Podcasts about Prevailing

This teaching with Pastor Tolani, who leads us into a deeper understanding of intercession and prevailing prayer. Intercession is presented as a divine partnership with God, where believers enforce heaven's will on earth and align territories to God's purpose.OUR CREED"As sure as God helps us,We will not give upWe will not cave inWe will not quitWe will not failWe will not dieUntil our job is doneAnd victory is won"——Partner with us to spread the influence of God all over the world. Give - https://pay.squadco.com/TheNewglobal——BROADCAST DETAILSMinister: Pst. Tolani OlakundeDate: Wednesday, January 27th, 2026——Stay ConnectedSubscribe to the latest content: http://bit.ly/subscribethenewliveWebsite: http://wearethenew.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearethenew_global/#21DaysOfAcceleration #SholaOkodugha

Billy Humphrey Podcast is a collection of Billy's message series. Billy brings passionate truth and authoritative biblical perspectives to a range of topics including The Knowledge of God, Night and Day Prayer, Global Mission, End Times, and Revival. For more information, please visit www.billyhumphrey.com

Pastor Bob leads us through an encouraging message from the Book of Acts titled “Marks of a Prevailing Church,” rooted in Acts 11. He reminds us that God uses powerful “aha moments” to reveal Himself and draw others into faith, and that a prevailing church is marked by unity across cultures, diversity embraced as a strength, and Spirit-filled leadership that encourages and equips the body. Together, we are challenged to live out these marks as we reflect Christ in our lives.

Irresistable grace does not mean grace cannot be resisted. It means that when God chooses, he can and will overcome that resistance.

Prevailing prayer takes the Christian to the mountain and enables him to cover it with a cloud of blessings and the earth, with mecry drops all around. Bible in a Year: Exodus 14-15 & Matthew 17

The sermon, drawn from Luke 11, calls believers to a deeper, more intentional prayer life in 2026 by emphasizing three essential principles: prioritizing prayer through dedicated, distraction-free spaces; cultivating passion in prayer by recognizing its transformative power and longing for personal testimonies of answered prayer; and practicing persistent, importunate prayer, illustrated through Jesus' parable of the midnight request, which affirms that God delights in the faithfulness of those who keep seeking, asking, and knocking. Rooted in the example of Christ's own prayerful life and the promise that 'those who persist in prayer prevail,' the message urges believers to persevere in faith, trusting that God answers not only in timing but with greater abundance than expected, especially in times of crisis and long-term need.

In this episode of Pray the Word on Genesis 32:28, David Platt describes how we are to commune with God according to his design.Explore more content from Radical.

