Category: Books

Episode 067: Remarkable Pt. 2

In this episode we continue and conclude our conversation with Pastor Brady about his new book, Remarkable. Be sure to listen to Part 1 HERE.

Issues of race are deep-rooted in our culture, and we in the church need to step up and say that there is a better way…

All of us need to respond to issues of race, and we each need to know the condition of our hearts… are we being gracious and empathetic, are we listening to people’s stories and experiences…? 

The reason that slavery got abolished is because Christians got involved… it was so tied up with economics that very few people were willing to stand up… and finally a group of British Christians stood up and said, “This is not what Christ meant by ‘love your neighbor.’” 

We are living in a sexually broken culture… I want people to understand the biblical idea of purity… it’s not just about rule-following… it’s about glorifying God…

I love the passage where it tells husbands to treat their wives like Christ treats the church… Paul realized that marriage was an opportunity to show the watching world how to serve one another…

I think that this is why we celebrate long marriages… what an accomplishment, to give yourself away to another human being for their flourishing and their benefit…  

This has to begin in your city… we’ll never serve the poor in our city well if we can’t serve our spouses or children well at home… 

We have a prayer that we pray at New Life, “Come, Holy Spirit…” That’s where I start my day… these days I am ending my day by praying, “Holy Spirit, remind me where you were present today and where I encountered you today…”

It’s amazing what happens when you pray that… it creates space for the Spirit to show me where he actually answered my prayers…

If you’ll bookend your day with prayer like that, this won’t become works, it will become grace, an empowering presence to do God’s will… you can’t follow Jesus without the Holy Spirit—don’t even try…

Be sure to grab a copy of Remarkable HERE! (And leave a review!)

Episode 066: Remarkable Pt. 1

In this episode (part 1 of 2) Andrew Arndt, Glenn Packiam, and Daniel Grothe sit down with Pastor Brady to talk about his new book Remarkable.

Paul had the same challenge that we have when he went into Corinth… the city of Corinth was sexualized and entertainment-driven and violent, and people were grasping for power and cheap money… it looks a lot like our culture today…

The question is, are we going to oppose the culture, or are we going to influence the culture? It starts with our own decision to live out the teachings of Jesus in a remarkable way…

The church in Corinth had been pushed to the margins… I believe that the church is at its best when it is pushed to the margins, we become our truest self at the margins…

One of options we’ve taken in response to the culture is that we isolate ourselves… we put spiritual and physical walls up to protect ourselves… the problem with that is that Jesus told us to be salt and light…

Another option we’ve taken is the exact opposite: we immerse ourselves in the culture, where over time there’s not much difference between us and the world around us… most Christians fall into this category…

The third option is the angry option, to be the instigators: they believe that they can shout at the darkness and make it go away… the world around is shifting and changing and they don’t know how to make sense of it…

The most revolutionary and radical thing we can do right now is love our neighbors as ourselves… and not just the ones that are like us… this is the most radical thing that Christianity has always brought to the world…

Jesus confounded the religious leaders of his day by hanging out with sinners and tax collectors… they couldn’t understand why Jesus wasted his time with “those people…”

We can’t be Great Commission people if we aren’t Great Commandment people… Jesus never expected us to go into all the world and make disciplines if we don’t love them…

The “fourth way” is being consumed with love for God and love for people and let that be your motivation for everything you do…

Catch Part 2 next week, and buy Remarkable HERE! (And leave a review!)

Episode 047: A Conversation with Andrew Wilson

In this episode we sit down to talk to our friend Andrew Wilson about his new book Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship to talk about the what, why, and how of blending the charismatic and sacramental expressions.

 

 

https://www.spiritandsacrament.com/

 

I don’t remember where I first came up with the word (“eucharismatic”), but my history is that I have some Anglicanism in my childhood that was non-charismatic… and then I went to a charismatic church that had almost no awareness of the historical church…

 

At around six or seven years ago I started thinking there was a need for the church to bring together these two gifts… the term eucharismatic is a putting together of two words: eucharistic and charismatic, and the link between them is charis—grace (or chara—joy)…

 

When we understand the gift of God in the spiritual gifts and the gift of God in the Lord’s supper, we can receive all of God’s gifts rather than just some…

 

For me, the sacramental tradition was not associated with joy… but then I began reading the history of the church, these people who had almost unutterable moments of revelation of the beauty of who God is [while celebrating the eucharist]…

