him, “Francis, how did this happen? How did cycling become your thing?” And he said, “Do you remember when I first moved in with you, and you asked if I wanted a bike?” I said, “Yes.” And he said, “I did not know what you were saying, and I did not want to be rude, so I just said yes. Then I fell in love with it.” I love that. Because so much of life is like that. One day, seemingly out of the blue, something comes into our lives that we did not plan for and could not have predicted. At first, it may feel random. It may feel small. It may feel like a simple yes to a simple question. But over time, that unexpected beginning can become a practice, then a passion, then a major part of who we are. A bike becomes more than a bike. A first ride becomes a rhythm. A rhythm becomes a love. A love becomes part of someone's identity. And that helps me hear Mark's story with fresh ears. Simon and Andrew do not wake up that morning knowing they are about to become disciples. James and John do not begin the day expecting their lives to turn in a new direction. They are working. They are casting nets. They are mending nets. They are living the life they know. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Jesus walks by and says, “Follow me.” What may have felt sudden in the moment becomes the beginning of their identity. They will come to be known as disciples, apostles, witnesses, people whose lives are forever shaped by Jesus. One ordinary day becomes the day they discover the call that will define them. In this first movement of our series, we are asking one of the most basic and important questions Christians can ask: Who are we? In a culture that often tells us our worth depends on success, power, control, or fear, the gospel speaks a deeper truth. We are beloved. We are called. We are connected. We are sent. And today, we begin with this: we know who we are because we know who we follow. We follow Jesus. Mark tells the story with striking simplicity. Jesus passes along the Sea of Galilee and sees Simon and Andrew casting a net into the sea, because they are fishers. Jesus says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” Immediately, they leave their nets and follow him. Then Jesus goes a little farther and sees James and John, the sons of Zebedee, mending nets in their boat. He calls them too, and they leave their father in the boat with the hired men and follow him. That whole scene unfolds with surprising simplicity. Jesus walks along the water and sees ordinary people in the middle of their ordinary work. The call of Jesus meets them right there, in the texture of daily life, among boats, nets, family, labor, and responsibility. Before they have time to prepare themselves, before they know where the road will lead, Jesus invites them into a new life. He finds them in the routines they know and calls them toward a future they cannot yet imagine. That is good news, because many of us assume that if God is going to call us, we need to be somewhere else first. We need to become more faithful, more prepared, more certain, more spiritually mature. But Mark tells us Jesus calls people in the middle of life. Jesus calls them as they are, but he does not leave them as they are. “Follow me,” he says, “and I will make you fishers of people.” That phrase can sound strange to us, especially when it has been used in ways that feel manipulative or aggressive. But Jesus is calling them into a way of life that gathers people into the nearness of God. He is calling them to participate in healing, mercy, liberation, forgiveness, and beloved community. Jesus calls these first disciples to walk with him until his way becomes their way. That is discipleship. Discipleship is the lifelong practice of being shaped by the one we follow. That is why this sermon title matters: “We Know Who We Follow: Jesus.” The church is always tempted to forget. We are tempted to follow success, fear, nostalgia, outrage, or whatever gives us belonging without transformation. But Christians belong to Jesus Christ. And Jesus shows us who God is. As we follow Jesus through Mark, we see what God's life looks like in the world. We see Jesus announcing good news, healing bodies, restoring people to community, touching those others refuse to touch, feeding hungry people, welcoming children, challenging religious hypocrisy, confronting oppressive powers, and refusing to abandon the vulnerable. We see him going to the cross rather than returning violence for violence. We see him raised by God, with the promise that death and empire and abandonment do not get the final word. So when we say, “We follow Jesus,” we are saying our lives are being reoriented around the crucified and risen Christ. We are saying that the clearest picture we have of God's character is Jesus eating with sinners, touching the untouchable, forgiving enemies, blessing the poor, challenging the powerful, and giving himself in love. That is not ideology. That is a way of life. This is where our United Methodist tradition helps us. Methodism began as a renewal movement of people who wanted to follow Jesus with their whole lives. Early Methodists gathered in societies, classes, and bands. They prayed together. They confessed sin together. They studied scripture together. They gave money to the poor. They visited the sick and imprisoned. They held one another accountable in love. As the movement grew, John Wesley gave the people called Methodists what became known as the General Rules: first, do no harm; second, do good; third, attend upon all the ordinances of God. In more recent years, Bishop Rueben P. Job helped many United Methodists recover the power of these rules in his book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living . Job summarized Wesley's General Rules in language that has become familiar across our tradition: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. These rules are a way of asking, every day, “What does it mean to follow Jesus here?” What does it mean to follow Jesus in this conversation, this conflict, this family, this workplace, this church, this neighborhood, this moment? There is a sitcom called The Good Place that, beneath all the jokes, bright colors, frozen yogurt shops, and absurd afterlife architecture, is really about moral formation. The show begins with Eleanor Shellstrop waking up after death and being told that she has made it into “the Good Place.” But Eleanor quickly realizes she does not belong there. In life, she had been selfish, rude, careless, and often cruel. So at first, her moral project is not really about becoming good. It is about passing as good. That is part of what makes the show so funny and so honest. Eleanor wants to learn enough ethics to blend in. She wants goodness as a disguise. And if we are honest, that is not always far from how people can treat religion too. We can learn the language, the gestures, and the right answers. We can learn how to pass as good. But Jesus does not call us to pass as faithful. Jesus calls us to follow. And this is where Chidi becomes so important. Chidi Anagonye is a moral philosophy professor. He knows the ethical theories. He can explain Kant, Aristotle, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and moral duty. If anyone should know how to be good, it should be Chidi. But Chidi's problem is that knowing about goodness does not automatically make him free to live it. He is so afraid of making the wrong choice that he struggles to make any choice at all. His knowledge is real, but it has not yet become courage. His ethics are serious, but they have not yet become love in motion. That makes Eleanor and Chidi surprisingly helpful for the church. Eleanor reminds us that faith is not about passing as good. Chidi reminds us that faith is not only about knowing what is good. Knowledge matters, but knowledge alone is not discipleship. Discipleship is when what we know becomes a life. Discipleship is when truth becomes practice. Discipleship is when grace becomes courage, mercy, forgiveness, service, and love. Over time, Eleanor and Chidi both change because they are drawn into a deeper kind of formation. Eleanor has to practice honesty, compassion, and care for someone beyond herself. Chidi has to practice trust, courage, and choosing love even when he cannot calculate every possible consequence. In other words, both of them have to be discipled beyond appearance and beyond certainty into faithfulness. That is what makes The Good Place surprisingly Wesleyan. The characters become different not because they master one idea or earn enough points, but because they keep practicing a better way of being human. Christian faith is not self improvement with hymns. The gospel is grace. It is God meeting us before we are ready, loving us before we are worthy, and calling us before we fully understand where the road will lead. But grace does not leave us unchanged. Grace begins to form us. That is why the Methodist tradition has always cared about practices. We practice faith because practice keeps us open to the love that is already working on us. We practice doing no harm. We practice doing good. We practice staying in love with God. And over time, through the mercy of God, those practices begin to shape us into people who look a little more like the one we follow. The first rule is: do no harm. Harm is not only physical violence. Harm can come through words, neglect, silence, systems, assumptions, jokes, posts, grudges, and the people we refuse to see. To follow Jesus is to ask: Is my life causing harm? Are my words causing harm? Are my habits causing harm? Are my comforts causing harm? Most of us are not being asked to leave literal nets on the shore, but we may need to ask what nets we are holding. What old ways of being keep catching us? What habits make us feel safe but keep us from love? The second rule is: do good. Christian faith is about participating in God's healing of the world. “Follow me,” Jesus says, “and I will make you fishers of people.” In other words, your life is going to become part of God's work of gathering, healing, feeding, forgiving, restoring, and liberating. Sometimes doing good is serving someone who cannot repay you. Sometimes it is telling the truth when silence would be easier. Sometimes it is forgiving someone, apologizing, showing up, or acting with courage at work or at home. The third rule is: stay in love with God. Wesley's original language was “attend upon all the ordinances of God,” meaning the practices that keep us open to grace: public worship, prayer, searching the scriptures, receiving communion, fasting, Christian conversation, and works of mercy. In other words, stay close to the practices that remind you who you are and whose you are. Because we cannot follow Jesus for long on outrage, willpower, or guilt alone. We need grace. We need prayer. We need worship. We need scripture. We need communion. We need community. We need people who help us remember when we forget. And we do forget. The disciples forgot. Peter left his nets immediately, but later denied Jesus three times. James and John followed Jesus, but later argued about greatness. They followed, but they stumbled. They were called, but they were not instantly complete. And that should comfort us. Following Jesus does not mean we never fail. It means that when we fail, grace calls us again. This matters because the world is full of rival formations. Every day, something is trying to disciple us. Fear disciples us. Consumerism disciples us. Nationalism disciples us. Algorithms disciple us. Anger disciples us. Anxiety disciples us. The endless need to prove ourselves disciples us. The endless need to belong by having an enemy disciples us. So the question is not whether we are being formed. The question is: Who is forming us? So when we talk about discipleship, we are talking about formation. We are talking about what shapes our loves, habits, reflexes, speech, courage, compassion, and imagination. The world is constantly discipling us into anxiety, resentment, consumption, suspicion, and fear. But Jesus calls us into another formation. Jesus says, “Follow me,” and then teaches us the way of mercy, justice, courage, humility, forgiveness, and love. And when Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is giving us both a command and a promise. “Follow me, and I will make you…” The making belongs to Jesus. The transformation belongs to grace. Jesus calls us as we are, and then grace begins its work. Grace teaches us to do no harm. Grace strengthens us to do good. Grace draws us deeper into love with God. Grace makes us into people who can bear witness to another way of life. So this week, choose one small way to follow Jesus intentionally. Serve someone. Forgive someone. Act with courage in your work or home. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. Not because these practices save us by our own effort, but because they open our lives to the grace that is already calling us. Because somewhere, even now, Jesus is walking along the shoreline of our ordinary lives. He sees us. He knows us. He calls us. And his invitation is still the same: “Follow me.” May we have the grace to leave behind what binds us. May we have the courage to walk in his way. May we have the humility to be made new. And may our lives become a clear witness to the truth we proclaim: we know who we follow. We follow Jesus. Amen.

Good morning. As the sun finally begins to coax flowers into bloom, the Chelsea Flower Show will open its gates today. The Royal Horticultural Society's annual event sees organisations create beautiful planted spaces, which inspire and educate visitors. With our news headlines full of unremitting contempt and calamity, millions of us will tune into coverage of Chelsea this week for relief. I'd like to think this is more than just a comforting distraction.Christian writer CS Lewis wrote about his vision of hell in the novella ‘the great divorce'. Hell was a place of continual twilight where people moved further and further apart into infinite space, driven by mutual suspicion and a sense of time ticking down. Paradise, by contrast was a place of colour, fruitfulness, and sunshine – open to anyone bold enough to stay. In paradise, people were unafraid of each other or the future. They sought out newcomers, working to convince them to remain.The show gardens at Chelsea may be sanctuaries of beauty, but they are also about shared spaces and living well together. Many, like the Trussell ‘together' garden, are inspired specifically by the way communities deal with hardship – the Trussel Trust's foodbanks tackle food poverty. Like Lewis' paradise, communal gardens like this one combat the notion that safety and solace can only be had by building walls and retreating from the world.John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote a collection of health remedies based on what people could grow or source themselves. Titled ‘Primitive Physick' and published in 1747 it would run to 23 editions during his life. Although his remedies were of their day, his commitment to people's access to healthcare and use of what was readily available still bears weight. Today, the rooftop garden of the national Methodist offices in London is planted with herbs and flowers used in Primitive Physick, recognising the importance of gardens to our collective mental and physical well-being.A reality of life in Britain today is that access to outdoor space is not equal: many do not have gardens. A Christian vision for good community still resists the notion that beautiful outdoor spaces are only the preserve of private wealth. After the show, all of the Chelsea gardens will find their way out into communities around the country – plants will go to balconies, windowsills and neglected urban spaces, gardens to hospices, schools, and the verges of motorways. They will join many other community gardens schemes, allowing even those of us who live surrounded by pavement, to put our hands in soil and see something grow. These gardens are places of retreat, yes: but also places of truth telling about the quiet work of living peacefully together.

Seventy years ago this May 4, the General Conference of the Methodist Church granted full clergy rights to women when it met in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But even before that historic date, women had been shaping the life of Methodism with courage, devotion, and prophetic voice.

Is outrage changing us?We live in a world that rewards anger, division, and instant judgment. But what if fighting what's wrong starts changing something inside of us, too?This Sunday, we'll explore a classic sermon from Methodism's founder and the hard challenge of loving people we deeply disagree with—without surrendering either truth or compassion.

