Podcast appearances and mentions of tim keller

Given the nature of the show and how the music is done, we cannot bring you the full show today. But I do have the conversation with Tim Keller. I'll try to edit out the music as best I can for everything else. But, I suspect most of you will want this. Have a Happy Easter. Erick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Given the nature of the show and how the music is done, we cannot bring you the full show today. But I do have the conversation with Tim Keller. I’ll try to edit out the music as best I can for everything else. But, I suspect most of you will want this. Have a Happy […]

Hear what Joni has to say about the change of Jesus's relationship with the Father on the cross as she analyzes a passage of Tim Keller's book on prayer. -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.     Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

On today's Bible Answer Man broadcast (04/14/25), Hank focuses on Holy Week, with Christians in the Eastern and Western Churches celebrating Palm Sunday yesterday. Holy Week for Christians in the East begins on Lazarus Saturday. On that day, that we remember afresh that our Lord Jesus Christ raised Lazarus, a historical reality that points forward to the universal resurrection of all humanity. The next day, Palm Sunday, marks the commemoration of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Christ's entrance into Jerusalem announced the establishment of the Kingdom of God and a foretaste of the time that He will gather His perfected bride and carry her over the threshold of Jordan into the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. On Holy Monday, the fig tree is set before us as a reminder of the danger inherent in having an appearance of godliness but being devoid of its reality; a reminder to be vigilant and bear fruits of righteousness and repentance.Hank also answers the following questions:If you believe that salvation is “once saved, always saved,” would this mean your free will no longer exists? Tim - Keller, TX (15:51)To me, the term replacement theology seems to be an accurate term as opposed to a misnomer, would you not say? Mark - Vancouver, BC (21:11)

Beyond Self-Esteem: Finding Worth in Christ :: [Ep. 264]Last week, we started the conversation about Self-Worth and Self-Esteem. This week, we are concluding that conversation. In this episode, we are learning just how a biblical perspective on self-worth can transform hearts and marriages. Rather than embracing the world's definition of self-esteem, we are discovering that our true value comes from being made in God's image and chosen by Him.We will cover the following:• Satan manipulates our self-perception to damage our marriages, convincing us we deserve better than our spouse• The "I am who I am" mentality creates a false comfort zone that prevents growth and transformation in relationships• Biblical confidence means thinking of ourselves less rather than thinking less of ourselves• How to transition from being "puffed up" to being "filled up" with God's truth and how that transforms how we serve our spouseFor further study on this topic, listen to our previous broadcasts titled "Idols of the Heart," read John 13, 1 Corinthians, or Tim Keller's "The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness."Happy listening!!Support the showFor episode transcripts, click HERE.For more marriage encouragement, visit: www.VowsToKeep.com | V2K Blog | Marriage Counseling | Insta | FBApple Podcast listener? Would you consider leaving us a review, as this helps more couple's to find our resources?! Leave your review HERE.

Jim Keena | Guest Speaker Referenced Scripture: Romans 7:14-25 & Galatians 5:17-23 Reflection Questions: 1. In which areas of your life is your “spirit willing,” but your “flesh weak”? For example, is it exercising, organizing, cutting out junk food, or filing your income taxes by April 15th? In other words, what is something you've tried really hard to change in your life but find yourself falling back into old patterns? 2. Read Romans 7:14-25 aloud. What stands out to you in Paul's description of his inner conflict? In the sermon, Jim mentioned that when he was 19 years old, he appreciated Paul's honesty and vulnerability. How do you respond to Paul's vivid portrayal of his internal struggle? 3. Verse 15 states: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Can you relate to this? How have you experienced this tug-of-war in your spiritual journey? 4. In Romans 7:16-17, Paul describes the source of our struggle as “sin that dwells within me.” This “indwelling sin” refers to the constant presence and influence of sin in a believer's life, even after they have been justified and regenerated by faith in Jesus Christ. Why is it beneficial to recognize this as a spiritual reality for all Christians? 5. Romans 7:22 states, “For in my inner being I delight in God's law.” How can a person genuinely delight in God's law yet still struggle to live by it consistently? What does this reveal about the journey of spiritual growth? 6. Romans 7:24 states, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” How does this verse express both despair and longing? Have you ever experienced that kind of desperation in your relationship with God? 7. The sermon emphasized that Romans 7:24-25 could be referred to as Paul's Four Steps. How do these steps connect to the struggle you face between your flesh and spirit? Have you taken these steps?They are:* HONEST CONFESSION: “Wretched man that I am!” (7:24a)* DESPERATE QUESTION: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (7:24b)* GOSPEL DECLARATION: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a) * OPEN ADMISSION: “So then, I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin.” (7:25b) 8. Tim Keller writes, “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” How does Keller's quote relate to Romans 7:14-25? How does his quote relate to you? What's your next step? * Connect: We'd love to connect with you! Fill out our Connect Card to receive more information, have us pray for you, or to ask us any questions: http://journeybozeman.com/connectcard * Connect: Get your children connected to our children's ministry, Base Camp: https://journeybozeman.com/children * Connect: Our Student Ministry is for High School and Middle School students: https://journeybozeman.com/students * Give: Want to worship through giving and support the ministry of Journey Church: https://journeybozeman.com/give * Gather: Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JourneyChurchBozeman * Gather: Download our app: https://journeybozeman.com/app * Gather: Join our Facebook Group to stay connected throughout the week: https://facebook.com/groups/JourneyChurchBozeman 

In this message, Tim Allen examines Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, highlighting it as the moment where Jesus publicly accepts the title "Son of David." Allen emphasizes Jesus' orchestration of events, His choice to ride a donkey, and the confrontational, conflicting, and transforming nature of His Kingship (The King is Come, Tim Keller). The sermon concludes with a call for listeners to fully crown Jesus as king in their lives.#PalmSunday #Jesus #TriumphalEntry #SonOfDavid #JesusIsKing #TransformedByJesus #AJourneyWithJesus

Carmen spends extra time in our Growing Your Faith Verse for this day (1 John 4:17).  Sometimes we gloss over the small words, like the conjuctions and prepositions. But they really mean a lot for our understanding of our relationship with God.  Chris Martin reflects on a Tim Keller sermon in Proverbs which calls for us to have a balanced, whole wisdom that doesn't waver to the right or left.  Faith Radio podcasts are made possible by your support. Give now: Click here

Tim Keller requests from MLG and she grants access to the National Guard to come and help APD plus Sheriff John Allen wants help with extradition on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

MLG sends the National Guard to back up APD because of crime, but could this back fire on Tim Keller on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."Unshakable Promise" is a sermon based on Romans 4:13-25 preached by Associate Pastor Michael Tooley. This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

A ten-person safe outdoor space opens in Albuquerque, much smaller than what Tim Keller wanted years ago plus Sam Bregman touts the success of Operation Route 66 on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this keynote address from TGC's 2007 inaugural conference, TGC's cofounder Tim Keller unpacks the essence of gospel-centered ministry, drawing from 1 Peter 1–2 to highlight its historical, doxological, Christocentric, cultural, and transformational nature.He stresses the importance of preaching, warns against shallow faith and legalism, and encourages a balanced approach to cultural engagement that embodies both truth and love. Keller concludes by showcasing the gospel's enduring relevance and its creative and transforming power.

I'd like you to think of someone you know who you consider to be a truly godly, mature Christian. What is the major characteristic you admire about that person? I doubt you would say, “They have very high self-esteem.” And yet we often hear you must have high self-esteem in order to be successful. In his booklet, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, Tim Keller talks about gospel-humility, which he defines as not needing to think about yourself. That is a lesson God has been teaching me for years—that self is not my solution, it's my problem. The more I can forget myself, the better off I am. When you don't need to think about yourself, it means you have a very good understanding of who you are in Christ, and that's all you need to know. Tim writes, “True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself.” It's not something we try to do; it's something that happens as we more and more know our true identity in Christ. A truly gospel-humble person doesn't hate herself; she just doesn't think about herself. This self-forgetful person would never be terribly hurt by criticism because she doesn't put much value on what other people think about her, any more than what she thinks about herself. Not long ago someone was very upset with me, due mainly to miscommunication, and she let me know it. Although her response didn't make me happy, I was amazed to see it did not devastate me. I'm slowly getting to the place where my self-worth depends less and less on what other people think about me—even on what I think about myself. Criticism or praise from others is not what my identity is built on any longer—at least not like it has been in the past. And my friends, this is wonderful freedom. There is true freedom in self-forgetfulness. You get to that place by immersing yourself in the truth of God's Word, making loving God and loving others your highest priority, and then you discover gradually you are thinking less and less about yourself, about your hurt feelings, about how you compare to others or what others think about you. It is marvelous freedom, and every Christian should know and live in this freedom.

