Let's Talk About the Bible

Rachel Hagewood and Ben Howard are joined by Beth Ritter-Conn, a lecturer at Belmont University's College of Theology and Christian Ministry. Together they talk about what it means to feel hope in dark times when you just don't feel it, how to process a lot of the struggles we've been going through in the last year, and what is giving us hope today.

In today's episode Rachel and Ben talk about our hope in Jesus Christ and how it spans the spectrum from the routine and every day to the profound. They look at the story of John the Baptist and his interaction with Jesus, Jesus' early ministry and how he overturned the expectations of the Messiah, Paul's thoughts about what it means to place our hope in Christ, and finally the ultimate goal of our hope described in Revelation.

Rachel and Ben are joined by Rev. April Casperson, the director of diversity and inclusion for the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church to talk about how she works with churches to become more diverse, what diversity really looks like, and why it's so complicated even when we have the best of intentions.

This week Ben and Rachel talk about what it means to be made in the image of God. They'll explore passages from Psalms, Philippians, and the Gospel of John as they discuss how we can dismantle our assumptions about what it means to be human and embrace the identity we are given as God's creation.

Rachel and Ben talk to Bruce Reyes-Chow, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, about his experiences with online worship, both before COVID-19 and during the pandemic, the importance of simplicity and community in shaping online connections, and where he sees online worship heading in the future.