In this episode of More to the Story, I'm joined by New Testament scholar Dr. David A. deSilva for a rich and fun conversation about faith, vocation, and theological formation. Dr. deSilva shares his personal calling to serve the church as a scholar and reflects on how his academic work has been shaped by a desire to build up the people of God. We explore his major areas of research in the New Testament and early Christianity (commentaries, apocryphal, and archaeological studies). Along the way, David tells the story of how God gradually led him into Wesleyan theology and Methodism, helping him see the deep coherence between his scholarly commitments and a tradition shaped by holiness, grace, and discipleship. This episode is warm and genuinely fun—a conversation with someone whose work has made a lasting contribution to both the academy and the church.Youtube - https://youtu.be/GkyAyJ8QrEEAudio - https://andymilleriii.com/media/podcastApple -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-to-the-story-with-dr-andy-miller/id1569988895?uo=4If you are interested in learning more about my two full-length video-accompanied courses, Contender: Going Deeper in the Book of Jude andHeaven and Other Destinations: A Biblical Journey Beyond this World , visit andymilleriii.com/coursesAnd don't forget about my most recent book, Contender, which is available on Amazon! Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching - Recently, I updated this PDF document and added a 45-minute teaching video with slides, explaining this tool. It's like a mini-course. If you sign up for my list, I will send this free resource to you. Sign up here - www.AndyMillerIII.com or Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching. Today's episode is brought to you by Wesley Biblical Seminary. Interested in going deeper in your faith? Check out our certificate programs, B.A., M.A.s, M.Div., and D.Min degrees. You will study with world-class faculty and the most racially diverse student body in the country. www.wbs.eduIf this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a review! For more from Andy Miller III, visit andymilleriii.com or follow @andymilleriii on X.Thanks too to Phil Laeger for my podcast music. You can find out about Phil's music at https://www.laeger.net

No Limits at the Kitchen Table Series: Defying Limits Scripture: Acts 2:42–47In Acts 2:42–47, the early believers do not gather in cathedrals or formal religious spaces, but in homes—around shared tables where Scripture is taught, prayers are offered, meals are shared, and life is lived in common. The church is born in ordinary spaces, where the presence of God is experienced through fellowship, generosity, and the breaking of bread.Luke describes their life together as marked by agalliasis—a wild, exuberant joy that the surrounding culture found threatening. This was not quiet or contained spirituality, but a visible, embodied way of living that resisted the fear, hierarchy, and scarcity of the Roman world. Their shared meals became a declaration that God's kingdom operates by a different economy.This pattern of faith lived at the table echoes through the story of Susanna Wesley, whose kitchen became a place of teaching, formation, and spiritual attentiveness. Long before Methodism became a movement, it was shaped in the rhythms of ordinary family life—where questions were asked, Scripture was read, and souls were formed in conversation. From that table comes a tradition that would shape John Wesley's understanding of discipleship as deeply relational and consistently practiced.At the center of that tradition is a question that continues to echo through Christian community: “How is it with your soul?” Not as a formality, but as a practice of spiritual honesty and care.This sermon invites us to reconsider the sacredness of the table—not as a symbol of comfort alone, but as a place where joy resists despair, where grace is extended to those overlooked, and where everyday life becomes a site of discipleship.Reflection Questions: Acts describes the early believers eating with agalliasis, a wild and exuberant joy that the surrounding culture found threatening. What would it mean for your daily life to practice joy as an act of resistance?  How can we transform our own kitchen tables into sanctuaries of grace for those society ignores?  John Wesley's discipleship groups always opened with the same question: “How is it with your soul?” This practice traces back to the conversations he had at his mother's kitchen table. Who in your life asks you that question, and who might be waiting for you to ask it of them?  Support the show

In this Wednesday reflection on 1 John 2:1–6, the phrase "the love of God has reached perfection" becomes a springboard for a pastoral tour through one of Methodism's most distinctive — and most misunderstood — doctrines: Christian perfection. The passage holds the same honest tension as the previous chapter: we are going to sin, Christ has atoned for it, and we have an advocate. But the deeper question is what perfection actually means. The reflection pushes back against the common assumption that holiness is a legalistic checklist of moral performance — don't play cards, don't see movies, don't listen to secular music — and argues instead that Christian perfection, in the Wesleyan sense, is never about perfect action but about God's perfect love being restored in us through sanctifying grace. The goal of salvation, as Wesley understood it, is the recovery of the image of God — which enables us to keep the greatest commandment: love God fully and love your neighbor as yourself. That's what holiness looks like. And it's why the means of grace — Scripture, prayer, communion, fasting, community — matter so much: they are the channels through which that love grows and changes us.Join us for our daily reflections with Andy. In 10 short minutes, he'll dig a little deeper into Scripture and help you better understand God's Word.You can read today's passage here - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%202%3A%201-6&version=NRSVUEClick here if you'd like to join our GroupMe and receive this each morning at 7:00 a.m. CST. - https://groupme.com/join_group/107837407/vtYqtb6CYou can watch this in video form here - https://andystoddard.substack.com/

