The horns and pitchfork came from a Greek goat god and a 17th century poem. The possession you picture came from a 1973 horror movie. The portals you were warned about came from a con man and a Parker Brothers board game.

Strip all of that away and what's left is a text that says less than you expected and more than you were ready for.

Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, Pastor Josh Bingle, and John Rowa work through what Scripture actually claims demons can and cannot do, why we read about possession constantly in the Gospels and almost never in our own neighborhoods, and where the honest line sits between what's demonic and what's just sin, sickness, exhaustion, or a bad decision.

Forgiveness is by definition undeserved. If someone deserved it, releasing them would be justice, not mercy. So the real question was never "do they deserve it." It's whether you're required to absorb the cost of what they did to you.

In episode 26 of The Analog Gospel, Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa work through what forgiveness actually is and what it absolutely is not. The conditional versus unconditional debate. Why "forgive and forget" is a misnomer that perpetrators love to weaponize. Why forgiveness and reconciliation are two different transactions. And two litmus tests that will tell you in about four seconds whether you've actually forgiven someone.

—

Text THE WELL to 55498 for more info and the Weekly Growth Guide that includes the latest sermon, podcast episode, daily Bible reading, and more.

Scripture says God does not change. Scripture also says God relented, at least a dozen times, and usually because somebody asked him to. So either prayer moves God, which means God can be talked into things, or prayer does not move God, which means every command to pray is theater.

The historic Christian answer refuses both.

In this episode, Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa work through Exodus 32, James 5, Luke 18, and Gethsemane to ask what prayer actually does. Is it a change of God's mind, or a change of his posture? Does praying harder work? Does the prayer of a righteous person carry more weight than yours? And what do you do when the answer is no?

We get into the pain most of us carry around unanswered prayer, including Pastor Jason's story of praying for his brother in a hospital room and not getting the miracle. We land on the Lord's Prayer and how to actually pray this week.

Text THE WELL to 55498 for more info and the Weekly Growth Guide.

--

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Sunday. https://www.thewellslc.com

Everybody has a favorite Bible verse. Most of us have never read the verse above it.

In Episode 24, Pastors Jason and Erica Parrish join John Rowa as they work through three of the most misused passages in the Bible and the reading mistake behind all of them: confusing what Scripture describes with what Scripture commands.

Acts 2 doesn't establish socialism. Jeremiah 29:11 wasn't written to you. And Paul wasn't thinking about your career when he said he could do all things.

But this isn't a takedown episode. It's a Bible study episode. We walk through the SOAP method, talk about why context and cultural background matter, and give you tools you can actually use the next time you open your Bible on a Tuesday morning.

Text THE WELL to 55498 for more info and the Weekly Growth Guide.

--

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Sunday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

Everybody has a megachurch take. Too big, too flashy, too shallow, too much fog machine and not enough gospel. But when you actually look at the data and the Bible, the case falls apart fast. Bad churches are bad and good churches are good, and size is almost never the thing that decides which one you're looking at.In this episode, Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa sit down with special guest Pastor Joshua Bingle from Genesis Church in Spokane, WA and make the case that megachurches aren't the enemy, and that a lot of what passes for discernment online is really just personal preference wearing a holiness costume. We get into why the failures make national news while thousands of faithful large churches quietly serve every weekend, what the research actually says about who's in these churches and what they're doing, and why the first church in Acts looked a lot more like a megachurch than the critics want to admit. 3,000 added in a single day, meeting in the temple courts and house to house.This is not a defense of everything big churches do. It's a refusal to treat bigness itself as sin.We talk through: the "planes that land safely" problem and media bias, the data on megachurch health and growth, what healthy growth actually costs a leader, the celebrity-pastor trap and real accountability, whether the early church was ever really that small, and how to answer the "that's just a megachurch" comment without losing your mind. Judge fruit, not square footage.Text THE WELL to 55498 for the full episode link and the Weekly Growth Guide.

--

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Sunday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

Are Christians dumb?

We put the question on the table and then checked whether the data actually supports it. The answer is no, and that lets us off the hook far too easily. Because the same people who affirm the Trinity at 98% also say, at 53%, that the Holy Spirit is a force and not a person. We were taught the words without the meaning.

That is not an intelligence problem. It is a discipleship problem. And it shows up in how we fight: loudly about cremation, tattoos, worship style, and Bible translations, while going quiet on the Trinity, hell, and suffering.

Season 2 of The Analog Gospel starts here, with Lead Pastor of The Well, Jason Parrish, Staff Pastor Howie Smith, host John Rowa, and special guest Pastor Joshua Bingle of Genesis Church in Spokane, WA. We walk through the Dogma, Doctrine, and Distinctives framework, sort out what you must believe to be a Christian, what your tradition holds, and where faithful believers are free to disagree.

Text "THE WELL" to 55498 for the full episode link and the Weekly Growth Guide.

--

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Sunday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

Pastors Jason & Erica Parrish join John Rowa to answer questions people have always wondered about what it's like to lead a large church in Utah. Why are people transitioning out of the church? Why don't we do midweek services or worship nights? What do pastors actually do when nobody's watching? What's a conviction we've changed our minds about? Plus, why the modern way of leaving a church is broken, what red flags people ignore in dating because they don't want to be alone, and what it really takes to work on a church staff. The Season 1 finale. Unfiltered. No script. No dodging.

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Tuesday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

A lot of people get saved, get on fire, and immediately want to preach, lead a small group, or start something. And then their pastor tells them no. Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa walk through why the church does this, what scripture actually says about it, the difference between intensity and faithfulness, and what "being on fire for God" really means past the initial spark. Plus, outpouring vs. revival, why everybody wants the upper room, and the difference between having ideas and having convictions.

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Tuesday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

Episode 19 of The Analog Gospel addresses the hard question with the plain answer. Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa take on one of the most charged conversations in American life, what scripture actually says, the stats behind 73 million abortions per year, the difference between holding a conviction and holding compassion, and what the church is actually doing that the culture refuses to acknowledge.

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Tuesday. https://www.thewellslc.com/

Pastor Jason Parrish, Pastor Howie Smith, and John Rowa walk through how Christians should actually think about Pride Month. We talk about grace and truth, what to say to your kids, whether to attend a gay wedding, pronouns at work, and the cultural strategy most believers don't see coming. Episode 18 of The Analog Gospel you can't miss if you're a Christian!

Recorded at The Well Church in Sandy, Utah. New podcast episodes of The Analog Gospel drop every Tuesday. https://www.thewellslc.com/