Can Therapists Start a Union? The Antitrust Trap, the Shadow Committee, and the Economic Strangulation of American Psychotherapy Analyzing America's Healthcare Regulations and Their Effect on Us: Why the Law Prevents Therapists from Organizing While Allowing a Private Committee to Fix Prices for the Entire Medical System https://gettherapybirmingham.com/can-therapists-start-a-union-spoiler-alert-they-cant/ The Monthly Rage Thread If you hang around therapist forums long enough, you will see it happen. It operates with the regularity of the tides. Someone posts a thread, usually after receiving a contract from an insurance company offering 1998 rates for 2025 work, and asks the obvious question: “We are the ones providing the care. The system collapses without us. Why don't we just all go on strike? Why don't we form a union and demand fair pay?” It is a logical question. In almost every other sector of the economy, workers who feel exploited band together to negotiate better terms. Screenwriters shut down Hollywood to get paid for streaming residuals. Auto workers walk off the line. Teachers fill the state capitol. Nurses at major hospital systems have successfully unionized and won significant concessions. So why, in the midst of a national mental health crisis, does the mental health workforce remain so politically impotent? The answer is not that we lack will. It is not that we lack organization. The answer is that for private practice therapists, forming a union is a federal crime. This is not a political manifesto. It is an analysis of the bizarre regulatory environment that governs American healthcare, a system of antitrust laws, shadow committees, and bureaucratic classifications that effectively strips clinicians of their bargaining power while empowering the corporations that pay them. If you want to understand why corporate tech monopolies are ruining therapy, or why the corporatization of healthcare feels so suffocating, you have to understand the legal straitjacket we are all wearing. And you have to understand the one group that is allowed to set prices, the one group exempt from the rules that bind the rest of us. Part I: You Are Not a Worker, You Are a Standard Oil Tycoon The primary reason therapists cannot unionize dates back to the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to prevent massive corporations like Standard Oil from colluding to fix prices and destroy the free market. It prohibits “every contract, combination… or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” The law was a response to genuine abuses: companies buying up competitors, dividing territories, and coordinating prices to gouge consumers who had no alternatives. Here is the catch: In the eyes of the federal government, a private practice therapist is not a “worker.” You are a business entity. Even if you are a solo practitioner struggling to pay rent in a subleased office, seeing clients between crying in your car and eating lunch at your desk, the law views you as the CEO of a micro-corporation. You are classified as a 1099 independent contractor, not a W-2 employee, and that distinction makes all the difference in the world. If two workers at Starbucks talk about their wages and agree to ask for a raise, that is “collective bargaining,” which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. But if two private practice therapists talk about their reimbursement rates and agree to ask Blue Cross for a raise, that is “price-fixing.” It is legally indistinguishable, in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission, from gas stations conspiring to raise the price of unleaded. It sounds absurd, but the FTC takes it deadly seriously. When independent contractors organize to demand higher rates, when they share information about what they are being paid and coordinate their responses, they are engaging in horizontal price-fixing, one of the most serious violations of antitrust law. The Sherman Act provides for criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. The law that was meant to break up monopolies is now used to prevent social workers from asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. The irony is crushing. The same regulatory framework that prevents two therapists from discussing their rates allows massive insurance conglomerates to merge repeatedly, concentrating buyer power in fewer and fewer hands. UnitedHealth Group, for example, has acquired dozens of companies over the past two decades, becoming the largest healthcare company in the United States. When they offer a “take it or leave it” contract to providers, they do so with the full knowledge that fragmented, legally prohibited from organizing therapists have no counter-leverage. The antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopoly power, have created a system where sellers are atomized and buyers are consolidated. Economists call this “monopsony,” and it is precisely the market distortion the Sherman Act was supposed to prevent. Part II: The Day the “Learned Profession” Died For a long time, doctors and lawyers thought they were exempt from these laws. They argued that they were “learned professions,” not mere tradespeople, and therefore above the grubby laws of commerce. They believed that their ethical obligations to patients and clients set them apart from the rules that governed steel mills and meatpacking plants. Medicine was a calling, not a business, and surely the government would not regulate the sacred doctor-patient relationship as if it were a commercial transaction. That illusion was shattered in 1975 by the Supreme Court case Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar. The case involved lawyers, not doctors, but its implications cascaded through every licensed profession in America. The Goldfarbs were purchasing a home and needed a title examination. The Virginia State Bar had established a minimum fee schedule for such services, and every lawyer they contacted quoted the exact same price. They sued, arguing that this fee schedule was illegal price-fixing. The Supreme Court agreed. In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that professional services, including legal and medical advice, are “trade or commerce” subject to antitrust laws. The “learned profession” exemption, which had been assumed but never explicitly established in law, was declared a myth. “The nature of an occupation, standing alone,” the Court wrote, “does not provide sanctuary from the Sherman Act.” This ruling was intended to lower prices for consumers by preventing lawyers from setting minimum fees, and in that narrow sense it was a good thing. But in healthcare, it had a catastrophic side effect: it made it illegal for doctors and therapists to band together to resist the pricing power of insurance companies. The “learned profession” exemption is dead. We are now just businesses, and businesses are not allowed to hold hands. This creates the illusion of progress: we have “free market” competition among providers, but monopsony power among payers. It is a market where the sellers are forbidden from organizing, but the buyers are allowed to merge until they are too big to fail. The result is not a free market at all. It is a market designed to transfer wealth from one class (providers) to another (insurers and administrators), with the law itself serving as the enforcement mechanism. Part III: The Cartel in the Basement If therapists cannot collude to set prices, surely nobody else can, right? Wrong. There is one group in American healthcare that is allowed to meet in a room, decide what every doctor's time is worth, and set prices for the entire industry. It is called the RUC, the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee. And understanding the RUC is the key to understanding why talk therapy is dying in the medical model, why psychiatrists abandoned the couch for the prescription pad, and why your insurance company offers you a ghost network of providers who never answer the phone. The Birth of a Shadow Government To comprehend the current crisis in mental health economics, one must excavate the foundations of the physician payment system. Prior to 1992, Medicare reimbursed physicians based on a system known as “Customary, Prevailing, and Reasonable” charges. Under this system, physicians were paid based on their historical billing charges. It was inherently inflationary; it rewarded those who raised their fees most aggressively and created wide geographic disparities for identical services. In response to spiraling costs, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, mandating a transition to a fee schedule based on the resources required to provide a service. This birthed the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale. The intellectual architecture for this system was developed by a team of economists at Harvard University, led by William Hsiao. Hsiao's team sought to create a “unified theory” of medical value, attempting to quantify the “work” involved in disparate medical acts, comparing the cognitive intensity of a psychiatric evaluation with the technical skill of a hernia repair. The Harvard study was revolutionary. It promised to level the playing field, suggesting that cognitive services, the thinking and talking that comprises primary care and mental health, were vastly undervalued relative to surgical procedures. Had Hsiao's original recommendations been implemented purely, the income gap between generalists and specialists might have narrowed significantly. But the administrative complexity of assigning values to over 7,000 Current Procedural Terminology codes overwhelmed the Health Care Financing Administration. Into this administrative vacuum stepped the American Medical Association. The AMA, fearing that the government would unilaterally set prices, proposed a “partnership.” They would convene a committee of experts to maintain and update the relative values, providing this labor-intensive service to the government at no cost. The government accepted. Thus, in 1991, the RUC was born, not as a government agency, but as a private advisory body with unparalleled influence over public funds. The Architecture of Control The RUC's claim to legitimacy rests on its status as an “expert panel.” But a structural analysis of its composition reveals a profound bias that mimics the governance of a cartel designed to protect incumbent interests. The committee consists of 32 members, but power is concentrated in the 29 voting seats. Of these, 21 seats are appointed by major national medical specialty societies. The distribution is not proportional to the volume of services provided to Medicare beneficiaries, nor is it proportional to the physician workforce. Instead, it is frozen in a historical moment that favored high-technology specialties. Primary care physicians, who perform roughly 45 to 50 percent of Medicare work, hold approximately 4 to 5 seats, giving them about 17 percent of the vote. Procedural and surgical specialties, including surgery, radiology, and anesthesiology, hold 15 to 18 seats, giving them roughly 60 percent of the vote despite performing only 35 to 40 percent of Medicare work. The American Psychiatric Association holds a single seat. One seat. This lone representative must negotiate with a supermajority of specialists, neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, radiologists, and ophthalmologists, whose financial interests are often diametrically opposed to the valuation of cognitive work. The cartel dynamic is enforced by a statutory requirement of budget neutrality. The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule is a zero-sum game. If the total relative value units projected for a given year exceed the budget, a “scaler” is applied to reduce the conversion factor, effectively cutting everyone's pay. Therefore, any proposal to increase the value of psychotherapy, which would increase the total RVU spend, effectively asks every surgeon in the room to take a pay cut to fund the raise for psychiatrists. Given that a two-thirds majority is required to pass a recommendation, the procedural bloc holds absolute veto power over any redistribution of wealth. The Secret Chamber A hallmark of cartel behavior is the restriction of information. For nearly two decades, the RUC operated in near-total secrecy. While recent years have seen minor concessions to transparency, such as the publication of vote totals, the core deliberative process remains opaque. RUC meetings are private. The public, the press, and even non-RUC physicians are largely barred from attending the deliberations where billions of tax dollars are allocated. Participants, including the specialty advisors who present data, must sign strict non-disclosure agreements. These agreements prevent them from discussing the specific tradeoffs, deals, or arguments made within the chamber. A former RUC participant described these agreements as “draconian,” designed to insulate the committee from public accountability. The Government Accountability Office and the Center for American Progress have noted the inherent conflict of interest. The individuals setting the prices are the same individuals who receive the payments. Unlike a regulatory agency, where officials are salaried and divested of industry assets, RUC members are practicing physicians whose personal incomes are directly tied to the decisions they make. This secrecy serves a functional purpose: it allows for “logrolling.” A representative from Orthopedics might support an inflated value for a Cardiology code in exchange for Cardiology's support on a Knee Replacement code. This “I'll scratch your back” dynamic creates an upward pressure on procedural values that excludes those outside the dominant coalition, specifically primary care and mental health. The Antitrust Shield Why has the Department of Justice not broken up this cartel? The legal shield is the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine. This Supreme Court doctrine establishes that private entities are immune from antitrust liability when they are petitioning the government. Because the RUC technically only “recommends” values to CMS (that is petitioning), and CMS “decides” (that is government action), the RUC is protected by the First Amendment right to petition. This legal loophole allows the RUC to operate with monopolistic characteristics without fear of prosecution, provided CMS continues to go through the motions of “reviewing” the recommendations. And CMS accepts those recommendations over 90 percent of the time. Because private insurance companies generally base their rates on Medicare, this private committee effectively sets the price of healthcare for the entire country. If independent therapists did this, if they gathered in a room and agreed on what their services should cost, they would face criminal prosecution. But because the RUC operates under the fiction of “advising” the government, it is protected. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist solidarity provides cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. Part IV: The Mechanics of Suppression To control a market, one must control its currency. In American medicine, that currency is the Relative Value Unit. Every medical service, from a 15-minute therapy session to a heart transplant, is assigned a total RVU value. This value is the sum of three components: the Work RVU, which accounts for physician time, technical skill, mental effort, and judgment; the Practice Expense RVU, which covers overhead costs like rent, staff, and equipment; and the Malpractice RVU, which reflects professional liability insurance costs. The Work RVU, which comprises roughly 50 to 55 percent of the total value, is determined by RUC surveys. When a code is flagged for review, the relevant specialty society distributes a survey to a sample of its members. These respondents are asked to estimate the time and intensity of the service compared to a “reference service.” This methodology violates several principles of statistical validity. The surveys are voluntary and distributed by the specialty societies themselves. The respondents are typically those most active in the society and most invested in maximizing reimbursement, advocates rather than neutral observers. The sample sizes are often shockingly small; RUC surveys frequently rely on fewer than 50 or 70 respondents to set the price for services performed millions of times annually. A sample of 30 orthopedic surgeons might determine the value of a procedure costing Medicare billions. The Time Arbitrage The most critical variable in the RUC equation is time. The Work RVU is conceptually derived from the formula: Work equals Time multiplied by Intensity. Therefore, inflating the time estimate is the most direct route to inflating the price. Independent studies by RAND and the Urban Institute, often using objective data like Operating Room logs, have consistently shown that the RUC overestimates the time required for surgical procedures. A procedure valued by the RUC as taking 60 minutes may, in reality, take 30 minutes. This creates an arbitrage opportunity. If a gastroenterologist can perform a “60-minute” colonoscopy in 20 minutes, they can effectively perform three procedures in the time allotted for one. They bill for three hours of work in one hour of real time. This “efficiency gain” is captured entirely by the physician as profit. Psychotherapy cannot utilize this arbitrage. CPT codes for psychotherapy are explicitly time-based in their definition. Code 90832 requires 16 to 37 minutes. Code 90834 requires 38 to 52 minutes. Code 90837 requires 53 minutes or more. A psychiatrist cannot perform a 60-minute therapy session in 20 minutes; doing so constitutes fraud. Therefore, the revenue of a psychotherapist is capped by the linear passage of time. They can sell, at maximum, roughly 8 to 10 units of labor per day. A proceduralist, aided by RUC-inflated time assumptions, can sell 20 or 30 units of “RUC time” in the same day. This structural discrepancy creates a widening income gap that no amount of “hard work” by the therapist can close. It is not a market failure. It is market design. The “Thinking” Penalty The RUC's bias is not merely structural; it is philosophical. The committee, dominated by surgeons and proceduralists, consistently values “doing things to people,” cutting, scanning, injecting, far more highly than “talking to people,” diagnosing, counseling, managing complex chronic conditions. This creates a regulatory environment that functions as a de facto wealth transfer from cognitive care to procedural care. In 2013, a major revision of psychiatry codes exposed this bias in stark relief. Previously, psychiatrists used codes that bundled the medical evaluation with the psychotherapy. The new system required psychiatrists to bill an E/M code for the medical management plus an “add-on” code for psychotherapy. While intended to improve transparency, this change exposed psychotherapy to the raw mechanics of the RUC's valuation bias. By isolating the “therapy” component, the committee could subject it to rigorous cross-specialty comparison. And the committee, dominated by surgeons, views “talking to a patient” as low-intensity work compared to “operating on a patient.” The economic signal was clear. This created the 15-minute med check culture not because psychiatrists stopped caring, but because the regulatory environment made relational care financial suicide. It effectively “illegalized” the practice of deep, slow psychiatry for anyone who wanted to take insurance. Part V: The “Messenger Model” and Other Legal Fictions When therapists ask about collective bargaining, lawyers will often point them to the only legal loophole available: the “Messenger Model.” In this model, a third party (the messenger) acts as an intermediary between a group of providers and an insurance company. The messenger takes the insurance company's offer and conveys it to each therapist individually. Each therapist must then make a unilateral, independent decision to accept or reject it. The messenger is strictly forbidden from negotiating. They cannot say, “The group rejects this.” They cannot say, “We want 10% more.” They cannot advise the therapists on what to do. They can only carry messages. This is why “Independent Practice Associations” are often toothless. In the 2008 case North Texas Specialty Physicians v. FTC, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear that if an IPA actually tries to leverage its numbers to demand better rates, it violates antitrust laws. If it follows the messenger model, it has no leverage. It is a “heads I win, tails you lose” regulatory structure designed to protect payers, not providers. The only exception is “clinical integration,” where providers genuinely merge their practices, share infrastructure, and accept joint financial risk. But this requires substantial capital investment and essentially means ceasing to be an independent practitioner. It is a legal pathway available mainly to large physician groups and hospital systems, not to solo therapists working out of rented offices. Part VI: Market Distortions and the Flight to Cash When a cartel sets a price below the market equilibrium, suppliers exit the formal market. This is precisely what has happened in psychotherapy. Mental health providers generally have lower overhead than surgeons. They do not need MRI machines or sterile surgical suites. And they face high consumer demand; the national mental health crisis ensures a steady stream of people seeking services. This gives them an “exit option” that proceduralists do not have. They can refuse to accept insurance and operate as cash-only businesses. The statistics are stark. Nearly 50 percent of psychiatrists do not accept commercial insurance, compared to less than 10 percent of other specialists. A 2023 survey indicated that 64 percent of private practice therapists planned to increase their cash-pay rates. Research published in Health Affairs Scholar found that patients are 10.6 times more likely to go out-of-network for mental health care than for medical/surgical care. This mass exodus is a rational economic response to RUC-suppressed rates. If the RUC says an hour of therapy is worth $100 via the RVU-to-dollar conversion, but the market demand is willing to pay $250, the provider will leave the RUC-controlled sector. They are not abandoning their profession; they are abandoning a pricing regime that values their work at less than half its market rate. Ghost Networks The RUC's pricing failure creates “Ghost Networks,” directories filled with providers who are ostensibly “in-network” but are functionally inaccessible. They are either full, not accepting new patients, retired, have moved, or simply do not respond to inquiries from insurance-based patients because the administrative burden of prior authorizations and clawbacks outweighs the suppressed fee. This is not a “shortage” of providers in the absolute sense. There is no shortage of therapists in private practice. There is a shortage of therapists willing to work at the RUC-determined price point. The insurance directories are graveyards of phantom availability, creating the illusion of access where none exists. The Cost Paradox The central thesis of the RUC's defenders is that they “control costs.” By strictly managing RVUs, they claim to save taxpayer money. In psychotherapy, this logic backfires catastrophically. By suppressing reimbursement rates to a level that drives providers out of the network, the RUC forces patients into the cash market. The theoretical in-network cost might be a $20 copay with the insurer paying $100. The actual out-of-network cost is $250 cash out-of-pocket, paid in full by the patient. Thus, the “cost of therapy” for the consumer skyrockets. Therapy becomes a luxury good, accessible only to those with disposable income. For the poor and middle class, the “cost” is effectively infinite, because the service becomes inaccessible. The RUC's cost-control measure for the system becomes a cost-multiplier for the patient. It shifts the financial burden from the risk pool, where it belongs, to the individual, where it causes maximum harm. The Signal to Students The RUC sends powerful economic signals to medical students making career decisions. When a student observes that a dermatologist or radiologist can earn $500,000 working regular hours, while a psychiatrist earns $240,000 handling emotional trauma and on-call emergencies, while a primary care doctor earns even less, the choice is clear for those motivated by financial security. The undervaluation of cognitive codes discourages the best and brightest from entering mental health and primary care. The cartel's pricing structure creates a perpetual labor shortage in the fields most needed for public health, while creating a surplus in high-margin procedural specialties. We then wonder why there are not enough psychiatrists, why primary care is in crisis, why mental health access is collapsing. The answer is in the price signal, and the price signal is set by a committee of proceduralists meeting behind closed doors. The Hands Are Tied The question “Why can't therapists start a union?” is not just a labor question. It is a window into the broken soul of American healthcare. We have built a system where a secret committee of proceduralists can legally fix prices to favor surgery over therapy, but a group of social workers cannot band together to ask for a living wage. We have utilized laws meant to break up Standard Oil to break up the solidarity of caregivers. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist coordination provides legal cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. The result is a regulatory environment that drives doctors crazy, burns out therapists, and leaves patients navigating a fragmented, assembly-line system that was never designed to heal them. It was designed to process them. Until we confront the legal architecture of this system, the RUC, the Sherman Act, the 1099 trap, we will remain powerless to change it. And the reality of therapy is that quick fixes, whether in treatment or in policy, usually end up costing us more in the end. Some states are beginning to push back. New York and California have implemented strict network adequacy standards requiring mental health appointments within 10 business days. These regulations force insurers to expand their networks, which means they must attract providers, which means they must raise reimbursement rates above the RUC/Medicare floor. It is effectively a state-level override of the RUC cartel, forcing capital back into the mental health labor market. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has long advocated for stripping the RUC of its power, proposing the use of empirical data, tax returns, payroll records, practice invoices, to set values automatically. But these are patchwork solutions to a systemic problem. The fundamental issue remains: we have created a healthcare system that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We have engineered a system where the only way to survive is to stop acting like a healer and start acting like a factory. And we have wrapped this system in a legal framework that criminalizes resistance while protecting the status quo. The hands are tied. But at least now we can see the ropes. Bibliography For those interested in the primary sources and legal texts that underpin this analysis, the following external resources provide high-trust verification of the claims made above: Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975): The Supreme Court decision that ended the “learned profession” exemption from antitrust laws. Read the Oyez Summary. The Sherman Antitrust Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7): The foundational text of US antitrust law prohibiting restraint of trade. Read the Document at the National Archives. North Texas Specialty Physicians v. Federal Trade Commission (5th Cir. 2008): A key ruling establishing that independent physicians cannot collectively bargain on fees without financial integration. Read the Court Opinion. FTC/DOJ Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care (1996): The federal guidelines explaining the “Messenger Model” and the narrow exceptions for clinical integration. Read the Guidelines (PDF). The RUC (AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee): The AMA's own description of the committee structure and its role in valuing physician work. Visit the AMA RUC Page. “Special Deal” by Haley Sweetland Edwards (Washington Monthly, 2013): An investigative deep-dive into how the RUC operates and its impact on primary care vs. specialty pay. Read the Investigation. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA): The law governing the right to unionize, which specifically excludes independent contractors. Read the NLRA. Laugesen, Miriam J. Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid. Harvard University Press, 2016. The definitive scholarly analysis of the RUC's history, structure, and influence on American healthcare pricing. Government Accountability Office. “Medicare Physician Payment Rates: Better Data and Greater Transparency Could Improve Accuracy.” 2015. GAO's critical analysis of RUC methodology and conflicts of interest. Center for American Progress. “Rethinking the RUC.” 2015. Policy analysis of the RUC's structural bias against primary care and cognitive services. Health Affairs Scholar. “Insurance Acceptance and Cash Pay Rates for Psychotherapy in the US.” 2023. Empirical research on out-of-network utilization in mental health care. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). “Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System.” 2024. Annual policy recommendations including proposals for reforming physician fee schedule methodology. Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, is the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective in Hoover, Alabama. He specializes in complex trauma treatment and writes at GetTherapyBirmingham.com.  