Tim Keller wrote: "The resurrection was indeed a miraculous display of God's power, but we should not see it as a suspension of the natural order of the world. Rather it was the beginning of the restoration of the natural order of the world, the world as God intended it to be. . . . The resurrection means not merely that Christians have a hope for the future but that they have a hope that comes from the future. The Bible's startling message is that when Jesus rose, he brought the future kingdom of God into the present."So, when Jesus makes this statement: "I am the resurrection and the life!" It is such a singularity of truth that one cannot possibly find greater superlatives to describe its importance. But the setting is what melts our heart: three friends, one dead. An ugly grave. Hot tears of mourning, loss, and even anger. We need the one who calms storms with a word. We need the Word who because flesh and is the resurrection and life! Listen in on this podcast of wonderful truths!▶️ Nate's Message on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@roswellgrace8562/videos⁠

Paul Vander Klay clips channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0jIcadtoxELSwehCh5QTg Midwestuary Conference August 22-24 in Chicago https://www.midwestuary.com/ https://www.meetup.com/sacramento-estuary/ My Substack https://paulvanderklay.substack.com/ Estuary Hub Link https://www.estuaryhub.com/ If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://calendly.com/paulvanderklay/one2one There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333  If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/  All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos.  https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay Blockchain backup on Lbry https://odysee.com/@paulvanderklay https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A To support Paul's work by supporting his church give here. https://tithe.ly/give?c=2160640 https://www.livingstonescrc.com/give

I'm sharing some thoughts from Tim Keller's booklet, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. Tim writes: “If someone has a problem with low self-esteem, we, in our modern world, seem to have only one way of dealing with it. That is remedying it with high self-esteem. We tell someone that they need to see that they are a great person, they need to see how wonderful they are.” Do you like people to tell you things like that? I sure do—who doesn't? But guess what: No matter how many times people tell you that you are a great person, it doesn't change who you are, does it? The only way you and I can truly be changed into a person of worth is when we allow God to do it in us. And that happens when we are born into God's family through faith in Jesus Christ, and then the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us and begins transforming us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, with ever increasing glory, as we read in 2 Corinthians 3:18. One clear proof you are no longer trapped in this false belief about the need for high self-esteem is you truly forget yourself. You are not the first person you think of in the morning—at least not every morning! You don't compare yourself to others and feel either superior or inferior, because you just don't think about comparing yourself to others. That happens when you are learning to be content with who you are, the way God created you, and how God has gifted you. As Tim writes: “Boosting our self-esteem by living up to our own standards or someone else's sounds like a great solution. But it does not deliver. It cannot deliver.” If you're missing the freedom that is rightfully yours as a daughter or son of God through faith in Jesus Christ, if you're trapped in a pursuit of good self-esteem, I invite you to find real freedom by learning what it means to live in the joy of self-forgetfulness. This is not to degrade yourself or deny your gifting. Rather it is coming to a place where you are not always plagued with trying to be what others want you to be or trying to make yourself look good. You're just not very concerned with what others think about you, because you are just not thinking about yourself that much.

Have you ever said or thought: “My problem is I have low self-esteem”? I think most of us have had those feelings at some time. After all, that's the message we've been fed from many sources: If you could just get rid of that low self-esteem, you would feel good about yourself, and you could put all your problems behind you. I'm sharing from Tim Keller's booklet: The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, and he points out that up until the twentieth century, almost all cultures believed and taught that having too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the world. Human pride, selfishness, greed, and evil were presented as the cause for all bad behavior. But in our modern western culture, we have developed a completely opposite idea. Now our educational systems, our counseling curriculums, our treatment of prisoners, and much of our legislation starts with the viewpoint that all we need is feel good about ourselves. Think of some evil in our world today—such as abuse of children. This philosophy would have us believe this evil would go away if those who abused children didn't have such low self-esteem. Even secular psychologists have come to see the error of this belief system. Some have reported there is no evidence that low self-esteem is a big problem in society, but rather people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them. But this is hard for people to accept. As Tim writes, “The thing about the low self-esteem theory of misbehavior is that it is very attractive. You do not have to make any moral judgments in order to deal with society's problems.” If you've been trapped in this belief that you just needed some better self-esteem, I urge you to let it go and come to God's truth as given in his Word. Feeling good about yourself can only be achieved as a by-product of knowing who you are in Christ and then forgetting yourself as you live your life to love God and love others. There is great freedom in self-forgetfulness, and if you're struggling with this issue, I highly recommend this booklet by Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.

What happens when church leadership stops being a one-man show? In this episode, we sit down with Dave Harvey, President of The Great Commission Collective, to discuss his book The Plurality Principle We dive into why shared leadership isn't just a good idea, but a biblical necessity, how to navigate power dynamics among elders, and what happens when churches get plurality wrong. Dave shares insights on leading well, avoiding burnout, and creating a team that thrives—not one that just survives. We also discuss the role of a “first among equals” and why accountability is essential for long-term health in church leadership. Resources from this episode: Dave Harvey's Website → https://revdaveharvey.com/ Am I Called? (Helping Leaders Discern Their Calling) → https://amicalled.com/ Great Commission Collective → https://www.gccollective.org/ Tim Keller on Leadership & Church Dynamics → https://gospelinlife.com/manual-paper/leadership-and-church-size-dynamics/ Support the Podcast Support us on Patreon Website: thatllpreach.io IG: thatllpreachpodcast YouTube Channel

Since 1984 we've been broadcasting the good news that God's Word is relevant to all areas of our lives, and most definitely to our jobs and careers. Very early on in this ministry, God began to show me the error of the self-esteem teaching that seemed to be sweeping the country. The general theme of this teaching was the troubles that plague our society—crime and addictions and failed marriages and abuse—all of it is attributable to low self-esteem. It was thought and taught that if we could just help people think about themselves in more positive ways, then they wouldn't do these things, and our societal problems would go away. As I looked at myself and others, God made it clear to me that self is not my solution; self is my problem! And looking back at the topics I covered early in this ministry, I see that early on I was trying to communicate this truth. Trying to get people to feel good about themselves will not reach into the depths of their souls and bring healing. And that's because each of us was born in sin, we commit sin willfully, and we simply have a sin problem. The Bible says there is nothing good in our selves—that all the righteous things we try to do are like filthy rags to God. That doesn't exactly fit with the good self-esteem message, does it? Recently I found a booklet by Tim Keller entitled The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness[1]. Tim did such a good job of explaining how this idea that low self-esteem is society's big problem is just not true. I want share some of Tim's thoughts, which are echoes of what I've tried to say for many years on this topic of self-esteem. The title gives you a clue to where he's going: The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. When you and I can come to a place where life is not all about us, we begin to walk in the freedom Jesus came to give us. Believe me when I tell you: Self is your problem, not your solution, and when you grasp the incredible freedom of forgetting about yourself, you are going to love it. --- [1] Keller, T. J. (2014). The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The path to true Christian joy. 10Publishing.

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."Faith Alone" is a sermon based on Romans 4:9-12 preached by lead pastor Billy Glosson.This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

In the first message of our series called Counterfeit Gods, Pastor Mel gives a detailed teaching on idolatry and why it's so dangerous. As human beings, nearly all of our sin is rooted in some form of idolatry. Idolatry is when we make anything other than God the "ultimate" thing in our lives. Tim Keller said, "We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life." Scripture uses three basic metaphors to describe how we relate to idols in our hearts: we love them, we trust them, and we obey them. Idols enslave us because we believe life without them is meaningless.

“ It may not be until the new heavens and the new earth, but we're eventually going to know that God had goodness that was behind the dark clouds of our lives.” So says Mark Vroegop, newly appointed president of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and author of Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, during his conversation with Russell Moore. Moore and Vroegop talk about the ways TGC has evolved since its founding through leaders such as Tim Keller and Don Carson. They talk about the nature of belief, how trust in Jesus alters our understanding of who we are, and navigating seasons of doubt. Their conversation covers ministry partnerships, vocational decision making, and the importance of deep friendships.  Moore and Vroegop consider what the Psalms have to say about seasons of doubt and grief, the relationship between character and gifting, and trust in the goodness of God. Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include: Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop Waiting Isn't a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life by Mark Vroegop The Gospel Coalition Made for Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows and Doubles Our Joys by Drew Hunter The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription to CT magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Where does true belief begin? True belief is an issue of the heart, not the head. Many people believe that a God of love cannot also be a God of wrath. Think about that. But author and pastor Tim Keller says there is no love without wrath. In the book Hope Has Its Reasons Becky Pippert writes, "Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it. Anger isn't the opposite of love—hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference." Join us as we study Luke 16:19-31 and see what Jesus had to say about Hell. >>Watch on YouTube

Dallas Willard challenges us to "ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." John Mark Comer was so moved by this line, he titled his book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry." We wonder why we can't hear the voice of God, or find his presence in the busy-ness of life. Perhaps the still, small voice still speaks in those inner rooms and deserted places Jesus chose to frequent throughout his life. Could it be that "doing more" is actually standing in the way of "being with"?The sermon today is titled "Wasting Time With God." It is the eighth installment in our series "Follow Me", and the fourth in the sub-series "Be With Jesus." The Scripture reading is from Luke 10:38-42 (ESV). Originally preached at the West Side Church of Christ (Searcy, AR) on March 23, 2025. All lessons fit under one of 6 broad categories: Begin, Instill, Discover, Grow, Learn, and Serve. This sermon is filed under GROW: Spiritual Formation.Click here if you would like to watch the sermon or read a transcript.Podcast Notes (resources used or referenced):John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way.Rich Villodas, The Deeply Formed Life.Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke (Sacra Pagina).Tim Keller, "With the Anxious" (Feb 9, 1997).Eric Pickersgill Photos.Jonathan Storment, "Rise & Shine" (notes from this sermon), preached at Pleasant Valley Church of Christ; generously provided by Jonathan; used with permission.I'd love to connect with you!Watch sermons and find transcripts at nathanguy.com.Follow along each Sunday through YouTube livestream and find a study guide on the sermon notes page.Follow me @nathanpguy (facebook/instagram/twitter)Subscribe to my email newsletter on substack.

