Is signing a formal church membership contract a necessary expression of loyalty? Has the institutional church traded the freedom of life in Christ for institutional control? In this episode I explore how formal membership contracts — often loaded with behavioral clauses, doctrinal checkpoints, and institutional loyalty — distort the gospel of grace and reduce free flowing community to a legal transaction with rewards for compliance and punishments for non-compliance. Jesus brought us into a relationship, not a system. So why have countless churches made belonging conditional on paperwork?

This episode is from a livestream on the UnSunday YouTube page. If you prefer to watch the full video, it's available at https://www.youtube.com/live/l8rXJSo1Cl4?si=VKichdClrUhBPyUp and at https://www.unsunday.com/community-without-roll-call-exchanging-freedom-for-a-contract

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What happens when church becomes a breeding ground for control, fear, and manipulation? This episode of The UnSunday Show exposes the patterns of church bullying, from toxic leadership to spiritual abuse that often occurs when the institutional church abandons the New Covenant gospel of grace in favor of a mixed-covenant version of a gospel of their own making.  This mixed covenant gospel is no gospel at all. 

I'm excited to have Jeremiah Ryan join me as we explore the topic of church bullying, what it is, how to recognize it, and what to expect when it happens to you. You can find Jeremiah at The Way Ministries using these links:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmMf-GnkloFWO1CUqNnFP6w
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088074741276
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_wayministries

This episode is also available as video. You can view it by visiting https://www.youtube.com/@unsundayshow

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I'm continuing the topic of women in the church and how historically, the church's view of woman has been harmful and abusive. It's not a good track record. This is the fourth of four episodes that I brought over from our Grace Cafe podcast to share with you here. In this episode we talk about headship and submission. We use 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 as the backdrop for our conversation and why we believe Paul's use of the word "head" (κεφαλὴ) wouldn't have meant authority or leader to the readers of his day.

Here are a couple of online articles that you might want to take a look at. The second one is more detailed and contains a lot of good references. Inclusion here doesn't imply our agreement with everything in the articles, but they are a good thought-provoking read.

• ‘Head’ Does Not Mean ‘Leader’ in 1 Cor 11.3, by Ian Paul - https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/head-does-not-mean-leader-in-1-cor-11-3/
• What About the Word Kephale ("head") in the New Testament?, by Laurie Fasullo - https://www.searchingtogether.org/kephale.htm

Enjoy!

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This is part 3 of a 4-part series I'm doing on Women in the church that originally aired on the Grace Cafe podcast in 2023. In this episode we're going to take a careful look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-40. It's here that the passage says the law commanded women to be silent, therefore, women should not be allowed to speak when the body of Christ is assembled. The problem is, the law doesn't say that and even if it did, we (and the people Paul was writing to) are not under the law, so why does that matter even if it were true? We think there's something else going on here that needs to be talked about, so let's talk.

I'm continuing with the topic of women in the church that I started back in episode 108. More specifically, how the institutional church has weaponized certain verses in the New Covenant scriptures and used them against women without fully considering the historical and cultural context. This has resulted in needlessly silencing half of the body of Christ and opened the door wide for abuse of every kind.

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In this episode we continue talking about the topic of how the institutional box church misrepresents and misinterprets passages of scripture that mention women in the body of Christ. We take a look at the historical and cultural context of Paul's first letter to Timothy and specifically, 1 Timothy chapter 2. In giving his reasons for writing this letter to Timothy, Paul instructs him to dispel myths that had arisen in the assembly (1 Timothy 1:3-4). In chapter 2 of his letter we see Paul begin to dismantle some of those myths and those myths centered around the worship of the pagan idol, Artemis. The culture in Ephesus was heavily influenced by the worship of Artemis. Artemis was a female goddess of Greek origin and the worship and culture of Artemis was female centric. While males could participate in the worship of Artemis, women were dominate and men had a lesser role (kind of the opposite of what we see today in most churches). 

Here are some of the myths Paul addresses:

• In the Ephesian culture, Artemis was looked to as the protector of women in childbirth. 
• Women stood a better chance of Artemis hearing and answering their prayers if they wore expensive clothes and jewelry when petitioning Artemis.
• Artemis was born before her twin brother Apollo, meaning woman was created before man.

We also need to keep in mind these important points:

• Timothy was not a pastor. There's no indication of that anywhere in Scripture. That's a church history-driven idea that is incorrect.
• The letters of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus are not "pastoral letters" written to pastors. Calling them pastoral letters is another false assumption delivered to us from church history.
• The letters to Timothy and Titus are not across-the-board manuals for doing church. They address specific problems that arose in specific locations involving specific people at a specific time. Failure to recognize this and instead promote the false assumption that everything in them is applicable to every generation without regard to the historical and cultural context they were written in, has led to the muzzling of half of the body of Christ.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Artemis: Virgin Goddess of the Sun and Moon - https://tinyurl.com/2p9cfykc
• What's With Paul and Women? https://tinyurl.com/yp6n47xn

I brought this episode over from the Grace Cafe podcast. It's part 2 of a 4-part series I'm re-posting here on the UnSunday Show. The link to the Grace Cafe podcast is below if you would like to see other episodes on this topic.

Enjoy!

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This is part one of four episodes I'm bringing over from the Grace Cafe podcast on the topic of women in the church and how institutional Christianity uses scripture out of context to silent women. Here's a breakdown of the episodes I'm bringing over:

• Twisting the Truth: How Church Uses Scripture to Silence Women - Part One (this episode).
• Twisting the Truth: How Church Uses Scripture to Silence Women - Part Two (next week).
• Did The Law of Moses Silence Women? A Second Glance at 1 Corinthians 14:34-40
• Headship and Submission

This week and next, explore the question, did Paul command women to be silent in church? This episode is a much needed overview of what the New Testament says about women in the body of Christ. We look at several of the clear passages of scripture to lay a good foundation for this topic before jumping into the sometimes not-so-clear waters of 1 Timothy chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 next time. Grab your favorite beverage and listen in!

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Let's talk about what happens when we stop going to church. This is from the livestream that I did on May 4th, 2025 on YouTube. Here's the link in case you want to watch the video:

https://www.youtube.com/live/CHWejf9tjwk?si=tQtWdw1Jzf3VubJe

You can follow the UnSunday Show on YouTube at:

https://www.youtube.com/@unsundayshow

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The video version of this episode is on my YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/H89bdlfkwHg

In this episode I share a quote from Michael C. Kapler's book, Clash of the Covenants: Escaping Religious Bondage Through the Grace Guarantee. This is an excellent book that I recommend without hesitation. You can find it on Amazon at https://bit.ly/3Rump8V

I'm thinking of doing a live video next Sunday on YouTube. Is that something you would like to see? Would you watch it? Let me know here: https://www.unsunday.com/contact/

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The gospel isn’t a group project. If grace is free, why do we try so hard to add to it? In this episode, I talk about how bringing nothing to the table isn’t a burden but is ultimate freedom. Grace apart from works is a death sentence for institutional religion that can't be tolerated there.

Let's talk about grace!

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Holiness Isn’t a Hustle. Many believers feel trapped in a cycle of performance, thinking sanctification is about sweating for Jesus. Too often, we’re taught that sanctification, or holiness, is about working harder, doing more, and proving ourselves to God. But what if it isn’t about striving to do more but about resting in what's already been done? 

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