Billy Humphrey Podcast is a collection of Billy's message series. Billy brings passionate truth and authoritative biblical perspectives to a range of topics including The Knowledge of God, Night and Day Prayer, Global Mission, End Times, and Revival. For more information, please visit www.billyhumphrey.com

PREVIEW FOR LATER TONIGHT THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY IN THE RHINELAND Colleague Charles Spicer. In 1936, Hitler violated treaties by moving troops into the Rhineland. Despite prior warnings, London and Parisfailed to react due to prevailing pacifist sentiment. Spicer explains that because Hitler's soldiers lacked live ammunition, standing up to this aggression could have easily prevented the tragedy of World War II. 1945-46 NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL.

One Thing Can Change Everything - Prevailing Through Prayer - Bishop Kevin ForemanSupport the show

The man behind the evangelist, and the God behind the man. A must-hear story of how prayer changes everything.

Prevailing spiritual darkness is overcome by a greater prevailing spiritual light. Pastor Greg Barkman preaches from the prophecy of Isaiah about the one who is the light of the world.

Guest: Brad BrandonMinistry: Across NigeriaPosition: Founder & CEOTopics: recent developments regarding Christian persecution, the U.S. State Department designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, & the "Persecuted & Prevailing" conference in Washington, DC 12/4Website: acrossnigeria.org, washingtonpolicyinstitute.org

Guest: Brad BrandonMinistry: Across NigeriaPosition: Founder & CEOTopics: recent developments regarding Christian persecution, the U.S. State Department designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, & the "Persecuted & Prevailing" conference in Washington, DC 12/4Website: acrossnigeria.org, washingtonpolicyinstitute.org

