Fifteen&: A Podcast Experience

Part 4 takes up the fourth woe of Matthew 23. Jesus says the Pharisees tithe their mint, dill and cumin but neglect justice, mercy and faithfulness, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:23-24). Chris opens with a Saturday when a bag of Goodwill donations mattered more to him than his daughter's chest pain. He explains how the tithe worked in Israel: it provided for the Levites, the widows and the orphans, and it taught that all is God's and all is ours (1 Corinthians 3). He then connects Jesus' words to Micah 6:8. Three takeaways follow: the tithe is the tool, sight is the target, and transformation is the result. He closes with Jesus' invitation to the weary (Matthew 11:28-30) and his own struggle to trust God with time and money.

WEEKLY REFLECTION: 

1. What’s unfair in your world that stays unaddressed because no one would get credit for fixing it?
2. Who needs mercy from you that will cost you something?
3. Where are you obedient with tasks but unreliable with people?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

Part 3 takes up the third woe of Matthew 23. The Pharisees had two kinds of promise: swear by the temple and you could back out, swear by the gold and you were bound. Jesus calls them blind guides for it (Matthew 23:16-22). Chris opens with the strange language we use at work and at church, "right-sizing," "per my last email," "we're a family," and tells the story of a team member who confronted the threatening edge in his own words. He reads Matthew 5:33-37, let your yes be yes, and shows the two ways we avoid it: proving looks for the loophole, hiding won't commit. Then the image at the center of the teaching: every promise has three parties, you, the other person, and God, and God has all the transcripts. He closes with three truths: God's name is holy, God is enough, and God shreds the transcript.

WEEKLY REFLECTION:

1. Where are you saying yes but leaving yourself an out?
2. Who do you have to say "I promise" to before they believe you?
3. What did you promise to do completely that you're only doing halfway?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

In this teaching, Chris looks at the second woe in Matthew 23. Jesus says the Pharisees "travel over land and sea to win a single convert" and then make that person "twice as much a child of hell" (Matthew 23:15). Their converts were copies of their teachers, not people set free. Chris shares how he did the same thing as a young leader and as a parent, and what he learned from it. He then contrasts the Pharisees' heavy rules with the yoke of Jesus (Matthew 11:28-30), who shapes us into his image, not ours (Romans 8:29). Three practices follow: make originals, not copies; serve the people in front of you, not the ones far away; and want the people you lead to go further than you. He closes with the story of a performance review that lifted a burden off a worship pastor that was never his to carry.

WEEKLY REFLECTION: 

1. Who have I been trying to make more like me?
2. What does one person on my team care about that I don’t?
3. Which of my habits would I hate to see in someone I lead?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

Chris kicks off a new series, 7 Humilities That Make You Great, by walking through the seven woes of Matthew 23 and flipping each one into a humility. Part 1 starts with the first woe in Matthew 23:13, where Jesus says the religious leaders shut the door of the kingdom in people’s faces. Drawing on Matthew 18:1-4 and Mark 10:43 to reframe what greatness means, Chris shares the story of shutting the door on his own brother and unpacks three practices: greatness is holding the door, you cannot give what you do not have, and engaging the tension when someone’s life is messy but they are trying to move toward God. Along the way he looks at Paul at Mars Hill (Acts 17), Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3), and Jesus as the gate (John 10:9).

WEEKLY REFLECTION: 

1. Who was trying to get in this week that you didn’t make room for?
2. You can spend your whole life anxiously guarding God’s love and never actually live in it. What would it look like to live there?
3. Who held a door open for you when they didn’t have to? Who can you hold the door for?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

What do you say when life is stuck in between? Most of us say “it’s fine.” In Part 5 of Limbo Moments, Chris shows why that kind of denial keeps us stuck and how honesty opens the way out. He walks through Isaiah 6, where Isaiah admits he has unclean lips, a burning coal makes him clean, and he answers God with “Send me.” Along with Luke 4 and 1 Corinthians 2:16, this teaching shows how God gives us a new mind in the in-between, so we can serve others for impact and not for our own validation.

WEEKLY REFLECTION:

1. What’s the sentence you haven’t been able to say out loud about where you actually are?
2. Which of the four collapses is your default: despair, grievance, the shortcut, or denial?
3. What’s the one small, obedient step you can take today?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org. 

