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Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Texts: Proverbs 4:25-27 & Philippians 4:6-9

What happens when Scripture sits on the bench and your phone takes the stand? We put social media and AI through a playful mock trial, using Philippians 4 and Proverbs 4 as the judge and jury, and followed the evidence toward a surprising, practical middle way. Instead of a simple guilty or not guilty, we asked sharper questions: Does technology pull our gaze off the path or help us walk it with others? Does it feed panic or deepen prayer? Does it form people of peace or keep us on edge?

We share stories from both sides of the aisle. On one side, the all-too-familiar cycle of doomscrolling, outrage, and comparison that scatters attention and crowds out silence. On the other, real wins: livestream worship that welcomes homebound neighbors, prayer chains that mobilize care, clergy across the country organizing on Zoom to support immigrant and refugee communities in fear. The tool isn’t the villain or the hero; the heart of the matter is attention—our most precious, finite resource. Where we aim it shapes who we become.

You’ll hear simple, repeatable practices to reclaim focus: adding friction with a “brick” that locks news and social apps after 9 p.m., batching updates, removing home-screen temptations, and using a daily digital examen to notice what feeds the soul and what frays it. We end with Mary Oliver’s three-line compass—pay attention, be astonished, tell about it—and a charge to let technology serve love, not steal it. If you’re longing for less noise and more peace, for tools that help you serve your neighbor without mastering you, this conversation offers a grounded, hopeful path forward.

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What happens when you put social media and AI on trial using Scripture as the judge? We invite you into a creative, candid journey through anxiety, attention, and the spiritual disciplines that help us live with peace in a noisy world. Grounded in Philippians 4 and Proverbs 4, we explore how prayer, gratitude, and a straight path can coexist with modern tools—if we choose them intentionally.

We share real stories from our community: livestreams that connect the homebound, online prayer chains that carry people through crisis, and digital organizing that gathers clergy across the country to support vulnerable neighbors. Then we face the hard parts—doomscrolling, outrage cycles, and the subtle ways our phones train our eyes away from the person right in front of us. The verdict is nuanced and practical: technology can be a faithful servant but makes a terrible master.

You’ll hear a simple practice that changes everything: a “brick” that locks news and social apps at night, requiring a deliberate step to unlock. It’s not withdrawal; it’s choosing when to engage so attention can rest, curiosity can breathe, and prayer can take root. We name attention as the scarce currency we all share equally, the resource that shapes our empathy and our discipleship. And we close with Mary Oliver’s three-part rule of life—pay attention, be astonished, tell about it—offering a weekly rhythm you can try today.

If you’re craving calmer mornings, clearer focus, and a kinder relationship with your phone, this conversation offers both encouragement and tools. Listen, reflect, and then join us: subscribe, share with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with one practice that helps you keep your eyes on what is true.

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A winter storm closed our doors, but not our hearts. We met from living rooms and kitchen tables, lit by lamps and laptop screens, to breathe, pray, and remember what steadies us when the world feels heavy. Guided by Mary Oliver’s poetry and the strength of Psalm 27, we explored how attention can become a kind of prayer—and how wonder can reshape the way we move through news, social media, and the long gray of cold days.

We began with “The Summer Day,” letting that final question—what will you do with your one wild and precious life—land in real time. From there, “Wild Geese” loosened the grip of striving and shame, reminding us that belonging does not hinge on perfection. “When Death Comes” turned our faces toward urgency and tenderness, asking us to be married to amazement rather than merely visiting this world. Along the way, we named gratitude for first responders, utility crews, shelter teams, and neighbors who keep one another warm and fed. Psalm 27 anchored us: fear is loud, but the Holy shelters, lifts, and teaches us to sing.

We prayed by name for those facing illness, grief, and job loss, making intercession a counter to doomscrolling. Oliver’s “I Worried” helped us set down anxiety and take our old bodies into the morning to sing. And we closed with a charge many of you know by heart: do justice now, love kindness now, walk humbly now. If you need a pocket of quiet courage, this is a warm cup for the cold. Press play, breathe with us, and consider one small way you might answer that wild and precious question today.

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Preacher: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Texts: Jeremiah 6:16 & Matthew 11:28-30

When the world shouts from every screen, how do we stay awake to suffering without burning out our souls? We open with Jeremiah’s call to “stand at the crossroads” and pair it with Jesus’ invitation to the weary, building a roadmap for people who want to be engaged, faithful, and sane in a noisy age. The result is a practice-based approach to balance: hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, but add Sabbath so your heart can hold both.

We trace how notifications, social media, and AI-driven feeds hijack attention and push our threat-biased brains into overdrive. Drawing on psychological insights about doomscrolling, anxiety, and decision fatigue, we explain why information overload makes everything feel urgent and trivial at the same time. Then we pivot to hope: ancient rhythms that protect empathy, restore nuance, and make our activism more effective. Rest is not retreat; it is training. Limits are not laziness; they are wisdom.

Along the way we share two sticky models for daily life. First, Brene Brown’s household check-ins—How much do you have today?—which turn love into logistics and prevent resentment. Second, the sentinel meerkat, a simple picture of rotating vigilance so everyone gets to eat, sleep, and play. Apply those patterns to families, teams, and congregations: share the watch, schedule digital sabbath windows, and trust your circle to tap you only when it truly matters. We close by reclaiming rest as a spiritual discipline that honors our design and fuels sustained, compassionate action.

If this message helps you breathe a bit deeper, share it with a friend who needs a reset. Subscribe for more grounded conversations on faith, resilience, and wise engagement, and leave a review to tell us where you’re finding rest this week.

