YouTube recently introduced a Podcast feature, and so I went ahead and created a Theology for the People YouTube Channel.
With YouTube now hosting podcasts, I might be motivated to post more video podcasts in the future.
Subscribe to Theology for the People on YouTube here, or for those of you on a desktop browser, you can listen to the embedded playlist below:
Last Thursday I hosted a YouTube LIVE Q&A for the first time, and it went better than I expected!
I answered questions about politics, the Holy Spirit, suicide, and demonic possession – and more people tuned in than I had anticipated!
Here’s the video of that recording if you’d like to watch back. If you turn on the comments, you can see people posting their questions and feedback.
Since it went so well, we are going to be doing this more regularly; we’re currently aiming for doing it weekly on Thursdays – so please join us for that, and please help us spread the word about it, so more people can be part of it and ask their questions!
On this particular occasion, I will be going live from the clubhouse of a golf course because I already had a tee time scheduled before we decided to start doing these live Q&A videos! So please join me in praying that the wifi works well at the clubhouse! And if you want to see my golf attire, you’ll have to tune in!
Here’s the link for that scheduled video, and with this you’ll also be able to watch it (or re-watch it) afterwards:
This Saturday (September 21, 2024) is the Rhythm at Roosevelt festival in Longmont, at Roosevelt Park from 2-10 PM.
White Fields Church will have a booth there, so please come by if you attend. We will be handing out popcorn and free swag and hoping to connect with many people in the community.
As part of our time there, we will be doing a Live Q&A, which will be broadcasted on YouTube, and people will have the opportunity to ask questions in person as well.
Here’s the link for that YouTube event, if you can’t come out in person:
On Monday, Sept. 23rd I am participating in a fundraiser to support YoungLife in the St. Vrain Valley. To raise money, I will be playing a marathon of 45 holes of golf in one day!
My wife Rosemary volunteers with YoungLife and both my high schoolers attend their gatherings. YoungLife specializes in building relationships with teenagers, walking with them through the highs and lows of their teen years, and introducing them to Jesus. YoungLife establishes mentoring relationships between Christian adults and teens, many of whom have no connection to church.
If you would like to join in supporting this local ministry with any amount, you can do so by clicking here: St Vrain Valley YoungLife Golf Marathon 2024
This Thursday I will be doing something new for the first time: a live Q&A session on YouTube!
I have received a lot of questions through the “Ask a Question” page on this site. I will be answering those questions, while giving priority to questions that people write in live during the recording.
Tune in to YouTube.com/whitefieldschurch on Thursday, September 12, 2024 from 2:00-3:00 PM Mountain Time to join us, or click the link below to go directly to the recording. If you click it now, you can set up a notification, which will remind you when we go live to join us.
Feel free to send me your questions in advance through the “Ask a Question” page, or as a comment on this post.
Hope to see you there!
In the latest episode of the Theology for the People podcast, Mike and I discuss the question of whether God hates religion.
Is religion opposed to relationship with Jesus? What is “religion” anyway – and is Christianity a religion or not?
In this episode we look at uses of the word “religion” in the Bible (there are 5 of them!), as well as passages like Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 where God talks about despising the religious practices of Israel; the very practices which He himself commanded them to do earlier in the Bible…
We also examine Jefferson Bethke’s spoken word YouTube video: “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus,” as well as a New York Times article about popular views on religion and biblical examples from Jesus, the apostles, and the New Testament church.
You can check out the episode here: Theology for the People: Does God Hate Religion? or by listening in the embedded player below.
Sometimes you spend hours preparing for Sunday’s sermon, but the one thing you say that gets remembered most was something you said off the cuff, that wasn’t in the notes. That happened to me this past Sunday.
I was teaching a message called “Thriving in Exile” in which I was looking at Daniel and Jeremiah and what it took for the people of God to live faithfully in the Babylonian exile, especially since the Apostle Peter states that the Israelites in exile in Babylon is a perfect picture of what it means for us to be Christians in the world today.
During a section in which I was pointing out that the exiles needed to have conviction in order to live faithfully in exile, I pointed out that Daniel and the others with him were also very courteous towards those in Babylon who didn’t believe what they believed, which is notable since it seems that some people think that to be a person of conviction means to be a “Jerk for Jesus.”
In contrast to that, the example we have throughout the Scriptures and from Jesus, Paul, and Peter specifically is that rather than an adversarial approach, we are to take a missionary approach to those who believe and think differently than we do, so that we might be used by God to help bring his light, love, and truth into their lives.
