Episode 16: AI Can't Love: Women in Ministry and Artificial Intelligence in the Church With Dr. Kristen Ferguson of Gateway Seminary + Cheerwine Soda Review and Pleading the Blood of Jesus in Prayer.

Practical Wisdom for a Deeper Prayer Life. How does phone addiction contend with our prayer life, and what can we do about it? Prayer Distractions and How to Deal with Them. BACON Soda Review.

Today, we have a deep discussion with Dr. Se J. Won on the topic of prayer, and Dr. Won goes beyond the normal prayer discussions and will lead us into a wonderful blend of spirituality and practicality as we discuss how to enrich your prayer life, and why the tyranny of the urgent is less worth your time than abiding in Christ is. Se J shared one of my favorite quotes I've heard recently when he said, "We often settle for what we can do, what we can muster up, rather than what God can do…Sometimes we miss out on the fruitfulness of what God can do because we are doing it our way." I can totally relate to that, and I bet you can too, and I think Dr. Se J. is going to help us today to prioritize prayer and abiding over, under, and in addition to all of the day-to-day tasks of ministry and life that all of us face. It is a powerful and practical episode, and Dr. Se J. will close out that interview with a great prayer, but don't leave yet, because Pastor Christopher and I will almost ruin it with a review of Lester's Fixins BACON soda. Not Baking soda - that probably would have been better, but bacon soda. This is a soda that should have been prayed over far more before it was released. You will hear a former law enforcement officer testify, under oath, "This has some odor peculiarities that are similar to methamphetamines," and the world's foremost cereal expert suggested that "this smells like it will take ten years off of our life," and, "I feel like I'm drinking a pig, and it's weird!" But before we have that rough experience, let's talk prayer and go deep. Notes: Why "Help me overcome my unbelief," is a powerful prayer. We miss the presence of God sometimes because we are busy trying and doing. We often settle for what we can do, what we can muster up, rather than what God can do…Sometimes we miss out on the fruitfulness of what God can do because we are doing it our way." When the pastor thinks "If its to be, its up to me." In other words, when he thinks that human effort is the fuel for the church to succeed, then he inadvertently teaches that philosophy to the congregation, and that teaches them to rely on themselves, rather than God. The danger of pastors thinking, "If I just sit around and pray," nothing is going to happen. The key to meeting the human-powered attitude is to surrender to God. Prayer doesn't have to be 60 hours a week, but it does have to be a priority. "If we are with the Lord, hearing His message, and being filled by Him, and cooperating with the Holy Spirit, then He can do everything better than us - 100 times more - if we are an effective tool in His hand." Dr. Se J. How do you approach mundane things of ministry prayerfully? Answer: I start the day with a clean slate, listening to the Scripture, coming to the office and praying, focusing on listening to God and asking for His help on the day. Throughout the day, I ask for His help as I process. Throughout the week, I skip one or two meals to spend time praying and listening to His leading so that I can hear and respond to the leading and nudging of the Holy Spirit. This means some of our prayer time needs to be when we are NOT doing all of the talking. What are the worst distractions to prayer? 1. Overscheduling/too much on your calendar. 2. Dealing with the tyranny of the urgent and trying to solve problems on our own. As pastors and church leaders, we need to determine whether something is a distraction, or something that will advance the Kingdom of God. How does phone addiction contend with our prayer life, and what can we do about it? Often we choose not to pray or enter the presence of God because we are busy, or it is not convenient for me right now. I am a processor, so I like solving problems, but maybe that is part of the problem - I am trying to solve the problem, but God calls me to be with Him. "You walked away having spent time with God." The Baptist way is to try and teach people into transformation, but sometimes the best way to learn to abide is to practice the presence of God and pursue Him.