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Jamie Barfield, the Lead Pastor at Palmetto Pointe Church in South Carolina. Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country, with four locations in South Carolina, a campus in Southern Illinois, and Spanish-language services reaching even more people. Is your church in a season of slow growth or scarcity? Wondering how to stay faithful and creative when resources are tight? Tune in as Jamie shares powerful lessons from 18 years of ministry—how his team built a thriving, multiplying church by embracing perseverance, stewardship, and servant leadership. The long road to growth. // Palmetto Pointe's story is one of persistence and faithfulness. It took three years to break 100 in attendance, five years before Jamie drew a paycheck, and six before the church had its own building. Today the church averages 2,500 weekly attendees and continues to grow—up 31% last year alone. Jamie credits that perseverance to remembering the “why” behind ministry: reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ. Stewardship over scarcity. // In the early years, Jamie says the constant feeling of “not enough”—not enough money, volunteers, or influence—could have been crushing. Instead, it shaped the church's DNA around stewardship and innovation. Rather than throwing money at problems, the team learned to think creatively and maximize what God had already placed in their hands. That approach still drives their ministry today. Faith that looks forward. // While rejecting the “name it and claim it” mindset, Jamie embraces faith-filled vision. Even when he doesn’t know how to get to big things, he continues to be faithful with what he has right now. This conviction shapes how he leads – every resource is treated as a seed that can grow if cultivated with faith and hard work. Developing leaders intentionally. // One of Palmetto Pointe's most distinctive practices is its 12-week leadership development process, a hands-on journey that every potential leader must complete before serving in a leadership role. Participants are recommended by current leaders and walk closely with Jamie throughout the course. During those 12 weeks, participants serve across multiple ministries and complete weekly assignments that build humility and discipline. Only after completing the program do they join the pool of eligible leaders. Multiplying wisely. // As Palmetto Pointe has launched new services and campuses, Jamie has learned key lessons about healthy multiplication. Each expansion begins with identifying potential pain points, recruiting dedicated volunteers, and ensuring no one burns out. Before adding services, his team recruits a core group committed to that specific time slot for at least nine months. Encouragement for church leaders. // As a district overseer, Jamie has a heart for pastors—especially those in smaller churches who feel stuck or discouraged. His advice: make one Sunday amazing. Pick one big day—Easter, Mother's Day, or another big day—and go all in. Then pick one person and invest deeply in them. Small, faithful steps of stewardship often lead to exponential impact. To learn more about Palmetto Pointe Church, visit palmettopointechurch.com or connect with Jamie on social media at @pastorjamieb. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: SermonDone Hey friends, Sunday is coming… is your Sermon Done?Pastor, you don't need more pressure—you need support. That's why you need to check out SermonDone—the premium AI assistant built exclusivelyfor pastors. SermonDone helps you handle the heavy lifting: deep sermon research, series planning, and even a theologically aligned first draft—in your voice—because it actually trains on up to 15 of your past sermons. But it doesn't stop there. With just a click, you can instantly turn your message into small group guides, discussion questions, and even kids curriculum. It's like adding a research assistant, a writing partner, and a discipleship team—all in one. Try it free for 5 days. Head over to www.SermonDone.com and use promo code Rich20 for 20% off today! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad to have you tune in today. We’ve got a great conversation. Really looking forward to talking to a leader who I know you can learn from, talking about stuff that is really important as we think about our churches and think about the future. It’s our honor today to have Jamie Barfield with us. He is part of the leadership team at Palmetto Pointe Church. I don’t know why that’s stuck in my mouth coming out.Rich Birch — It’s one of the fastest growing churches in the country with four locations in beautiful Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, a location in Southern Illinois and Spanish services as well. He’s an ordained bishop in the Church of God, serves as a district oh overseer for the Myrtle Beach and surrounding areas. He’s also served, he’s got a lot going on, in the State Evangelism Board for the Church of God in South Carolina. Welcome to the show, Jamie, a real expert on the show today. Appreciate you being here.Jamie Barfield — I don’t know about expert, but it is an honor to be here. I learned a lot from the school of hard knocks, so I will be definitely able to answer from that point point of view.Rich Birch — Love it. Well, Palmetto Pointe is one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Now multiple locations, which is we see that 73% of churches over 2000 have multiple locations. For leaders that don’t know the story, kind of give me the story of your church. Tell me a little bit of what’s going on. If it were to arrive this weekend, what would that look like?Jamie Barfield — Yeah, wild, wild story. 18 years. We just celebrated 18 years. Rich Birch — Congratulations.Jamie Barfield — Took us three years to ever break 100. Five years before I was ever getting a paycheck from the church. Rich Birch — Wow.Jamie Barfield — Six years before we ever had our own facility. Seven years before I ever had another staff member with me. Right before COVID hit, we were doing four services. And then obviously COVID shut everything down. And last year, God’s favor has just been upon the church the last few years. Last year, we grew about 31% last year – it was wild. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. And what does attendance look like now on the weekends at your church?Jamie Barfield — We had 2,500 last Sunday. Rich Birch — Wow. Jamie Barfield — And we had but 2,500 last Sunday and that we we had about, of that probably 2,100 was here at our our main location here in Myrtle Beach.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Well, I appreciate that you paced out the timeline there, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders who, or church planters who are in these early days, and it feels like, and the early days could be half a decade, you know, it could be a long time.Rich Birch — Take us back when you think kind of the mindset of that, what what what was that experience like? How did you keep going? Talk us through what did that look like?Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Early on, you know, and I talked at a conference last weekend about your “why”, knowing why you’re in this to begin with, knowing why you started and never forgetting the thing that actually put you in ministry to begin with. You know, that moment God called you, that moment that he asked you to do something great for him.Jamie Barfield — And in those moments or those seasons, um early on specifically, when you were ready to throw in the towel and ready to quit, you always had to be reminded of, okay, God, why am I doing this? What is it that you put inside of me that pushed me to want to do something great for your kingdom?Jamie Barfield — It was never about a paycheck. It was never about being on an amazing podcast like this. It was never about speaking at conferences. It was always about reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ and doing our best to get that out there. And so in moments where you wanted to throw in the towel and you wanted to quit, you always go back to those seasons of, okay, God, why did you call me into this to begin with?Rich Birch — And what, what, when you answer that question in your own life, where does that, but you know, kind of, when you think about the why, how, what is what’s the kind of image that comes to mind or language that you wrap around for, for you?Jamie Barfield — I’m very visual. So I think of standing before the throne of God one day and him saying, well done, my good and faithful servant.Rich Birch — So good.Jamie Barfield —And I’m so it’s going to be such a beautiful moment, but it also also motivates me .bBecause I think in that moment that I’m going to go in there almost nervous of the time that I wasted or the time that I gave up or the time that I… And I’m so I’m so motivated by that moment that I just want to stand there and have him look at me with a big smile on his face and say, you did it. You did everything that I put before you to do. You did it. Good job, servant.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, early on, if we could talk for real here… Jamie Barfield — For real. Rich Birch — …like church planting, man, it’s it’s it’s tough.Jamie Barfield — It’s the hardest thing ever.Rich Birch — And those early years, yeah, those early years, it’s like, I don’t know. It’s like, you’re not rolling in cash. You don’t have the resources. You don’t have the people. Man, how how did that go for you? The kind of scarcity? How did that shape the way you lead, innovate? Talk us through that piece of the puzzle.Jamie Barfield — Yeah, lack of money, lack of volunteers, lack of influence in the community. You know, it it feels like you know the the word attached to church planting so often is lack. I don’t have enough.Rich Birch — Yeah, right.Jamie Barfield — And that mindset inside of church planters, it’s going to be the thing that either crushes them or is going to cause them to innovate. For us, we just decided it was going to be the thing that pushed us or that drove us. And so the scarcity mindset that you spoke about at you know the beginning of ministry was some some things that were birthed inside of us that created some stewardship principles that we still follow today at our church. You know, we’re very much penny pinchers. We’re going to try the best to figure out the best way rather than just throwing money at problems.Jamie Barfield — You know, I got buddies that, you you know, with the best of intentions, they just think that they can you you know, throw money at situations or at problems and it’s going to fix everything. And our mindset is just, we’re just going to be innovative. We’re going to try to figure this out and do it the best way we can without expecting that money is going to fix everything, or that volunteers are going to fix everything, or that influence is going to fix everything. So even at the start, all of that lack created or birthed something in us that has followed with us for the last 18 years.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’d I’d love to talk a bit a bit a bit more about that. Well, first of all, I think it’s I think it’s good that you’re underlining mindset. I know for me as a leader, and it took me way too long to figure out that like kind of my approach. You know, I’m not like, ah you know, name it and claim it kind of person. I don’t think I can like, you know, I can’t just like make stuff up.Jamie Barfield — Sure.Rich Birch — But what I do know is if I don’t have the faith for it, if I don’t believe that God’s going to do something, then it doesn’t happen. Jamie Barfield — Yeah, for sure. Rich Birch — And so I’m not sure how that happens. There’s like a weird connection there between what I believe about faith and like, and I probably some people are like, man, this guy’s got bad theology. But talk us through that mindset and how, maybe give us a couple examples of how that has impacted you even today.Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah. So I agree completely. The the you know concept of name it and claim it versus you got to have faith and where is that balance? And I’m unsure as well, probably got bad theology as well. But I definitely think that, you know especially early on, like it was, God, I see big things in our future. And I’m not sure how to get to big things, but I know I can’t settle with these things that we have now. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.Jamie Barfield — So I have to press forward to make the things that we have in our hand now. I have to be a good steward of what you’ve given me. You know, he is faithful with little. You’re going to reward us with much. So, God, I’ve got to be faithful with what you put in my hands now.Rich Birch — That’s so true.Jamie Barfield — And I’m going to do the absolute best with this that I have in my hand now. But I’m going to do everything I can to make this thing better. Because I see bigger, because I see greater in front of us. Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — And so I’m not going to just stop here and say, well, this is all that I have. This is this is all that I’m ever going to be. I’m going to do more for you with what you placed in my hands. I’m going to be that servant that whenever you walk away from me, you gave me two talents. I’m go to do my best to turn it into four.Rich Birch — Yeah that’s, yeah, that’s amazing. That’s that’s so good. I love, you know, we wanna be multipliers of what, you know, what’s given. And I think the the financial stewardship thing makes sense. I think that’s understandable. You can see where, man, we gotta be good we gotta use the resources we have.Rich Birch — What about on the people side? When you think about kind of being good stewards of your people, maybe developing leaders, that sort of thing, how does that work? What practices have you helped has have you kind of kept this mindset of innovation, kind of getting the most out of our people, that sort of thing. How has that impacted how what you do even today?Jamie Barfield — Yeah, so I grew up in a very small church, you know maybe 70, 80 people. Maybe on on big Sundays we had 120 on Easter or something of that nature. And I saw leaders being thrown into situations, not trained well, not knowing church culture, not knowing what expectations were, not knowing the pastor’s heart. I saw all of that growing up.Jamie Barfield — And those leaders that were thrown in oftentimes would find themselves burnt out by focusing on things that they really had no passion for. And the pastor maybe didn’t know what the thing inside of them that was the thing that really you know would drive them. And so we just decided whenever, you know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, we just decided we were going to create a process of knowing our our leaders and our leaders knowing me well.Jamie Barfield — And so so we we go through a you know, I tell them all the time as we do a 12 week course. It’s not really we call it leadership development, but it’s not really leadership development. It’s more about you have to learn this culture. You have to learn my heart and my expectations for you. Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — But I’ve also got to learn your story, and your passion, and your vision. Because I want us to walk away from this 12 weeks together, I want to walk away better prepared for a future together. And so as you’re walking this 12 weeks out with me, you’re you you know they’re serving everywhere in the church and serving in kids ministry one week and you know making coffee one week and all of the things. But what we’re learning in that season together is expectation. And you’re learning me and I’m learning you, but we’re putting expectation on what it takes to be a leader. And so as they finish this 12-week process with me, they then go into this pool of just to even be considered to be a leader in our church. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s interesting.Jamie Barfield — So everybody that’s ever been a leader in our church, before they ever get to a leadership role, they’re a part of this pool because they’ve been through this 12-week journey with me. And I’m there with these people every step along the way, because again, I’ve seen it done so poorly that I just wanted to make sure that my fingerprint was upon leaders and volunteers in such a way. Rich Birch — That’s cool.Jamie Barfield — You know, there’s again, go back to a parable of Jesus, you know, the sower and the seed, you know, there’s this, there’s this principle of where you sow, if you sow in good soil, that it’s going to produce a good fruit. And so these people that are, that are, have a passion for the kingdom of God and want to do something great for the kingdom of God, those are the people that I want to invest my time, effort, and energy into because those are the people that are going to produce the, the largest or most productive harvest.Rich Birch — Okay. I want to double click on this. Jamie Barfield — For sure. Rich Birch — There’s a ah bunch there that I want to unpack… Jamie Barfield — For sure. Rich Birch — …which is fantastic. So how, so how do you identify or how does your team identify people that land in this 12 weeks? And then I’d love to talk a little bit about, you know, the, actually the mechanics of it what’s going on in those 12 weeks.Jamie Barfield — They have to be recommended by a leader in our church.Rich Birch — Okay.Jamie Barfield — It’s the only way to join the 12-week journey.Rich Birch — Okay.Jamie Barfield — So a leader in our church sees them, watches them serve or whatever inside of the church, and then they recommend them to my assistant, and we we start the journey with them.Rich Birch — Okay. And those, is it like you run it in like a couple of seasons during the year? It’s a class and like a cohort matter. What’s the content? Just give us a ah a bit of, you know, a bit more about that.Jamie Barfield — Yeah, we do we do two… Yeah, we do two semesters of it. So twice a year we run it. And it is ah one night a week. We meet at the church. We go through ah hour, hour and a half you know class type setting with constant homework through the week. And homework looks as simple as, you know, we we read the book, Andy Stanley, Next Generation Leader. We read through that together.Jamie Barfield — Homework is serving assignments on Sunday. Homework is cleaning the church. You know, little things like that that just creates this culture, this this servanthood inside of them. So once ah once a week, we’re here at the church learning together. But then through the week, we’re constantly um connected and, um you know, again, working, efforting to to sharpen them through the 12 weeks.Rich Birch — That’s cool. And you know you mentioned it multiple times. So you’ve really kept ownership of this group. They’re meeting with you. That I want to underline for folks that are listening in.Jamie Barfield — Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, your church you said is 2,500 people. There’s a lot of pastors of a church of 2,500 that would say, hey, I don’t have time to meet with this. Kind of unpack that a little bit more. I know you mentioned this already, but I want to kind of unpack what what are you thinking about there? What’s the advantage? How far does that scale, you think?Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I am a huge advocate of whatever it is that you do, whatever’s on your plate. There’s some things that you have to do as a pastor or as a leader. And leadership development ought to be something that you have your fingerprint on. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Jamie Barfield — Whether it’s [inaudible] as much as mine is or whether it’s just, hey, I’m creating class and I’m stepping in every now and then, but somewhere, somehow, you have to be touching your leaders in the church and they have to know your heart. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jamie Barfield — Whenever they go away from this class and they’re serving wherever, and maybe even they’re on a campus or doing whatever they’re doing, when they walk away from me, they know me, they know my heart, they know my, my expectations.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jamie Barfield — And so I don’t have to go into, you know, seasons and step into kids ministry and try to put out fires and fix problems because they know me from the start before they ever get involved in certain ministries. They already know me and already know my heart. And so it just makes the the family community atmosphere of the church healthier…Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — …because from from birth, this is from birth. This isn’t something that we’re trying to teach on the run. This is something we teach from birth to through the process. And then whenever they launch into whatever ministry they um lead or or serve in they already have all the foundational principles, all the pillars are built.Rich Birch — That’s interesting. I love it. That’s, that’s great to learn more about. Talk to me about an expectation that ah that you have of your leaders that might be a little bit different. That might be like, oh, hey, it’s, you know, kind of in the secret sauce category that you’re like, hey, this is a part of what God’s using when, you know, hey, if you’re leading here, this is what we want you to be like, or something activity or something like that.Jamie Barfield — Yeah. So so for instance, servanthood is something that I’m very passionate about. I am a servant. I expect leaders here at this church to be servants. I think Jesus is the greatest leader of all time, and he was a servant leader. It’s who he was. It was a part of his you know, character. And so, so servanthood is something that we, my wife and I portray to our leadership. And then we give expectation that this is what we expect from leaders inside of our church and throughout every department of our church.Jamie Barfield — I think that is, that is, you know, something as simple as when you see some trash in the parking lot, as you’re walking up, you pick it up. All the way to when we’re having church events here, my wife and I are the last ones to eat. We’re not first in line. Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — We’re making sure everybody else is served because we want we want to make sure that we are servant leaders inside of our our team.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So I’d love to know, you guys have launched multiple locations, obviously multiple services within that. Multiplication is, to me, is a sign that you’re developing leaders. There’s something good happening on that front. You can’t do that unless you, you know, have multiplied leaders. Talk us through some of the lessons you’ve learned around multiplication as it relates to leadership development and how that all works together.Jamie Barfield — Yeah, I will say that good leaders multiply themselves, but so do bad leaders. Rich Birch — Oh gosh, that’s true. Oh man.Jamie Barfield — And so that’s and so that’s that that’s that’s dangerous as well. Rich Birch — Yes. Jamie Barfield — And so as as we multiplied, you know, from multiple services to, you know, multiple campuses and all the things that come with multiplication, as we have walked through the seasons of multiplication, we’ve always identified early the needs that were going to be present and tried our best to make an effort to make them not as painful as they could have been if we wouldn’t have identified them.Jamie Barfield — And so something as simple as you know whenever we you know we were talking about launching multiple services, when when we launched into multiple times, we’ve launched into multiple services and been able to you know, through growth, knock out walls and go back to one and then we’re at two and then we’re at three, knock out a wall, back to one, two, three. And then right at COVID, we were doing four. But the the healthiest way that we ever launched a service was we did a 8 a.m. and a 10 a.m. The 8 a.m. was for volunteers only. So it was kids’ workers. It was, you know, we did, but did we did a full service. We did the band. We did I did my full sermon. It was volunteers only, but you’re welcome to come. Rich Birch — Right. Jamie Barfield — But this is strictly, you know, we’re focusing on volunteers. But then whenever we launched into two, as that second service filled up, we launched into two. We completely changed service times. What was a 10 a.m. service, now we went to 9 and 11. So then everybody was forced and instead instead of saying, oh, well, this is my service time. Now everybody was forced to choose a different service time. Rich Birch — Right.Jamie Barfield — So the 8 a.m. people we you know went to the 9 a.m., obviously, and the 10 a.m. people had to choose, do I want to get up an hour early or do I want to come an hour later? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jamie Barfield — And so it was almost it was actually a 45 to 65 percent split whenever we went to the 9 and the 11. So it was the healthiest way we had ever done it, so incredibly beautiful.Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — And so just, you know, if somebody’s watching this and they’re looking to go to two services, I would suggest have a volunteer service, go all in because that starts training your your band to do two services. It starts training your volunteers of what time they’d have to get there to be able to do multiple things. It kind of creates that buffer of a tension point in the future and being able to look look in advance to say, hey, let me let me work some of these issues out before we get there.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. um Kind of related to that, I feel like this is the year of like the three service questions, third service questions. Like I’ve had so many people in this last year reach out to me. I’ve written, I think three or four blog posts, probably 10,000 words on different stuff I’ve learned um about this because it’s like just keeps coming up. Like even today, literally today, I got an email about it this morning.Rich Birch — So talk me through what what you’ve done at Palmetto Pointe around identifying when we pull the trigger for more services. Is that what mix of that is like opportunistic—we’re creating new space—or it’s reactive, like which of how much of it’s proactive, reactive? And how do you, you know, your church is growing, you’re growing quickly. How do you, how do you keep a far enough ahead? Cause you can’t just decide, Hey, we’re going to do new services. You got to do planning to make it all happen. Talk us through what’s that look like? How are you kind of the, how, how do we know how to identify when we pull the trigger? That sort of thing. Talk us through what that looks like.Jamie Barfield — Yeah, reactive is terrible. I’ve done it twice. Reactive to, oh no, you know the parking lot’s full. Let’s plan a second service. You know, hat’s terribly difficult. You know, the proactive approach of, I see growth, here goes what, you know, we’re already talking about Easter next year, okay? Here goes how many people are gonna show up. How many services do we need for Easter? And then how much did we grow last year for Easter? So if those people come back, what can they expect the next week?Jamie Barfield — And so for me, it becomes, opportunistic, yes. Launching multiple services are going to help your church grow. But as you’re launching multiple services, the growth versus the attrition, how is this going to wear your team out? Is this going to wear your staff out? Is this going to wear your band out or your kids’ ministry workers out? And that balance of, okay, at what point do you press forward and what at what point do you pump the gas or pump the brakes? Jamie Barfield — And so I would just say for us, what we learned through this journey is, you know we want to make sure that when we launch into a another service that there’s a core group of people that are going to be a part of that service. I need you to I need you to say for nine months you’re going to be a part of this service and this is your thing.Jamie Barfield — And so when we launch into another service, we’re going to make sure that this group of people wants to be there, and this is their church and their service. And then for us, we’re going to make sure that we have a completely different staffed kids’ ministry, completely different group, so we’re not wearing out the already wore-out volunteers of kids’ ministry.Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — And depending on the time slot, we’ve we’ve tried three different time slots for our third service, but depending on the time slot we choose, it potentially may be a completely different band as well. Maybe the same worship leader, but a completely different band. Because those are the really the two areas, kids ministry and band and the staff. Those are the three areas that are really going to wear you out with multiple services.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. That’s some really clear thinking there around that. Really appreciate that. You know, at 31%, if you continue to grow, I know you know this, you know, that’s like just less than two and a half years, you’ll end up doubling. Jamie Barfield — Right. Rich Birch — So you’ll be a church of 5,000 if you continue at this rate.Jamie Barfield — Crazy.Rich Birch — And that that becomes difficult to stay in front of. You know, I’ve led in churches that are growing at that rate. And it’s it’s hard to to keep the skis out in front, you know, keep things moving in the right direction.Rich Birch — Let’s pivot in a totally different direction. I want to take advantage of the fact that you’re a district overseer, in your movement. From your perspective, from your vantage point, what are you seeing across the church these days as it comes to growth and and challenges? And kind of what are you learning as you’re in that kind of coach seat?Rich Birch — I’m taking advantage of the fact that you’re coaching other leaders.Jamie Barfield — I actually love that you asked me this question because I was talking with a guy yesterday, and we were talking about how smaller churches specifically, those pastors are really struggling with grasping what their expectations of congregants are, and what the congregants’ expectations of the church should be.Jamie Barfield — We as small you know smaller church pastors specifically, but we expect them to show up and to give and to serve and to connect, but they don’t have those same expectations on their life. So 30, 40 years ago, those were the expectations of a church attender.Rich Birch — Right.Jamie Barfield — Now they’re not.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Jamie Barfield — And so we have these unrealistic expectations that are creating frustrations from the pulpit to the pew. And I think it’s it’s creating this disconnect, or or honestly, I’ve seen some pastors even preach maybe very angry towards their congregation because of the unrealistic expectations placed upon those people. And so I would say maybe just to the smaller church pastor, which again is 80% of America, you know…Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Yep.Jamie Barfield — …those those guys listening to this, maybe be more understanding of how life has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. I’m not saying lower our standards of righteousness or scriptural truth, but understand that travel ball is a thing and it’s always going to be a thing. And you know, school plays and you know, families going on vacation. Rich Birch — Right.Jamie Barfield — Man, we celebrate when families go on vacation. I’m not mad at you for taking a vacation because I want a vacation, you know? Rich Birch — Yes.Jamie Barfield — And so we celebrate when families go on vacation. So just creating realistic expectations for the congregation rather than what the, what the expectations were 30 or 40 years ago.Rich Birch — That’s good. I like that. You know understanding where people are are today and not you know not overburdening them with ah a previous model. I think that’s a really good word for sure. How can we think about that same pastor that maybe sees that frustration and and takes the, you know, the pastoral word of like, yes, I’m not going to exacerbate my people, but I want to help clearly articulate. I kind of want to point to a brighter future for them. Jamie Barfield — For sure.Rich Birch — How do I what what would you suggest to them? How do you how should we do that? Jamie Barfield — Well, first off, I would say one of the things that I see giving life to pastors is them connecting with other pastors. Rich Birch — So true.Jamie Barfield — I would just encourage a pastor watching this to make sure that he has or she has somebody in their life that’s outside of the bubble of their own church that may be going through something similar to their to what they’re going through.Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — And I just think pastors encouraging pastors. We’re on the same team. We’re in this together. Pastors, encouraging pastors. I love what you do here where you celebrate ministries and what they’re doing. I just see that giving such life to um to other pastors that are discouraged and frustrated and aggravated. So I would start there. I would say, man, pastors, find another pastor and speak life into them.Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — Maybe maybe the second thing I would say is you know maybe maybe an encouragement to, you know, to pastors who have wanted to try something new and try something different. Maybe just an encouragement to you know and to to do it, man. Just do it. Just try it.Rich Birch — Give it a try.Jamie Barfield — See what happens. Throw spaghetti up against the wall and see what sticks.Rich Birch — You get a lot of grace from most, I think most of the people in our churches, we have the the negative voice person in our head, the person that like doesn’t love what we do and is like a complainer or whatever, but that’s like a rare minority in most churches. Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like most of the people in the church are cheering for the pastor, cheering for the leaders… Jamie Barfield — That’s right. Rich Birch — …and are like, man, I love that guy. I love that girl. And if you were to say, Hey, I’d love us to try this thing. It’s just a test. Let’s see what happens. Most people would be like, let’s do it, you know, and, and I, you know, that’ll be fine. And if it goes bad, then don’t take yourself too serious and say, well, we tried that. That didn’t work. And that’s okay. um Yeah, that’s good. I love that. That’s a great word for sure.Jamie Barfield — Yeah. Agree. Agree completely. Agree completely.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, just as we’re kind of landing today’s episode, any final words as we think about for people that are listening in about, you know, what you’ve learned through the years? I love the mindset stuff we’ve been talking about and just this whole area of like our our you know our approach to scarcity, how that works. But anything else you’d love us to think about today as we’re hanging up today?Jamie Barfield — Yeah, yeah um maybe maybe maybe just to um to the guys that are feeling guys and gals that are feeling stuck, um you know maybe maybe short on everything. Lack is a big thing. Here goes here would be my encouragement. Make every Sunday amazing the best you can, but pick one day and throw all of your energy towards that one day. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Jamie Barfield — Maybe it’s Christmas Eve service coming up, or maybe it’s an Easter service or Mother’s Day or, you know, a manufactured big day, ah you know, a back to church Sunday or something of that nature. Rich Birch — That’s good.Jamie Barfield — Pick a day and throw all of your energy towards that one day. Pick a person and start investing in a person. You may not be able to do a leadership development process, but pick a person and start investing your life into that person.Rich Birch — Dude, that’s so good.Jamie Barfield — Pick one event in the community and just show up for it. Just you know wear a church shirt and show up for the event and shake hands and hug necks and tell everybody, hey, you know. Pick one area of ministry and you know you know go go to your kids’ ministry and say, how can I make this better? You don’t have to fix it all right now. Rich Birch — That’s so good.Jamie Barfield — You don’t have to you don’t have to be great at everything right now. You don’t have to have the most amazing, you know, Mother’s Day yet. But man, you can find one thing and just start focusing on something. And I think this is where that mindset of there’s more out there. I’m going to focus on something and make this one thing that God has put in my hand. I’m going to make this thing better.Rich Birch — Dude, that is such good advice. You know, don’t drown in the all the things you wish you could do. Pick one thing and just do it. I love that. Jamie Barfield — Pick one thing and do it.Rich Birch — A friend of mine was a church planter and i was like, I think it was either the first or second Easter they did they went all in on the like Easter egg drop, which I know lots of people have done. But it was a smash success for them. They, you know, it was like five times their normal attendance. It was fantastic. The local news showed up. It was, and it gave, man, it breathed energy into the church for months. Jamie Barfield — Yes. Yes.Rich Birch — Like they lived off of that because it was like, hey, that was a win. Yeah, that’s, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation today. Rich Birch — I love talking to church planters. You know, I was recently with a leader of a church. We were walking around his facility and their buildings about 250,000 square feet, giant building. And he was talking about himself as a church planter. He was like, you know, referring to that. Rich Birch — And and I joked with him. I said, well, at what point do you stop being a church planter? Like when you, you know, when you you just are doing a $20 million dollars building or whatever, I think, you know, somewhere along the line. But he’s like, no, once a church planter, always a church planter. We’re always, ah you know, the same thing. So I’ve really appreciated this similar conversation today.Jamie Barfield — That’s exactly right. Rich Birch — Jamie, if people want to track with you or track with the church, where do we want to send them online?Jamie Barfield — Yeah, palmettopointechurch.com, it’s all over social media.Rich Birch — Perfect.Jamie Barfield — pastorjamieb, all of all of the social media handles are that. Love to connect with them…Rich Birch — That’s great.Jamie Barfield — …palmettopointechurch.com, I’d love to connect. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Jamie. Really appreciate you being here today, sir.Jamie Barfield — Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Hour 1 – The Drive opened the show explaining how the two thoughts around the Chiefs are; the end of a dynasty or don't let this team get hot.

