audio by album hillbilly theology

Dan and I have been working on this podcast for three weeks. Now the first fruit of the dream is yours in digital reality. With your feedback and prayer, maybe future podcasts won't be so painful. Leave feedback here, or send your private scathing remarks to feedback@opendiscipleship.org.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Dan and Jody talk about what discipleship is and should be.

Here's the second installment of "Hillbilly Theology." Dan and Jody talk about Apologetics and discipleship and their place in the Church.

With your feedback and prayer, maybe future podcasts won't be so painful. Leave feedback here, or send your private scathing remarks to feedback@opendiscipleship.org.

Dan reflects on and shares what it is to be "hillbilly." I'll publish these occassionally as long as I have them. Maybe you'll get some "desert rat" reflections from Jody from time to time as well.

In the third installment of "Hillbilly Theology." Jody asks Dan about Children in worship. Children in worship? Children in worship. It turns out to be quite the can of worms. An alternative title could have been "Reaping the Wirlwind."

Leave feedback here, or send your private scathing remarks to feedback@opendiscipleship.org.

Dan reflects on what it is about "being hillbilly" that, in a sense, binds us all together.

Dan talks about the "Economics of Worship," and the potential dangers of how we pick the music we use for worship. We went a little long, at 22:50 this time, but we're going to work at keeping them shorter in the future. (Our goal is to shoot for 15 minutes or less.)

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Dan tells us the story of his friend, and Momma's biscuits.... Yeah, that was real good eatin'.

We start off with the intent to look at how tithes and offerings effect the giver, and ended up talking about how God blesses us when we are faithful, and when we trust in Him. (This show is also going out encoded in a way to make it a much smaller file. If the audio quality is bad, please let us know.)

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Dan talks about remembering his dad's remembering (?!) about "farming rocks" in the spring. It's funny where we find the joy in our childhool memories.

Dan visits with Rusty Smith, the camp manager for Guadalupe Christian Camp. We get a little glimps of being a camp manager, a little glimps of being a mountain preacher, and a little glimps of being Rusty. (There is a lot of noise in the recording. In the words of my cousin, "It has that analog charm." Please forgive the recording quality, we expect it to go away in all future recordings.)

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Rusty Smith, the manager of Guadalupe Christian Camp, talks about being the pastor of the congragation in the Guadalupe Mountains. (1:39)

Unfortunately, we ran out of Hillbilly Theology recordings, and there were no suitable scraps that I could pull together to make a show out of, but we do have plenty of "Reflects" thanks to our visit with Rusty Smith. So, today you get a bit of Rusty instead of a session with me and Dan.

I hope you enjoy this little snack, and I hope I get a chance to get with Dan next week, when we get back from vacation.

Rusty Smith talks about being a cowboy preacher.... or learning to be a cowboy preacher... or about not being much of a cowboy preacher.

Dan ambushes Jody with a question about who the Judges were and how God used them. To add insult to injury, he presses the issue, asking how an analogy might be draw between the Judges, and leadership in the modern Church. You'll notice that the recording doesn't catch the very first parts of the introduction, since Dan didn't bother to wait until the recorder was on to fire his surprise question.

Rusty Smith talks about Women's Retreat at Guadalupe Christian Camp. Women's Retreat is the only camp that fills up during early registration, and has more interest than we have room for at the camp.

Recorded on the 3rd of July, Dan wonders into the topic of what the relationship between Christianity and patriotism is, has been and should be. It's a nice, short show this week and just under 9 minutes. We'd like feedback from listeners on what you think. We just scratched a little at the surface. We think we can learn a lot from you.

We talk about the things preachers are expected to do, what they are trapped into doing, what tradition dictates that preachers do, and question what part reality should play in all of that. What do you expect from your preacher? What should we expect from our preachers. How much of what we expect preachers to do is a waste of time?

What things do preachers do because they are trapped in the tradition of doing those things?

We treasure your feedback. you can leave it in the comments below (if they are working), or email us at feedback@opendiscipleship.org.

MF wrote in (a long time ago) asking us, "Is worship about entertainment? When the focus is so much on the music style isn't that about entertaining the congregation? Shouldn't the congregation be more concerned with worshiping rather than person entertainment?" Dan and Jody take on the question....

Send feedback.

Show link: GeeksAndGod.com (I love these guys!)

Starting in 1 Timothy 3 , we wrestle with the office of Elder, the "office of minister," and more tradition-inflicted bondage in the Church. Were do we find the "office of minister" in the Bible, anyway?

Dan tells a story about a Church he ministered to when confrontation was the only path to healing. "It's one of those stories that just freaks me out."

This is our first "Special Feedback Episode." We hope to do more, more often. We answer all the questions and respond to the best of the best of the comments. We hope you enjoy!

Send us feedback. feedback@opendiscipleship.org, review the show at iTunes, leave a comment here.... just send us feedback.

"His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise." -- G.K. Chesterton

Dan and Jody talk about our culture's pursuit of pleasure and the price the family pays as a result. Is there a way back? Can the family be restored? Just some thoughts on that kind of stuff.

Let's talk about grace.... for a while. It's a long one, people! Weighing in at 42 min, 35 seconds, this is our all-time, most overweight show... Listen to it, anyway.

Popular culture and the modern Church teach about a "faith" that is believing without evidence, a kind of faith that is weakened by evidence. Real faith, Biblical faith, is actually evidence based belief. C.S. Lewis defines faith as continuing to believe what your reason has accepted. The real enemy of faith is fear, not reason.

Why doesn't the Church exercise propper church discipline? We really would like your opinion on this under practiced church ... er ... practice.

kinda of rambling conversation. We didn't know it would turn into a show, but it did. You can hear us clearing lunch from our throats, and talking around breath mints, but it's mostly good stuff worth thinking about. Angels, spirituality, law and legalism, and when Jesus says, "Shut up!"

If you don't like the stuff we're talking about, maybe you should be sending us feedback.

Forgiveness. Probably the central tenant of Christian behavior. One of the things Jesus talked most about, and gave instructions most about. He also modeled it for us, perfectly (i.e. on the cross). Also, interestingly enough, one of the least practiced behaviors among Christians.... Now, ain't that sumthin'?

As usual, this is not an exhaustive conversation. There is, however, a HOWTO Forgive embedded in there! (No, it's not a "do it yourself," or "forgiveness for dummies" kind of thing... but it oughta work for anyone who listens to this show.)

How many problems in the Church would never grow into problems if we would JUST TALK about them before they became problems? Seriously. Why don't we just talk before things become a problem? "Hey, I love you. Let's talk," would go a long way in building the church.

Well... how, exactly, do you introduce the topic of world views? Since so many people aren't even aware that world views exist, and even fewer aware that they have one.... Put most simply, "Our worldview is our framework for viewing reality." (wikipedia) It's a very difficult idea for some people, but the place to start is in identifying that we have a world view. Once we've cleared that, we can start identifying what's broken in our world view and figuring out how to fix it.

Dan interviews Tom Micheaud of Valley Christian Academy in Roswell, NM.

God speaks to each of us. He speaks to each of us in unique ways. Sometimes those words are sharp and striking, sometimes sweet and subtle. When and where does God speak to you? When does he call your name? How does God tell you, "I love you"?