The Grove Church

Before getting into the book of Acts, Charlie and Abigail stop at one of the most debated verses in church history: Jesus telling Peter, “On this rock I will build my church.” Who actually holds authority in the church, and where does it come from? Charlie walks through four major ways Christians have read this passage. Is the rock Peter himself? Is it Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah? Is it Jesus? Or is Peter a representative of all the apostles? Along the way they look at the wordplay behind Peter’s new name, how Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches each landed where they did, and why Martin Luther insisted that Scripture, not tradition, is the final word on what’s true. Abigail brings her honest first read of the passage, and Charlie admits he’s got a Larry Bird grudge from the 1970s. It turns out how you read this one verse says a lot about what kind of church you belong to.

Israel had just watched God thunder against the Philistines and rescue them without a single soldier lifting a sword. And then, a few years later, they came to Samuel with a request: give us a king. Like the other nations have.

The thing they were asking for — someone to represent them, fight for them, go before them — was exactly what they already had. They just couldn’t see it.

In week four of the Samuel series, Charlie walks through 1 Samuel 8 and makes the case that this isn’t just an ancient mistake. It’s the same one most of us are making right now. We’re one promotion away, one house away, one status upgrade away from finally feeling like we matter. And we’re asking God to give us something he already gave us in Jesus — while slowly trading away something we can’t get back.

Last week covered the church’s first 500 years. This week, Charlie and Abigail finish the map. They trace the story from the book of Acts through Constantine and the medieval church, the split between East and West in 1054, the corruption that sparked calls for reform, and the printing press that put the Bible in ordinary people’s hands. From there they move to the Reformation, the Great Awakenings, global missions, and the challenges facing the church today. Along the way they talk about why monks pushed back against a comfortable, mainstream faith, why opening the Bible to everyone was both a gift and a risk, and why this series follows the thread that leads to our own church. There are a few detours too, including Abigail accidentally listening to the wrong church history podcast. It’s a wide-angle look at how we got from a small movement in Jerusalem to where we are now.

Most of us assume that if God has called us to something, the path will be clear. The doors will open. Things will fall into place. And when they don’t — when the waiting stretches into years, when obstacles pile up, when the trial hits right when things were finally starting to move — we wonder if we heard wrong.

Samuel waited 20 years. Twenty years between the audible voice of God calling him as a prophet and the moment Israel was finally ready to listen. And when the moment came, he was ready.

In week three of the Samuel series, Charlie walks through 1 Samuel 7 and makes the case that the waiting and the trial aren’t detours from the path. They’re part of it. God shapes you in the uncertainty. And when He finally shows up, you’ll have something worth commemorating — an Ebenezer of your own.

After two weeks on why church history matters, Charlie and Abigail start laying out the map. This week they cover the first three of eight eras they’ll walk through in the series: the church of the apostles, the early church under persecution, and the moment Christianity went from illegal to mainstream under Constantine. Along the way they talk about what “the church” actually means, why one verse about Peter shapes so much of church history, how the destruction of the temple in 70 AD scattered believers, and why so many early heresies were about one question: who is Jesus? They also touch on what changed when following Jesus no longer cost you anything. And yes, Abigail makes the case for naming a kid Irenaeus. It’s a big-picture look at the centuries most of us know the least about, even though they’ve shaped our faith the most.

It’s easy to look at the way things are and assume that’s the way they’ll stay. The powerful stay powerful. The ones who’ve been knocked down stay down. The situation that looks impossible probably is.

Hannah didn’t believe that. And in week two of the Samuel series, Mark walks through her prayer in 1 Samuel 2 — one of the most overlooked passages in the Old Testament — and unpacks what it actually says about who God is and how he operates. He’s not the God of the expected outcome. He’s the God who raises the poor from the dust, breaks the bows of warriors, and seats the forgotten at the table with princes.

The question isn’t whether God can flip the script. He’s been doing it the whole time. The question is whether you believe he’s doing it for you.

Most of what we believe about God didn't start with us. We inherited it from centuries of Christians who studied, debated, and prayed their way through the hardest questions of the faith. This week, Charlie and Abigail finish making the case for church history by talking about humility and how Christian doctrine developed over time. They get into why the Trinity is harder to arrive at on your own than it seems, how Constantine shaped the church in the 300s, and what changed when the printing press let ordinary people read the Bible for themselves. There are a few detours along the way, including where the term "Mad Hatter" comes from and a kindergarten math problem that didn't go well. Through it all, they explore how remembering what we've been handed can help us come to Scripture with more confidence and a lot more humility.

This week in our Samuel series, we discussed how God’s purposes often begin long before we understand them, using the opening chapters of 1 Samuel as our guide. Charlie shared his own journey of feeling called to ministry and related it to Samuel’s “origin story”—a calling that took shape even before Samuel was born, woven through his mother Hannah’s years of persistent prayer. We unpacked what it means that God prepares a path for each of us (Ephesians 2:10) and why that’s not just about prophets or pastors, but about all of us, wherever we are in life. With practical applications, Charlie encouraged us to recognize how our everyday choices—however small—are part of walking in that God-given path. Whether you’re wrestling with doubts about calling or just figuring out the next faithful step, this episode invites you to believe God sees you, loves you, and truly has a purpose for your life. Take a moment this week to reflect on where God might be inviting you to say “yes.”

This week on Cultivate, Charlie and Abigail begin a new series on church history. Before getting into the people and events, they start with a simpler question: why should a Bible-centered church spend months studying what happened after the Bible was written?

Abigail explains that every era's view of God is shaped by its circumstances, including war, money, and who held power. She draws on her history minor and her love of bottom-up history, the idea that you can understand a society better through the fairy tales it told than through its official records. She also makes the point that what looks like a new question almost always has a very old answer.

Charlie then makes the case in three parts. First, church history pulls us out of a "just me, God, and my Bible" faith. None of us studies Scripture in a vacuum, and we have all been shaped by 2,000 years of Christian thought, whether we realize it or not. Second, it shows us what the church has believed everywhere and always. Those anchor points have held steady across centuries and cultures, and they are what to hold onto when faith is being rethought. Third, and maybe most importantly, it keeps us from reinventing old heresies. Many "new" ideas about God turn out to be ancient ones with a fresh coat of paint and a soothing TikTok voice.

You can sit in a room full of people and still feel completely alone. You can come to church every week, check the box, and never actually let anyone in. And if you're honest, part of you prefers it that way — because community is hard, people are weird, and you've probably been burned before.

In the final week of Walking the Ancient Paths, Charlie looks at the very first thing the early church did after 3,000 people came to faith in one day — and it wasn't launch a program or build a building. They just started spending time together. Eating. Praying. Learning. Showing up for each other's needs.

That was the church. And two thousand years later, it still is.