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Virginia Prodan #Podcast. Topic : Christian Persecution with Jenny Nohelty - our guest. Jennifer will talk about the event in Washington DC at the Museum of the Bible on 12/4/2025 - as #WashingtonPolicyInstitute is presenting #PersecutedandPrevailing #ChristianPersecution. For Tickets to the event go to: https://www.washingtonpolicyinstitute.org/events/persecuted-and-prevailing-addressing-christian-persecution-in-the-modern-world/ Jennifer Nohelty is serving as the Board Chair and CEO of the Washington Policy Institute, focusing on journalism accountability and upholding faith-based American values. Jennifer will talk about the event in Washington DC at the Museum of the Bible on 12/4/2025 - Persecuted & Prevailing - presented by Washington Policy Institute.  She has over 25 years of experience in the field, working with diverse families and organizations to align donor goals with impactful initiatives.  Board Member of the Quad City Planned Giving Council and National Christian Foundation Wisconsin. Jennifer has been working in planned giving for over 25 years, following in her father's footsteps as a gift planner and wanting to serve her donors, she worked with innumerable donors. Jennifer has been married to her best friend for 33 years and they have been blessed with 3 children – a daughter (who is married to her “favorite” son-in-law) and 2 sons, and 2 pretty incredible grand-daughters. Until recently Christian persecution rarely made makes the news and when it does, the media seems to gloss right over it.  President Trump is now putting the spotlight on the mass murders of Christians taking place in Nigeria.  "Nigeria is the most dangerous nation on Earth to follow Christ," according to the House Appropriations Committee said "For simply practicing their faith, Christians are actively being kidnapped, attacked and slaughtered. " It's estimated that as many as 8,000 Christians are murdered in Nigeria every year.  I experienced persecution.   I am Virginia Prodan—you host at Courageous Leadership with Virginia Prodan; an #international #humanrights #attorney, #keynote #speaker, #author of *Saving My Assassin*, and survivor of socialist Romania. I know firsthand the price of freedom, the power of faith, and the courage it takes to stand for truth in the face of opposition. On this channel, you'll find weekly episodes that inspire and equip you to: - Strengthen your #Christian #faith and live with bold #courage - Defend #freedom and #values in an increasingly hostile culture - Learn powerful lessons from history—especially from life under socialism - Discover your God-given purpose and calling - Learn powerful lessons from history—especially from life under socialism - Lead with conviction at home, in the church, and in society.