Walk Worthy of Your Calling Ephesians 4:1-10 by William Klock “It's Pauline and she sounds angry.”  It was my first week working as an Apple Computer repair tech and the receptionist was telling me I had a call.  I'd repaired Pauline's computer that morning and now she was on the phone and angry.  I didn't know what to expect, but I knew there was no way her computer had the same problem.  I picked up the phone and listened as Pauline yelled at me for a couple minutes because now her printer wasn't working.  This was a new problem.  It didn't make sense.  I spent the next half hour walking her through everything I could think of to get the printer working.  Nothing worked and she was getting angry again.  I knew the printer was plugged into the wall, because we'd already verified the lights were on.  “Pauline, this may sound really stupid, but the printer cable is plugged into the computer?  Right?  You plugged it back in when you got the computer home?”  She bit my head off.  “I never had to plug it in before!” she yelled at me.  “Okay, well, nothing else is working so just humour me.  Is there a cable plugged into the side of the printer?”  “Yes.”  Follow that cable to its other end and tell me where it goes.  If it's not plugged into the printer port on the computer, the computer can't talk to the printer.”  I heard grumbling on the other end of the phone, then a bit of swearing, and then she hung up.  She didn't call back.  Problem solved.  And thus began my career as a computer repair tech. There were a couple calls like that every week.  There was lady who delete an application from her iMac and needed help to reinstall it.  I told her to put the CD in the computer and then to double click it when it appeared on the desktop.  After going round in circles for over half and hour I finally figured out that she didn't know what a CD-ROM drive was.  She was holding the CD up the screen and then putting the mouse on top of it and clicking the mouse button.  As Veronica can relate, I had stories like this all the time.  These were the ones with funny endings.  A lot of them were just exercises in hair-pulling frustration.  I had to listen as people fumed or cry when I told them their hard disk was dead and their data were lost.  I had to call to tell them how much it was going to cost to fix their computer and then figure out what to do when they couldn't afford it.  But those direct interactions with my customers reminded me where my bread and butter came from.  They were the business.  Keeping them satisfied was the mission. A few years later I was hired by a company in Seattle.  The week before I was supposed to start, I went down to meet the guys I'd be working with.  Their shop had a completely different vibe.  And that was because the techs were completely isolated from the customers.  They didn't take phone calls, they didn't offer support, they didn't even talk to them at the service counter.  All they did was fix computers.  And that changed everything.  Talking with them, I used the word “customer” and the lead tech said, “Let me stop you right there.  We don't call them customers.  We call them…”  And what he called them isn't something I can repeat.  It was really bad.  The next morning I called the general manager there and told him I didn't want the job.  I eventually did get a job with that same company in Portland.  Things were run pretty much the same way as that shop in Seattle.  Thankfully the attitude was much better, but I noticed the problem.  When you never meet or deal with the customers, it changes your perspective.  The service counter keeps handing you broken computers and your job is to fix them.  And it never stops.  And instead of seeing the broken computers as the problem, you start to see the people who broke them as the problem.  You can even start to see them as the enemy.  And it becomes all about fixing the computers.  You lose sight of the real mission, which is to satisfy the customer and to leave them happy and with a good experience.  And it's easy to not notice, because you're still fixing computers even though you've lost the real mission.  In the corporate world they have a term for that: employee misalignment.  Or when it happens to a whole department or company, it's “mission drift”.  And it can absolutely destroy a business. Brothers and Sisters, the same thing can and does happen in the church.  We lose sight of our mission.  We misidentify the enemy.  And we fail as stewards of the gospel and of God's kingdom.  If a church does that long enough, if it gets entrenched in the wrong mission, if it misrepresents Jesus and the gospel and the kingdom and refuses to get back on track, Jesus warns that he will take away our lampstand.  Remember his letters to the seven churches in Revelation.  He'll let a church dwindle and die.  Because a bad witness is worse than no witness at all. We're back to St. Paul's letter to the churches in Ephesus this morning—Chapter 4.  [Page 1161 in the pew Bibles.]  And Paul gets at something very much like this idea of “mission drift”.  First, a little bit of recap: Before Passiontide we made our way through Ephesians 1-3.  In the first half of the letter Paul made his way back and forth between prayer and praise to walk us through the story of God and his creation—through the story of Israel and how Israel's story led everything to the story of Jesus, Israel's Messiah, and how Jesus has created a new Israel, a new people of God who have been filled and given new life through the Holy Spirit God had promised to his people so long before.  In Ephesians 1:10 Paul spelled out God's plan and promise: to sum up the whole cosmos in the Messiah, everything in heaven and on earth in him.  It's a promise of a new temple.  Heaven and earth brought together and at the centre of it, at its heart is the image of God.  That image was supposed to be us—humanity.  God created us to be the stewards of his creation and the priests of his temple.  But we rejected that vocation and tried to become gods ourselves.  And so Jesus has come to restore that image—to represent it faithfully and perfectly himself and to wash us clean with his blood and to fill us with his Spirit in order to restore us to that lost vocation.  So Paul is clear: this promise has been fulfilled already in Jesus.  It is currently being fulfilled in the creation of a renewed humanity.  For Paul, the great witness of this new humanity is the church—where Jews and gentiles were being brought together into a single, united people, filled with God's Spirit and living as his temple.  And the promise, finally, will be fulfilled in the end when, as he puts it, God will do far more abundantly than we can ask or imagine. So Jesus and the church—this new people, this renewed humanity—are the evidence that God truly is at work to set his broken creation to rights.  Through this people, God will reveal his manifold, his multifaceted, his Technicolor wisdom to the world and one day, because of Jesus and the faithful stewardship of his people, the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God.  Brothers and Sisters, this is why the church's witness is so important.  This is why mission drift is so dangerous.  This is why, if a church goes astray from the mission and repeatedly and repeatedly refuses God's correction, he will let us wither and die.  Because the church is meant to witness his glory to the world and that can't and won't happen unless we are faithful stewards of his gospel and his Spirit, unless we're truly heaven on earth people. So Paul now begins Chapter 4 writing, “Therefore…”  All of that (Chapters 1-3) is what the “therefore” is there for.  So knowing God's plan and his promise, knowing that he is setting creation to rights through Jesus and the faithful witness of his church, he says “Therefore, I appeal to you—yes, it's me, the prisoner in the Lord—I appeal to you to walk worthy of the calling to which you've been called.  Bear with one another in love; be humble, meek, and patient in every way with one another.  Make every effort to guard the unity that the Spirit gives, with your lives bound together in peace.” Paul's going to make three points in verses 1-10 and this is the first.  He's got something important coming in 11-16, but first he's got to lay a foundation for it.  Think of it in terms of him building a sturdy three-legged stool to support it.  So, first, here in verses 1-3 he stresses the need for humility.  He starts out stressing that it's essential for the church to live in a way that matches the gospel—the good news about Jesus.  “Walk worthy of the calling to which you've been called.”  Into the middle of this Paul interjects a reminder of his imprisonment.  They already knew he was in prison.  That's why he's writing them a letter instead of talking to them in person.  But Paul reminds them again at this point because he saw his imprisonment as an example of what it means to walk worthy of our gospel calling.  Brothers and Sisters, the ways of God's kingdom are the inverse of the ways of the world.  To the pagans in Ephesus, for Paul to be in prison was a sign that either he was out of favour with his God or that his God was powerless to help him.  But for Paul, who had made the cross and the humility of Jesus the lens through which he looked at everything, to be in prison for the sake of the gospel was a sign of faithfulness.  In the same way, the gospel virtues that he says should characterise the life of the church—the ones he lists in verse 2: loving each other, being humble, meek, and patient—those weren't virtues at all in the world of the Greeks and Romans.  To the pagans, they were signs of weakness. So Paul stresses that they've been called.  Usually Paul uses this word, this idea of “calling” to emphasise God's initiative in our coming to faith, but here he kind of wrapping everything to do with—call it “conversion”—he's rolling it all into this idea of calling: We've heard the gospel, we've received and taken to heart the gospel, we're repented, and in faith we've obeyed the gospel.  Now he reminds us just what it was we responded to when God called us.  This is the part I think we sometimes forget, but Paul wants us to remember that the gospel—the good news about Jesus and the message that once captivated us—is about God's amazing kindness and generosity and grace.  And Paul's point is that if that's the gospel that called us, then our gospel life ought to be equally characterised by kindness, generosity, and grace. When I hear that I think, “Oh yeah!  Duh.  How could I lose sight of that?”  But we do.  I don't think we ever forget it; it's more that it sort of slips into the background.  But when we let that happen—think of our Philippians 2 Epistle from Palm Sunday—when we let this slip into the background, we lose the mind of the Messiah that Paul is so insistent we should share.  We stop acting with humility and we start acting and living according to the values of the world around us.  Instead of living for others, we start using and abusing others for ourselves.  Instead of putting others before ourselves, we act out of pride and selfishness.  Instead of being gracious, we can become jerks.  To people out there.  But to our brothers and sisters in the church, too.  And when we do that, we stop working and living as the body of Jesus, our unity starts to break down, and our light grows dim.  We undermine our witness to God's new creation.  So Paul reminds us: bear with each other in love, with humility, meekness, and patience—because this is the way of the cross! The Greek word Paul uses for “patience,” it literally means “great-heartedness”.  Brothers and Sisters, consider the great-heartedness of Jesus who died for his enemies.  We ought to have that kind of great-heartedness for each other.  It doesn't happen naturally, but this is why God has plunged us into his Spirit—or maybe I should say, he's plunged his Spirit into us: to fill our hearts with love for him and for each other.  We come to the church from different backgrounds, we all have our likes and our dislikes and our preferences, we have our different personalities, we all have our hurts and traumas, and it's really easy to get bent out of shape or bend others out of shape when things don't go right.  It's really easy to want to force our desires on others.  It's really easy to use others to accomplish our own goals.  It's really easy to become divided.  Paul knew that as well as anyone and so he tells us, “No!  That's not your calling.  Your calling is be a loving, generous, and gracious gospel people who share the mind of the Messiah and overflow with the love and life of God's Spirit. And, like I said, things like humility, meekness, and patience were not virtues in their world.  This is why Israel stood out from the peoples around them.  The scriptures taught them over and over the importance of humility and love, meekness and patience.  The pagans didn't think that way and even Israel struggled and often failed to be this kind of people.  And this is why it's so important for the church—for us—to remember our calling: because our renewal through Jesus and the Spirit to this kind of life is the fulfilment of the scriptures—of God's promises.  Our gospel life is a witness to God's glory and one that confronts this broken world with what true humanity is supposed to be.  This is how the church announces the coming of God's new creation.  This is what it means to be the people who pray “on earth as in heaven” and not just the people who hope for it and pray for it, but most importantly the people who do it. Instead, we're too often like James and John (remember that scene in Mark's Gospel) conniving a way to sit at the right hand of Jesus.  And Jesus reminds us: That's how the pagans do things.  They push and shove and boss and bully their way through life, always trying to get to the top, but the son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many.  Brothers and Sisters, keep the generous humility of Jesus always in your sight.  That's the kind of people, the kind of community the church should be.  In fact, Paul writes in verse 3: the Spirit has given us unity and made us one and we need to guard that unity with our lives.  That means, first, that each of us ought to live for the sake of our brothers and sisters and not for ourselves.  If we would do that, we'd have no reason to be offended by each other and to divide.  But, too, to live for the sake of each other is to be willing and quick to forgive instead of taking offense when things do happen.  And, again, this runs totally against the grain of our culture.  Our culture says to look out for ourselves; it says to get even; or it says, at least, to cut those problem people from our lives.  The church is meant to witness a better way of being human—one that shows the world (again) the love, generosity, and patience of the cross. So that's the first leg of our stool.  Now look at verses 4-6: “There is one body and one Spirit; you were, after all, called to one hope which goes with your call.  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.” I can't help but think that Paul has the shema in mind.  Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”  That was sort of Israel's fundamental creed.  It's why God could not be represented by idols and it's why there was only to be one temple in Israel.  And now Paul extrapolates that out in light of Jesus and the new covenant.  One body, one Spirit, one hope; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; and above all, there's one God.  We're so distant from the polytheistic world of Paul and the Ephesians that we might not realise what Paul's doing here, but this is him again highlighting how the church confronts the world with the reality of God and his new creation.  Hear, O Church, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…and that oneness works its way through who we are and what we do.  And it not only makes the church stand out in a world chock full of gods as in Paul's day, but it also makes the church stand out in a world that is divided by philosophies and religions and all the “isms” we can think of.  And that includes all the “isms” that divide the church: Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Pentecostalism and on and on.  You and I won't fix all those divisions, but we ought to do all we can in our life as the church to live out the reality that we share one faith in the one Lord, that we've all been baptised into the one triune God, filled with the one Spirit, and live with the one hope of a world set to rights, and that we are one body despite what the signs outside our churches might imply. When it becomes more about our “brand” than it does about our one God, our one Lord, our one faith, our one baptism, and our one hope; when we start thinking of Brothers and Sisters in the Lord as enemies—we've lost the plot.  Ecclesiastical employee misalignment.  Ecclesiastical mission drift.  We need to recentre ourselves on Jesus.  We probably really need to remember his humility, because we've probably become more than little ecclesiastically or theologically snobbish.  And we need to remember that God intends to make his glory known to the world through his church regardless of our “isms” and those things won't matter when the mission is accomplished and he is above all, through all, and in all—that glorious image of a temple filled with his presence. And then then the third leg.  Look at verses 7-10: “But grace was given to each one of us, according to the measure the Messiah used when he was distributing gifts.  That's why it says [and here Paul quotes Psalm 68:18], ‘When he went up on high, he led bondage itself into bondage, and he gave gifts to men.'  When it says that ‘he went up,' what this means is that he also came down into the lower places, that is, to earth.  The one who came down is the one who also ‘went up', yes, above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.” What Paul's working towards is an explanation of God's gifts to the church—all of us having a vast diversity of gifts to be used together for the common good.  We'll get to that next Sunday.  But before he can get to the diversity of gifts, Paul wants to stress the fact that the gift of the gifts themselves is yet another thing that stresses our unity.  Because those gifts, if we run with them on our own can turn into a source of division.  So Paul quotes from Psalm 68, which is about God's enthronement on Mt. Zion, but it's also got echoes of Moses going up Mt. Sinai.  The gist of it is God enthroned on high and lavishing gifts on this people—whether that's his abundance on the nation Israel or sending down Moses with his law carved on stone tablets.  Paul knew this Psalm well, but after he met the risen Jesus, it took on another layer: It's now the Messiah who ascended to his throne and in doing that he has led bondage itself into bondage.  The long captivity of humanity to sin and death is over.  Jesus has triumphed and been exalted.  It follows Paul's prayer in Chapter 1 where he praises God for putting all things in subjection under his feet.  So Jesus' enthronement after defeating our enemies has inaugurated a new age.  And that prompts Paul to tweak the words of the Psalm.  Instead of humans bringing gifts to God as they did under the old covenant, God now pours out his gifts of grace and redeemed humans receive them.  Through that grace and through those gifts, God is setting his people to rights so that they—so that we, his people, his church—can begin to live his new creation here and now.  So, first, the gospel not only restores us to our God-given vocation, it also gives each of us a new sub-vocation to help the church fulfil that task. Second, Paul, I think, stresses that this is part of the gift of God's Spirit.  Jesus has ascended and in doing so the Spirit has “come down”.  This is again about God's new temple.  Jesus washes us clean and makes a fit dwelling place for God, and God then sends down his Spirit to indwell us—as Paul put it in 3:19 when he talked about the church being filled with all God's fullness.  And in this Paul reminds us of the mission: Again, God's purpose is to set creation to rights by filling it with the knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea.  The church is his means of doing that.  We're not only the people entrusted with the good new of Jesus, crucified and risen; we're not only a people entrusted to proclaim the goodness and faithfulness, the lovingkindess and generosity of God; we're also a people filled with his presence and made stewards of his new creation, enabled to live it out—even if imperfectly—in the midst of the old.  A people called both to proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord and that he has died and risen to deliver us from sin and death, but also a people called, gifted, equipped, indwelt by God himself, in order to make known his love, generosity, and patience and to display as a community the very renewal, the very filling of all things that is our hope and towards which his plan and his promise are moving. And this—I'll just say in closing—this is why the Bible's image of the temple is so important.  It not only reminds us who we are; it reminds us of the mission.  The temple is the place of God's presence.  It's the place where people go to find, to meet, to know, to experience the God of creation.  And too often we think of it as something out there, but Brothers and Sisters, the temple is us.  Washed clean by the blood of Jesus and filled with God's Spirit, we are the temple.  And that means that the world ought to see the God of the incarnation, the God of the cross, the God who humbles and gives himself for the sake of his enemies, the world ought to meet that God in us.  We can become consumed by so many other good things, so many other things that, yes, as the church we should be doing.  But we lose sight of the real mission, of our real calling to be God's temple, to make his glory known to the ends of the earth.  Brothers and Sisters, the world ought to be drawn to God, to this temple, as it sees in us a better way to be human, as it sees the beginning of God's new creation in our life together: humanity's divisions and strifes healed here.  Humanity's tears wiped away, here.  As it finds hope here.  The grace and love, the meekness and the patience of Jesus the Messiah on display here.  As it sees the glory of God in the work of redemption taking place in us. Let's pray: Almighty Father, you gave your only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justifiction: Grant that we may put away the leaven of the old age, and put on the life of the new that we might make your glory known in all the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

It is broadly understood that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement that spread around the world in the eighteenth century. He is known for being a missionary in Georgia, his “heart-warming” experience at Aldersgate, field preaching, and the famous quote “the world is my parish.” But this book reveals John Wesley's ultimate reluctance to send missionaries overseas, with several examples of Wesley's rejection of world missions and occasions when he thwarted plans, including those of Thomas Coke, the Father of Methodist Missions. John Wesley and the Origins of Methodist Missions (Abingdon Press, 2025) shows how ordinary immigrants, merchants, planters, soldiers, enslaved persons, and former slaves carried Methodism with them to such far-off places. They were not officially commissioned or authorized by Wesley, but rather traveled on their own, motivated by the love of God and neighbor, to share their faith with others. It was only after these Methodist societies were established, and after multiple appeals, that John Wesley and the British Conference agreed to send missionaries to assist. This book offers some reasons for Wesley's hesitancy to send missionaries overseas and highlights the stories, challenges, and successes of the pioneers who spread Methodism around the world. Byline Host:Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

It is broadly understood that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement that spread around the world in the eighteenth century. He is known for being a missionary in Georgia, his “heart-warming” experience at Aldersgate, field preaching, and the famous quote “the world is my parish.” But this book reveals John Wesley's ultimate reluctance to send missionaries overseas, with several examples of Wesley's rejection of world missions and occasions when he thwarted plans, including those of Thomas Coke, the Father of Methodist Missions. John Wesley and the Origins of Methodist Missions (Abingdon Press, 2025) shows how ordinary immigrants, merchants, planters, soldiers, enslaved persons, and former slaves carried Methodism with them to such far-off places. They were not officially commissioned or authorized by Wesley, but rather traveled on their own, motivated by the love of God and neighbor, to share their faith with others. It was only after these Methodist societies were established, and after multiple appeals, that John Wesley and the British Conference agreed to send missionaries to assist. This book offers some reasons for Wesley's hesitancy to send missionaries overseas and highlights the stories, challenges, and successes of the pioneers who spread Methodism around the world. Byline Host:Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is broadly understood that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement that spread around the world in the eighteenth century. He is known for being a missionary in Georgia, his “heart-warming” experience at Aldersgate, field preaching, and the famous quote “the world is my parish.” But this book reveals John Wesley's ultimate reluctance to send missionaries overseas, with several examples of Wesley's rejection of world missions and occasions when he thwarted plans, including those of Thomas Coke, the Father of Methodist Missions. John Wesley and the Origins of Methodist Missions (Abingdon Press, 2025) shows how ordinary immigrants, merchants, planters, soldiers, enslaved persons, and former slaves carried Methodism with them to such far-off places. They were not officially commissioned or authorized by Wesley, but rather traveled on their own, motivated by the love of God and neighbor, to share their faith with others. It was only after these Methodist societies were established, and after multiple appeals, that John Wesley and the British Conference agreed to send missionaries to assist. This book offers some reasons for Wesley's hesitancy to send missionaries overseas and highlights the stories, challenges, and successes of the pioneers who spread Methodism around the world. Byline Host:Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

In this episode of History 102, 'WhatIfAltHist' creator Rudyard Lynch and co-host Austin Padgett analyze Protestantism's global evolution, exploring how sectarian dogmas, economic shifts, and historical transitions from the 1600s shaped modern Western identity. -- FOLLOW ON X: @whatifalthist (Rudyard) @LudwigNverMises (Austin) @TurpentineMedia -- TIMESTAMPS: (00:16) The Historical Impact of Protestantism (01:32) Protestantism as the Spear Tip of Innovation (03:51) The Shifting Religious and Ethnic Landscape (05:29) Modernity and the Erasure of History (11:20) Nietzsche and the Death of God (16:57) The Theological Origins of Science (21:33) The Map of Protestant Europe in 1600 (27:00) Rationality vs Modern Anti-Intellectualism (35:08) The Social Conservatism of the Reformation (38:05) John Calvin and the Power of Sincerity (40:51) Max Weber and the Calvinist Work Ethic (42:53) Psychological Drives: Busyness vs Sovereignty (44:02) The Rise of Therapy and Wellness Culture (56:01) Germanic Cultures and the Protestant Map (1:03:08) Lutheranism and the Individual Reader (1:06:50) Jante's Law and Scandinavian Conformity (1:14:33) Pietism and the Wellspring of Philosophy (1:18:17) Calvinism: Totalitarianism and Capitalist Freedom (1:35:47)) The Quakers and Social Radicalism (1:39:24) The Baptists and Adult Baptism (1:43:32) Methodism and the Great Awakenings (1:49:39) Anglicanism and the English Establishment (2:01:39) Mormonism and the Faustian Will (2:05:42) Pentecostalism and Growth in the Third World (2:14:00) Darwinism and the 21st-Century Religious Collapse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Jennings attends a Global Methodist church, works as a creative designer, and writes books and loves Jesus. He is the author of The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley. He wrote that book twenty years ago and has just re-released it for its twentieth anniversary. I say Dan wrote the book, but actually he just compiled what John Wesley wrote in his journal about the plethora of miraculous events that occurred while he was ministering at the birth of Methodism. So Dan searched Wesley's journals and found all the stories of visions and dreams, miraculous healings, exorcisms and spiritual warfare (even stories of how God miraculously healed Wesley's horse, not once or twice but three times)! So today, we're just going to have fun wallowing in the stories that led John Wesley down the path of supernatural ministry. 