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Presenter: Rev. Dr. Kit Schooley

A vineyard without hedges. An angel who sounds like Christ. A slave who weeds beyond the brief and is named co‑heir with the son. We dive into The Shepherd of Hermas, a wildly popular early Christian text from Rome that many congregations cherished but the canon ultimately set aside. Across visions, mandates, and parables, Hermas wrestles with a problem the young church felt in its bones: how do ordinary people live free of sin after adult baptism is treated as a final crossing?

We start with the history—how the text spread in Greek, why its silence on Jesus’ name and the resurrection puzzled later readers, and what that reveals about the concerns of communities between 100 and 150 CE. Then we unpack the famous vineyard story, mapping its characters and symbols: the master’s absence, the faithful slave, angels as stakes, sins as weeds, commandments as dishes sent from the feast. By setting Hermas beside Isaiah’s lamenting vineyard and Mark’s violent tenants, we trace a striking evolution from failure and rejection to formation and hope. No tower. No hedge. The field lies open, and holiness looks like patient work that blesses others.

Along the way, we explore why Hermas nearly made it into the New Testament, how Eusebius and Athanasius shaped the canon and the Trinity debate, and why this “wordy” book kept winning hearts anyway. The payoff is both historical and practical: a window into Rome’s pro‑Israel posture and a template for spiritual growth where obedience, initiative, and generosity confirm our calling. If you’re curious about early Christian literature, canon history, or how moral life takes root in community, you’ll find a rich guide here.

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Presenter: Rev. Dr. Kit Schooley

A fragile manuscript, a private room, and a challenge that still stings: who gets to speak for Jesus when the records are broken and the crowd isn’t there to witness it? We unpack the Gospel of Mary against a Hellenistic backdrop where God is distant, matter feels suspect, and the soul struggles upward. Instead of a public miracle at Galilee, we hear a small circle wrestling with inner revelations, missing pages, and a mission that might stall before it starts.

Mary steps forward to interpret a post-resurrection conversation, sketching stages of ascent that sound more like shedding burdens than climbing a neat ladder. Andrew and Peter push back, questioning her credibility and the idea that Jesus could favor her insight. Levi (Matthew) answers with a sharp correction: if the Savior deemed her worthy, who are we to reject her? That moment reframes the episode from a gendered squabble into a strategy session for a young movement: stop piling on rules, stop gatekeeping spiritual status, and carry the message into a skeptical world. We connect these sparks to wider currents—anti-legalism, the break from Jewish norms, and the swirl of heterodoxy and orthodoxy that shaped the canon.

Across the hour, we trace why private texts struggled for acceptance, how early ascetic demands set impossible bars, and what “no new laws” meant for communities trying to grow without shrinking the table. Mary’s tears anchor the stakes: authority, trust, and the future of the mission. If you care about women’s leadership in the early church, the politics of canon, and the practical craft of evangelizing across cultures, this conversation opens a rare window into second-century tensions that feel uncomfortably current.

If this episode resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves early Christian history, and leave a review with your take: who should we trust to interpret Jesus today?

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Preaching: Rev. Dr. Kit Schooley

Texts: Genesis 1:1-9 & Mark 1:4-11

A world that once felt like welter and waste can be reordered with a word and a pour. We follow the current from Genesis’s first light to the Jordan’s torn-open sky and into a mountain village where a wooden coffin becomes a font of resurrection. Along the way, we wrestle with an earthy, practical question—how much water is enough—and discover why the church’s oldest wisdom says the power is not in technique but in the God who meets us in ordinary elements.

I share the nerves and wonder of my first baptism in a tiny congregation and how hearing the water changed the room. We explore early Christian instructions that flex around rivers, fonts, warmth, and necessity, and we return to the heart of the act: water and the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism cleanses, yes, but it also marks—like a watermark you only see when held to light—naming us as beloved and claimed. That mark isn’t ink the world can spot; it’s a witness the community learns to recognize in forgiveness, courage, and a hope that doesn’t run dry.

The story crescendo arrives before dawn in a highland village, where an elder lowers a child beneath water that fills a handcrafted coffin, then raises him with a shout of new life as Easter songs break open the morning. Death and birth, endings and beginnings, all meeting in one soaked moment. If you’ve ever wondered what baptism changes, or if you’ve only known the lightest touch of a fingertip, this journey invites you to see and hear grace flow—visible and generous—and to remember who you are when the Spirit says “well pleased.”

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Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Texts: Matthew 2:1-12, 16-18

A star rises over a troubled world and we’re left with a choice: move the way fear moves, or let love lead us down another road. We follow Matthew’s story of the Magi and Herod to explore how power panics, how people brace for the fallout, and how a quiet act of reverence can become a bold act of resistance. The journey isn’t neat or sentimental; it’s about holding fear and curiosity together long enough to see where the light actually points.

We dig into what the text says—and what tradition added—about the Magi’s number, status, and gender, opening space to imagine women among these border-crossing seekers. That reframe draws a line back to the women of Exodus who defied Pharaoh and preserved life, and forward to anyone who chooses truth over intimidation today. When the Magi kneel before a vulnerable child and then refuse to return to Herod, they model a way of faith that honors the holy and rejects complicity.

From there, we connect the ancient playbook to our present. Leaders still stoke fear, justify harm as peace, and divide communities to protect power. Jesus’ early life as a refugee confronts that logic, and his ministry shows a different pattern: healing, solidarity, and courage that lets love run wild. With a nudge from Rumi’s “Keep Walking,” we ask practical questions for the new year: Who are today’s Magi crossing borders for love and truth? Who are the Marys at our doors? Where do we need to take another road?

If this reflection helps you see the path a bit clearer, share it with a friend, subscribe for more thoughtful sermons, and leave a review with your answer: Which road are you choosing this week?

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