Luke 15:11-32 - This parable of Jesus's is often known as "the parable of the prodigal son," but it could just as easily be thought of as "the parable of the gracious father" or even as "the parable of the religious older brother." Each of these three main characters unlocks a world of meaning within this parable. In this sermon, we focus especially closely on the older brother and what Jesus has to teach us through him about the dangers of legalism, entitlement, resentment, and bitterness toward God's grace for others. A sermon by Naseem Khalili. [Part 5 of our series "Imagining the Kingdom: Jesus's stories about the already and not yet reign of God"] Questions for reflection: 1) When you read this parable, which character do you most relate to? 2) What motivates the older brother's frustration after seeing how the father treats the younger brother's return? Have you ever felt similarly? When? 3) Tim Keller coined the term "older brother lostness" to describe the sense of frustration and bitterness that comes from keeping the rules but not being rewarded how you want. How does the grace of God upend our expectations around these things? 4) What does this parable have to say about the character of our God as revealed in Jesus? 5) Naseem gave us a powerful question: Why do you love God? Or why do you follow Jesus? How does the story of the older brother press us for an answer?

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."Right With God" is a sermon based on Romans 4:1-8 preached by lead pastor Billy Glosson.This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

The letter of Romans strengthened the ancient church, brought reformation to the dark ages, has brought hope for 2000 years, and can change your life!This week Pastor Joel begins Part 2 of his message series in the book of the Bible called Romans, “Bold Faith That Wins”. This is a special four part series that will span the year of 2025.LINKS + RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:• Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard F. Lovelace and other recommended reading for this series• Tim Keller, Martin Luther, St Francis of Assisi, Jim Daly, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt; John Owen “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”• Download the free study guide by visiting and clicking on the button "Download Study Guide"⁠• Find a complete transcript here• Scripture References: Romans chapter 7, verse 7 – chapter 8, verse 1; Exodus 20; Acts 9; Galatians 5, verse 17; Psalm 139; 1 John 2, verse 1; John 11; 1 Thessalonians 4• Find out more about Covenant Church at ⁠covenantexperience.com

How can we practice the presence of God? By abiding in the vine.The sermon today is titled "The Habit of Abiding in God." It is the sixth installment in our series "Follow Me", and the second in the sub-series "Be With Jesus." The Scripture reading is from John 15:1-11 (ESV). Originally preached at the West Side Church of Christ (Searcy, AR) on March 9, 2025. All lessons fit under one of 6 broad categories: Begin, Instill, Discover, Grow, Learn, and Serve. This sermon is filed under GROW: Spiritual Formation.Click here if you would like to watch the sermon or read a transcript.Podcast Notes (resources used or referenced):John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way.Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God.Tim Keller, "Grow in Grace" (Jan 5, 1992).Tim Keller, "The Vinedresser" (Jan 12, 1992).Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline.Jonathan Storment, "Rise & Shine" (notes from this sermon), preached at Pleasant Valley Church of Christ; generously provided by Jonathan; used with permission.I'd love to connect with you!Watch sermons and find transcripts at nathanguy.com.Follow along each Sunday through YouTube livestream and find a study guide on the sermon notes page.Follow me @nathanpguy (facebook/instagram/twitter)Subscribe to my email newsletter on substack.

A group of Teens charged with Murder after running over in a car, plus Tim Keller wants to run for a third term because of President Trump on News Radio KKOBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Pastor David Robertson, minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee Scotland (http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk). Pastor Robertson is also the associate director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity (http://www.solas-cpc.org), married to Annabel and has three children. Pastor Robertson joined us to discuss Brexit, Scotland revivals, and why should pastors engage in politics. Pastor Robertson regularly blogs on his site: https://theweeflea.com/ , go check it out! In CrossPolitic news we discuss: Idaho is more progressive than New York City https://nypost.com/2018/10/02/de-blasio-to-sign-legislation-allowing-third-gender-on-birth-certificates/ Mein Kampf Revised for Academic Journals… Scholars Publish Absurd Gender Studies Papers https://www.dailywire.com/news/36645/scholars-publish-absurd-gender-studies-papers-ashe-schow City of Houston Fighting Sex Robots Brothels https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/city-of-houston-creates-ordinance-to-prevent-sex-robot-brothel-from-opening/285-599919539 You can stream live from our website here, or you can find our newest episode in the iTunes store and Google store. To find out more about our partnerships (limited number) and advertising packages, please email us at contact@crosspolitic.com. Finally, the best way you can help us out is to join our club membership!

We had the pleasure of interviewing Pastor David Robertson, minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee Scotland (http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk). Pastor Robertson is also the associate director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity (http://www.solas-cpc.org), married to Annabel and has three children. Pastor Robertson joined us to discuss Brexit, Scotland revivals, and why should pastors engage in politics. Pastor Robertson regularly blogs on his site: https://theweeflea.com/ , go check it out! In CrossPolitic news we discuss: Idaho is more progressive than New York City https://nypost.com/2018/10/02/de-blasio-to-sign-legislation-allowing-third-gender-on-birth-certificates/ Mein Kampf Revised for Academic Journals… Scholars Publish Absurd Gender Studies Papers https://www.dailywire.com/news/36645/scholars-publish-absurd-gender-studies-papers-ashe-schow City of Houston Fighting Sex Robots Brothels https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/city-of-houston-creates-ordinance-to-prevent-sex-robot-brothel-from-opening/285-599919539 You can stream live from our website here, or you can find our newest episode in the iTunes store and Google store. To find out more about our partnerships (limited number) and advertising packages, please email us at contact@crosspolitic.com. Finally, the best way you can help us out is to join our club membership!

