What if the thing we're missing at the start of a new year isn't more discipline, more hustle, or a better version of ourselves — but more depth? Chad opens 2026 by gently dismantling the resolution machine and offering a different invitation: stop trying to fix yourself and start being present. Through family photos and a son's 21st birthday, Moses pausing at the burning bush, and Jesus refusing to rush past the children, he names the quiet ache so many of us carry — that life keeps moving faster than our ability to actually be there for it. The bush had always been burning; the difference was that Moses stopped to look. Maybe this is the year we let the moments that matter stop us, instead of passing them by.

In this episode:

- Why New Year's resolutions quietly tell us we're behind because of effort — and why that's the wrong diagnosis

- The difference between explaining a moment and actually experiencing it ("you can explain a sunset, but never actually see it")

- Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3): God wasn't getting his attention, He was waiting on him to stop and look

- Jesus and the children (Mark 10): the life unfolding in front of you isn't an inconvenience — it's the point

- What the dying say they'd do differently — slow down, be present, love deeper — and why we don't have to wait

- An honest confession about chasing "slowing down" all the way to Portugal, only to realize the angst travels with you

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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On Christmas Eve, the God of the universe didn't arrive with power, certainty, or control — he chose to become small. Small enough to be held, small enough to cry, small enough to need warmth and care. Chad sits in the quiet of the candlelight to ask what that says about love: that it isn't about being right or standing over anyone, but about closeness, vulnerability, and a God unafraid of our humanity. This is the final candle of Advent — not an idea or a concept, but a name: Jesus. And the invitation is simple — slow down enough to let awe make the small things holy again.

In this episode:

- Why God chose presence over power — and what a manger says about love (Luke 2)

- Awe and wonder: how slowing down quiets the ego and gathers us into community instead of hierarchy

- Who shows up at the manger — shepherds, outsiders, people on the fringe, not the elite or polished

- The hidden history of "O Holy Night": an abolitionist anthem and the first song ever broadcast over radio

- A word for whoever walks in heavy — the Christmas story doesn't say "fix yourself," it says "God has come close"

- Passing the flame: love received becoming love shared, wonder experienced becoming wonder practiced

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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We grew up with a villain in the Christmas story — a hard-hearted innkeeper who turned the pregnant Mary away. But the word we translate "inn" actually means a family's guest room, and Bethlehem was too small to even have an inn. Chad reopens the Advent story to suggest there was never an innkeeper at all: Joseph and Mary were turned away by family, by a system that taught people it was normal to other, to shame, and to reject. We need a villain because, as Jonathan Haidt puts it, we default to a "common enemy" identity — us versus them. But God doesn't side with empire or power. Love slips in through the cracks, on the margins, to an unwed teenage girl, and meets a rejected Mary through the eyes and smile of a baby. The good news of Advent for all people: no matter what a culture or system says about you, you are loved, and you are worth it.

In this episode:

- Why "no room in the inn" is a mistranslation — and how "cataluma" (guest chamber) changes the whole story

- The historical case that Mary and Joseph were rejected by their own family, not a stranger

- Jonathan Haidt's two mindsets: "common enemy" identity versus "common humanity"

- Why empire rarely looks cruel — it announces itself as policy, procedure, "just how things work"

- How Jesus consistently pushed against systems that othered people — from his disciples to the table he flipped

- The love of Advent: God chooses displacement over dominance, vulnerability over visibility, presence over policy

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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Most of us were handed a Christmas story whose whole point was what happens after we die — baby Jesus born so he could grow up, die, and get us a ticket to heaven someday. But that's not what the angels are actually saying over the shepherds. The announcement is "peace on earth" — now, here, to them. In week two of Advent, Chad reframes biblical peace as the Hebrew shalom: not the absence of conflict or stress, but wholeness, every scattered piece of you returning to center. And the doorway into that wholeness is awe — the wonder kids still have and adults have learned to rush past. When awe opens us up, God gathers the pieces back together, peace takes root, and we stop being peace-keepers who avoid and start becoming peacemakers who carry wholeness into the world.

In this episode:

- Why the angels' "do not be afraid" means "don't experience this as terror — experience it as awe" (phobos vs. yerah)

- Shalom as wholeness: mind, heart, relationships, and meaning all returning to center — not perfection, performance, or control

- The science of awe: how it quiets the brain's default mode network, calms the nervous system, and makes us less self-focused and more others-focused

- Jesus and Paul on a faith that's about here, not escape — rest, and the fruit of the Spirit as the overflow of a whole life

- Four everyday practices to recover wonder: linger, slow down, engage your senses, and unplug

- Why peacemaking isn't effort but overflow — you can only give the world the peace you've found inside (Romans 12:18; Matthew 5:9)

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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We tend to treat the Bible like a magical book that fell from heaven in modern English. But it's an ancient, human collection of documents — written across thousands of years, in languages we don't speak, to people whose world looked nothing like ours. Daniel Gertson makes the case that context isn't an optional add-on to faithful reading; it's the whole game. When we rip a verse out of its time and place and read it through our present-day lens, we don't just misunderstand it — we can weaponize it. And when we do the harder work of asking who wrote this, to whom, when, why, and in what kind of writing, the Bible doesn't get smaller. It gets deeper, more honest, and a lot more like the upside-down kingdom Jesus actually announced.

