As part of our current series answering listener questions, we discuss how churches and pastors should think about power and authority. Authority is a hot topic in our culture and is often misused in our churches. We ask what scripture has to say about power and how we can handle it with wisdom and discernment in our churches and ministries. 

As we continue our series answering your questions, today we're talking preaching. One of the challenges of preaching can be finding your own voice. It's easy to sound like the preachers you listen to. In our conversation today, Pastor Jim discusses how to find your own voice and how long it takes to really feel comfortable in the pulpit. We hope it's a helpful conversation for anyone who finds themselves preaching regularly.

For many, transitions are a part of a lifetime of ministry, but how do you know when what you're feeling is your own restlessness vs a genuine call from God? In today's conversation, we're going to explore how to recognize God's call to a new place of ministry. Pastor Jim shares lessons he's learned from several of his transitions and offers advice for how to navigate your own. 

We're starting a new series answering listener questions. Special thanks to those who submitted questions. In today's episode, we talk about how we became Assemblies of God credential holders and what keeps us in the AG. We'll discuss some of the strengths of our movement and the challenges we face moving forward. 

In today's episode, we're wrapping up our conversations through the book A Sharp Compassion. If Jesus was willing to risk offending people, should we seek to offend people like Jesus did? How should we think about hard words and hard conversations? And does Jesus offer us wisdom for knowing when to risk offense? We'll explore how Christians and ministers should think about their own words of offense. 

As we continue our look at the book A Sharp Compassion, we unpack what it really means to follow Jesus. We've talked about how insecurity and imitation of this world draw us into offense, but in our conversation today, we'll discover how by imitating Jesus, we are freed from offense. We hope this conversation helps you focus your own life on following Jesus and being healed from insecurity and offense. 

In our conversation on A Sharp Compassion, we have been looking at what we've called the mechanism of offense, the complex series of emotions and desires that lead from insecurity to offense. In today's episode, we're looking at the final step of that process: accusation. We'll explore how insecurity moves us to accusation and how this spirit of accusation has consumed our modern culture. 

Over the past few episodes, we've been talking about the mechanism of offense. How insecurity creates idols and leads us into imitation. That imitation leaves us more insecure and desperate for affirmation. In today's episode, we're taking a look at why our culture is so desperate for affirmation and the temptation the church faces to offer grace as a cheap form of affirmation. We're continuing our conversation on the book A Sharp Compassion. 

As we continue our look at A Sharp Compassion, we come to the topic of imitation. With our attention fixed on an idol, we are drawn to imitating them. We become like what we worship. But imitation is more pressing than most realize. Wherever there is insecurity, there is a temptation to imitate the things of the world. We take a closer look at how Jesus freed his disciples from the things of the world and offered them a better form of imitation.

As we continue our discussion of the book A Sharp Compassion, we take a closer look at the consequences of our insecurity. Wherever there is an insecurity, there will inevitably be an idol, a hope for some salvation and security. We discuss how we become blind to idols in our hearts and how it often takes a hard word for us to recognize them.