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews David Smith about his new book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom. Smith shares how the book was inspired by teachers who wanted practical guidance on integrating faith into their daily teaching practices. The conversation explores how a bottom-up approach helps educators create hospitable, faith-filled classrooms through intentional rhythms and practices. Smith discusses redesigning assignments to build relationships rather than just complete tasks and emphasizes the importance of shaping learning experiences that reflect who students are becoming. The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Be encouraged. Mentioned: Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom by David Smith EverydayChristianTeaching.com OnChristianTeaching.com Just Teaching by Jon Eckert Solutions that Heal by Alan Bandstra Connect with us: Baylor MA in School Leadership EdD in K-12 Educational Leadership Jon Eckert LinkedIn X: @eckertjon Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl     Jon Eckert: All right, so welcome David. It's great to be able to talk to you about your new book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom. So I just got it yesterday, so appreciate that. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what brought you to writing this book. I mean, you've obviously written a lot of things. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: What brought you to this one right now? David Smith: Yeah. It was two experiences that really sparked the idea for this book. One, was just that the last book on Christian Teaching had circulated quite widely and a lot of schools had used it in professional development. And a couple of school leaders said to me, "Okay, we've read on Christian teaching, we believe you that this is a thing. We're on board, you've persuaded us. Now, how do we learn how to do this on a regular basis? We are kind of convinced of the concept, but how do we internalize this?" And then I had a slightly more detailed version of the same conversation when I was doing like an online seminar for Trinity Western University for some of their faculty. And at the end of, I gave a presentation about some of the old Christian Teaching staff and some different ways of connecting faith and teaching. And one of the faculty said to me at the end, "I go to a church, have done for years and years and years. I teach at a Christian university, have done for years and years and years, and I would never have made the connections between the two that you just made. How do I learn to think like that?" And I thought, it's another version of the same question. How do I learn to more instinctively think in a way that connects faith and teaching. Especially in a culture where so many of us have learned so deeply to keep those things apart, and that teaching is about tips and tricks and getting it done. And faith, it's about church and theology and so on, and it feels like we don't always have a great set of mental muscles for moving fluidly backwards and forwards between those two. So that just seemed like a great question, like how do you... Like don't try and persuade me of a philosophical position, but teach, like how do I learn to think about this on a regular basis? So that's what I was trying to address in the book, is- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: How to learn to think. Jon Eckert: Well, and the intro is, Invitation to Wisdom, which I love, especially right now as we look at everything that artificial intelligence can do, all the things that can be offloaded to different kinds of tools. We have more tools to help people learn than we've ever had. And it also feels like deep, meaningful learning grounded in something more than just tips and tricks is increasingly obfuscated. And so I love this very human invitation to wisdom. So talk about why you started there. David Smith: Well, it's partly Comenius' fault, 'cause he's my hero. For those who are new to Comenius, a 17th century major Christian education thinker, and he's got this textbook called The Orbis Pictus, the World in Pictures. And it's probably the most famous textbook in the history of schooling. It went through 250 editions, close to over a couple of hundred years. And the very first line of the book is, "Come child, learn wisdom." And I just thought that's a pretty interesting way to start a school textbook, that's not how most of our textbooks start these days, right. And so I sort of borrowed that as the start of this book. And his book starts with this image of a road that we're walking along as we learn wisdom and the Bible, wisdom's often spoken of in terms of a path or a way. It's something you walk in, wisdom's not just something you get by getting the diagram straight in your head, or getting the doctrines all lined up, or knowing the sentences in the right order. Wisdom's something you have to learn how to walk in and walking is something that takes place over time and you kind of sway to the right and the left and it's got a rhythm to it. And again, that's sort of what I was going for with the book. So this book doesn't start with the philosophical concepts or the theology or the reasons why we need to do integration of faith and learning or that kind of top-down. It really starts with the rhythms of the classroom and how you start the class, what things you repeat, how you use silences, how you end the class, how you frame things. Those things that are happening to us every single day if we are educators, as we sort of walk through this life in the classroom. And again, if we're going to learn to think in a way that habitually connects faith and learning, it has to happen in that context. It can't just be when we're sitting in the great lecture with some great Christian thinker who tells us how the world fits together. It's got to be while I'm in class, while I'm in motion, while I'm moving. So the Comenius image seemed to help me capture a little bit of that, that we are walking along a road, we're trying to learn wisdom, we're trying to walk better, we are not just trying to have better theories or better solutions or better fixes. We're trying to learn to walk in a way that's got a certain kind of rhythm to it, a certain cadence. Jon Eckert: Yes. And I love that you begin and end with wisdom. So when you get to the close, before you finish it out, you get back to the purpose. And throughout the book you have what looked like woodcuts from your hero and it's a cool through line throughout the book. So learning to be wise, that's really what we want from education, is how to learn to be wise and, so appreciate that. And then, just the way you've broken the book down, it does really, and I think you said it even before we jumped on, it starts from the bottom up. Like what does this- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Look like in the classroom? And then where is the wisdom in that? Where is the humanness in that? Where do we see our creator in that process? So- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Can you talk a little bit how you came to that bottom up piece? Because I think a lot of times philosophers and people that are in the academy get accused of starting top down- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Like, "You should do it this way." But I think what you're saying is here, this is how it is done, and then- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Here's the wisdom in that. Can you speak a little bit about that? David Smith: Yeah. Oh, I could speak for hours about that, because there's something in this that's been kind of motivating everything I've done for 30 years, has been trying to push on that very thing, because. And I think a lot of it goes back to, I didn't grow up Christian, I became Christian as an adult. And then a couple of years after I became Christian, I became a teacher and then started figuring out how those two sort of connected with each other. So I started reading the Christian books and the philosophies and the theologies and going to conferences and listening to people. And I thrive on that stuff, I mean, I love a good philosophy book. I've got no objection to people writing great philosophy books. But I also find that sometimes, as a classroom teacher and I was a language teacher, I wasn't like a religion teacher or even a history teacher where we could talk about big ideas in class. I was teaching languages, I was doing this very nuts and boltsy kind of thing. And I just found that sometime, even when I'd read the book on what a Christian vision of knowledge is or of the world or whatever, that there was still this gap of like, yeah, but what do I do on Tuesday morning with my twelve-year-olds? And there's a moment I sometimes share with my students, and I remember, my very first semester in the classroom I was doing my student teaching and total newbie, no skills, and I made the rookie mistake of standing writing on the whiteboard for too long. I think it was a blackboard at the time, actually, writing on the blackboard for too long with my back turned to the class. And I turned around and a student in the front row had removed almost all of his clothes and was sitting there in his underwear, apparently just to see what I would do. And I just had this moment of like, they didn't tell me about this in teacher ed, just that the classroom is like the Wild West. The classroom is this place where very unpredictable, angular stuff happens and often the theory is, it's a thousand foot. So I've always been fascinated in this middle space, of how do you avoid, either ending up reading a philosophy book that's at a thousand feet and it might be brilliant and it might be inspiring, but you're still not quite sure what to do on Tuesday morning. But I also don't want to end up in the other end of the scale, and there's lots of this out there, which is the, like, 50 tips and tricks to get you through your week in the classroom stuff which is... Sometimes you get some good ideas out of that, but it's also kind of brainless in terms of lacking like a coherent reason why we should choose these tips and tricks. It's just like this big bag full of stuff and you're just going to pick stuff out that looks like it works, but there's no coherence to it. So for a long, long time I've been fascinated with how do we try to describe that middle space, where you want to do stuff that works, you want to actually live in the classroom, you want to actually teach, you want to actually help students. But you want to do it in a coherent way that's in touch with your beliefs and your values and your commitments and the way the world fits together. And that, it feels like a difficult but the most interesting space. And so much of our literature seems to drift off to one end or the other of that, like it's either philosophy of education, or else it's a hundred tips and tricks for teachers and how to rescue your classroom kind of stuff. Jon Eckert: Well, I want to go deeper into that idea and a couple things from the book, but you have to tell me, what did you do with the kid that's sitting there in his underwear? David Smith: It's actually one of those rare occasions where I think I probably did the right thing without having a lot of forethought. Jon Eckert: Okay. David Smith: I actually just laughed at him and invited him to go outside and put his clothes back on and then join us again and then carried on with the class. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: And therefore, I think deflated his attempt to- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Capture everybody's attention for the next 15 minutes and make me look really stupid, so. Which I think was probably the right response, I think he was kind of- Jon Eckert: Right. David Smith: Hoping that I would sort of go ballistic or something, but- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: I just sort of basically said, "That's really funny. Now go put your clothes back on." Jon Eckert: Yeah. Well done. Well done. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: A novice win. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: So one of the things, I just was having a conversation with the head of school at a really great school and they're talking about how they integrate their academic success. They've been very successful based on test scores and everything, they've got great scores K through 12, and they're actually a school that's funded by vouchers, so it's an interesting model, in Milwaukee. And so they've been doing this for a long time. So they have a faith-based component to it, but they're also measured by state tests, so it's kind of- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: An interesting- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Place to look at. And they're like, "We know we've got to get better on our faith integrations, we want to work on our K through 12 Bible curriculum, that's one of our strands. And this other strand is on improving academics." And my response was, those two things have to go hand in hand. David Smith: Right, right. Jon Eckert: Because you've got to have that integration about why do we do this well? We do this as a reflection of what our creator's given. It's all got to be woven in there. Have you seen schools that do that well? And what is a hallmark of that? So you've laid out all these great ideas here. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Have you seen schools where that's happening really well right now? David Smith: Yeah, there are schools here and obviously there's a lot of schools I don't know, so I'm sure there are schools- Jon Eckert: Right. David Smith: Out there that are doing brilliantly, that are just not ones- Jon Eckert: Right. David Smith: I happened to have visited. But the schools that I've visited that seem to be doing really well at this, seem to more often be schools that have really set aside intentional time to think about it together. That's the one simple thing I would put my finger on, it's the schools that have got time set aside each week for a professional learning community, where they're actually talking about how to integrate their values with their teaching and they're not just doing admin things or curriculum things or whatever. So I think this is very dependent on being able to build a reflective community where you can talk to each other about how your values are infusing your teaching and learning choices. Something I've been suggesting to schools for a while, is like why don't you take one of your professional development days each year and just cancel it and just tell your teachers to go to the park or whatever, but then say, and now you owe me six hours. And what you're going to do with that, is you're going to get together with three of your colleagues and for six months you're going to meet one hour a month at the local coffee shop with a nice pastry and a nice drink. And you're just going to talk about three things, what was the best thing that happened in my classroom in the last month where things really felt integrated? And what was the worst thing that happened in my classroom last month? And what's one thing I want to change in the next month? And just talk about those three things for an hour. And how much learning might you get out of that in terms of questioning your own practices and moving them forward? So to me, it's less about getting the perfect model and more about, can you build the kind of community where you question what you're doing together and can then start to make adjustments? And you can be constantly asking, why do we do it this way? Is it just because we did it that way last year? And how does this actually reflect what we say we're about on the mission statement? I mean, if I can throw in an example here, interrupt me if I talk for too long. But to throw in an example that's in the book, is a perfect example of this kind of, again, finding this middle space and questioning things. I was having breakfast a few years ago with some teachers at my daughter's school when she was in high school. And I was just venting, I wasn't even trying to be constructive, I was just complaining about the general state of the world. And what I was complaining about was that I'd noticed that during the vacations we got our daughter back, that she was articulate and she shared her life with us and we talked about things. And as soon as the semester started, it was down to monosyllables, and it wasn't because we had a bad relationship, it's just because she was tired all the time. And because school was colonizing her every waking hour, she would get up at 6:30 in the morning, to be on a bus by 7:20, to be in school by quarter to eight. We get on another bus at something after three and get home by four-something, and then we'd have supper together at five. Wasn't always our most brilliant hour as a family because my daughter just had long tiring days, and then she'd have four hours of homework. And what had struck me was that the homework was always designed to be done alone. And so she would disappear to her room with a pile of books and a laptop and the only role for me as a parent, was to either nag her to get it done or tell her to quit and go to bed. And after we had this conversation over breakfast, and I just complained about this, the teachers who'd been at that breakfast started surprising me. So a week later, she turned up in the family room one night at eight o'clock and she said, "Do you guys have some time, because I've got this weird homework from my religion teacher? I've got to talk to you for half an hour about whether you grew up Christian, or became Christian, or how you relate to all of that, because we're going to talk about it in religion class tomorrow, and you've got to sign this piece of paper to say that we talked about it for half an hour." And then another teacher sent home a homework where we had to choose a TV show and watch it together and then discuss what its value system was, and whether we thought this was a fruitful way to spend our time and they were going to discuss this in the media studies class. And there was a whole string of these from different teachers. But one of the things that struck me about this, was that this was a school whose official philosophy was that God has given primary responsibility for children to their parents, and the Christian school comes alongside parents to help them raise their children in a Godly way. And yet as a parent, the only role I was being given was to nag about homework and to sell food at sports games. And until this point, I wasn't being invited into the learning process, and what's more, the school was occupying, not only the whole day but the whole evening with tasks that the student was designed to do on their own. And as soon as we started asking this question, "Well, could you design homework activities that actually strengthen community and actually build relationships between people?" Suddenly you've got something that is a little more in tune with what the school says it's official philosophy is. My daughter said she learned more from them from the standard fill out a worksheet kind of homeworks. So it was actually beneficial for learning. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: And it didn't necessarily involve throwing a Bible verse on all the worksheets. This is just more about trying to actually get the practices to line up with the values. So that's the kind of thing I'm sort of constantly fishing for, because we all think we know what homework is supposed to look like, so we all just keep doing what we think homework is. But maybe sometimes it doesn't look like that. Jon Eckert: Well, and I think that notion about homework is shifting significantly post-covid and what teachers actually assume students are doing on their own. Because I think the assumption is, that has been, that they're doing it on their own, I think that's a pretty false assumption now. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: That they would be doing anything on their own if you consider the tools that are available to them to get rote homework done. The thing I love about your example, is that homework assignment cannot be offloaded to ChatGPT, or if it was- David Smith: Right. Jon Eckert: It'd be, probably somewhat comical how ChatGPT might answer that question about how you came to faith and where your family, you know. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: So I think there is a benefit to that kind of homework and building community, because again, I think even with homework now, we need to lean into the humanness of what we do. Because there are a lot of other tools for getting assignments done and not always crediting the source of that assignment- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Whether that's a friend, Photomath or some type of artificial intelligence tool. So I think if we're not rethinking homework right now, we're really sticking our head in the sand. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Because I don't think students need four hours to do homework anymore, I think they're way more efficient. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Because they divide and conquer and offload to other things, so if you're not giving a meaningful homework assignment that is not able to just be done by something else, that's a problem. What I also loved about your example, and this is from page 76 in your book, it really gets into hospitality and what that looks like. And so it's asking students to be hospitable and then asking families to be hospitable. And you have this great separation here that, I'm just going to read this. "The call to tolerance asked me to put up with your differences in exchange for you being willing to put up with mine. A Christian frame asks for more, extending the idea of love of neighbor to include strangers and even enemies." And so I do think as Christians, as educators, we have a really high call, that tolerance isn't even close to what Christ requires of us. And so- David Smith: Right. Jon Eckert: Welcoming students into that and helping them welcome others in it, that's a really high call. So can you talk a little about, this is from your framing sections, I thought that was a perfect place for it. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Can you talk some about that? David Smith: Yeah, I think there's more than one Christian idea that can become a framing device in education, and one that I've been thinking about for a long time is hospitality. There is this theme in scripture, from start to finish, about hospitality to strangers. And it appears in all the important places, it's in the law, it's in the gospels, it's in the prophets, it's in the epistles, it's everywhere. So there's also quite a long history of thinking about schools in terms of hospitality, so when you start thinking about that in curricular terms, what does a hospitable classroom look like? How do students experience the classroom? So the way I started one of my classes this semester, and I talked about this in the book as well, is I actually started the class with us all sitting around in a big circle. And I asked each student to, I asked them to pair up and introduce themselves to each other and share two pieces of information that they were willing to be made public. And then I asked each person to introduce their partner to the group. And as we went around the group, we tried to memorize all the information, so we stopped after every second or third person and said, "And what was her name and what was her cat called?" right, and so on. So it's a real simple thing. And then I had students journal about it, and I've done this for a few years now. And first, I think there's an interesting difference between coming to a classroom and having to introduce yourself and having somebody else introduce you- Jon Eckert: Right. David Smith: Having somebody speak up for you in the first five minutes of class. And then, rather than going around the class and doing the introductions and by the end you can't actually remember any of it, because 40 pieces of random information just went through your short-term memory. The fact that we're actually focusing on remembering things about each other, my students have written quite eloquently about, in fact, I was fascinated just reading the journals over the weekend. One of them said, "Teachers often say at the start of the semester, "We care about you, we are here to help you," but usually I don't believe them. I think it's just something teachers are supposed to say at the start of the semester. But this activity made me believe that you actually cared that we were there, because the information about ourselves actually mattered for the start of the learning." And it's not like I think that's the way every class has to start, there are different disciplines and contexts and so on. But again, it's how do we find these moves that actually create a welcome within the classroom and you then push it further, how is the classroom welcoming to voices from beyond the classroom? So whose pictures do we show? Whose stories do we tell? And then how do we enable students to go out beyond the classroom? If I give my student a homework where they have to go to interview someone, how do I help them to be a good interviewer, to ask good questions, to not roll their eyes when the person says something they disagree with, to show in their body language that they're interested in what somebody has to say? Suddenly you're into a whole new set of skills that you don't get if the homework is fill out a worksheet. So there's a whole continuum here in terms of, hospitality is a very rich way of thinking about lots of different facets of schooling, from just basic classroom relationships, to curriculum content, to what kind of skills we're trying to equip our students with. And tolerance is not nearly enough, tolerance just means I'm willing to not kill you. Jon Eckert: Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great example. We do some similar things in the, I teach a leadership capstone class, it's the only class I get to teach to undergrads. And I just had lunch last week with one of my students from last semester, who has been through a lot, really tough life as an atheist. When you dig in, you realize where a lot of the hurt is. And so at the end of the semester, I give each kid a book and I inscribe something in the front to encourage them where I've seen them grow, what I hope for them, how I'm praying for them. And I'd given this class, All Prodigal God, by Tim Keller. And it was interesting, when we sat down, she read it over break, and so she wanted to gather and talk about it at lunch. And the book is the story of the Prodigal Son, but it's really, God is the center of the story is a reckless spendthrift, so that's why it's Prodigal God. And it's a beautiful story. She actually said, in this way that I find having atheists in class to be unbelievably interesting to creating a different dynamic in the class. She was wise enough to identify herself as the elder brother in that, so not only was she not tolerating Christians on campus, she was looking down on them as being less than, because of how she felt like they made her feel and instead, she had become the older brother in it. And she articulated that at lunch, and I was like, the wisdom that she shared and the hospitality that she displayed by, A, reading a book that I gave her that's explicitly Christian. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: And then B, wanting to have lunch and talk about it. I mean, what a gift that is from a student to an educator to be able to have that, and then to have that all throughout the semester in class, 'cause we dealt with a lot of really hard things. And so I think that's a beautiful piece, and I love this, you say this on 113, which relates to, I think, both of those last two examples. It's about hopes and tasks, and I thought this was really good. "Instead of just giving a reading assignment, we could devote the same kind of reflection to tasks focused on other skills such as writing research or artistic creation, with the idea that we are trying to," this is the next sentence down a little bit. "A carefully articulated task becomes a chance to remind ourselves of who we are trying to become, as we read." And so if we started thinking that way and curating our assignments that way, I think that would fundamentally shift how we assign work in class. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Is there another example that you have where that's been really successful for you? David Smith: Yeah, I mean, just yesterday in class, I got the most nods around the room that I've had in a while, from students just going, "Oh, yeah. When we started talking about how there's something about school that if you're not really, really careful, slowly teaches you that the point of doing the assignment is to get the assignment done. And that in the end, what the teacher really cares about is that you get the assignment done, because what you're going to be penalized for is not failing to grow, it's not turning it in at 3 P.M, and it's not having written 250 words, or not having got to page 27. So a lot of the messaging that we give to students when we give out assignments, it's often like the last two minutes of class and we're already in a hurry, and it's like, "Make sure you read chapter two by tomorrow," right. So the strongest verbal message is, what I really care about is quantity, deadlines, getting it done, getting it turned in. And so I also find that what my students most often come and apologize to me about, is, "Oh, I didn't quite manage to get to the last three pages today," or, "I need to turn it in 30 minutes late, is that okay?" And a big part of me is going like, "Why would I care if you turn it in 30 minutes late? Like the world's not going to stop turning." So that means you're a good student being conscientious, the fact that you still want to get it in within 30 minutes. But what they're not coming to me and saying, is, "I started reading this and I didn't get through it because it was really challenging me and I had to go and think about it." Or, "I tried to get through it, but I didn't quite understand it. Can you help me figure out how to apply this?" And so, again, this is a big mountain to climb, but how do you start to shift the message from, school is about getting stuff done, to school is about growing and learning. And I think a real simple way to run at that is by being explicit about assignments. So if I give you something to read, is the message, "Read to page 27 by tomorrow?" Or is the message, "I'd like you to read to page 27, and when you get to page 22, you're going to find a paragraph there that's kind of a little dense, but it's a really core paragraph in this chapter, and we're going to need talk about it together tomorrow, because I've read this chapter eight times and I'm still trying to live out this paragraph and I'm not sure I'm there yet, so I need you to think about it with me. So when you get to that paragraph, stop, read it three times, then go find a friend and read it to them and see what they think. And if that means you only get to page 26, I can live with that, but this paragraph, right. And then see if you can think of some ways that you would live differently tomorrow if this were true." And I'm just making this up as I go along- Jon Eckert: [inaudible 00:27:12]. David Smith: But imagine that as a homework assignment, compared to the usual kind of, "Read to page 27, answer the first three questions, turn them in at 4:37 P.M. on Moodle." And it's all about messaging, and so if I could do that consistently, is there a chance that I could get more of my students believing that in the end, what I really care about is that something changed, that some learning happened. And not just that we all managed to click in the right place on the right day. Which, frankly, is the least of my worries, so. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Because even when you emphasize that, it doesn't happen anyway, so. Jon Eckert: Yes, no, I want to give that a giant amen. I mean, my classes are always designed, I take the best 25 authors, I've read their best article or their best chapter from their best book, and I have curated that as like, this is what we're going to focus on today. And I love that even focusing them further on the paragraph and going back to the example I just gave you from the student who I gave the book at the end of the semester. Like that's not an assignment, that's a, "Hey, I am grateful for you. This is my last, kind of bringing closure to class and here's this." And then it's, I may never see that student again, we may never have another conversation. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: But when you do, that's a much richer conversation, because it wasn't compulsory, it wasn't about compliance, it wasn't about getting something done, so I love that. I love that point. The last thing we always do, is we do a quick lightning round, and with all the years of experience you have, I got to imagine you've got some good answers. I just have four questions. The first one is, and you can do in whatever order you want, these first two. Best advice you've ever given or received as an educator and worst advice you've ever given or received as an educator? Start there. David Smith: Best advice, never talk to a child without eye contact. Jon Eckert: That's good. David Smith: That was the best piece of parenting advice I was ever given, actually. Jon Eckert: Yeah. That's good. David Smith: I think it's really easy for adults to talk at young people- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Rather than, to young people. And something I said in, at least once in a previous book is, I think teaching is something you do with people, not something you do to people. My students are not objects that I'm trying to hit with something, and if I can't establish communication, that we're actually human beings looking at each other and we're trying to figure something out here, then it's probably not going to go as well as it could. If I just kind of broadcast over the top of the assembled heads, that's not going to go well. Jon Eckert: Just watch a great kindergarten teacher, they're always down on a knee- David Smith: That's good. Jon Eckert: Eye to eye with kids, yeah. David Smith: Right. Well, I often find, it's not just kindergarten, university, I often find myself down on a knee by a table, 'cause that's where you should be, right. Jon Eckert: You should be, you just see it far less. I totally agree. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: No, but yes. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: That is good. David Smith: So- Jon Eckert: Worst advice? David Smith: And then worst advice. Worst advice I've been given, don't smile till Christmas. Jon Eckert: Oh yeah. Classic. David Smith: It's one of our old chestnuts. Yeah, it's funny, when I first started teaching, my early teaching was in some urban environments and I found it very difficult. And I did not have great classroom management skills when I started and I struggled, I had some unruly classrooms. But one of the things I also learned about myself was that I couldn't do the Policeman act convincingly, it's just not in my personality to look mad- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: With students. Because I'm not actually very often mad with students, I just find classrooms fascinating. Jon Eckert: Even when they derobe. Yeah. David Smith: Yeah. And so, a few times early on, if I tried to pretend to be mad with students, then they just laughed at me, because it just wasn't convincing. So I had to gradually find other strategies, which had a lot to do with just investing lots of time in relationship building and trying to make the learning meaningful, and again, the one-on-one contact. And so the sort of be mean until they know you mean it thing, has just never ever worked for me. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Maybe there are people for whom it works, but even then, I'm just not convinced that an ethic of be unpleasant to people until they get on board is a great way to go. Jon Eckert: I'm pretty convinced that's not a great way, which I think you're being kinder than I am. I don't think that's an effective way to manage people, especially not in 2025. I don't think that's a- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Ethic that's going to work. Okay, next thing, best book you've read in the last year related to education? David Smith: Oh my, read so many books recently and some of them were really, really specialized. Jon Eckert: Yeah. Or pick one of your top five. David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Best book that I've just read. Well, you know what, I'm going to do the really embarrassing thing here, I really enjoyed your book. I read your book just recently- Jon Eckert: Oh. David Smith: Just Teaching by Jon Eckert Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Is something that I've been getting ideas out of for my own classroom, and that's always a win. So that was a really great one. And another reason I have for picking that out is, at the moment I'm working up to a big research project on Comenius. So I'm reading a lot of- Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: Books about Comenius at the moment, and some of them are really great. Jon Eckert: Yeah. David Smith: But they're in German and they're really specialized, so. Jon Eckert: That is specialized. David Smith: But- Jon Eckert: That is specialized. David Smith: In terms of books that are just about the classroom, I did enjoy your book, Just Teaching. Jon Eckert: Okay. David Smith: And, yeah, another one I just read the other day, I just did a podcast the other day with Alan Bandstra, who's a teacher from Iowa, and he's got one called, Solutions That Heal- Jon Eckert: Okay. David Smith: Talk about infectious behavior in classrooms. And it's a self-published book, it's just a teacher who wanted to write about the things that are going on in his classroom, and I found it quite winsome. Jon Eckert: No, that's good. David Smith: [inaudible 00:32:43]. So, yeah. Jon Eckert: That's good. The funny thing is, whenever I ask that question about best book, I always have my pen ready to write it down. And as you're sharing that, I'm mindlessly, I literally wrote down, "Just Teaching," on my thing. I was like, okay. David Smith: so you can look it up later and see if it's any good, yeah. Jon Eckert: Right. I'll see, I'll check. But that's very kind. Last question, what makes you most hopeful as you look at schools right now? David Smith: It's funny, I don't draw hope from looking at institutions really, so it's not so much looking at schools. What always makes me hopeful is, like every student who is in my classroom right now is a human being who is spending a lot of money to learn how to help other people learn. And I just find my students are sometimes idealistic to a fault, there's some things that will get more complicated when they get into the classroom, but they are students who deeply want to do good for their learners. And I'm glad every semester, that I've just spent a semester with another 20, 30 young people who want to be teachers and who want to find a humane way of doing that and a faith informed way of doing that, in a way that does good in the world. And that's among my students. But I'm going away on a retreat as part of a research project this weekend, with five teachers from area schools. Where we're actually going to talk about hope for the whole weekend and how we're going to address that in schools. And again, just seeing their eagerness to be part of that project and to want to give up their weekend to talk about how we teach for hope in schools. So all over, when I do professional development, I just keep running into teachers who haven't given up yet and who are trying to do right by their students, do right by their faith, find a more true and wholesome way of doing things. And as long as there's a good subset of people who are doing that, then there's still a chance that it can get better. Jon Eckert: That's good, that's good. Good place to find hope. Well, hey, thank you for your work, really appreciate Everyday Christian Teaching. Super helpful, good follow up on Christian Teaching- David Smith: Thank you. Jon Eckert: Also, super helpful. Oh, and excited for the platform you're building out, we didn't even talk about that. But there's a platform that's going to go with all of this. Do you want to just say something to wrap up- David Smith: Yeah. Jon Eckert: And give people a sense of where to find that? David Smith: Yeah. I'll try to say this quickly. Where to find it, there's a website, everydaychristianteaching.com. It already exists, if you go there right now, you'll find a description of what's coming, but there's no actual resources there yet. We are hoping to have the first resources up there by March, we are building it frantically right now. But what it's going to be is really an extension of the idea that this book is about, how do you learn how to do this regularly, not just how do you have this one blinding moment of revelation, but how do you make this part of a routine? So we're building professional development resources that help to create community conversations around this. So there are some resources where you can just download everything you need to run a PD day. There's others where you can download everything you need to run a seven week or seven month whole school conversation around it. There's going to be self guided resources, so if there's just one of you or if there's a small group of you that want to do it at your own pace, there's going to be versions like that. And there's some graduate credit bearing options. And we're building these around specific topics like community or hospitality or Shalom, and we're sort of building out resources for each of those. Like I say, we're furiously working on finalizing details on some of these, and we've been piloting them out in schools and getting really good feedback. And so we hope to have the first ones available on there and we're trying to make it very affordable as well. First stuff should be up sometime in March at the latest, and yeah, go there and take a look and then keep coming back to see what we've added over time. Jon Eckert: No, that's great. Thank you for that. Appreciate your work. Thanks for being with us. David Smith: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for the invite.  