In this episode:

- Why "spare the rod" was about a shepherd's staff guiding sheep, not corporal punishment — and how the word musar means instruction, not violence

- Jeremiah 29:11 was spoken to a conquered, exiled people, not to graduating seniors — what changes when we stop reading it as toxic positivity

- Reading Joshua as an ancient "conquest narrative" rather than a literal record — and why that frees us from a God who commands genocide

- The Roman-world context behind 1 Timothy 2:12 and Ephesians 5 — and the question of who actually wrote them

- How Paul himself elevated women — Phoebe the deacon, Junia the apostle, "no longer male and female" in Galatians 3

- A direct word to any woman told her voice doesn't belong: that's a lie — if the gospel oppresses anyone, it isn't the gospel of Jesus

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

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After four weeks tracing the lenses that harm us, we cross over into the lenses that heal — and the first one is Jesus himself. The "word of God" the Bible names isn't a leather-bound book; it's a person. So when Chad goes to Scripture, he goes through the character of Jesus, asking not just "what does this say?" but "would Jesus say that?" Watch how Jesus actually handles Scripture and a pattern emerges: he centers mercy over ritual, he prioritizes people over systems, and he interprets everything through love. He never throws the old story away — he reclaims it from the hands of fear and control and returns it to its original heart: love, freedom, and liberation. And when we learn to read like that, the healing isn't just theological. It reaches the nervous system. The real question this week isn't "how did Jesus read Scripture?" It's "how does Jesus read me?"

In this episode:

- Why the Bible calls Jesus — not the book — the Word of God, and what changes when he becomes your lens

- A recruiter's broken promise and a fast trip to Iraq: how interpretation shapes the life you live

- Three things Jesus does every time he quotes Scripture — mercy over ritual, people over systems, love over everything (Hosea 6:6, Luke 4 / Isaiah 61, Matthew 22)

- The line Jesus refused to read: leaving out "the day of vengeance" and turning retribution into liberation

- The neuroscience of a loving vs. punishing God — amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and why fear and love can't share the same brain

- The closing reframe: Jesus doesn't see a project to fix or shame, but someone worth healing

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

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Some of us learned to read the Bible through a "hierarchy lens" — Scripture as a tool to decide who's in charge, who's righteous, and who gets silenced. Robert Vargas names what that lens costs us and offers a different way in: not obey-or-be-condemned, but grace. God isn't Santa keeping a list; in Christ you are already loved, forgiven, and accepted — not because you earned it, but because grace levels the playing field. From there he reframes resilience as a faith muscle you strengthen one hard week at a time, leaning on the One who sustains you so that the hope overflowing in you can spill out to a hurting world.

In this episode:

- The "hierarchy lens" (from Zach Lambert) — how reading Scripture as a power structure can wound, silence, and even cause spiritual trauma

- Jesus overturning worldly hierarchy in Matthew 20:25-28: greatness through service, not dominance

- Grace as the antidote — Ephesians 2:8-9, John 3:17, and why God came to save rather than condemn

- Resilience as a faith muscle: Philippians 3:12, "forgetting what is behind," and getting back up

- Three practical markers — recognize and shift your lens, embrace grace daily, and live toward flourishing (Galatians' fruit of the Spirit)

- A charge for a hard season: Isaiah 61 and being people who hand others love instead of despair

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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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"The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." It sounds confident and faithful, but Chad names what that posture actually does: it shuts down curiosity and conversation. Drawing on Zach Lambert's Better Ways to Read the Bible, this week looks at the literalism lens — the modern habit of flattening poetry, parable, and story into one-dimensional commands, and the way inerrancy got weaponized to gatekeep who belongs. From bald-mocking bears to snake-handling churches to a food pantry that asked for a signed doctrinal statement before letting the hungry be fed, Chad makes the case that the problem isn't the Bible; it's how we've been taught to read it. What makes a reading sacred isn't how literal it is — it's how much love it produces.

In this episode:

- Why "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" closes the conversation instead of opening it

- The literalism lens: reading a love poem like a legal document (2 Kings 2, Mark 9, Mark 16)

- Where inerrancy actually came from — the 1978 Chicago Statement and whose voices wrote it

- The food-pantry story: when love has to sign theological fine print before it's let in

- Genesis 1–3 isn't a science report; it asks whether God is worthy of worship

- "Every time God forgives, relationship matters more than the rules" — and a practice for reading with fresh eyes this week

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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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Most of us were handed a version of God we never thought to question — always watching, easily angered, quick to punish, impossible to please. Describe that "person" in any other relationship and you'd be warned you're dating a narcissist. In the opening week of Undoctrinated, Chad starts the work of unlearning the toxic God we inherited and reclaiming the one we actually meet in Jesus. Using the woman at the well in John 4 — long preached as a morality tale about a "sinful woman," but really the story of a wounded woman Jesus sees, dignifies, and entrusts with the gospel — he shows that grace doesn't shame us into change; love steps in and tells us the thing we were told about ourselves and about God was never true.

In this episode:

- Why a childhood fear of "quicksand" is a picture of beliefs we carry for years that turn out not to be real

- Defining indoctrination — accepting beliefs uncritically — and how it's used for control rather than freedom

- The list of "narcissistic" traits we've attached to God that don't sound anything like Jesus

- A reframe of John 4: the cultural reality behind her five husbands, and why she came to the well at noon

- Saint Photini, "the enlightened one" — how the Eastern Orthodox church honors her as an apostle, not a scandal

- Thomas Merton on loving people as they are, and the invitation to be seen as a person, not a project

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The Arsenal | San Antonio, TX

???? thearsenal.church

???? Download the Arsenal Church app

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In this week’s message, Daniel Gertson invites us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the Bible—moving beyond rigid, inherited beliefs and into a more honest, human, and transformative way of engaging Scripture. Through personal stories, humor, and thoughtful insight, Daniel explores the tension many of us have felt when the Bible seems confusing, contradictory, or unclear, and reframes it not as a perfect rulebook or answer manual, but as a diverse, evolving story of how people have experienced and understood God across time. Rather than shutting down questions or doubt, this message opens the door to curiosity, conversation, and growth—reminding us that faith isn’t about having everything figured out, but about learning to engage, wrestle, and ultimately love more deeply.