This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through one of the shortest and sharpest parables Jesus ever told — the Parable of the Two Sons in Matthew 21. It's four verses. Jesus gets an immediate explanation in. And it lands like a slap.

A father asks two sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says no — and then goes anyway. The second says yes — and never shows up. Jesus asks the chief priests which one did what the father wanted. They answer correctly. And then Jesus tells them: tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

Charlie and Abigail dig into why this parable lands so differently than the ones with weeping and gnashing of teeth, what John the Baptist actually has to do with it, what a prophet actually is (versus the Harry Potter definition), and why the Pharisees' entire problem was that they couldn't humble themselves all the way down. They also get into economy of words, Charlie's discomfort being photographed loading backpacks at staff meeting, the correct plural of moose, and a preview of next week — the Parable of the Tenants, where Jesus unloads the whole magazine.

Most of us have friends. Acquaintances. People we like. But there's a different category — the kind of people who show up when everything falls apart, who know you well enough to know what you actually need, and who will tell you hard things because they care too much not to.

Do you have those people?

In week two of The Grove's mission series, Charlie walks through three stories about a man named Barnabas — one of the most underrated figures in the New Testament — and what it looks like to be that kind of person for someone else. He fought for Paul when nobody believed in him. He found him at his lowest and brought him back. And when Paul needed to hear something he didn't want to hear, Barnabas said it anyway.

That's the kind of relationship the church is supposed to be built on. And it's closer than you think — it just might require one uncomfortable step to get there.

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through one of the shortest and strangest parables Jesus ever told — the Parable of the Fig Tree in Luke 13. It's only four verses. It doesn't resolve. And Jesus drops it almost as an aside, mid-crowd, without anyone asking for it.

A vineyard owner has a fig tree that hasn't produced fruit in three years. He tells the gardener to cut it down — it's wasting soil. The gardener pushes back: give it one more year, let me tend to it, and if it still doesn't produce, then cut it down. And then the story just... stops. We never find out if the owner agreed. We never find out what happened to the tree.

Charlie and Abigail dig into why that ambiguity is the point, who the gardener actually represents and whether the original audience could have possibly known, and what this parable has in common with Noah, Jericho, and two thousand years of patience that most people don't stop to notice. They also get into why God's grace and God's judgment aren't opposites — and why deciding God should never hold anyone accountable is its own kind of arrogance.

Plus: Charlie's classic dad move of telling everyone to be ready at 7 when the flight is actually at 7:15, Abigail's experience reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry at the beach, and five parables left before the series wraps for good.

Life doesn't come at you in one big wave. It comes in a relentless series of them — and if you don't have something solid underneath you, you end up somewhere you never meant to be.

In this week's sermon, Charlie kicks off a new three-week series on The Grove's mission statement and lands on one specific, practical challenge: what does it actually look like to know Jesus — not just know about him, but really know him? He works through Psalm 1 and the contrast between a tree planted by a river and chaff blown around by the wind, and makes the case that the difference between the two isn't talent or circumstance. It's roots. It's what you're letting sink in every day.

There's also a church-wide goal announced — reading through the New Testament together this year using The Grove's plan on the YouVersion Bible app. Whether you're brand new to the Bible or have read it a dozen times, this one's a good place to start.

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail dig into one of the most well-known parables Jesus ever told — and one of the most misunderstood. The Parable of the Talents (or Bags of Gold, depending on your translation) is sitting at the tail end of their parables series, and Charlie says it's easily top three, maybe number one.

A wealthy man goes on a journey and leaves enormous sums of money — one talent being roughly equivalent to a million dollars — with three servants. Two of them put the money to work and double it. The third digs a hole and buries it. When the master returns, the first two are celebrated. The third is called wicked and lazy and thrown into the darkness.

The question the parable raises: what exactly did God give you, and what are you doing with it?