We had the pleasure of interviewing Pastor David Robertson, minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee Scotland (http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk). Pastor Robertson is also the associate director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity (http://www.solas-cpc.org), married to Annabel and has three children. Pastor Robertson joined us to discuss Brexit, Scotland revivals, and why should pastors engage in politics. Pastor Robertson regularly blogs on his site: https://theweeflea.com/ , go check it out! In CrossPolitic news we discuss: Idaho is more progressive than New York City https://nypost.com/2018/10/02/de-blasio-to-sign-legislation-allowing-third-gender-on-birth-certificates/ Mein Kampf Revised for Academic Journals… Scholars Publish Absurd Gender Studies Papers https://www.dailywire.com/news/36645/scholars-publish-absurd-gender-studies-papers-ashe-schow City of Houston Fighting Sex Robots Brothels https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/city-of-houston-creates-ordinance-to-prevent-sex-robot-brothel-from-opening/285-599919539 You can stream live from our website here, or you can find our newest episode in the iTunes store and Google store. To find out more about our partnerships (limited number) and advertising packages, please email us at contact@crosspolitic.com. Finally, the best way you can help us out is to join our club membership!

During today's conversation on Back Porch Theology, the very last stop in our topsy-turvy tour through Judges, we're going to hang out with a hot mess of a man who was my favorite character in biblical narrative – apart from Jesus, of course – when I was a little girl. His name was Samson and I'm not sure why I was so captivated by him when I was a kid because for most of his life, he was a rebel without a clue. Although Sam's birth announcement was engraved by an angel, and he was doted on by good and godly parents who suffered through decades of infertility before they got pregnant with him, he rejected their morality and devotion to God and went careening in the opposite direction. I'm not going to spoil the audacious end of his story in this preview, but if you've been on the porch for the last few episodes, you know that divine redemption is always lurking in the darkest alleys of humanity. Dr. Tim Keller explained it beautifully, “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” We're serving up extra portions of hope on the porch today, so we're delighted you've chosen to pull up a chair to chow down with us. Please grab your favorite beverage, and a Bible and let's dive into this divine love story and remind our prone-to-wander selves of the miraculous redemption available to us because God's faithfulness has always been weightier than our flaws! Watch the Ark in the Darkness HERE. Find out more from Hope For The Heart Here. Learn more about The Chosen HERE.