When we are stuck in between, we reach for shortcuts: the confident plan, the quick move, the power play that gives us back a sense of control. Chris McAlister shows how those shortcuts comfort our insecurity and cost us the new thing God is doing. Drawing on Isaiah 43:15-21, Jesus reading Isaiah in Luke 4, Romans 12:2, and James 1:13, Chris walks through three ways to recognize a shortcut: it restores false control, it comforts insecurity, and it is about source, not speed. God is making a way in the wilderness. The question is whether we will take the road we have not seen yet.

WEEKLY REFLECTION:

1.      What in recent memory is a decision you made that was rushed and how did it comfort your insecurity?

2.      Where are you asking God to bless a plan you already built, instead of asking him for a road you haven’t seen yet?

3.      What smaller, slower road have you dismissed on sight that might actually be the way?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

Part 3 of Limbo Moments: Mastering the In-Between. When life does not go the way we planned, we often feel owed. Chris shows how that feeling points to a hidden deal: if I do this, then God will do that. Drawing on Isaiah 40:27-29, Isaiah 44:9-20, Isaiah 49:14-15, and Jesus reading Isaiah in Luke 4, Chris explains why an if-then is not faith. The second move in a limbo moment is to investigate. Find your if-then, ask if there is a lie in your right hand, and say the true sentence to God and to one other person.

WEEKLY REFLECTION:

1. Finish this and say it to your group: “If I ______, then I’m safe.” What’s the carved thing in your right hand?

2. Where did you get let down for real this year, and is it a place you visit or an address you moved into?

3. When your deal broke, did you go toward God even in anger or become cold toward God?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

A limbo moment is a stretch of life you did not choose and cannot control. Something ended, nothing new has started, and the hardest part is not the circumstance itself. It is the story you tell yourself about what it means. In Part 2 of Limbo Moments: Mastering the In-Between, Chris McAlister opens Isaiah 6 and 11 to show what God is doing when the tree gets cut down. The stump of Jesse looks like death, but it is formation: God stripping away the things we build our identity on so we can see what actually defines us. Drawing on Acts 17, Chris shows that you did not choose your circumstance, but you can choose the true story about what God is doing in it. The first step is simple: observe what happened without deciding what it means.

WEEKLY REFLECTION: 

1. What is a circumstance that creates a limbo feeling for you right now?
2. What is the story you’re tempted to believe about yourself or God in this limbo moment?
3. If what you’re building got cut away, what’s still true about who you are?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.  

A limbo moment is the space where something has ended but nothing new has started. It isn't working, and it isn't over. You didn't choose it, you can't undo it, and you can't control it. It might be a marriage that is neither healed nor finished, a parent who is here and already fading, or a business whose old direction collapsed before the new one arrived. In Part 1 of Limbo Moments, Chris names the four ways we get these moments wrong: despair, grievance, grabbing the fastest shortcut, and denial. He then walks through Luke 4, where Jesus comes out of forty days in the wilderness, stands up in his hometown synagogue, and stops mid-sentence while reading Isaiah to announce that the year of the Lord's favor begins today and belongs to everyone. Deuteronomy 8 explains why God allows the wilderness at all: to humble you and test you, and to show what is in your heart. God is not the source of your wilderness, but he does use it. The goal was never to master your circumstances. It's to understand what this moment is doing in you.

WEEKLY REFLECTION: 

1. What in-between are you standing in right now and can you name it?
2. When pressure hits, which do you reach for: despair, grievance, the shortcut, or the bypass?
3. What's the one thought you need to take captive and replace with a thought Christ can give you?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org. 

In the finale of The Rescue AI Isn’t Bringing, Chris brings the whole series together. He reads Babel (Genesis 11) against Pentecost (Acts 2) to show that real community is not sameness. It is many different people held together in love. He names three lies that fake connection: that we connect by meeting a need, by earning respect, or by staying protected. AI can reveal us, but it cannot be a soul in the room. It cannot forgive you and stay. That part was always meant to be built by people made by God, fitted together like bricks into one temple (Ephesians 2).

WEEKLY REFLECTION:

1. Which of the three lies is hindering you and unity in a troubled relationship?
2. Where do you need to offer forgiveness and release the need for validation from another human?
3. Looking back over all four weeks, which of the three — Ginosko, Phronesis, Koinonia — is the one God is most clearly inviting you into right now, and what is the first move?

Thank you for listening. You can support 15& by visiting fifteenand.org.