In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. John Wigger joins me to explore the life and legacy of Francis Asbury—one of the most understudied yet profoundly influential figures in American religious history. Asbury may not have been a charismatic performer or a deep intellectual in the traditional sense, but he had an extraordinary grasp of Methodism's core calling: holiness, sanctification, relational connection, and cultural awareness.He organized and adapted Methodism to serve the needs of the emerging United States, helping it thrive in a new nation. This episode challenged and corrected several misconceptions I held about Asbury, highlighting his practical genius in making Methodism relevant and vibrant in early America.If you're interested in Wesleyan theology, Methodist history, or how faith adapts to cultural contexts, this is a must-listen!Key Topics Discussed:•  Asbury's non-traditional leadership style•  The heart of Methodism: holiness, sanctification, and relational discipleship•  Cultural adaptation and organizational strategy in the young United States•  Correcting common misconceptions about AsburyYoutube - https://youtu.be/2xzLVzyG70QAudio - https://andymilleriii.com/media/podcastApple -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-to-the-story-with-dr-andy-miller/id1569988895?uo=4John Wigger's book: American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists - https://a.co/d/058UdnmnIf you are interested in learning more about my two full-length video-accompanied courses, Contender: Going Deeper in the Book of Jude andHeaven and Other Destinations: A Biblical Journey Beyond this World , visit andymilleriii.com/coursesAnd don't forget about my most recent book, Contender, which is available on Amazon! Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching - Recently, I updated this PDF document and added a 45-minute teaching video with slides, explaining this tool. It's like a mini-course. If you sign up for my list, I will send this free resource to you. Sign up here - www.AndyMillerIII.com or Five Steps to Deeper Teaching and Preaching. Today's episode is brought to you by Wesley Biblical Seminary. Interested in going deeper in your faith? Check out our certificate programs, B.A., M.A.s, M.Div., and D.Min degrees. You will study with world-class faculty and the most racially diverse student body in the country. www.wbs.eduIf this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and leave a review! For more from Andy Miller III, visit andymilleriii.com or follow @andymilleriii on X.Thanks too to Phil Laeger for my podcast music. You can find out about Phil's music at https://www.laeger.net

It's Monday, March 2, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus United States and Israel bombed Iran The long-simmering threat of conflict between Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran erupted Saturday morning as the United States and Israel launched sweeping airstrikes against Iran, reports NBC News. The launch of “Operation Epic Fury” followed months of heated rhetoric and repeated warnings from President Trump about military intervention in Iran. U.S. and partner forces struck multiple targets, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control facilities, Iranian air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields. Not only was Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, but so was his top security adviser, his chief military secretary, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, the Defense Minister, the Head of Iranian military intelligence, and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reports Axios and Israel National News. Trump: We will destroy Iran's “wicked, radical dictatorship” In an 8-minute address to America, President Donald Trump explained why he believed the attack on Iran was necessary. TRUMP: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America' and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.” The president laid out the litany of Iranian attacks from the 1979 U.S. Embassy Hostage Crisis in which dozens of Americans were taken hostage for 444 days and the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 soldiers to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and the Iranian-funded attack on Israel through Hamas on October 7, 2023. TRUMP: “For these reasons, the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world.” Isaiah 10:1-2 says, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.” President Trump expressed concern for the safety of U.S. soldiers. TRUMP: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans, and our children, will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way. And we trust that with His help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.” Sadly, three U.S. service members have been killed in action, as part of the Trump administration's “Operation Epic Fury,” reports NewsNation.com. Iranians celebrating in the streets Anti-regime protesters in southern Iran tore down a statue of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in celebration of his death on Saturday, reports The Telegraph. In Tehran, loud cheers echoed from rooftops and through the streets.   Listen. (audio of Iranians celebrating) Celebratory music played, car horns honked and fireworks were set off in parts of the capital at around 11pm local time. They were joined by Iranians across the world who celebrated the Supreme Leader's downfall after he was killed in a barrage of US and Israeli missile strikes early on Saturday morning. Senator Ted Cruz: Bombing Iran is “single most important decision of [Trump's] presidency” Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas applauded President Trump's decision to bomb Iran. CRUZ: “President Trump's decision to launch this decisive action against Iran is the single most important decision of his presidency. He is taking this action because the government of Iran is a profound and malign influence. “They have been the leading state sponsor of terrorism for 47 years. They have, over that time, killed nearly 1,000 Americans. They provide more than 90% of the funding for Hamas. They provide more than 90% of the funding for Hezbollah, the Iranian Ayatollah, was, until yesterday, actively trying to murder the President of the United States, Donald J Trump.” Senator Lindsey Graham: “The mothership of terrorism is about to go down!” Appearing on Fox & Friends, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was grateful the American people re-elected President Trump in 2024. GRAHAM: “My feeling today is that I'm very glad that President Trump won and Kamala Harris lost. Unfortunately, the modern Democratic Party is pathetic in the face of evil. “The difference between Donald Trump and our Democratic colleagues, he's common sense. He understands the world. He's of the mindset that the Ayatollah is Hitler in a robe, wearing a turban; that he's not capable of changing his ways. “Donald Trump does not get us entangled in forever wars, but he sure stands up to the bad guys, and he makes us safer. This is the most consequential decision any President has made since 1979.” Senator Graham predicted a major re-set in the Middle East because of “Operation Epic Fury.” GRAHAM: “If the regime falls, I think Saudi Arabia, the keeper of the holy mosque and Mecca and Medina, the center of Islam, will go back to the table to try to do peace with Israel. We were close before, before October the seventh. October the seventh was designed to stop normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. “I think when this regime collapses, we'll be back at the table of normalization. If Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel it will be the biggest change in 1,000 years in the history of the MidEast. If this regime falls -- Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis terrorist network supported by Iran -- will collapse, slowly but surely. “The mothership of terrorism is about to go down. There's a new dawn coming in the Mideast.” Mass shooting in Austin leaves 3 dead and 14 wounded Three people are dead and 14 have been injured after a mass shooting at a popular bar along West Sixth Street in downtown Austin, Texas during the early morning hours of Sunday, March 1, reports the San Antonio Express-News. The shooting took place at Buford's, a popular bar along the West Sixth Street entertainment strip. Anniversary of John Wesley's death And finally, John Wesley, the English evangelist, who was a principal leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism, died at the age of 87 on this day, March 2nd in 1791. Wesley placed his faith in Christ on May 24, 1738. Referring to our Savior Jesus Christ, Luke wrote in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” In his early ministry years, Wesley was barred from preaching in many parish churches and the Methodists were persecuted. Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery. He became known for the Wesley Covenant Prayer. It says, “I am no longer my own, but Thine. Put me to what Thou wilt, rank me with whom Thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for Thee or laid aside for Thee, exalted for Thee or brought low for Thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to Thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Thou art mine, and I am Thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on Earth, let it be ratified in Heaven. Amen.” Wesley wrote hymns including “O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing.” “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace! My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread thro' all the Earth abroad the honors of Thy name.” John Wesley became widely respected, and by the end of his life, was described as "the best-loved man in England.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Monday, March 2nd, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com.  Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

METHODISM Podcast Episode 8: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE WORLDIn this final episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Beth LaRocca-Pitts share how Methodism is All About the World and an in-depth understanding that we are to be people who love God and our neighbors—wherever we may be. AND, LENT BEGINS ASH WEDS FEB 18th 6pm in Sanctuary
Lent is coming quickly and this season of honesty about our lives and our faith begins with Ash Wednesday. We will have Drive-Thru Ashes from 7:30-8:30am in the front driveway near the steeple and an evening Ash Wednesday Worship at 6pm in the Sanctuary. May we use this time to remember our mortality, our human frailty, and our dependence upon God. 

(There will be no Midweek Dinner this Weds and the Ash Weds Service will stream online at YouTube.com/ogumc/live) 

AND, the Lenten Devotionals are out: “God Provides”(Available in print at the church building and an electronic version here: https://ogumc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2026.02.18-ogumc-lenten-devotional-electronic-version.pdf) —You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#churchpodcast #methodism #umc #ogumc #Jesus

METHODISM Podcast Episode 7: IT'S ALL ABOUT SERVANT LEADERSHIPWhat exactly IS Servant Leadership and how do we follow the example of Jesus to both serve and love our neighbors?In this 7th episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Associate Pastor Rev. Dr. Joseph McBrayer share how Methodism is All About Servant Leadership.Watch on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/KiADgdz_H4E—You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#servantleadership #methodism #umc #ogumc #Jesus

One of Methodism's true values is our assurnace of our faith and hope in Heaven.

How do Methodists decide HOW we should live out our Christian Life? (Hint: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience! AKA the “Methodism Quadrilateral!” More on that in the PODCAST THIS WEEK!)In this 6th episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Senior Pastor Beth LaRocca-Pitts' sermon on how Methodism is All About Jesus.—You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#methodism #umc #ogumc #Jesus #ngumc

METHODISM Podcast Episode 5: IT'S ALL ABOUT UNITYHow did the “UNITED” become a part of “United Methodism?” What DOES Christian UNITY mean? Have you ever wondered what Methodism is? Or maybe what makes up the core of what United Methodist Christians believe? Well, this is the Way — or at least this worship series will help us to understand more about the methods of Methodists. In this 5th episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Senior Pastor Beth LaRocca-Pitts' sermon on how Methodism is All About Unity.—You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#methodism #umc #ogumc #connectionalism #ngumc

METHODISM Podcast Episode 4: IT'S ALL ABOUT CONNECTIONHave you ever wondered what Methodism is? Or maybe what makes up the core of what United Methodist Christians believe? Well, this is the Way — or at least this worship series will help us to understand more about the methods of Methodists. In this 4th episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Pastor Melissa's sermon on how Methodism is All About Connection.You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#methodism #umc #ogumc #connectionalism #ngumc

How did Methodism spread across the American frontier? Today, Stephen Nichols looks at the lives of circuit riders who carried Methodism westward. Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/early-methodism-circuit-riders-and-camp-meetings/ A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://donate.ligonier.org/ Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

METHODISM Podcast Episode 3: IT'S ALL ABOUT OTHERSHave you ever wondered what Methodism is? Or maybe what makes up the core of what United Methodist Christians believe? Well, this is the Way — or at least this worship series will help us to understand more about the methods of Methodists. In this 3rd episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Pastor Beth's sermon on how Methodism is All About Others.You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865+ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000—Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc#newyear #methodism #umc #ogumc

