We tend to read Jesus' "triumphal entry" as a humble, gentle ride into town — but for the people watching, it was loaded with meaning. Pastor Chad walks us back into Passover week in Jerusalem, where a city remembering its liberation from Egypt was now living under Roman oppression. On the same week, two processions enter the city: Pilate riding in from the west on a war horse, surrounded by soldiers and the religious elite — a display of power, force, and fear. And Jesus riding in from the east on a borrowed donkey, surrounded by the poor, the sick, the overlooked, and the healed — a display of humility, presence, and peace. Seen side by side, Jesus' entry isn't passive. It's a calculated, deliberate protest — a parody of empire that exposes one way of being human and offers another. This is the message that starts the countdown to the cross.

In this episode:

- Why Passover wasn't just nostalgia but a charged, dangerous story about God overthrowing empire

- The Pax Romana: how Rome's "peace" was really control, order, and stability enforced by violence

- Pilate's procession from the west vs. Jesus' procession from the east — two visions of humanity walking into the same city

- What it meant that Jesus chose a donkey (peace) and not a war horse (conquest) — drawing on Luke 19

- The contrast in the crowds: people protecting power vs. people who had been crushed by it

- A look ahead to the temple and the tables — the calculated demonstration that becomes the last straw (continued next week)

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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We tend to think the world has gotten darker — but maybe our vision just needs recalibrating. Just like your eyes need light to reveal the color that was there all along, Jesus came as the light to show us what humanity looks like at its best: love in action. Walking through the healing of the bent-over woman in Luke 13, Chad reframes the old "What Would Jesus Do?" question by watching Jesus break a Sabbath rule to restore a daughter of Abraham — proving that people matter more than any rule, and compassion never needs permission. When we keep our eyes fixed on him, we start seeing in full color what we'd always seen in black and white: image-bearers who just want to belong and be loved.

In this episode:

- An eyesight illustration and a color-perception experiment: light doesn't create what's there, it reveals it

- Matthew 6 on the eyes as windows, and how attention "framing" decides what we notice — rules and threats, or compassion and suffering

- Luke 13:10-17: Jesus sees a woman crippled for 18 years, calls her forward on the Sabbath, and heals her

- Why "daughter of Abraham" is a radical word of belonging for someone society labeled unclean

- Reclaiming "What Would Jesus Do?" — the WWJD bracelet as a reminder that love, not the rule, is the answer

- The kingdom of God as a mustard seed and yeast: small moral acts of kindness that quietly change everything

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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We're wired to miss the gorilla in the room. Chad opens with the famous "invisible gorilla" experiment to show how attention works: when fear narrows our focus, we go into threat-detection mode and our world shrinks to enemies, categories, and the next disaster. But awe does the opposite — it widens the frame until people stop being symbols and start being human again. Walking through Mary and Martha, the Good Samaritan, and Matthew 25, this message reframes "the fear of the Lord" not as terror but as wonder, the kind of expanded vision where loving your neighbor — and even your enemy — finally makes sense, because you realize they were never separate from you.

In this episode:

- The "invisible gorilla" experiment and inattentional blindness as a picture of how anxiety and fear shrink our perception

- Mary and Martha (Luke 10) — two people, same room, same Jesus, two completely different realities shaped by where their attention went

- Why "the fear of the Lord" is better read as awe and wonder, and how awe trades certainty for curiosity

- The Good Samaritan and Matthew 25: how Jesus collapses the distance between "enemy" and "neighbor," and between the suffering stranger and himself

- Chad's two tours in Iraq and years studying Persian/Farsi — how knowing a people turns a "headline enemy" back into human beings

- Awe lowers our gaze to the person in front of us: "Fear teaches us to look for enemies, but awe teaches us to recognize family."