Episode 22: Empowering, Equipping, and Encouraging Women in Ministry in Southern Baptist Churches. SBC Women in Ministry. Complementarian Ministry

#22. On today's episode, we finish up a great interview with Dr. Cathie Smith, who is the Great Commission Association Women in Ministry Ambassador. If you are following the news, this is a timely conversation for us, as the nation's largest Protestant denomination, the SBC, grapples with the role of women in ministry. Today, we talk with Dr. Cathie about how pastors should seek to enlist qualified and gifted women to serve in leadership roles and invite them to speak into sermon topics, schedules, etc. To give them a voice at the decision-making table. We also discuss practical ways to entrust and release women into areas of ministry in the church that are Bible-honoring, people-encouraging, and church-building. I think you will find the conversation to be both very practical, but also encouraging and inspiring, because Dr. Cathie does a great job of pushing pastors to see the women of the church as an often tragically untapped reservoir for dynamism, health, and flourishing. Seven Ways to Empower Women In the Church 1. Engage them. Engage them in discipleship and making disciples. See them, connect with them, open doors of opportunity for them as God allows. 2. Encourage their giftings. 3. Exhort God's calling in their lives and give them opportunities to respond to what God is calling her to do – commission/send out 4. "Equip women for ministry and disciple-making. This includes education. Educate women in theology, hermeneutics, and other Bible teaching skills to help her to be able to adequately handle the word of God. 5. Establish ministry pathways for women – both for equipping and serving in her gifting. This will involve a cost in resources, personnel and energy. 6. Enlist qualified and gifted women to serve in leadership roles and invite them to speak into sermon topics, schedules, etc. Give them a voice at the decision-making table. Partnership not just permission. 7. Entrust and Release Women in your church – Champion/Co-Workers/Celebrate

Episode 21: Why are Women Leaving the Church and 7 Biblical Ways to Empower Women in the Church with Dr. Cathie Smith + What is Greater than Serving?!

How can pastors and churches encourage women to use their gifts for the Kingdom of God? Seven Ways to Empower Women In the Church: 1. Engage them. Engage them in discipleship and making disciples. See them, connect with them, open doors of opportunity for them as God allows. 2. Encourage their giftings. 3. Exhort God's calling in their lives and give them opportunities to respond to what God is calling her to do – commission/send out 4. "Equip women for ministry and disciple-making. This includes education. Educate women in theology, hermeneutics, and other Bible teaching skills to help her to be able to adequately handle the word of God. 5. Establish ministry pathways for women – both for equipping and serving in her gifting. This will involve a cost in resources, personnel and energy. 6. Enlist qualified and gifted women to serve in leadership roles and invite them to speak into sermon topics, schedules, etc. Give them a voice at the decision making table. Partnership not just permission. 7. Entrust and Release Women in your church – Champion/Co-Workers/Celebrate Women are fully in the Imago Dei - in the Image of God. Jesus sees Mary and Martha, and He engages them in deep theological truths in profound ways. "The church cannot flourish without women playing KEY ministry positions…in every realm of life, you lose what you don't value." Pastors aren't like Jerry Jones or Mark Cuban…we don't own the team the way that sports owners own their team. We don't own the church, it's Christ's church, and we are under-shepherds at best. We aren't owners who utilize church players to put trophies in our cabinet." Jesus does not look past women. How can pastors and churches encourage women to use their gifts for the Kingdom of God? Generation Z women are disaffiliating from organized religion and leaving churches at unprecedented rates, outpacing their male peers for the first time in modern history. Research indicates that nearly four in ten young women now identify as religiously unaffiliated. Data from the Survey Center on American Life shows that women make up the majority (54%) of Gen Z individuals who disaffiliate from religion, completely reversing the gender gap seen in older generations like Baby Boomers, and recent studies from the Barna Group highlight that young adult women now report the lowest rates of Bible reading, prayer, and church attendance among their generation. 1. Our own Pastor Christopher Cole has written a great article about church renewal called The God of Renewal, which you will want to read. https://www.gcasbc.org/post/the-god-of-renewal [https://www.gcasbc.org/post/the-god-of-renewal] Also, our GCA resource of the month is also related to church renewal and is written by future podcast guest Mark Hallock and Jeremy Conrad, and is a great encouragement for churches to work together for the Gospel! All around us, pastors are discouraged, churches are competing instead of cooperating, and the witness of the gospel can feel fractured. But what if the solution isn't working harder, it's working together? In Radical Collaboration, Mark Hallock and Jeremy Conrad call God's people back to His design for unity, offering a practical vision for how churches can partner, multiply, and strengthen one another for the sake of the gospel. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G3WJSHPC?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_KKM4MNGP5Q18XK8AB1YX [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G3WJSHPC?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_KKM4MNGP5Q18XK8AB1YX]

