Pastor Ben and Pastor Michelle catch up about the new sermons series at SUMC called "Back to Basics" and discuss the topic of "serving others". It is an important topics because in many ways it can be bound up with guilt and shame, especially for feeling like you are not doing enough. So they share some insight on how to approach serving others in a healthy and sustainable way.

Today, Pastors Michelle and Ben tackle a really significant question, "How do you know when it is God that you are hearing?". We all have many different voices that we hear every day, some internal and some external. How do we discern which voice is God's? How do we separate God's voice from our own wants and desires? Join us as we discuss this question, and several others like it! 

This week Pastor Michelle and Pastor Ben talk about the new sermon series "Back to Basics". It's a conversation that we will be having throughout the next five weeks about how the spiritual practices and habits that draw us closer to God are really much more simple than they seem. Jesus lived a simple life, and practiced a simple and beautiful faith. In this series we will seek to follow Jesus into how we can develop spiritual habits and patterns that help us connect more deeply to God and each other. This week we start with prayer and Michelle and Ben talk about what prayer means to them and how we can practice it in a more simple way.

Pastor Michelle was out of town this week so Ben brought in a special guest, Jenkins! The two of them talk about the theology of the Body of Christ and the ways that both campuses of Sparta UMC live into this special type of community. It's a great discussion with some deep discussion about how some of the normal ways we build relationships with each other have eternal impact.

Pastor Michelle and Pastor Ben talk about all about baptism this week. Baptism is a unique thing that we do not experience every day, so many people have questions about it. On top of that, many churches practice baptism in different ways. So what do we believe about baptism at Sparta UMC? How have we practiced this sacrament in the past? Why would someone get baptized? We talk about all of these questions and more!

In another episode where Michelle and Ben tackle some questions, they take a look at communion.If you take a listen, they just might answer a few questions that you have wondered about, but never got around to asking. It is a really interesting conversation about one of the most important aspects of our faith.

Michelle and Ben talk about about contentment on this week's episode, and discus how we can learn to grow content in all situations in life. 

This week Michelle and Ben talk about a powerful way to read the Bible for personal growth and transformation. It's called the H.O.P.E. method, and we use Psalm 23 to provide an example of how you can use this in your everyday life. You can find an explanation of the H.O.P.E. method bellow:

Hearing - what did you hear in this passage?

Outstanding - what stood out for you?  A new word or phrase?  Something that didn’t make sense?  A particular image, word or phrase that caught your attention?

Prayer - Given what you have heard and that which caught your attention, what might be your one sentence prayer?

Engage - How might you put your prayers into action?  Where does this experience intersect your life and call you to action?

Hey Everyone, we had some difficulty with our sound in this episode....so the quality is a little worse that usual. We will have it fixed next week! 

This week Michelle and Ben have a conversation about how to approach difficult passages in the Bible. They talk about how important experience, reason, and tradition are when figuring out what challenging passages are saying to us. Also, there are some great updates about what is happening in the life of the church!

This week Michelle and Ben take a look at two questions that have come up in our conversations about prophets at both campuses. They discuss if there are any prophets amongst us today, and how to navigate the middle path of Jesus. This is a robust conversation that goes to some deep places that we don't necessarily have time for on Sunday mornings and also gives some fun updates from the life of the church.