 

The Lord’s Supper is the lovely thing where everyone knows that this is something they are supposed to do; the question is how and how often… our church was doing it in homes, like they did in Acts 2…

 

For us, we had to recognize that whatever we did not practice on Sunday we did not ultimately value… you can say the same for the gifts… unless we do this at some point on Sundays, the church will think this is relatively unimportant…

 

I think that for many in more traditional churches, they are concerned about the charismatic out of a concern for orthodoxy and for things to be done in a decently and in order kind of way…

 

One of the things you can do is pick low-hanging fruit… the judicious and careful use of a prophetic impression (and you might not even call it that)—most people, even the most conservative (traditional) are happy with the idea that God might lead them to do something…

 

You just need to be sensitive to the fact that for many people this is really new… you need to be able to explain things in a non-weird way what God is doing…

Episode 039: A Conversation with Lisa Bevere

For this conversation, we sat down with nationally recognized author and speaker, Lisa Bevere to talk about life, marriage, ministry, and her latest book, “Adamant.”

 

 

There is a challenge in our day to merge truth and love… we have to know the Word of God but also have the leading of the Spirit…

 

I started to see that everyone saw that the truth was fluid… I found myself wondering what was happening in our culture… many people are finding themselves overwhelmed by information with no clarity [about what is true] …

 

Jesus is our “adamant” which means “invincible” … Jesus is invincible, he is an unassailable refuge… and we are in an “unassailable refuge of truth” which is Christ…

 

There are a lot of people who know catch phrases but don’t know the Word of God… there needs to be a return to reading the Word of God in context… not just scriptures here and there but context…

 

Being a grandmother gives you long range sight… there are things you’re concerned about when you’re a young woman or a mother… but when you’re a grandmother, you see that what you were so concerned about didn’t really matter…

 

Daughters have questions, mothers have answers, and grandmothers have perspective… God has always been multi-generational… and things that kids can’t hear from parents, they can hear from grandmothers and grandfathers…

 

When women are empowered correctly, they are not competitive with each other… they are free to use their gifts of intuition and relationship…

 

A lot of times we get women trying to talk like men at the table when we need women to be women at the table and men to be men and both empowered and valued and put together…

 

John and I don’t focus on what we don’t have… we’ve learned that the grace lifts when we complain… I don’t really believe in balance… I believe that I’m always a minister, always a wife, and always a mother…

 

Stop trying to be friends with everyone… enjoy your children and don’t just survive them… enjoy your marriage… laugh at your future… focus on the people who are challenging and building you… be the friend you wish you had…

 

 

Episode 007: Spiritual Parenting

Episode 007 – SPIRITUAL PARENTING

 

 Show Notes

What you have now is millennials who really want to be involved in their children’s lives, but are ill-equipped because many of them weren’t parented spiritually themselves…

 

Churches need to give millennials practical resources that are not antiquated… We need to give them meaningful ways to find community… and we need to give them paths for mentorship…

 

I can’t tell you how many young moms and dads are asking me for mentors… for couples in their 40s and 50s who can help them…

 

Children’s ministry typically means a “program”; it tends to have a “child-centric” approach… in a family ministry we see the child as a byproduct of the family they are raised in… we want to look at the child in context…

 

When we start dealing with the broader issues and bring restoration and health to those, we bring greater ministry to that child than we could have during one hour per week…

 

We have to repackage how we message about the need for involvement in children’s ministry… inviting people into a journey is more compelling…

 

For senior leadership, we need to further the message of that journey and then make the call for people to participate in the raising of the next generation…

 

In Western society, we’ve become so individualistic that we only think about our own families and not our greater participation in the family of God…

 

To the empty-nesters: you are the most prepared you will ever be to serve in local children’s ministry, and lots of you are just sitting on the sidelines… we need to challenge them to re-engage in the life of the local church…

 

Questions for you and your team

1) How well is your church doing at equipping parents to minister to their children?

2) How would your ministry look if you began to shift from a child-centric to a family-centric approach?

3) What can you do to begin to create situations where organic mentorship can take place?

4) How well are you and your team doing at positioning children’s ministry participation as an invitation to be part of a compelling spiritual journey?

 

RESOURCES

Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today’s Families by Michelle Anthony

Pursuing God’s Will Together by Ruth Haley Barton

Also, be sure to join us next year for The Gathering, a unique, 3 day event designed for you and your family ministries team!

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