Episode 20: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Why Pastors Talk about Controversial Bible Issues, Textual Criticism, and Guarana Antarctica Soda Review with Textual Criticism Expert Dr. Anthony Ferguson

Why should pastors talk about controversial Bible passages and difficult Bible origin questions with church members? Old Testament Scholar Dr. Anthony Ferguson answers... Today, we talk to Dr. Anthony Ferguson, an Old Testament Textual Criticism expert and pastor, about some pretty deep Bible nerd stuff, including how pastors can talk about the background of the Bible without turning the church into a seminary. Some of this short interview is pretty deep, but if you feel lost, never fear, we will process through a little bit of what we discussed at the end of the episode today, right after Cal Baptist Ministry student J.C. and I review Brazil's #1 Coke competitor, Guarana Antarctica. Like me, Dr. Ferguson was taught in seminary to not use Greek or Hebrew in sermons, and also like me, he pretty routinely ignores this advice, which raises a question that the third part of our interview with Dr. Ferguson brings up: why would we focus a whole episode on some of the more academic points of the Bible, including textual variants, biblical origins, and the Dead Sea Scrolls? At least one of the answers to that question, Dr. Ferguson addressed in our opener - if you don't, somebody else well, and shouldn't a pastor be the one to shepherd the people through those issues, rather than somebody else?

Episode 19: Using AI For Evangelism and Ministry, The Power of Old Testament Lamentation, Dead Billionaire Soda and World Cup Evangelism with Pastor Anthony Ferguson

Today we have Pastor and Professor and Everton Blues superfan Anthony Ferguson with us again, and we are talking to him about World Cup evangelism with the Yellow Card Initiative, and a few other things also, including the Great Commission Value of Artificial Intelligence and the importance of preaching about the OLD Testament in church. We've also got Cal Baptist ministry student and Valley Baptist Youth minister JC Thompson with us today to review a soda that USED to be called Armless Palmer. What is it called now? Will it muster enough Spurgeons to be recommended? Well, you'll just have to listen to find out. If you like the show, please tell a friend about it…that's how podcasts like ours grow - by word of mouth. That said, let's jump into our interview now. To get some yellow cards of your own to equip your church for evangelism! Two ways: ⚽️ visiting the YCI website www.yellowcardinitiative.com [http://www.yellowcardinitiative.com] ⚽️ emailing us at missionadvance@gcasbc.org [missionadvance@gcasbc.org] ⚽️Then, get trained via YouTube training videos @yellowcardinitiative on YouTube. Seeking GCA's next Executive Director of Missions GCA's current Executive Director of Missions, Dr. Mike Stewart, has faithfully led our association for nearly three decades. As he prepares to step into retirement in the coming year, we are prayerfully seeking the next Executive Director of Missions to build on this legacy and help lead GCA into a fruitful future of ministry. Learn more about the role and consider how God might be calling you or someone you know to join the mission in California. Initial review of candidates begins May 21. https://www.vanderbloemen.com/job/executive-director-of-missions-edm-great-commission-association-of-southern-baptist-churches/ [https://www.vanderbloemen.com/job/executive-director-of-missions-edm-great-commission-association-of-southern-baptist-churches/]