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Wisdom for Work from PhilippiansDevotional: 2 of 4Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. (Philippians 2:14-15)Want to “shine among” the non-Christians you work with? Paul tells you how: “Do everything without grumbling or arguing.” Apparently, working without grumbling and complaining was as countercultural in Paul's day as it is in ours.C.S. Lewis once said that, “Hell begins with a grumbling mood.” The inverse is also true. People can get a whiff of heaven through the joyful mood of its citizens. Dr. Randy Alcorn goes so far as to say that, “Happiness in Christ is one of our most powerful evangelistic tools.”The question, of course, is how can we be joyful and work without grumbling when your co-worker replies all to yet another email or your boss makes an urgent request at 4:45 on a Friday? By focusing on what Christ has done for us.Just a few verses before today's passage, Paul writes about how Christ “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death” for you and me (see verse 8). “Therefore,” Paul says in verse 14, “do everything without grumbling or arguing.”The cross is the source of our joy amidst less than desirable circumstances. Once you focus on what Christ accomplished for you at Calvary, grumbling about the smell in the office refrigerator feels ridiculous. Tim Keller once compared it to being a “spiritual billionaire…wringing your hands over ten dollars.”Grumbling is so second nature we often don't notice we're doing it. Here are three simple ways to prevent, confess, and respond to complaining.First, prevent grumbling by writing Philippians 2:14-15 somewhere you'll see it while you work. On a post-it note, your phone background—wherever.Second, confess grumbling by creating a grumble jar. And every time you or someone on your team complains, drop in a dollar (or, if you're like me and never carry cash, an IOU to tally later). My family and I did this recently to break a different habit and it was shockingly effective. We were able to kick our habit in less than a month. Finally, respond to grumbling by expressing gratitude. Think back to the last thing you complained about and thank God for something related to that thing. For example, this morning I grumbled about the house being a mess. But I then said a quick prayer of gratitude that I have children to make said mess.Do whatever it takes to wrestle your grumbling to the ground, believer. Because as Dr. Alcorn put it, “Our happiness makes the gospel contagiously appealing; our unhappiness makes it alarmingly unattractive.”

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."Justified By Faith" is a sermon based on Romans 3:21-31 preached by Associate Pastor Michael Tooley.This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

Scripture: Genesis 2:4-17 Key Takeaways: + Work is a good gift from God. “Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.” – Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?” + Work is to be done for God and for his glory. Ephesians 6:5–8 + Good work that glorifies God is ethical work. + Good work that glorifies God is excellent work. "The Church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly – but what use is all that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry?” – Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?”  “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.” – Martin Luther Exodus 31:1–5 Proverbs 22:29 + Work is how we partner with God in his care of the world.  “God Himself will milk the cows through him whose vocation that is.” – Martin Luther + Our identity is to be found in Jesus and his work, not ours. “If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.” – Tim Keller

We're so glad you are here! Thanks for checking out Sunday's message!-- SUNDAY'S NOTES --For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 ESVMistaken IdentityYou are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9 ESV“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.'” Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the LORD your God.'”Matthew 4:3-7 NLTGod created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 ESVThe enemy wants to rob you of your God given identity and destiny and establish a stronghold of mistaken identity in your life. The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. John 10:10 NLTIf your identity is in your work, success will go to your head and failure will go to your heart. Tim KellerYou are not identified by your struggle but your savior! The sooner you refuse to be identified by your struggle, the sooner sin and death will lose its hold on you. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:12-17 NLTThe devil's strategy is to takeaway your inheritance, and to do that he has to steal your identity. To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12 ESVIf you choose real relationship with Jesus and stand in His authority, the enemy can't touch your inheritance!Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. Ephesians 1:4 NLT Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:5 ESV I am loved, I am adopted, I am forgiven, I am redeemed, I am Holy, I am His! - - The only way for you to know you is for you to focus on knowing Him!But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43:1 ESV Identity is inextricably linked to ownership.Knowing in your heart that you are a loved and empowered child of God changes everything.I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 ESVWe don't lose our true selves but rather become our true selves when we find ourselves in Jesus!-------------------------------------------------Download the 828 Church app!To view our latest e-newsletter, the Midweek Momentum, and subscribe to our weekly updates, go here! https://linktr.ee/828church

We're so glad you are here! Thanks for checking out Sunday's message!-- SUNDAY'S NOTES --For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 ESVMistaken IdentityYou are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9 ESV“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.'” Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the LORD your God.'”Matthew 4:3-7 NLTGod created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 ESVThe enemy wants to rob you of your God given identity and destiny and establish a stronghold of mistaken identity in your life. The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. John 10:10 NLTIf your identity is in your work, success will go to your head and failure will go to your heart. Tim KellerYou are not identified by your struggle but your savior! The sooner you refuse to be identified by your struggle, the sooner sin and death will lose its hold on you. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:12-17 NLTThe devil's strategy is to takeaway your inheritance, and to do that he has to steal your identity. To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12 ESVIf you choose real relationship with Jesus and stand in His authority, the enemy can't touch your inheritance!Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. Ephesians 1:4 NLT Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:5 ESV I am loved, I am adopted, I am forgiven, I am redeemed, I am Holy, I am His! - - The only way for you to know you is for you to focus on knowing Him!But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43:1 ESV Identity is inextricably linked to ownership.Knowing in your heart that you are a loved and empowered child of God changes everything.I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 ESVWe don't lose our true selves but rather become our true selves when we find ourselves in Jesus!-------------------------------------------------Download the 828 Church app!To view our latest e-newsletter, the Midweek Momentum, and subscribe to our weekly updates, go here! https://linktr.ee/828church

With declining church attendance and shifting values, there's no denying that our culture's posture toward Christianity has changed. Some say America is now “post-Christian,” but author Aaron Renn believes it is downright “anti-Christian.” In a recent NY Times profile, Renn explains why he thinks Christianity now occupies a “negative world,” and why the winsome approach of leaders like Tim Keller should be abandoned for more aggressive tactics. Then, Phil talks with legendary musician, songwriter, and producer Charlie Peacock about his new memoir, “Roots in Rhythm: A Life in Music.” Also this week, a leaked memo reveals the real impact of Trump's foreign aid cuts and immigration policy, and what exhibits would you add to the Museum of Failure?   Holy Post Plus: Bonus Interview: https://www.patreon.com/posts/124128840/   Ad-free Version of this episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/124154267/ 0:00 - Show Starts   2:35 - Theme Song   2:00 - Sponsor - World Relief - Visit https://worldrelief.org/STAND to join The Path to support vulnerable communities around the world!   3:10 - Sponsor - Bushnell University - Equip yourself to be transformative in your community! Go to https://www.bushnell.edu   5:10 - Museum of Failure   10:35 - Trump Cutting Funding—to the US?   24:30 - Negative World   32:57 - Crotch Christianity?   53:00 - Sponsor - Hiya Health - Go to www.hiyahealth.com/HOLYPOST to receive 50% off your first order   54:10 - Sponsor - BetterHelp - This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/HOLYPOST and get 10% off your first month   55:20 - Interview   1:06:00 - Personal Spirituality and the Music Industry   1:14:22 - Death on the Mountaintop   1:31:30 - End Credits   Links from News Segment: Museum of Failure: https://abc7news.com/post/museum-failure-look-legal-challenges-surrounding-what-could-san-franciscos-newest-attraction/15955141/   Article on Aaren Renn by Ruth Graham and Madeleine Hordinski: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/aaron-renn-christianity-conservative-negative-world.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c&pvid=37FBD019-9B01-4CB8-B85C-587FBFCB4794#   Other Resources: Roots and Rhythm by Charlie Peacock: A Life in Music: https://a.co/d/2lwSYE2   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying  purchases.  