Daily Dose of Hope January 16, 2026   Scripture: I Thessalonians 4   Prayer:  Almighty Father, Thank you for loving us despite our many faults.  Thank you for showing us a different way of doing life.  Help us seek holiness in all we do.  Help us become the people you desire us to be.  As we work through today's Scripture and devotional, I pray that you speak to our hearts.  Help us see things differently.  We want to hear from you.  In Your Name, Amen.   Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, the devotional and podcast that goes along with the New Hope Church daily Bible reading plan.  We are currently journeying through Paul's letters.  Right now, we are walking through I Thessalonians.   Today, we read I Thessalonians 4.  Possibly because they were experiencing so much persecution, the Thessalonians were very interested in knowing when Jesus' second coming would occur.  Paul tells them two things they needed to hear: their persecutors will be judged and in the meantime, living in faith, hope, and love, is the best way to prepare for the next step of their Christian journey.  Jesus will come suddenly, like a thief in the night.  But they have nothing to fear as God's children.  Those who reject the Gospel will face God's wrath but the believers will be protected and get to live with Jesus for eternity.   He reiterates what it means to live a Godly life.  He says to reject sexual immorality, and to seek holiness.  The idea of seeking holiness is deeply rooted in Scripture, including the command to be holy as God is holy (Lev. 19:2), Jesus' teachings to be perfect as our Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48), and the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:34-40).  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, writes that holiness is not perfection or flawlessness but more a maturity of character and increasing love for God and others.  The Thessalonians were coming from a pagan culture that valued self over others.  Living holy lives would have truly set them apart from the culture around them.  People would notice.    The last part of the chapter is kind of interesting, regarding those who have already died.  Just like his talk of the second coming, this is purely pastoral encouragement for them.  Believers who have died in the Lord will be resurrected when Jesus returns.  They can trust in that.  Now, Jesus was pretty clear-no one knows the time he will come back, only the Father.  In Matthew 24:36, Jesus says, "However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows."  Despite this, people have tried making predictions for thousands of years.  I hear people today say, "Well, these must be end times because of this or that."  My personal opinion is that isn't for us to know or say.  Our responsibility is to take Paul's advice to the Thessalonians and live in faith, hope, and love, pointing others to Jesus and living like people with Good News.   Blessings, Pastor Vicki    

How did a small group of Oxford students shape a global movement? Today, Stephen Nichols traces the early roots of Methodism, from high moral standards and revival preaching to its growth in Great Britain and colonial America. Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/early-methodism-beginnings-and-revival/ A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://donate.ligonier.org/ Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

METHODISM Podcast Episode 2: How Pastors are Appointed to ChurchesHave you ever wondered:+ how pastors are selected and appointed to local churches? + what Bishops help do in overseeing churches in the United Methodist faith tradition? + what is the difference between an Elder and a Deacon in the United Methodist Church?+ how you can help Oak Grove prepare for Dr. Beth LaRocca-Pitt's retirement in June 2026 and the announcement of who will follow her as the Senior Pastor at OGUMC? Well, you're in luck! In this 2nd episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear a live-recorded conversation and Q&A with retired Bishop Larry Goodpaster and retired District Superintendent Rev. Dr. David Naglee. participate in the congregational life of Oak Grove. Many thanks to the participants in this discussion and to the many church members who attended this live recording on Sunday January 11th, 2026 in the Oak Grove Sanctuary. And, special thanks to Bishop Goodpaster and Dr. Naglee!You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865 + Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000 — Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc #newyear #methodism #umc #ogumc

METHODISM Podcast Episode 1: IT'S ALL ABOUT GRACEIn this first episode of the Methodism Podcast we'll hear Pastor Beth's sermon on how Methodism is All About God's Grace.You can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865 + Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000 — Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc #newyear #methodism #umc #ogumc

A continuing force for good.

This bonus episode of the Podcast is on the Covenant Prayer used by John Wesley, Methodism's founder. Retired Bishop Larry Goodpaster leads us in a conversation about this classic prayer which challenges us to surrender to God's will and continue to seek to live a faithful Christian life. John Wesley and the people called Methodists used this prayer both then and now as a way to help us to focus on the New Year ahead of us and on our relationship with God.A special thanks to Bishop Goodpaster and we hope that you'll join in for worship at Oak Grove in 2026 as we begin a new series called “Methodism: This is the Way,” which will focus on the core teachings of the Methodist faith. You can find a modern translation of the Wesley Covenant Prayer here: https://www.ngumc.org/covenant-prayerYou can listen, watch, & subscribe to the Podcast on:+ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@OGUMC/podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠+ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0nGIcxSt5ToGbAcs0dmua2?si=3328d0411f194865 + Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oak-grove-umc-podcast/id1695962000 — Sunday Worship: 8:30 & 11am* Traditional Worship and 1045am* Modern Worship.*livestreamed at YouTube.com/ogumc #newyear #newyearseve #umc #ogumc #covenantprayer

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than 15 books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way we understand the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. While his career brought many of the trappings of establishment respectability – he was both a Fellow of the British Academy and the Master of Balliol College, Oxford - he was also seen as a threat to that very same establishment. Under surveillance by the security services for decades, in the 1980s Hill was publicly accused of having been a Soviet agent during the war. His was a Cold War life, as well as a scholarly one.In this brilliant work of biography Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso Books, 2025), Michael Braddick charts Hill's development from his abandonment of the respectable provincial Methodism of his youth, through his embrace of Marxism, his membership and eventual break with the Communist Party, as well as his celebrated intellectual career. While many of his books - not least the thrilling work of historical resurrection, The World Turned Upside Down, and God's Englishman, his classic biography of Oliver Cromwell - are still widely read and admired, his intellectual reputation was damaged by sustained academic criticism in the politically-charged atmosphere of the 1980s.Braddick's judicious biography not only situates Hill's life and work in their historical context but seeks to rescue Hill for a new generation of readers. Mike Braddick is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Lucas Tse is an Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than 15 books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way we understand the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. While his career brought many of the trappings of establishment respectability – he was both a Fellow of the British Academy and the Master of Balliol College, Oxford - he was also seen as a threat to that very same establishment. Under surveillance by the security services for decades, in the 1980s Hill was publicly accused of having been a Soviet agent during the war. His was a Cold War life, as well as a scholarly one.In this brilliant work of biography Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso Books, 2025), Michael Braddick charts Hill's development from his abandonment of the respectable provincial Methodism of his youth, through his embrace of Marxism, his membership and eventual break with the Communist Party, as well as his celebrated intellectual career. While many of his books - not least the thrilling work of historical resurrection, The World Turned Upside Down, and God's Englishman, his classic biography of Oliver Cromwell - are still widely read and admired, his intellectual reputation was damaged by sustained academic criticism in the politically-charged atmosphere of the 1980s.Braddick's judicious biography not only situates Hill's life and work in their historical context but seeks to rescue Hill for a new generation of readers. Mike Braddick is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Lucas Tse is an Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than 15 books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way we understand the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. While his career brought many of the trappings of establishment respectability – he was both a Fellow of the British Academy and the Master of Balliol College, Oxford - he was also seen as a threat to that very same establishment. Under surveillance by the security services for decades, in the 1980s Hill was publicly accused of having been a Soviet agent during the war. His was a Cold War life, as well as a scholarly one.In this brilliant work of biography Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso Books, 2025), Michael Braddick charts Hill's development from his abandonment of the respectable provincial Methodism of his youth, through his embrace of Marxism, his membership and eventual break with the Communist Party, as well as his celebrated intellectual career. While many of his books - not least the thrilling work of historical resurrection, The World Turned Upside Down, and God's Englishman, his classic biography of Oliver Cromwell - are still widely read and admired, his intellectual reputation was damaged by sustained academic criticism in the politically-charged atmosphere of the 1980s.Braddick's judicious biography not only situates Hill's life and work in their historical context but seeks to rescue Hill for a new generation of readers. Mike Braddick is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Lucas Tse is an Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In this episode, we look at the fall of 1739 and the different questions of ministry that John Wesley is asking and answering. This was a fecund time for Methodism with the beginning of the General Rules and the first hints at conferencing taking place.Please give us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.You can find us online at www.historyofmethodism.com.You can support us online at patreon.com/historyofmethodism. 

In the 1700s, Delaware witnessed powerful movements that shaped American Christianity. Today, Stephen Nichols continues exploring this colony's church history, from George Whitefield's Great Awakening preaching to the rise of Methodism. Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/a-little-church-history-of-a-middle-colony-the-first-great-awakening/ A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://donate.ligonier.org/ Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, once said that "singing is the language of holy joy." On this Christmas music Sunday, hear what scripture has to say about the gift of holy joy and it's role in providing hope for us in every circumstance. [Zephaniah 3:14-15]

On Today's Podcast - Learn how Methodism became a worldwide mission.It is broadly understood that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement that spread around the world in the eighteenth century. He is known for being a missionary in Georgia, his “heart-warming” experience at Aldersgate, field preaching, and the famous quote “the world is my parish.” It is also assumed that Wesley was a proponent of world missions and helped spread the Methodist movement around the world. Phillip examines this assumption and, after a closer look, reveals John Wesley's reluctance to send missionaries overseas. This was a fascinating discussion that I think gives nuance to the way we think about the history of world missions. 

Not very long ago, a British scholar named Bebbington worked to give a definition of the history of British Evangelicalism. But there was one phrase in his formulation that was interesting: social reform. So, should “social reform” occupy a spot of primacy in believers' lives? Join Kevin as we dive into the question of whether 21st-century Evangelicals are truly evangelical! // Download this episode's Application & Action questions and PDF transcript at whitestone.org.

We continued our exploration of the Holy Spirit by examining a vital truth: Jesus operated not merely as God, but as a Spirit-filled human being. This distinction transforms everything because it means Jesus becomes our model, not just our object of admiration.When Jesus read from Isaiah 61 in Luke 4, declaring "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he revealed his mission statement. Theologians call this kenosis: Jesus voluntarily set aside the independent use of his divine attributes. He didn't stop being God, but he chose to live as a human in complete dependence on the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit. This is why he could promise in John 14:12 that we would do the works he did and even greater things.The book of Acts proves this promise. Peter, John, and Philip (a table server!) all performed the same miracles Jesus did through the same Spirit's power. The early Moravian community demonstrated this reality in the 1700s when 300 people committed to 100 years of continuous prayer. Their intimacy with God produced extraordinary power and sent over 100 missionaries worldwide, influencing movements like Methodism and modern missions.We explored three pathways to experiencing this power: growing in intimacy with God through consistent prayer and worship, pursuing holiness by dealing with sin and keeping short accounts, and taking risks in faith by stepping out when prompted. The parable of the talents reminds us that God commends those who risk, not those who play it safe. The same Spirit who empowered Jesus is available to us today.