We hope this message encourages and inspires you!Want more like this from CoastLife Church?YouTube: CoastLife Church - YouTubeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/mycoastlifechurchInstagram: https://instagram.com/coastlifechurch...GIVE: https://www.mycoastlifechurch.com/giveLooking to get connected? We'd love to meet you! We offer several different ways to connect and be in community: Join a Together Group, Register for CoastLife+, or become a part of our Serve Team today by visiting: CoastLife Connect Card - CoastLife Church (churchcenter.com)Give: To support and be a part of or growth and global impact click here: https://www.mycoastlifechurch.com/give

On that day, the church below will join the song of the church above.Tuesday • 11/4/2025 •Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) This morning's Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Nehemiah 12:27–31a,42b–47; Revelation 11:1–19; Matthew 13:44–52 This morning's Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

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Sunday AM - 10.26.2025 - Pastor Jerry Rowley "Prevailing in perilous times" by GBFPC

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1 Samuel 1:1-18

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Buy Jesse's new book on Spiritual Warfare here: https://tanbooks.com/products/books/spiritual-warfare-q-and-a-for-priests-and-laity/ USE CODE NATHAN15 FOR 15% OFF ANYTHING AT TANBOOKS.COM Subscribe to our YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/@seekingexcellence_In this episode, Nathan Crankfield and Jesse Romero delve into the themes of spiritual warfare, the impact of Charlie Kirk's assassination, and the nature of evil. They discuss the importance of authority within the Church, the role of laypeople, and the necessity of evangelization in combating ignorance. The conversation also touches on the reality of hell and the theological implications of the Charismatic Renewal. Jesse emphasizes the need for resources to guide Catholics in understanding spiritual warfare and the tools available to them.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Welcome04:11 Spiritual Warfare and Cultural Impact08:47 Understanding Evil: Brainwashing vs. Choice13:48 The Role of Truth in Wickedness19:36 Charlie Kirk's Faith Journey24:56 Demonic Affliction and Spiritual Warfare30:13 The Concept of Invincible Ignorance32:45 The Importance of Evangelization37:40 The Role of Evangelization in the Church41:05 The Reality of Hell and Salvation45:01 The Balance of Authority in the Church53:52 Confronting Evil Within Ourselves

At today's Holy Communion service, Pastor Femi Paul shared a brief exhortation on The Communion of Prevailing Peace. He reminded us that the peace Jesus gives is not fragile or fleeting but powerful enough to overcome fear, opposition, and life's challenges. “Prevailing Peace” is God's gift that steadies the heart, keeps us calm, and empowers us to triumph through Divine Strength & Superiority! Just as Jesus declared to His disciples, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19–21), we too can walk in peace that prevails in all circumstances and brings divinely orchestrated victories. As we shared the body and the blood, we received not only a reminder of Christ's sacrifice but also His enduring promise of peace that secures our hearts and minds.

Prevailing Prayers by Word Mission Church International

Prevailing Prayers 2 by Word Mission Church International

This week, Dudley brings us his Monthly Message, The Prevailing Word, from Acts 19, a chapter filled with extraordinary miracles and the reality of spiritual conflict. In it, he walks us through the dramatic story of the Seven Sons of Sceva, offering clear insight into spiritual warfare explained through Scripture. We see how the power of Jesus' name cannot be borrowed or imitated—it must be lived through faith.Dudley also reflects on how the Word of God “prevailed” in Ephesus, transforming lives, leading to repentance, and even sparking a bonfire of sorcery books. This Bible study reminds us that our work in Christ matters, that every act of love pushes back darkness, and that the same Spirit who moved in Acts still empowers the church today.Get Dudley's Weekly Word delivered right to your inbox every Friday! Click here to get access ➡️ https://dudleysweeklyword.com/opt-inFor more information and resources, visit https://kerygmaventures.com/podcast/ Follow and subscribe:Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/41N9SAP Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3LEIxeo YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerygmaventures Watch our "Conversations At The Ranch" series: https://bit.ly/conversations-at-the-ranch Watch our “Dudley's Monthly Message” series: https://bit.ly/dudleys-monthly-message 

A new MP3 sermon from The Narrated Puritan is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The All Prevailing Plea Subtitle: Spurgeon's Prayers Personal Speaker: C. H. Spurgeon Broadcaster: The Narrated Puritan Event: Audiobook Date: 8/28/2025 Length: 9 min.

Restore My Soul - Prevailing Over Psychological Warfare - Live from ATL - Bishop Kevin Foreman

Restore My Soul - Prevailing Over Psychological Warfare - Bishop Kevin Foreman

On today's ID the Future, Science After Babel author David Berlinski continues discussing his newly released book from Discovery Institute Press. In this conversation with host Andrew McDiarmid, Berlinski explores a chicken-and-egg problem facing origin-of-life research, a blindness afflicting some evolutionists focused on human origins, and the mystery of why science almost flowered in ancient Greece, early Medieval China, and in the Muslim-Arab Medieval Empire, but did not, having to await the scientific revolution that swept through Europe beginning in the sixteenth century. Check out the endorsements and get your copy, paperback or e-book, at scienceafterbabel.com. Source

Send us a textSupport the showThank you for joining me! I pray these message enhance your walk with the Lord.

Tune into Pastor Andrew's message as he concludes the "316 series," exploring the most important gift God has given us: the name of Jesus Christ. This episode unpacks the power, access, and authority held within this single name, demonstrating its significance in every realm. Drawing from Acts chapter 3, Pastor Andrew highlights the first miracle performed post-ascension, where Peter and John heal a lame man in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Discover how this name grants believers ultimate access to the Father—acting as a "master key" that simplifies reaching God, unlike various complicated methods. Learn that the name of Jesus provides all authority, prevailing over heaven, earth, and under the earth, impacting jobs, families, friendships, and even terminal illnesses, as God has "given him the name which is above every name" (Philippians 2:9-11). Pastor Andrew challenges listeners to utilize this gift, reminding them that "whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you" (John 15:16). He illustrates how miracles, healing, and deliverance flow through the use of His name (Mark 9:39, Mark 16:17-18), and how salvation offers a reconnection to the Father—a finished work received by believing and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. This powerful message emphasizes that your identity in Christ, combined with the master key of Jesus' name, provides everything you need to navigate life effectively.

This week's interview wasn't initially intended for the podcast and wasn't recorded that way (Brewing Industry Guide subscribers read it last month (https://brewingindustryguide.com/expanded-qa-lester-jones/)), but the topics are salient and the audio listenable, so we thought it would be an interesting change of pace. Lester Jones is the VP of Analytics and Chief Economist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association, and has some pretty deep data-driven insight into what is reality and what is just vibes in today's world of beer sales which he shares in this conversation. Throughout, we try to unpack what's actually going on, comparing anecdotal experience to real sales data, for a more accurate picture of the opportunities and challenges in today's beer world. This episode is brought to you by: G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): For years G&D Chillers has chilled the beers you love, partnering with 3,000+ breweries across North America and beyond. With our 24/7 service and support, your brewery will never stop. Remote monitor your chiller for simple and fast access to all the information you need, and gain peace of mind your operation is running smoothly. Berkeley Yeast (https://berkeleyyeast.com). Berkeley Yeast bioengineers ordinary strains and make them extraordinary—enhancing the flavors you want and eliminating the ones you don't. Visit berkeleyyeast.com to learn more and start brewing with science on your side. Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): As breweries expand beyond beer into other segments like mocktails and CBD beverages, Old Orchard is here to help. We can formulate custom blends featuring specialty ingredients. More information and free samples are waiting at oldorchard.com/brewer. Indie Hops (https://indiehops.com) Lórien seamlessly combines traditional elements of European noble hops with an elegant twang of American modernity. Learn more about Lórien and the rest of Indie's varieties at www.indiehops.com. Indie Hops — Life is short. Let's make it flavorful. XTRATUF (https://xtratuf.com) XTRATUF has been making rugged and reliable boots for 75 years. Built for the harshest conditions, the Legacy Collection styles are oil, acid, and chemical resistant with a non-slip rated outsole. Be prepared for whatever comes your way and shop the latest XTRATUF boots on xtratuf.com. Veterans Blend from Yakima Chief Hops (https://www.yakimachief.com) The 8th Annual Veterans Blend from Yakima Chief Hop is available through pre-order! $1 from every pound sold of Veterans Blend will be donated to this year's non-profit Soldier's Angels. Plan ahead and place your Veterans Blend pre-order with Yakima Chief Hops at yakimachief.com. Brewery Workshop (https://breweryworkshop.com) If you're launching a brewery or acquiring an existing one, consider our brewery workshop and new brewery accelerator, September 14 through 17th in Fort Collins, Colorado. Over four days, we engage in panel discussions, technical brewery tours, networking, and small working group sessions that help you better understand and prepare for the challenges of brewery operation. Tickets are on sale now.