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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In this message, Chad explores what happens when awe feels out of reach in the middle of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. Using the story of Peter walking on water and Jesus’ invitation to “look at the birds” and “consider the lilies,” this talk reframes faith not as trying harder, but as learning to widen our perspective. When fear narrows our world, awe expands it—and what shapes our attention ultimately shapes our lives. This is an invitation to notice where your focus has drifted, to gently return, and to live from a place where love, peace, and compassion can take root and grow. 

We were handed "the fear of the Lord" as a posture of dread — grit your teeth, suppress the anxiety, just trust Jesus harder. But the Hebrew word (yirah) was never really fear; it was reverent awe, a perspective shift. In Mark 4 the disciples and Jesus are in the same boat, the same storm, the same lack of control — the difference isn't their circumstances, it's their lens. Fear narrows the frame and screams "something bad is happening and I must control it." Awe widens it: "something bigger is happening and I'm held within it." Chad makes the case that trusting Jesus isn't an abstract command to white-knuckle our way through the storm — it's learning to live rooted in awe, the counterweight to ego and fear, where the fruit produced through us starts to look like Jesus.

In this episode:

- Why "the fear of the Lord" was a mistranslation of the heart — yirah as reverent awe, not dread

- Mark 4 reread: same storm, two nervous systems, and the lens that decides which one you get

- Awe widens the frame; fear narrows it — and how each one shapes the way we treat people

- The Colin Kaepernick coffee-shop moment: stepping back, staying curious, becoming "unoffendable in your patience"

- Galatians 5 in the Passion Translation — if awe is the root, the fruit looks like the love of Jesus

- A live congregational check-in on whether six months of practicing awe has actually produced peace

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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We're being formed by a world engineered to keep us reactive — every headline, every clip, every algorithm built to keep the herd running so it's easier to steer. Chad starts with a confession: a sharp response video he almost posted but didn't. From there he walks through Jonathan Haidt's "elephant and rider," Durkheim's collective effervescence, and Bonhoeffer's warning about stampedes, then lands on Jesus in the wilderness refusing power. The real question isn't how do we win — it's how do we stay human, grounded, and interruptible enough to tell the truth without becoming violent in spirit. Awe, not outrage, is what widens us. And love is the only thing strong enough to calm a stampede without becoming one.

In this episode:

- The confession: the response video Chad almost posted, and the quiet reaction that stopped him

- Jonathan Haidt's "elephant and rider" — why emotion moves first and logic just runs to catch up

- Durkheim's collective effervescence and how a herd amplifies a single reaction into tribe and identity

- Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany: "stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice," and why you can't argue inside a stampede

- Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4) refusing economic, spectacle, and political power — the kingdom built by formation, not volume

- The weekly invitation: before you post or escalate, pause and ask — am I responding from fear or from belovedness?

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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???? Download the Arsenal Church app

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We live in a moment where everything is reactive, urgent, and demands an instant take — and our knee-jerk reactions reveal what we actually believe about God. Drawing on psychology and the gospels, Chad argues that religious blindness isn't born from ignoring Scripture; it comes from obsessing over systems while missing the person standing right in front of you. The danger Jesus names isn't blindness — it's thinking you see clearly when you don't. Before reacting to the next thing the world throws at us, Chad offers five formational questions to slow us down, loosen our grip on ego, and keep us human enough to choose faces over crowds, people over power, and repair over comfortable silence.

In this episode:

- Why we don't experience reality directly — we filter it through our nervous systems, our stories, and our image of God

- John 5, the two-stage healing in Mark 8 ("I see people, but they look like trees"), and the blind man in John 9 who gets expelled for being seen

- Five questions to ask before you react: What kind of God is behind my instinct? Does faithfulness require silence or repair? Am I prioritizing intent or impact? What's at risk for me if I name this clearly? If Jesus stood with the harmed, what would he need from me?