Elaine Heath is the abbess of Spring Forest, a new monastic community in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Spring Forest centers around communal prayer and meals, a vibrant farm, refugee support, and other ministries you can read about here. You can learn more about Elaine's work as an author and speaker on her website, or in articles like this one from the Center for Action and Contemplation.Many thanks to Elaine and her husband Randall for welcoming Ron and I and our audio producer, Colin, to the farm last June. Besides relishing the good company of our hosts, we enjoyed harvesting cabbage, feasting and praying with the Sunday evening group, walking through the woods, and petting some good-natured goats.Dr. Elaine HeathOn the farm.Someone had to help harvest the cabbage, so Ron and Colin and I pitched in.Elaine, husband Randall, and I in their lovely home.TRANSCRIPTElaine Heath If you are nurtured by traditional church—or let's say, conventional church—keep doing it, but also realize that for other people that's not nurturing. It feels dry and lifeless, and it's clear the Spirit is doing something new. So instead of insisting everybody stop doing the new thing, and everybody has to come and do the conventional thing, you can be conventional in your worship and bless and make space for others so that we have a plethora of experiments going on.Debra Rienstra Welcome to the Refugia Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Debra Rienstra. Refugia are habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis. We're exploring the concept of refugia as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia: nurturing life-giving spaces in the earth, in our human cultural systems, and in our spiritual communities, even in this time of severe disturbance. This season, we're paying special attention to churches and Christian communities who have figured out how to address the climate crisis together as an essential aspect of their discipleship.Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Elaine Heath. Elaine is founder and abbess of Spring Forest, a new monastic community centered on a 23-acre forest and farm property near Hillsboro, North Carolina. The farm supplies a CSA and supports food security for refugees and serves as the setting for outdoor programs for kids, cooking classes, potlucks, forest walks and more. But the Spring Forest community is a dispersed network of people who move in and out of the farm space in a variety of ways. They live on the farm for a time, they visit often to volunteer, or they simply join the community online for daily prayer. We got to visit the farm last spring, and I can tell you that Elaine's long experience with new monasticism, trauma-informed care, and contemplative practice make her an ideal curator of refugia space. The vibe on the farm is peaceful, orderly, and full of life. It's a place of holy experimentation in new ways to form Christian community and reconnect with the land. Let's get to it.Debra Rienstra Elaine, thank you for talking with me today. It's really great to be with you.Elaine Heath Yeah, I'm glad to be with you too.Debra Rienstra So you served in traditional parish ministry and in religious academia for many years, and then in 2018 you retired from that work to found Spring Forest. Why a farm and a new monastic community? What inspired and influenced this particular expression of faith?Elaine Heath I've always loved farms and forests. But actually, my dream to do this started about 25 years ago, and my husband and I bought a 23 acre property in North Central Ohio, right when I was right out of my PhD program and I got my first academic job at my alma mater, which is Ashland Theological Seminary. So I went there to direct the Doctor of Ministry program, and we bought this beautiful property. It had a little house that looked like the ranger station, and it had a stream and a big labyrinth cut in the field, and it had beautiful soil to grow, you know, for market gardening. And what we planned to do was gradually develop retreat ministries there. My husband was going to build some hermitages up in the woods, because I did a lot of spiritual direction with pastors who were burned out and traumatized, and we felt like that, you know, as I got older and phased out of academia, that would be something we could do together.So we were there for a couple years, and then I was recruited to go to Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. And we were very sad to leave our property behind, but we were clear that we were being called to Texas. So we bought a home in the city in a sort of mixed income, racially diverse neighborhood in Garland, and it was a big house with a nice yard, and soon after starting to teach evangelism—which, I kind of created my own path for how to teach evangelism, because I don't believe in selling Jesus or any of those kinds of colonizing things. So I was teaching about living a contemplative life and practicing social and environmental justice and being good news in the world, and being good neighbors to all our neighbors, and thinking of our neighbors as us and not them. And I had them reading Shane Claiborne and the people writing with the emerging church movement at the time, and pretty soon, I had students in my class coming to my office every week. It was a different student, but the same tears and the same kind of narrative: “Dr. Heath, I think I'm going to have to leave the church to answer my call. Tell me what I should do.” And it was because they were being called to do innovative, new monastic ministry, missional, new monastic kinds of things. But our denomination in particular didn't quite get it, even though early Methodism was very much like that.So I realized fairly quickly that this was God calling me through these students to focus my research and writing and my teaching in the area of emergence. Emergence theory, what's happening in the world. How do these currents of emergence intersect with what's happening politically and environmentally, and what's happening, you know, in the economy and with the church. So pretty soon, I don't know, it wasn't very long, I felt God was calling me to gather students and start some experiments outside, out in the city. And so I had a prayer partner, and we were praying for a house to come available, so that we could start a new monastic house. And she came to me one day and she said, “I saw the house coming. It'll be here soon.” And I said, “Okay.” I had no money for a house. You know, kind of a lowly professor, didn't make that much. And within two weeks, one of our neighbors came to me, who didn't really know me well at all, and said, “Hey, my mom has a rental property. It's been in our family for a long time, and we wondered if you might have some students that would like to live there. We won't even charge rent, just pay their utilities and not have drug parties or whatnot.” And I said, “No, that's unlikely,” you know. So I said, you know, I could throw the phone down and ran down to get in her car and go over to this house with her. And we were driving over, and she says, “You know, it's not the best neighborhood.” I said, “Perfect!” But we got there, and it was a really great little three bedroom house in a predominantly Latina neighborhood, and that was our first new monastic house. So I asked three of the students who'd been crying in my office, “Would you be willing to break your leases wherever you live and come and live here for a year?” And I can assign a spiritual director to work with you, and I can write a curriculum for an independent study on the theory and practice of new monasticism. And we can develop a Rule of Life based on our United Methodist membership vows. And they all immediately said yes, and so that's how we got started with our first house.Elaine Heath And then right around the same time, I started a missional house church that was quickly relocated into the neighborhood where most of the refugees are resettled in Dallas, because one of my students brought six Congolese men to our little house church worship, and that that was the beginning of realizing we were called to work with refugees.Debra Rienstra Oh, I see.Elaine Heath So that all got started around 2008. And by 2009, there was a student who came to Perkins who had been a commercial real estate banker on Wall Street. And he came to Perkins as a student. He was an older man. And we were going on my very first pilgrimage to Iona, Northumbria, and Lindisfarne, and Michael Hahn was with us too. He and I team-taught this class, so it was my first one. But it turned out that Larry Duggins, the student, had come to seminary because he really wanted to be equipped to help young adults who were feeling disillusioned with the church but wanted to be out in the world doing good work. And he started describing what he was called to, and I'm like, “Well, that's what I'm doing with these students.” So we joined forces and created a nonprofit called Missional Wisdom Foundation, and within three years, we had a network of eight new monastic communities across the metroplex. They were all anchored at local churches. Some of them were parsonages that weren't being used. And we wove into the expectations and sort of the lifestyle of those houses, urban agriculture.Debra Rienstra Oh, I was waiting for the farm to come back into it. Yeah, because I'm seeing these threads of experimentation and monasticism and place. We're sitting here today on your current farm land. So it's really interesting to hear all these threads being developed early on in an urban context.Elaine Heath Yes, it was quite something. These houses were all in different social contexts. There was one house, the Bonhoeffer house, that was in East Dallas, in a neighborhood that was not only mixed income and racially diverse, but also used to be where the mayor lived. And now there are people who are unhoused living there, and there are also people with nice houses living there. So it was a very interesting neighborhood. So that house, we learned quickly that you needed to take a year to get to know the neighborhood before you try to figure out how you're going to support whatever justice work needs to happen in the neighborhood. But that house got really close with the unhoused community and did a lot of good ministry with the guys and a few women. Then there was one for undocumented workers, the Romero House, and just different social contexts. But all of them had a backyard garden or, you know, some type of growing food kind of thing. And I used to take students to this farm that was an urban farm in DeSoto, which is just south of Dallas, where it was quite small, but these were former missionaries, the type that have crusades and show the Jesus film and everything in sort of poor countries. And then they had an awakening that happened, and they realized they were being called to help people in orphanages learn how to grow their own food in a sustainable way and raise the living standard for the whole village. So they had this little farm, and I would take students there every semester to experience the conversion of thought that this couple had over what mission is, and to experience the beauty and joy of tilapia that provide food for the lettuce, that provide for the bees, you know. So this closed system. So that also affected my imagination about what I really wanted to do in the future.And so gradually, the years—we were there for 11 years, and we lived in community the whole time that we were there. By the time we came here for me to work at Duke, we had a very clear picture of what we wanted to do here. And so we looked for the property back when we had to sell that first farm, when we were so sad about selling it, I had an experience in prayer where I sensed God was saying to me, “Don't give up on this dream. It's sacred, and it will happen in the future on a better piece of property, at a better time in your life for this.” And so when it was time to move here, I said to Randall, “This is the time. Let's look for that property.” So that's how we landed here.Friendly, very contented dairy goats, hanging out in the afternoon.Debra Rienstra Yeah. When talking about your students, you mentioned yesterday that you like to “ruin them for fake church.” So what do you mean by fake church, and how exactly do you ruin them for it?Elaine Heath Well, you know, church is really the people and not the building. You all know that. It's the people and we're called to be a very different kind of people who are a healing community, that neighbor well, that give ourselves away, that regard our neighbors—human and non human—as part of us, whether they think they're part of us or not. We have this sort of posture in life. And when I think of how Jesus formed the church, Jesus had this little ragtag group of friends, and they traveled around and did stuff and talked about it, and they got mad at each other and had power struggles and drama and, you know, and then Jesus would process the drama with them. And he would do these outrageous things, you know, breaking sort of cultural taboo to demonstrate: this is what love really looks like. And so we don't get to do much of any of that, sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, facing forward while the people up in the front do things. And so many churches—maybe you've never experienced this, but I certainly have. The pastor's sort of the proxy disciple while people kind of watch and make judgments and decide whether or not they want to keep listening to those sermons.Debra Rienstra Oh yes.Elaine Heath So when you experience Christian life in a community where it's both natural, it's just the way you live in the world, and it's also liturgically rich, and the life is a contemplative life, and it's also a life of deep missional engagement with the world— that other version of church, it's like oatmeal with no flavoring in it. It makes you, I mean, it's about the life together. It's how we live in this world. It's not about sitting somewhere for an hour once a week and staring forward.Debra Rienstra Right. Yeah, so I would, you know, of course, I would describe what you're describing as refugia, being the people of refugia. You know? Not that I'm—we'll come back to traditional worship and traditional forms of faith and religion. But it seems like what you're doing is living into something you say on your website that we are in the midst of a new reformation in the church, and I certainly sense that too. I think the evidence is all around us, and the research bears out that we've reached this inflection point, and it's a painful inflection point that a lot of people think of as decline, because living through it feels confusing and bewildering and dark and full of loss. So what is your sense of when we are, in this point in history, in particular, for those of us who've been part of church communities, where are we finding ourselves? Why is it so confusing?Elaine Heath I really believe we're in a dark night of the soul as the church in the West and perhaps places in the East too. I know we've exported a capitalist version of church all over the world, sadly. But I believe we're in a dark night of the soul, you know, classically understood, where it's spirit-breathed. It's not that the devil is doing something to us. It's spirit-breathed to detach us from our sort of corporate ego that thinks we get to show up and boss the world around and act like we own the joint.Debra Rienstra We call that church of empire.Elaine Heath Yeah. And so I think that's what's happening. And when, you know, if you study the literature, if you work in spiritual direction, and you're looking at what happens with the dark night of the soul. That's a real dark night, not a clinical depression or something like that, but an actual dark night. You have to go through it. You can't bypass it. You can't work your way out of it. You can't talk your way out of it. And what happens is you find yourself increasingly hungry for simplicity, for a simple but clear experience of God, because it's like God's disappeared. There's a deep loneliness, even a sort of cold hell, to being in a dark night of the soul. And so there's a restlessness, there's a longing for actual experience of God. There's a feeling of futility. Things that used to work don't work anymore. So you know the threefold path? The purgation, illumination and union is one way that we've learned to think about what happens. The purgation part is— we're there.Debra Rienstra We're being purgated.Elaine Heath We're being purgated, yeah. And at the same time that we're having these flashes of intuitive knowing, this sort of illumination is coming. “Oh, let's pay attention to the saints and mystics who lived through things like this. What gave them life? What helped them to keep showing up and being faithful?” And we're having moments of union too, when we feel like, “Oh, discipleship means I make sure that the trees are cared for and not just people. Oh, all living things are interconnected. Quantum physics is teaching us a spiritual truth we should have known already.” So the three parts of that contemplative path are happening simultaneously. But I think what feels most forward to a lot of people is the purgation piece where you're like, “Oh, things are just dropping away. Numbers are dropping. Things that used to work don't work. What's going to happen now?” Sort of a sense of chaos, confusion. Tohu va bohu, yeah.Debra Rienstra Yeah, do you want me to explain what that is?Elaine Heath Yeah, chaos and confusion. From the beginning of time.Debra Rienstra It's the realm out of which creation is formed. So the idea that the spirit is drawing us into this dark night is actually really reassuring. We are where we're supposed to be. And even though it feels confusing and painful, there are these moments of wisdom—that's so reassuring. In fact, one of the things you write: the new reformation is all about the emergence. So this emergence is happening of a generous, hospitable, equitable form of Christianity that heals the wounds of the world. What is your vision about what the church needs to release and hold and create right now?Elaine Heath We need to release everything that even slightly has a hint of empire, that we have thought of as what it means to be the church, because that completely reverts what church is supposed to be about. So giving up empire, we need to take up the great kenotic hymn of Philippians two and actually live it.Debra Rienstra The self emptying hymn.Elaine Heath The self emptying. And it's not—I know that that can be problematic when we're thinking of women or, you know, groups that have been forced to empty themselves in an exploited way. But that's not really what that's all about. It's about showing up to God, paying attention, seeing what God's invitation is, then cooperating with that and just releasing the outcome. That's what that's about, and really finding out, what am I in this world for? What are we in this world for? And being about that and not about something else.Debra Rienstra Yeah, it's hard to release the ways that we have done things. Well, you have a congregation, you have a pastor, you have a sanctuary, you have programs, you want the kids to come, you need tithes, all of those systems. And actually, what you're doing here at Spring Forest—let's talk about that. What you're doing here at Spring Forest doesn't have any of that. Sunday services. There's no church building. You have barn buildings, you have farm buildings. No Sunday school, no adult ed, no choirs, organs, praise bands, any of that stuff, right? Do you think of Spring Forest as a new model for church? Perhaps one among many?Elaine Heath It's one among many. We're definitely shaped by traditional monasticism. We're shaped by early Methodism. We're influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement, and definitely Bonhoeffer's work and a number of others: the Clarence Jordan and Koinonia farms. And so we're influenced by all of those. We do have music sometimes at Forest Feast, if we have someone that can lead it, and, you know, do a good job. But the backbone of our worship life is morning and evening prayer. And that is so wonderful. You were here last night for Forest Feast, and we use the same structure we use for morning and evening prayer, and we have a group of about six people who are writing the liturgies for us, who have been writing for a year and a half now.Debra Rienstra Who are those people?Elaine Heath Well, there's Steve Taylor is our lay leader, and his wife, Cheryl, and then there's Donna Patterson, who's—none of them were here last night. They all had to go somewhere. But some of them are lay people. Some of them are clergy.Debra Rienstra And they don't live here?Elaine Heath No, they live— well, some of the people that write live far away, and they're in our digital community. But, yeah, Steve and Cheryl live in Lumberton, which is, you know, almost two hours away. But they're beautiful. I mean, if you go online and look at some of the last month, look at the prayers and see the—they're just truly beautiful, and they reflect our spirituality of our community.Debra Rienstra Yeah. So the community, it seems to me, you have had people living on the farm itself, but your community, like the Iona community, is both located here on this land, but also dispersed. And so you have that interaction, that conversation between this residential life. So let's try to describe for listeners: there's the farm. You live here with your husband. You have interns from Duke. You have a farm. What do you call Larry?Elaine Heath He's our farm coach.Debra Rienstra Coach, yes, I love that. They have the farm coach who has the farming knowledge that you all sort of follow. You have chefs. They don't live here either, but they come in. So you have a lot of people coming in and out on this farm. And you do regenerative farming. You have programs for kids, you have refugee support, and you can talk about that, trauma informed rest for spiritual leaders. And then a number of other things. The farm produces vegetables and those go to a CSA, and also a lot of it is donated. Why this particular assembly of activities? How does it all fit together? And what are the theological principles beneath each of these endeavors?Elaine Heath The overarching principle is that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to every believer and to every person, let's just be honest. And the job of the pastor, the pastor teacher, is to fan those gifts into flame, to help them have the support they need to use their gifts and that the ministries should be shaped by the gifts of the people, which means you can't use a cookie cutter. And we have numerically a small community, but incredibly high capacity of people. So we have these gifts that they have, and then the ministries are emerging out of those gifts. And it might seem like, why do you have refugee support? And you know, just name anything else we're doing. How does this fit together? The organizing principle—okay, so you have the foundation. These are gifts given by the Spirit. Our ministries are emerging from our gifts. And the organizing sort of a cohesive piece is our rule of life that ties everything together. And so our rule of life is prayer, work, table, neighbor and rest. And that rule of life came about after we lived here for a year, when we first started Spring Forest with—there was another pastor that co-founded it with me, Francis Kinyua, who's from Kenya, and he was my student in Dallas, and did all those other things with me. So we invited him to come. We had to work with three different bishops to kind of make it work. But it worked, you know. Anyway, we just waited for a year to see. We had lots of work to do with getting the farm ready to go and Francis and I went to Church World Service right away to say, “Hey, we have a lot of experience supporting refugees, and we would like to do that here as well.” So we got started with that, but we waited a year and then just articulated, what are the practices that we do that are keeping us grounded here and keeping us right side up. And it was those things, so we named it.Debra Rienstra Okay, you were just doing it, and then you named those things.Elaine Heath Instead of creating sort of an aspirational rule and tried to live into it, we named what was actually working, what was actually grounding us and felt life giving.Debra Rienstra Hi, it's me, Debra. If you are enjoying this podcast episode, go ahead and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. If you have a minute, leave a review. Good reviews help more listeners discover this podcast. To keep up with all the Refugia news, I invite you to subscribe to the Refugia newsletter on Substack. This is my fortnightly newsletter for people of faith who care about the climate crisis and want to go deeper. Every two weeks, I feature climate news, deeper dives, refugia sightings and much more. Join our community at refugianewsletter.substack.com. For even more goodies, including transcripts and show notes for this podcast, check out my website at debrarienstra.com. D-E-B-R-A-R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A dot com. Thanks so much for listening. We're glad you're part of this community. And now back to the interview.Debra Rienstra You do partner a lot with, you know, “regular church folk.” It's that sort of in-and-out permeable membrane. How do you think about the relationship of what you're doing here, with Spring Forest, with the work of sort of standard congregations, is there like a mutuality? How do you think about that?Elaine Heath It's just like traditional monasticism. You've got a community that have this rule of life they follow. People who are not living in the community can become Oblates to the rule of life and have a special relationship. And usually those people go to church somewhere else. Part of our ethic here is we want to resist competition between churches, so we don't meet on Sundays to do things like programmatically. We usually just rest on Sundays and watch a movie and eat popcorn, you know.Debra Rienstra That's a spiritual practice.Elaine Heath But also, so there's that sort of historic piece, and people from churches come here for retreats. Lead teams come for retreats. People come—pastors, we have a lot of pastors who come here for a retreat. But also we are a mission community, so we're very active with supporting refugees. We're very active with the food programs that we have, and that gives people from a church—lots of churches don't have things like that going on. They don't have the resources for it, or they haven't figured it out. But that way, we can partner with churches and people can come here and they can actually get their hands in the soil, and they can teach somebody to read, and they can see little children learning where food comes from. They can help the chef with her kitchen things, you know. So it's a wonderful way to provide spiritual formation and missional formation to congregations that don't have those resources. And we can do these things together.Debra Rienstra Yeah. And that's that's premised on this being a place, an embodied place, a refugia space that people can come to. Yeah. I think that's a wonderful model. Do you yourself ever feel a sense of loss for “the old ways?” And I'm just thinking of this because at the beginning of your book, God Unbound, which is about Galatians, you write about how Paul challenges the Galatians to let go of their tight grip on the past, and you write about how you, reading that, felt yourself like a little bit of a traditionalist, you know, sort of defending, “But what about the past? What about the old ways?” Which you have loved too, right? So, how would you counsel people who have loved traditional church despite everything, and really do feel this sense of loss and wonder anxiously about what's next?Elaine Heath Yeah, I feel empathy. You know, something was going on in the Middle East at the time. I can't remember exactly the situation. There's always something going on, but it had to do with people's culture being wiped out and being told that what they believed didn't count and wasn't right and everything. And I was feeling such grief for them, and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm in Galatians, and think, “Well, that's how those people felt.” And even myself, there are things in my own daily practice that are—they're precious to me. My way of praying in the morning, the facing into the forest, you know, and things like that, that are rituals for me. And thinking, you know, if somebody told me “that doesn't matter,” how hard that would be. So I think in the spiritual journey, we come to the place, if we keep maturing, where we realize, in Merton's words, that so often we think it's the finger pointing to the moon, we think the finger is the moon. And it's that way about rituals and all sorts of things that we do, and we get to a place where we realize that intellectually and even spiritually, in an emotional way. But you can't force people to get to that point. This is something that happens as we grow and mature as life goes by. So what I have said to many people is, “If you are nurtured by traditional church, or, let's say, conventional church,”—because which traditional church are we talking about? One, right here, middle class, white, are we talking about Brazil? —”So if that nurtures you, keep doing it. But also realize that for other people, that's not nurturing. It feels dry and lifeless, and it's clear the Spirit is doing something new.” So instead of insisting everybody stop doing the new thing, and everybody has to come and do the conventional thing, you can be conventional in your worship and bless and make space for others so that we have a plethora of experiments going on. Because we're in a time of great emergence, as Phyllis Tickle wrote, and we need lots of experiments.Debra Rienstra Yeah. I appreciated what you wrote about trial and error. It's a time of trial and error, and it's okay to try things and have them not work. And that fits the refugia model too, really, really well. I mean, refugia don't always work. They just sometimes fail. Let's talk about a couple of key metaphors that I've noticed in your writings and in the website for Spring Forest too. One is that metaphor of the mycelial network, so the underground fungus that connects the creatures, the beings, the plants, the trees of the forest. I think is a wonderful metaphor too, for the way that faith and climate people, people who are worried about the climate crisis, and also people of faith—it's a great metaphor for how they're finding each other and connecting and building this sort of cultural and spiritual soil where the seeds of the future can grow. How is that metaphor meaningful for you here at Spring Forest?Elaine Heath Well, it means a lot in terms of the first of all, the diversity of expressions of ministry that are even here on the property, but also, especially in our dispersed community, through following the rule of life together, which—we are a practice-based community, rather than a dogma-based community. So as people are practicing those practices where they live and work and play, then they are forming community in a very specific, contextual way where they are. I think of Steve and Cheryl again, the friends I mentioned earlier. He's our lay leader. They live in a, I think a working class neighborhood in Lumberton, which is the land of the Lumbee here in North Carolina. And they have developed a wonderful, just neighborhood ministry there with—and they've been able, through potluck dinners and front yard barbecues and remembering people's birthdays and things like this, they've developed this friendship network in the neighborhood with people that are on complete opposite sides, politically, racially, and this is in the South, where you've got all sorts of issues. And they've taken the sort of ethic of Spring Forest here, but it's caused a mushroom to bloom there that looks really different from here. They don't have a farm, they don't have a forest, they've got this neighborhood. But the neighboring, the praying, the tabling, resting, all of those things are part of how they live there. And so it's fruiting there. And it's the same in other places in the world where we have people that live there.Debra Rienstra It's a good example, too, of how eating together is sacramental, both here and in these other networks that are connected to you. The Garden of Eden and the vision of the New Earth in Revelation are both important to you, that that whole long scriptural arc begin in a garden, end in a garden city, and then the Tree of Life is also your symbol, your logo. So how would you situate our work today as people of faith in that long arc of history, from the garden to the Garden City, and how does the Tree of Life fit into that for you?Elaine Heath There's a way in which the whole story is happening simultaneously. Does that make sense?Debra Rienstra Yeah.Elaine Heath It's all happening beyond time, sort of simultaneously. So sometimes we're living in the garden and we've been deceived, and now we have to figure out what to do, and sometimes we're rebuilding the wall, and sometimes we're on our way to Bethlehem, and sometimes we're in the garden of the new creation. And we can see it, and we're living that truth even while there's still the wall being built. There's a simultaneity to it all. But for me, I think especially of the theology of Julian of Norwich. That's why we have her icon here. There's this vision of love making all things new, that God, Christ, the risen Christ, says in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.” All things, not just a handful of people who get the right doctrine, not just—no, all things: horses and amoeba and all things are being made new in mysterious ways that we can't completely know.Debra Rienstra And that's Colossians one and Romans eight as well.Elaine Heath It's this thread that comes through scripture, and we get to participate in that, even while we don't see all the things completely made new, we get to be part of that. And to me, that's what it means to follow Christ. That's what it means to be a disciple. And to be the love of God enfleshed in this world is to keep participating in the making of all things new. This is why healing has such a central role in my theological vision and my practice, is it's making all things new.Debra Rienstra Healing land, healing people, healing communities.Elaine Heath Yeah, yeah. Healing theology. Theology has been so damaged by patriarchy and philosophy and all sorts of things, you know, and racism.Debra Rienstra Colonization. Yeah, so that embodiment is important even theologically, because we're not aiming for some abstract doctrinal perfection. We're not aiming to become disembodied creatures. We're aiming for this embodied redemption. And so working on the farm, healing, you know, getting muddy, walking through forests, harvesting veg, and you're able to invite people into that embodiment. Little kids doing yoga, I think that's wonderful. You know, just finding this kind of rest in their own little bodies. Eating—one of the most embodied and kinship-with-creation things we do, right? Taking it inside ourselves. And that, I think, is condensed in ritual. So I know that you have been playfully experimenting with rituals. I was able to be a part of the Forest Feast last night with my husband Ron and our friend Colin. And it was this beautifully curated event where we shared table together and then went through this prayer sequence that you described, and it was beautifully participative. I noticed you do a blessing of the animals too on the farm. So good thing these are blessed chickens and blessed dairy goats, blessed dogs and cats. What other sort of liturgical shenanigans have you tried to help people live into this embodied faith practice?Elaine Heath We do so many things. It's so much fun. It's never boring. It's never boring. We have a ritual in the fall, in late November, where we tuck the farm in and put it to bed for the winter, and we have the children come, we get some compost. You know, we've cleared out the beds, and they're gonna rest now. And so the children put some compost in. And we have a liturgy that we use. We light candles, and we thank Mother Earth for the food, we thank God for the opportunities. And so this is one of the things that we do ritualistically. We also have a spring ritual. It's very Hebrew-Bible like, right? With these seasons and the crops and the things with the liturgical seasons, we also have done a bunch of things. My favorite one so far was for epiphany, and this was two years ago. And so I had the interns from Duke Divinity School do the bulk of the planning. I just gave them a little bit of guidance about the four-fold order of worship and just some things like that. So we had a journey through the forest. It started here. We went on the forest trail. Of course, it was dark outside, and they had gone ahead and set up fairy lights at certain places where we're going to stop. And one of the interns' fiance was a musician, so he had his guitar, and he had one of those things where you can play the harmonica and play the guitar at the same time, but he was our troubadour, and all of us were the Magi. So there's this troop of Magi, and we would stop at each station along the way, and there were prompt questions that we would take five minutes, and people could respond to these questions. There would be a scripture reading, and we respond to the question, we go to the next station. And it was so amazing. People shared from their lives in a very deep way. It surprised me how quickly they went deep. Well, it was dark, and there were these twinkle lights, and there was the troubadour. Then we finally got up to the Christ child, and we went into the goat barn. And honestly, I get chills every time I even remember this. But the students had set up in the goat barn—and the goats were in the barn. Okay, they were behind a little chain link thing so they didn't step on the icons and everything. But they had set up an altar at the base of the feeding trough with a big icon of Mary with the Christ Child, candles, and some other things there. There were different icons and some fairy lights. And we went in there, and we all crowded in and began to sing. We sang “This Little Light of Mine,” we sang some Christmas carols, and finished the story. And then we came back to the house and had some snacks and talked about what kind of wisdom was given to us since we were Magi. We were going to be people seeking wisdom and seeking—it was the most beautiful thing. And we've done lots of things like that. We see the land here is a primary text to learn from and to listen to and to observe, not as a metaphor, but as, it's actually a conversation partner. So we do things like that.Debra Rienstra That playfulness is so exciting to me, this sense of using our tradition, using our scriptures, using the skills that we've honed as people of faith over generations, singing together, praying together, but experimenting with those things in new contexts and new ways, in new forms of embodiment that are just faithful and yet playful. And so, as you say, people go deep because they're sort of jarred out of their habitual ways, and that can be such a great formational moment and bonding moment too, and it's very memorable. We remember that in ways—you know, you had such joy on your face as you're describing that. What would you say as you look back over the last, well, let's see, it's been almost eight years? Seven, eight years here at this location. What would you say has given you the most anguish and what has given you the most joy?Elaine Heath Oh, anguish. Which story should I tell?Debra Rienstra Yeah, I don't want to make it sound like it's all been beautiful and romantic and perfect.Elaine Heath Whenever you have community, you have drama. Well, you know, at your typical church, you're gonna have drama sometimes. But what we've found a few times, and it's pretty predictable. This happens in traditional monasteries too, which is why they have novitiate periods that are sometimes quite lengthy and sort of staggered, like you put your toe in the water. People of very high capacity who are deeply grounded spiritually and have a real vision for the gospel, are attracted to community life like this. People who are really hurt, who've had a lot of brokenness, especially from religious institutions or abusive situations, trauma that that is unresolved, that has a lot of unhealed wounds, are also attracted to places like this, often with a sort of utopian hope, because of, you know, life's deficits.Debra Rienstra And they feel that this is a place of healing, and they're right about that.Elaine Heath They're right about it. And so what actually happens is sometimes with the person, the second category of person, will come and join in and just be so full of gladness, because, “Oh, these, these are real people, like they're really doing things in the world. This is what I've longed for.” But then, as relationships form, and we're doing life together, and we all bump up against each other at times, the unhealed wounds fester. And the way I see it is, God's bringing them to a place where, if they'll just do their inner work now, now that it's clear what's the next step—if they'll take the next step, whether it's get some therapy, stay on your meds, get some support for your addiction recovery, whatever the things are—if you'll take the next step, then this is a very supportive community that can help you. It's a village that can be around you and you will heal here in the context of this village. But sometimes people are not willing or not able, or it's not time in their own sense of what they can do, and so then they'll leave. Sometimes when people leave, this happens in traditional churches, for whatever reason, this is a common sort of psychological reaction, they'll create some sort of chaotic drama to be the excuse for leaving, rather than have to face the fact that it was time for me to take the next step, and I was too scared. Because that takes a lot of self awareness, you know, to come to realizations about things like that. So I know from talking to people, from, you know, friends that are in traditional monasteries and convents that this is a common thing that happens there. So it happens here sometimes, and it's never easy. It's always painful and always challenging, you know, but with God's help, we get through it. And so that's the anguish, when those kinds of things happen. We've had a time or two where, over the last 20 years, really, where a person would come in, usually a young adult who's very idealistic, and they're like, “This isn't a new monastic community. You're not forcing people to pray three times a day!” You know, whatever the thing is that they have in their head that is supposed to be, because we're pretty gracious, you know.Debra Rienstra You don't get up at three in the morning.Elaine Heath Yeah, that's not us. We can't do that because, especially if you've got families with children and, you know, you've got to get up and go to work in the morning. So sometimes there will be somebody that figures they know more than everybody else in the room, and they want to take over and run the joint. You know, that's not going to happen. So then that sometimes creates some anguish. What about the joy? The joy is—and there's so much to give me joy. I really, really love seeing people come alive, like I really love seeing people who have, especially people who have been harmed by religion, because of their identity or because of anything, and they find deep spiritual friendship. They find how to connect, in Buechner's words, their deep passion with the world's great need, and start a new thing. And it gives them so much joy. And it's actually helping people. It's helping the world. And just sort of fanning that flame, that gives me a lot of joy. I have so much joy being in touch with the land and the animals. I just really experience them directly mediating God to me. I feel the divine life in them, and I feel, I guess I get a lot of dopamine hits when I'm out there harvesting and when I'm, you know, brushing the goats and talking to the chickens and whatnot.Debra Rienstra They are blessed chickens!Elaine Heath They are blessed chickens.Debra Rienstra What advice would you give to church people who, even though they love their church and their community, recognize that something needs to change, but they don't know where to start? What advice would you give?Elaine Heath To start in their own home, if at all possible, start in their own neighborhood. Start having neighbors over for dinner. Do not tell them we're going to have a Bible study now, because that's—it's not to have a Bible study. It's to form friendships with our neighbors. Start neighboring well. Figure out who lives on my street. Who lives across the street? Invite them for dinner. Have neighborhood potlucks. We did this in Texas, right after we moved there, I think they're still going. We'd have 50 people in our house sometimes. But just invite the neighbors for dinner. Have a potluck. Get to know them. Remember their birthdays, go to their kids' graduation. When you find out their mother died, go to the funeral. It's so simple. It's just such basic neighboring. That's where to start. It's not a church program. It's not making you stop going to church somewhere, to go to church over here. What you're actually doing is living church in your own neighborhood. Start doing that.Debra Rienstra Elaine, it's been such a pleasure to be here on the farm with you and to talk with you, get to know you a little bit. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for spending some time with me today.Elaine Heath It's been a joy. Thank you for the interview.Debra Rienstra Thanks for joining us for show notes and full transcripts, please visit debrarienstra.com and click on the Refugia Podcast tab. This season of the Refugia Podcast is produced with generous funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Colin Hoogerwerf is our awesome audio producer. Thanks to Ron Rienstra for content consultation as well as technical and travel support. Till next time, be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit refugianewsletter.substack.com