Charlie and Abigail work through what "talents" actually means (a unit of weight, not a skill — though Sunday school has always blurred that line on purpose), why the amounts given to each servant aren't the point, what it means to steward something that doesn't fully belong to you, and why not doing anything wrong is not the same as being faithful. They also get into whether heaven has neighborhoods, the surprising fact that first-century Jerusalem had interest-bearing savings accounts, and how It's a Wonderful Life explains banking better than most finance courses.

The disciples thought the good news was for their people. Their nation. Their tribe. They had to be pushed — sometimes literally scattered by persecution — before they understood what God had been saying since Abraham: this was never just for one group.

In the final week of Foundations, Mark walks through Acts 1 and 15 and traces the early church's journey from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. From a confused Ethiopian official reading Isaiah on the side of the road, to a Roman soldier named Cornelius whose conversion broke every cultural assumption the disciples had, to the council in Jerusalem finally putting it in writing — all the obstacles removed, by grace through faith alone.

The question at the end isn't theological. It's personal. You have the Spirit. You have the power. Is it locked up in the garage — or are you letting it loose?

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail work through one of the most unusual parables Jesus ever told — the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. It's the only parable where a character gets a name. The poor, sick man covered in sores outside the gate is called Lazarus. The wealthy man who ignores him every day gets no name at all.

That detail alone is worth sitting with.

Charlie and Abigail dig into why Jesus tells this story directly at the Pharisees, what the chasm between heaven and hell actually means, how much theological weight we should put on the fire imagery, and what Jesus is really saying in the last line — "they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." That line lands very differently in hindsight.

They also wrestle with the harder questions: Is this a definitive picture of the afterlife, or is it imagery? What does it actually mean that there's no crossing over? And is Jesus saying rich people go to hell and poor people go to heaven — or is he saying something more specific, and more uncomfortable, than that?

Plus: La La Land is a bad movie, The Odyssey is tense for 2 hours and 50 minutes straight, and Abigail's niece is still learning her middle name.

After the resurrection, the disciples still had the wrong question. They wanted to know when Jesus was going to fix the world — when he was going to restore Israel, right the wrongs, put the right people in power. And Jesus basically said: that's not your concern. There's a different kind of power coming.

In week seven of Foundations, Charlie walks through Acts 1 and 2 — the ascension of Jesus and the day of Pentecost — and unpacks what it actually means that the Holy Spirit lives in every believer. Not just the pastors. Not just the spiritually elite. Everyone.

A lot of us are stuck waiting for God to show up in some specific way before we feel equipped to do anything meaningful. But the power has already arrived. The question is whether we're going to live like it.

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail tackle what might be the most confusing parable in the Gospels — the Parable of the Shrewd Manager in Luke 16. A property manager gets caught mishandling his boss's finances, gets fired, and then — before he's out the door — starts forging documents to reduce what people owe his master, so they'll feel indebted to him once he's unemployed.

And then Jesus does something nobody expects: he has the owner commend the manager for it.

Not for the fraud. But for the shrewdness.

Charlie and Abigail work through why Jesus would tell a story like this — why the dishonesty is deliberate, what "use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself" actually means, and what it looks like to be strategically generous rather than selfishly calculating. They also get into why Jesus teaches the way he does — vague and parable-shaped rather than clear and direct — and why that's the point. This is the episode that makes you glad someone explained it.

We say it so often it starts to lose its weight: Jesus died for your sins. But what does that actually mean? And what changed because of it?

In week six of Foundations, Charlie walks through Matthew 27 — the crucifixion and resurrection — and unpacks three things that happened in that moment that most of us have never fully sat with. Jesus took the weight and consequence of our sin onto himself. The curtain in the temple — the barrier that kept ordinary people from the presence of God — was torn in two. And death, the last great enemy, was conquered.

What that means practically is this: there are no more obstacles. No more limited access. No more earning your way to the front of the line. The barriers are gone.

This is week six of the Foundations series — eight pivotal stories from creation to resurrection that show how Scripture tells one coherent story. This one is where it all comes together.