It’s Thursday, May 22, 2025, and we haven’t recorded in almost 6 months. We’re here today to change that! What have we been up to? We also wanted to talk about who’s not represented at Annual Conference session this week (including the 3 of us), and what we as a Church might do to change that.

Hey friends, we have some new content for you! The three of us had a conversation about the state of the country we call home, and what the future looks like now that we're starting a second Presidential term with a certain man who uses a little too much spray tanner. How do we help one another? How do we support the folx the Oompa Lumpa has threatened to disenfranchise? We talk about those questions from a pastoral perspective.

We're baaaaaaaack! It's been exactly 6 months since our last new episode...and a whole lot has been going on with us. Emily talks mental health, Jess talks physical health, Natalie talks disability and inclusion, and all of us talk about letting your heart and soul air out.

Our very good, longtime friend, the Rev. Edris Hitchcock, pastor at the First Baptist Church of LeRoy, chats with Natalie and Jess about motherhood in the ministry, hope in the face of messiness, and a few memories from our old seminary friends Matt Turie, and the late, beloved Heather Janes.

In this episode Natalie, Jess, and Emily interview their friend and colleague, the Rev. Megan Stowe. A longtime servant of the Upper New York Conference, Megan moved over to New England and is now a DS in Massachusetts. Megan chats about resources that help clergy thrive, imposter syndrome, and being her brave self.

In this special episode, Natalie, Emily, and Jess interview Natalie's neighbor and colleague Genghis Khan, an imam, prison chaplain, and electrician at GE! Genghis dives deep into his immigration story from Guyana, his Muslim faith, bad stereotypes Christians have about our Muslim friends, and how anyone who achieves peace through submission to God is a Muslim!

In this special interfaith episode Natalie, Emily, and Jess chat with Natalie's friend and colleague Paul Uppal, a fellow member of Schenectady Clergy Against Hate and a Sikh. We had an amazing conversation about Paul's immigration story, false ideas and stereotypes Christians have about Sikh's, the beauty of the Sikh scriptures, and about how all you have to do to see God is look in the mirror.

In this very special second season premiere, Natalie, Emily, and Jess are all together and interview the Rev. Adam Hamilton! That name will ring bells of recognition across the United Methodist connection, as Adam is the lead pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, which is the largest Methodist congregation in the United States. Adam is also the author of a host of books, and has served several times as a delegate to General Conference. Adam chats with us about how his belief in pretty girls brought him to a belief in Jesus, about his unconventional discovery of the UMC, about his theological wrestling over his lifetime, and about the hope he sees in the future of the UMC in such a time as this.

Natalie and Jess reunite with the luminous Melissa Morral! CRCDS friends will remember Melissa as the first person they met on campus, as a steadfast presence amid the chaos of seminary life, and as a friend. Melissa chats with us about her upbringing among evangelicals, her exceptional calling, her time studying and working at CRCDS, and her ministry these days to the poor and to the refugee.

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse and cancer, as well as a few more F-bombs than we normally drop.

Natalie chats with Jo Schonewolf, host of the podcast "What the Hell Is a Pastor?" Natalie and Jo talk about being a Christian in the '90s, the damage of purity culture, beating cancer, the new frontier of Christian podcasting, moving on after a toxic experience, and the complicated relationship pastors have with saying 4 letter words.