••• The Secret of Grace, Segment-2 of 2, Ep 400b . ••• Bible Study Verses: Ephesians 4:7-15, Hebrews 4:16, Daniel 11:32, Hebrews 5:12, Hebrews 10:25, James 1.25 . ••• PART-A's VERSES: 2 Peter 3:1-18, Romans 6:1-2, Romans 3.23, 1 Corinthians 1.10 . ••• “Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down" John Wesley 1703-1791 † ••• “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ", Ephesians 4:7, KJV . ••• What are the 3-reasons why is it necessary for the believers to grow in grace? ••• What are the 4-benefits of growing in grace? STOPPED AT t16••• What are the 5-life actions to growing in grace?••• Are you going to ask your small group to pray that you will be more intentional about growing in grace of God through the power of Holy Spirit? ••• PART-A BIBLE STUDY QUESTIONS: What are at least 3-aspects of growing in grace? ••• How should the knowledge of the death, resurrection and return of the Lord Jesus Christ affect the way we live our lives?••• Pastor Otuno expounds on this and much more on the exciting journey of Fresh Encounter Radio Podcast originally aired on October 25, 2025 on WNQM, Nashville Quality Ministries and WWCR World Wide Christian Radio broadcast to all 7-continents on this big beautiful blue marble, earth, floating through space. Please be prayerful before studying The Word of God so that you will receive the most inspiration possible. ••• This Discipleship Teaching Podcast is brought to you by Christian Leadership International and all the beloved of God who believe in its mission through prayer and support. Thank you . ••• Broadcaster's Website - https://www.lifelonganointing.com/ . ••• Exceeding Thanks to Universe Creator Christ Jesus AND photo by Stacey Franco, https://www.instagram.com/staceyfranc0/, on unsplash, Art Direction by gil on his mac with free mac layout software . ••• Study Guides at - https://shows.acast.com/fresh-encounter-radio-podcast/episodes . ••• SHARING LINK: https://shows.acast.com/fresh-encounter-radio-podcast/250927-the-secret-behind-the-believers-dominion-p8-s2-ep400b . ••• † http://christian-quotes.ochristian.com/John-Wesley-Quotes/ . John Wesley was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, with founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. In contrast to George Whitefield's Calvinism (which later led to the forming of the Calvinistic Methodists), Wesley embraced Arminianism. Methodism in both forms was a highly successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged people to experience Christ personally. Wesley believed that this doctrine should be constantly preached, especially among the people called Methodists. In fact, he contended that the purpose of the Methodist movement was to "spread scriptural holiness across England." Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the Church of England and insisted that his movement was well within the bounds of the Anglican tradition. His maverick use of church policy put him at odds with many within the Church of England, though toward the end of his life he was widely respected . ••• RESOURCE - https://www.soundcloud.com/thewaytogod/ . ••• RESOURCE - https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/kjv/john.1%20 .••• FERP250927-Episode#400b GOT250927 Ep400b . ••• The Secret Behind the Believers Dominion, Part-8b: The Secret of Grace, Segment-2 .Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/fresh-encounter-radio-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patrick tackles everything from spouses nodding off at Mass to pressing questions about mixed-faith relationships and finding trustworthy news for Catholic classrooms, all with real listener calls and a dash of humor. He doesn’t shy away from controversy either, one caller presses him on whether celebrating violence online should mean losing your job, prompting Patrick to challenge listeners on character, consequences, and genuine Christian witness. What emerges is a fast-moving blend of everyday Catholic struggles and tough conversations, always anchored in faith and real-life experience. Rosy (email) – How can I help my husband from falling asleep at Mass? (00:55) Crella (email) – How do I talk to someone who refuses to renounce Methodism, and even tries to convince me that the Holy Eucharist is not the real blood and body of Jesus Christ, but just a symbol? (06:44) Katie - Do you have any alternatives to CNN10 that can be played in Catholic schools. The teacher plays it in one of my kid's classes. (14:14) Mary Anne (email) – People should not be fired for celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. (22:17) Emma - My sister told me she is going to a Protestant service with her friends. Do you have any advice on what I can say to warn her about this? (31:18) Bridget (email) - Patrick, if you needed surgery and the best surgeon is happy about ANYBODY'S death and so is the second-best surgeon and so is the third best......would you take the fourth best? I don't think I would. (37:11) Richard (email) - How might a faithful Catholic respond to this 'religious hero' worship? (40:11) Calvin - Falling asleep during the homily. Sitting more towards the edge of the bench instead of leaning back on the pew has helped me. (47:27) Audio: Scott Jennings – I’m not losing any sleep over the people being fired for celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death (49:10)