The fact is, it’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to influence people who can tell that you despise them. Those bombastic people who think they are dropping “truth bombs” tend to only embolden those who already agree with them and further alienate those who don’t – rather than wooing them to consider the beauty of the gospel.
Below you can listen to the podcast of this discussion and/or watch the video of it.
Here is a link to the book Mike and I discussed, in which I heard the phrase “Jerks for Jesus:” Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith by Larry Osborne. I recommend this book. In it, Larry Osborne points out how the pharisees never set out to become “pharisees” – they started out as people who cared about truth and following God whole-heartedly, but this devolved into pride, exclusivity, and creating rules which God never ordained, as well as fences which God never put in place. For those of us who truly care about truth and walking with God, this should be a warning to us lest we accidentally become pharisees ourselves. The book of course goes into much more detail and explanation. I especially appreciated what he had to say about Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the “secret disciples” mentioned in the gospels. It’s definitely worth a read.
Also embedded below is the video I mention about Ray Comfort, the Kiwi evangelist. I watched this film with my kids, and it was so inspiring. He speaks with so much compassion and empathy, and is a good example of how to not water down the truth, but still be courteous – and how many doors that opens for effective gospel ministry. The movie is called The Fool
Michael Payne, who serves as worship pastor at White Fields Community Church in Longmont, just released an original song called “My Times”. Check it out on YouTube here:
Here’s what Mike wrote about the song:
The story of this song starts back in 1996 when I arrived in Debrecen, Hungary with my backpack and guitar. It comes from Psalms 73 and 31 and encapsulated the start of my journey as a missionary. This song would become a mainstay for our Monday night English language Bible study with the medical students. But then I left the song behind in Debrecen as we moved to Budapest where I felt God call me to invest in Hungarian songwriters and song-writing. Since our move to the States 21 years later, this song has taken on new meaning as my family declares this same endless truth to God again – “My times are in Your hands”, stepping out into a new chapter in life.
Music is not only about the song itself, but who you play it with and it was a great joy to record this with great friends.
I hope the story and the words of this song resonate with you wherever you are in your walk with God.
Mike is going to be featured in the Longmont Times-Call’s 100 People of the St. Vrain Valley feature, in which they highlight notable people from the area.
You can also listen to Mike’s music on Spotify: Michael Payne on Spotify
They say that listening is the new reading. My friend’s tweet from this morning illustrates this growing trend:
I’m an avid podcast listener, and many of my friends are as well. I listen to podcasts while I drive, sometimes while I run, and often when I am doing busy work around the house.
The Edison Institute did a survey of 1200 Americans about podcasting and determined:
Check out the latest episode in the player below (email subscribers click here). In this episode, Mike and I talk about whether babies go to heaven, if there is an “age of accountability” and if God judges people during this life, or withholds it until the “final judgment.”
What all of us long for is nothing less than redemption.
This young Israeli couple have been posting videos of their music for a while. This video, according to their Facebook page, was recorded a cappella in their car because the original recording had audio problems, but there is something very lovely and beautiful about both the way they sing and what they are singing about.
What makes it so beautiful, is that they are singing about a day in the future when there will be no more wars and strife, when things will be the way we all innately feel that they should be and the way that all people deep down hope it will be.
What all of us long for is nothing less than redemption.
And that’s because we were made for perfection, but we’re fallen… and yet we have a sort of ancestral memory of it; we know that even though death and strife and sickness are the realities of the world we live it, even though that may be how it is, we still believe that it’s not the way it should be, and so we long for and we sing and dream and write about a world where these things are no more and everything is finally as it is supposed to be:
No more death. No more violence. No more pain. No more parting from those we love. No more infirmity. Love that lasts forever. True peace. Overcoming the limitations we experience now with frustration.
That is why this song is so moving. That is why all of the movies which make you cry have the same common themes: heroic self-sacrifice, good overcoming evil, immortality and overcoming death itself.
The message of the Gospel is that God loves you so much that He made a way for you to be redeemed through Jesus, so that one day that hope could become reality, so that everything your heart longs for deep down could not only be a wish, but a reality.
One day…
If you’re interested in more from these guys, here’s a link to their YouTube channel, and here is another song of theirs, this one in Hebrew (English translation can be found in the comments section on YouTube) – it’s a song of praise and worship to God:
Theology for the People 