- A direct, costly word on racism, the church's tendency to minimize and spiritualize harm, and what nine years of pastoring (and losing most of the money) taught Chad about protecting people over crowds

- Awe as the counterweight to ego — and Dorothy Day, Heschel, and Bonhoeffer on staying human, refusing cynicism, and loving people out of "stupidity"

- The invitation: practice the questions on yourself first — notice which image of God gets activated, and let awe widen your vision instead of narrowing it

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

???? Download the Arsenal Church app

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When the world feels unsafe, the first thing we lose isn't our beliefs — it's our perception. We stop seeing faces and start seeing categories, threats, and labels: people who "look like trees walking around." In this raw, honest message, Chad names the fear, anger, and grief so many of us are carrying right now, then turns to the strange two-stage healing in Mark 8 — the one time Jesus has to touch a man's eyes twice — to make the case that seeing clearly is a process, not a failure. Drawing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity" and Jesus' warning about the speck and the log, he shows how judgment blinds us while love restores sight. And he offers awe — not as a vibe, but as medicine and resistance — as the way to calm our nervous systems, lower the ego, and stay tender enough to keep fighting for justice without burning out.

In this episode:

- The Mark 8 healing where Jesus restores sight in two stages — and why partial sight is part of the process, not a failure

- Why fear, anger, and grief narrow our vision and turn people into "trees walking around"

- Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity": how fear and group pressure make us stop seeing rather than stop thinking

- Jesus on the speck and the log (Matthew 7) — how judgment distorts vision and love illuminates it

- Awe as medicine: lowering cortisol, softening the body, and acting as the counterweight to ego (Jonathan Haidt)

- A simple invitation: pause, breathe, and notice what's tightening inside you — so you can keep loving without being consumed

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

???? Download the Arsenal Church app

???? Questions or need prayer? [email protected]

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On the Arsenal's ninth anniversary, Chad trades the usual vision-casting for something quieter: an invitation into a "year of awe." Drawing a line from Elijah — who looked for God in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, only to find him in a gentle whisper — to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts were burning long before they recognized who was walking beside them, Chad makes the case that meaning is usually present before we can name it. After nine years of his own deconstruction and reconstruction, he's convinced the fear of the Lord was always meant to be awe, that wisdom begins with wonder rather than answers, and that maybe this next year is about depth instead of growth, presence instead of performance.

In this episode:

- Elijah in the cave (1 Kings 19): why we keep expecting God in the grand force and miss him in the quiet

- The road to Emmaus (Luke 24): grief, a stranger, broken bread, and recognition that comes later

- "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" — and why the Hebrew word points to awe, not terror

- Nine years of deconstruction: when certainty stopped feeling like the same thing as faith

- Rachel Held Evans on doubt deepening faith, and what psychology is learning about how awe integrates over time

- A different metric for success: becoming more human, choosing love over being right, depth over performance

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

???? Download the Arsenal Church app

???? Questions or need prayer? [email protected]

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We tend to think we have to go chasing awe — book the trip, stand at the Grand Canyon, wait for something big enough to move us. But awe rarely announces itself. More often it interrupts us: a toddler obsessed with helicopters, the impossible ordinary work of learning to hold a fork, the trillions of living things quietly keeping us alive. In a guest week framed as a conversation rather than a sermon, Daniel and Britney pick up last week's invitation to slow down and add one small shift — tuning our attention so we can actually catch the wonder that's already all around us. Drawing on the Hebrew idea of awe (yirah, often flattened into "fear of the Lord") and on the way Jesus kept stopping to see the overlooked, they make the case that awe and God's presence are never far off. We just have to reorient and remember they're right there.

In this episode:

- Why awe interrupts us rather than waits for us — and what it asks of us when it does

- Finding wonder in the everyday: a daughter's "hub-bub-bub," messy first bites, the microbes in your own gut

- Reframing awe through the Hebrew yirah: how small and how deeply held we are at the same time

- The widow's two coins (Luke 21) — that Jesus even noticed her at all

- Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10) — Jesus stopping the crowd to see the most overlooked person there

- A challenge for the week: hold the shift, remember God is "just a moment away," and let awe send you out to love well

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

???? Download the Arsenal Church app

???? Questions or need prayer? [email protected]

???? Give: thearsenal.church/give