What the Hell is a Pastor?

In which Ethan and Jo talk about the Christmas season, their resolutions for the New Year, and the pitfalls of dealing with past congregational trauma. 

In which Ethan and Jo discuss yearly Christmas pageants and how to decide whether a ministry is vital or not. 

In this week after yet another anti-Semitic attack has ravaged our Jewish siblings, we'd like to supplement our Anti-Semitism Warning with a twitter thread by the Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1211624621591666689?s=20. Give her a follow on the social media platform of your choice to learn and grow and join us in the on-going fight against prejudice against Jewish people in our current political climate. 

Come for the Guy Fieri story, stay for the twitter recs. 

Jo is @aj_schwlf, Ethan is @PastorEShearer, and the podcast is @wthisapastor. Check out who we're following for our recommendations. 

Here's the article that Ethan is referencing at the beginning. It's worth the read. 

https://catapult.co/stories/love-peace-and-taco-grease-how-i-left-my-abusive-husband-and-found-guy-fieri-by-rax-king

Settle in, friends. In this episode, Ethan and Jo talk about their weeks (weddings galore!) and then get into it, taking some theological side roads in order to land on the minefield that is a pastor's mental health. Listen, if it wasn't important, we wouldn't give our time and attention to it. As you listen to this, again, longer-than-usual episode, see if you can find the one grammatical mistake that was so glaring, Jo almost corrected it with a voiceover. 

In which Ethan and Jo have a longer-than-usual conversation from the long-distant days of November about why Ethan thinks being a pastor is first and foremost a job and what it means to worship and tend to our spiritual selves. 

In which Ethan, Jo, and special guest Ian discuss Romans, blog posts, boundaries, and their favorite sweaty seminary professor, with a touch of anti-capitalism thrown in for spice. 

In which Ethan and Jo talk about running for office, what they would change about their churches (which they love!) if they could, and what keeps them hopeful in this season of doubt and distress in the United Methodist Church. 

In which Jo and Ethan talk about paperwork and translating their thoughts into the language that Boomers understand, with a guest appearance by Ethel at the end. 

A special mini-sode in which Ethan and Jo dig into the incarnation, biblical interpretation, David Bentley Hart, and how the internet impacts our ministry. 

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to grab a drink with our hosts, this conversation is almost nearly it. Ethan and Jo get a running start by talking about how we interact with our siblings in Christ in different international contexts, which somehow morphs into a discussion about movies and postmodernism, and we promise, we cut out a solid 30 minutes of pastoral phone calls and surprise visits and theological asides to meet the time limit.