Paul reminds us to avoid arguments that divide and instead root ourselves in the unshakable foundation of God's truth.

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he summed up the law and prophets in two calls: Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind — and love your neighbor as yourself. Justice work begins here. In community, we turn love into action — showing up, speaking out, and standing with those in need. #LoveYourNeighbor #LoveHeals #Matthew22 #UVC

John Wesley grew the Methodist movement by following a simple format that incorporated field preaching, small accountability groups, empowering leaders and serving his community. In “Calling on Fire: Reclaiming the Method of Methodism,” co-author Rev. Dr. Chris Heckert challenges United Methodists to reclaim Wesley's practices that empowered everyday disciples—not just clergy—to lead, serve, and grow … Continue reading "‘Calling on Fire': Reclaiming Wesley's method to renew the church"

Rev. Pamela Lightsey leads us through Ephesians 2:3–10 in a message titled "The Way of Grace." Discover how God's gift of grace transforms our lives—not because of what we've done, but because of who God is. Come as you are. Experience grace, healing, and community. #UrbanVillageChurch #WayOfGrace #Ephesians2 #LoveHeals

Cain's question—“Am I my brother's keeper?”—still echoes today. John Wesley, founder of Methodism, answered with a resounding yes—especially when confronting the horrors of slavery. He called slavery “the sum of all villainies,” recognizing that to ignore the suffering of others is to deny our shared humanity. In this story, God hears the cry of Abel's blood—just as God hears the cries of the oppressed across time. The call is clear: we are responsible for one another. As Methodists, as Christians, as people of faith—we are our siblings' keepers. We are called to stand against systems that kill, exploit, and discard. #Genesis4 #JohnWesley #FaithAndJustice #AmIMyBrothersKeeper #UMC #LoveHeals #ChurchForJustice #LoveHeals #JohnWesley #UMC

What is the impact of historical research on our faith? Dr. Christopher Jones examines Brother James Covel's life and choices and how his life inspires belief in grace and a message of hope.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC217ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC217FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC217DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC217PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastDC217ESYOUTUBEhttps://youtu.be/ty4CrredNj0ALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 - Part 1 - Dr. Christopher Jones01:45 Dr. Jones previews this episode03:10 Dr. Jones's bio05:01 Becoming a Historian10:06 Four missionaries and an important conversion16:10 Three branches transplanted to Ohio18:43 D&C 38:32 The Lord alleviates fear21:15 Insights from the Apostles22:07 James Covill/Covel26:17 Changing our opinion of James Covel27:18 Backgrounds of D&C 37 and D&C 38 28:18 D&C 37:1-4 - Gather to the Ohio29:45 D&C 38:1-3, 32 God reassures and promises an endowment35:25 A conference at Fayette37:21 What we had wrong about James Covel46:35 What is Antebellum? And more Covel discoveries51:45 Why Methodist vs. Baptist matters for James Covel53:23 D&C 38:26 - A parable and baptism debates57:19 Methodism experiences changes1:00:37 Final words to James Covel1:04:51 Comfort for those that have left the fold1:06:56 The end of James Covel's earthly story1:09:04 Application of James Covel's story01:12:23  - End of Part I - Dr. Christopher JonesThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications Director"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com