Paul and Wally discuss the latest on HB 11, formerly known as Paid Family & Medical Leave. A bill to raise alcohol taxes died in committee (HB 417). Are alcohol taxes dead for the session? Speaking of which, the tax bill is/could be the biggest bill yet to drop this session. It could STILL include this and other tax policies and be rammed through by session end. Democrats in the House Energy Committee rejected another opportunity to reform EV rules by overturning MLG's mandate. Bipartisan support for a Medicaid Trust Fund? What does it mean?  Paul attempted to testify (virtually) against HB 6. Why and what happened?  Today is the 5th anniversary of MLG's first COVID public health emergency. Paul and Wally look at that legacy and the recent NM supreme court decision to ratify it and other emergencies like her anti-gun emergency.  Paul will be in Alamogordo on the day of March 26 and we have an exciting event on New Mexico's medical shortage that evening in ABQ as well: Darren White is the latest addition to the Albuquerque Mayoral race. Can anyone knock off Tim Keller?   

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."Our Great Need" is a sermon based on Romans 3:1-20 preached by lead pastor Billy Glosson.This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

We have a must-watch episode of the No Doubt About It Podcast featuring former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who recently announced his run for Albuquerque Mayor. If you care about crime, homelessness, and the future of our city, this episode is a must-listen.In This Exclusive Interview, We Ask Darren White:✅ How will he fix Albuquerque's skyrocketing crime?• With crime at all-time highs and Albuquerque becoming almost unlivable, what's his plan to restore law and order?• How will he crack down on repeat offenders and prevent crime from spiraling further?✅ How will he tackle homelessness?• Homelessness has exploded under Tim Keller's leadership—what will White do differently to get people off the streets and back on track?✅ His stance on marijuana legalization• White has been involved in the cannabis industry, and we didn't shy away from asking the tough questions about his support for legalization.• Hear his direct response and how he plans to balance public safety and business interests.Why This Election Matters:• Current Mayor Tim Keller has been in office for 8 years, and during that time, crime has surged, and the city has fallen into deep decline.• Is Darren White the leader Albuquerque needs for a new start?If you care about the future of Albuquerque, this interview is essential viewing.Website: https://www.nodoubtaboutitpodcast.com/Twitter: @nodoubtpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoDoubtAboutItPod/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markronchettinm/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

Krista filled in on the Family Meeting this week. She invited our friend, Pastor George Sayour on to share his perspective about the Andrew Tate phenomenon. In the second half, we discussed Tim Keller's approach to church planting and his idea of third way-ism. -- Be sure to stay connected by downloading the CFBU app! With the CFBU app, you'll have all our resources (Theology Mom, All the Things Show, and CFBU) at your fingertips. Search for "center for biblical unity" in your app store.

A picture of Christ on the cross. Two thieves, one on His left, one on His right. A moment of cosmic significance—God Himself atoning for the sins of the world. And yet, according to Rick Warren, this is also…a metaphor for political moderation?That post, now deleted, tried to argue that Jesus died “in the middle” as a sign that Christians should reject both the Left and the Right in modern politics. But that's not theology—it's a desperate attempt to baptize political fence-sitting. And it's part of a broader trend known as Evangelical Third-Wayism—a concept pushed by figures like Tim Keller and, more recently, Gavin Ortlund. The idea is simple: Christians should neither align with the Right nor the Left, but instead carve out a “distinctly biblical” third way. It sounds noble, even wise. But in practice, it functions as a convenient excuse for coddling progressives while selectively condemning the Right.Stephen Wolfe has called this out as nothing more than “sharpshooting”—strategically engaging with culture to present a morally palatable image to coastal elites while never actually challenging the underlying liberalism that dominates our institutions. He's right. If politics is war by other means, then Third-Wayism is an attempt to negotiate a ceasefire while one side keeps advancing.This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Reece Fund, as well as our Patreon members and donors. You can join our Patreon at patreon.com/rightresponseministries or you can donate at rightresponseministries.com/donate.At the end of the day, Third-Wayism is not simply a bad take. It is bad strategy, and it is unchristian. Tune in now as we explain.*MINISTRY SPONSORS:**Squirrelly Joes Coffee - Caffeinating The Modern Reformation*Our audience can get a free bag of coffee (just pay shipping) by visiting ⁠https://squirrellyjoes.com/rightresponse ⁠*Reece Fund⁠https://www.reecefund.com/*Dominion: Wealth Strategists* is a full-service financial planning and wealth management firm dedicated to putting more money in the hands of the church. With an education focused approach, they will help you take dominion over your finances.https://reformed.money/

The book of Romans has been a catalyst for revival — for spiritual awakening and transformation throughout the history of the church. ‌Tim Keller said, "The letter to the Romans is a book that repeatedly changes the world, by changing people."This is part one of our Romans sermon series: The Gospel | Right with God."True Righteousness" is a sermon based on Romans 2:17-29 preached by lead pastor Billy Glosson.This sermon was preached at Mission Church — a church in Morganton, North Carolina in the heart of Burke County.Join us in person on Sundays, 10 AM221 Herron St.Morganton NC, 28655

In one of Jesus' most famous parables, He shares the story of a prodigal son who returns home to his father after making a mess of his life. What does this story reveal about God's heart for us? Join us as Senior Pastor Eric Geiger and Content Pastor Liz Garcia discuss what this story about God means for us!The Prodigal God by Tim Keller: https://a.co/d/4WjTZrvFirst Time? Start Here: https://rock.marinerschurch.org/connectcardCan we pray for you? https://rock.marinerschurch.org/page/692You can find information for all our Mariners congregations, watch more videos, and learn more about us and our ministries on our website https://www.marinerschurch.org/---------------------------------------------------------------- FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marinerschurch • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marinerschurch • Twitter: https://twitter.com/marinerschurch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marinerschurch • Online Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariners.online-------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the ministry and help us reach people worldwide: https://www.marinerschurch.org/give/Like podcasts? Check out more from Mariners Church https://www.marinerschurch.org/podcast-channels/

Send me a one-way text about this episode! I'll give you a shout out or answer your question on a future episode.Today's guest was nominated by her daughter, Sydney, who wrote on the nomination form, "My mom has given her entire life to raising me and my six siblings. Five of us were adopted, many with trauma that needed special attention. She has shown strength and dignity through it all. She is an inspiration to me as I am a brand new homemaker and I believe her wisdom will be a blessing to many others."  I am so thankful that Sydney nominated her mom, Heather Price, who has been keeping a home full time for 30 years with her husband. They have raised 7 and fostered many more and God has refined Heather through all the challenges of adopting traumatized and special needs kids. We talk about God's faithfulness, the need to stay flexible, and to constantly remember His unchanging character and what He has done in the past. We cover all the usual ground of expectations, hospitality, fails, wins, and many more aspects of Heather's homemaking journey over 3 decades.EPISODE NOTES & LINKSOur Favorites for Tim KellerWalking with God  in Pain in Suffering by Tim KellerJesus the King by Tim Keller (a walk through the Gospel of Mark), previously published as King's CrossPracticing the Presence of God by Brother LawrenceRecommended Chalk Paint: Annie SloanBe Our Guest! Apply or Nominate Through 2.17.25 or before all spots are filled. theartofhomepodcast.com/guestSupport the showHOMEMAKING RESOURCES Free Weekly Newsletter, Homemaker Happy Mail Private Facebook Group, Homemaker Forum Newsletter Archive JR Miller's Homemaking Study Guide Audio Newsletter available to Titus 2 Woman monthly supporters SUPPORT & CONNECT Review | Love The Podcast Contact | Voicemail |Instagram | Facebook | Website | Email Follow | Follow The Podcast Support | theartofhomepodcast.com/support

One may not expect Russell Moore and Jonathan Rauch, an openly gay atheist, to become friends—much less to be positive influences on one another's lives and work. But as this conversation shows, this surprising fact is true. The two discuss their perspectives on politics, Christianity, and culture. They talk about their regular gathering on Thursday nights with fellow thinkers and the ways they see fear taking precedence in American churches. Their discussion covers race, gender, and sexuality, as well as Christian nationalism, parallels between the political left and right, and the reasons why Rauch considers forbearance to be a key aspect of liberal democracy. Moore and Rauch consider the “four Ms”—mortality, morality, murder, and miracles—and talk about why Rauch dedicated his new book, Cross Purposes, to two Christian friends who have passed—Tim Keller and Mark McIntosh. Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include: Jonathan Rauch Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy by Jonathan Rauch Brookings Institution The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention Peter Wehner David French Mark A. McIntosh “Let It Be” “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time” No Compromise Tim Keller Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices