The foremost focus of this podcast episode is a thorough discussion among Joshua Noel, Christian Ashley, and Brandon Knight, regarding their individual podcasts under the Anazao Podcasts Network and their reflections on the events of 2025. They delve into their respective projects, articulating the significant developments and content that have engaged their audiences throughout the past year. As they explore their aspirations and goals for 2026, the conversation unveils an array of upcoming projects and thematic directions, promising an engaging year ahead for listeners. Each host articulates personal anecdotes and insights, fostering a sense of community and shared experience within the network. This episode serves as an informative preview, allowing listeners to anticipate exciting new content and collaborations on the horizon.

The podcast episode delves into a broader exploration of interpersonal relationships within the church, highlighting the necessity for kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, echoing the divine forgiveness extended to humanity through Christ. Through this lens Joshua Noel, Christian Ashley, and Brandon Knight, engage in a thought-provoking dialogue about the challenges faced by modern Christians in fostering genuine community while navigating differing opinions and emotions. The episode further invites reflection on the complexities of maintaining unity within the church amidst diverse perspectives and experiences.

The speakers encourage listeners to consider how understanding and empathy can mitigate conflicts, suggesting that slowing down to engage in meaningful dialogue can enhance relationships and diminish hostile reactions. They emphasize the significance of forgiveness as a deliberate choice, mirroring the grace received from God. This part of the discussion serves as a poignant reminder of the transformative power of grace in nurturing a loving and supportive church environment. In conclusion, the episode not only provides theological insights but also practical implications for personal conduct and community dynamics, urging listeners to embody the principles of love and understanding in their daily interactions.

The episode also features a light-hearted introduction to the hosts and a discussion about their various podcasting endeavors, establishing a casual atmosphere that juxtaposes the serious themes discussed. They reflect on their personal journeys, illustrating the diverse backgrounds that inform their perspectives on faith and community. The hosts share anecdotes about their experiences in church and podcasting, creating a relatable context for the serious discussions that follow. This blend of personal stories and theological discourse enriches the episode, making it accessible while still addressing profound spiritual truths. The concluding remarks reiterate the importance of unity, kindness, and forgiveness within the church, encouraging listeners to actively contribute to a culture of understanding and grace, both in their personal lives and in their wider church communities.

In essence, the podcast episode challenges listeners to reflect on their behaviors and attitudes towards others, particularly in moments of conflict, while offering practical strategies for fostering a more compassionate and unified community. The hosts' earnest engagement with these themes invites listeners to not only reflect on their personal faith journeys but also to actively participate in creating a church environment characterized by love, truth, and mutual support. The episode concludes with a call to action, urging listeners to embody the principles discussed and to engage with one another in a spirit of kindness and understanding.

Takeaways:

1. The hosts reflect on their individual podcast journeys and share insights about their shows' evolution throughout 2025.
2. The discussion emphasizes the importance of community engagement and understanding diverse viewpoints within the Christian faith.
3. Listeners are encouraged to explore various shows on the Anazao Podcast Network to broaden their perspectives and engage with different theological discussions.
4. Brandon Knight announces an innovative format for his upcoming episodes, blending music themes with scriptural reflections during Lent in 2026.
5. Christian Ashley highlights the significance of personal growth through challenges in faith, particularly during his job search since graduating seminary.
6. The hosts express a commitment to fostering genuine dialogue and unity within the Christian community as they prepare for future episodes in 2026.

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https://anazao-podcasts-shop.fourthwall.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

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All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and slander must be removed from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you in this pericope of Scripture.

St. Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus about what it means to be the church. Here he's telling the church how to behave towards one another.

After this section, he's going to go on to discuss how families in the church should treat one another, parents to children, husbands and wives, that kind of stuff.

Brandon Knight how can we today better and practically learn to speak truth, have a healthy relationship with anger, and still forgive one another in the ways that St. Paul is describing here?

I mean, being angry and sinning, not, as some translations put it, is like the million dollar question. I feel like it's like something that Christians still to this day have a difficult time trying to do.

I would say just kind of my own take on this and would be, I think we would we can show kindness and we can have less outbursts of sinful anger if we actually slow down to understand one another, that we may have seek opportunities to sit with one another and to actually discuss rather than relying upon stereotypes or misinformation that we might know about other Christians and instead actually like embrace community and rather than just trying to wave our flags of, you know, this is my stance, this is. And I'm angry because other people disagree.

Yeah, good work. Also interesting that he says be angry and do not sin and then immediately turned around with a also get rid of all anger.

Hey guys, welcome to the whole Church podcast podcast.

Possibly your favorite church unity podcast on possibly your favorite random Christian podcast network of some friends that like to hang out with each other on occasion and complain about Josh mostly. I'm Josh.

Amen.

I'm Josh, one of the co hosts of this show. Missing the co host with the absolute most TJ Tiberious Juan Blackwell, also known as Pod Almighty.

I think his New Year's resolution was to make me suffer slightly more. So I'm recovering from a flu or something and he's setting this one out.

But I'm here with two wonderful gentlemen who are going to help me struggle through this episode because they're also podcast experts. Yeah, yeah. The one and only Brandon Knight you heard discussing the verse a little bit earlier.

He is the host of my Seminary life, as well as Kung Fu Pizza Party, as well as the father to the one and only producer Cooper. Yeah, I think that's an important bit to include.

It is. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Pastor Sensei, Brandon, good to have you.

And we are also here with someone who's master, another person who's mastered the divine itself, the one and only Christian Ashley. He's also learned from Will the powers of the magic head. Yeah. Welcome, Christian.

TJ is a host of Systematic Ecology. Will is a host. We're not going to do this, but Christian also host why I don't like Friday night frights. Some other things.

I think I can't keep up with everything Christian does. And that's considering one more. Yeah, yeah.

Just for fun, for those who don't know, I occasionally do one that's be living water that for a long time was dummy for theology. I also help with the Bible after hours and both of those have been not publishing really well. So we'll be discussing all of our podcasts, plural.

We'll be discussing what the network is. Some other shows that are going to be added to the network are being added, might be added, you know, that kind of stuff.

And we're just gonna have she it they added. It's first grade. Spongebob.

I'm just glad we both got to Wombo at the same time. That's what church unity is all about. So with that said, guys, consider going to our website, purchasing one of our T shirts.

It helps promote our show, it helps raise some money for podcasting needs, and it lets other people know about the importance of our mission to educate and unite the modern church. The one I'm wearing currently is one I like to suggest it's I like the green shade, but there's several different colors.

The whole church podcast on the back has the Irish Trinity nod, has a nice nod to the Nicene Creed, and it says one church, one God. So, you know, I recommend that one for you guys. Check it out. And I'm back.

By the way, sorry to interrupt you because I forgot which day we were recording. I thought we were recording yesterday. So that's when I wore my Systematic Ecology shirt. Only to realize, oh, I'm in the wrong.

I'm a complete dork. I have my kung fu pizza party shirt sitting out and I forgot to.

Throw it on, so I need one of those, actually.

Anyway, Will Rose has one.

What? Will's cooler than me? Pick one up, man. Also, since we're all on the network, remember to go to Bonaza Podcast Network.

The link is in the show's description. It always is. Actually, I always put that link down there.

So if you want to hear some of these shows we're talking about, or some of the other ones like this, or whichever one I forget to mention, like when I forget to mention the homily because I've been forgetting to update it so long, you could still find it there using that link, even though I forgot to say it. So, without further ado, we're going to jump into the most important form of unity, which, of course is silliness.

Yeah, there's nothing that really gets you more bonded than just goofing off. Talking about Wombo was just too serious for this show.

Brandon, you know, whenever you send out the. The script for these episodes, I always check two things. The first one is, am I going to be asked the Bible verse?

Because I've been caught off guard before by that. And what is this? I almost disregard the rest of the notes. I have to know, what's the Bible verse? Do I have to talk or. And what is the silly question?

And mine would be finish in fourth place at Ninja Games at Ninja Con in November.

Man, I'm just so proud of you for setting such a specific goal.

I know.

And then you did the thing, man.

And I did the thing.

And knowing you're lame.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think for myself, I'm gonna let Christian go last. Save the best for last.

I would set my own goal to beat three video games that aren't Kingdom Hearts this year. And, you know, I'm proud of myself for that.

What three?

Oh, I. I've beat Oblivion because I never played Oblivion before this year, so I got through that. Well, I guess I'm counting all of the Jack of Daxter series as one game for some reason. That's fine. So I beat Oblivion.

I beat that and then there was some random indie game I found that I beat. But I also beat the main campaign for Planet Zoo, so I'll count that. That'll be my third one. Planet Zoo is awesome, by the way.

Yeah, mine would be to publish another episode of why I don't like because I hadn't done so in over a year and I did it right before the end year ended, baby.

I'm not guaranteeing anything but the end of the year.

Love it.

Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, I'm proud of all three of us. We did great at those New Year's resolutions that we totally came up with in time.

So let's start with our with our intros. Amazingly, there's probably around for some reason. December, January, we get a lot of new listeners around this time.

So there probably are some people that this is their first episode. Congratulations to you guys.

I'm sure this has been confusing so far, so let's start with some intros for those people who haven't listened to the whole church much before. Or maybe this is their very first episode. Just kind of let everybody know. Who are you? I'm going to let Christian go first.

Who you are, how you came to Jesus, how you got involved with us of all people, and what shows you are running on the Onaz Isle Podcast Network.

So we're going to use the Marvel method. You know, every episode, someone's first episode. So welcome everyone. If this is somehow your first episode and Joshua was right for once in his life.

We all love each other, we're all friends. So if we say anything like that, we actually do enjoy each other's company. So. I'm Christian Ashley. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church.

My mother had me on a Tuesday, I was in on church on Sunday. And I have lived in the church ever since.

I came to Faith when I was six years old, after one particular sermon, my dad took me aside, asked me about what the pastor was saying, what I thought about Jesus, what I thought about sin and my relationship towards Jesus. And I realized that we didn't have one. As much as a six year old child understands what they're getting into. I accepted him into my heart.

I got baptized the year after that. I have been in the church ever since.

Even in my times of being the guy who thinks you can be lone wolf Christian, I would still read scripture, I would still get stuff done. Eventually realized that I was in the wrong to do that, got back into the church.

I've worked in many places in there and youth and children's ministry, small group leaders, so on and so forth. And how I got involved with Joshua is I met him in college and. And we kind of hit it off pretty well.

And then he left me behind, you know, like a callous man that he is. But, you know, he had to do his own things. He had some growing to do, as it were, and so did I.

And eventually along the way, you know, I had read forever ago that he was making this whole church podcast thing. Even though we had gotten out of touch, I had never listened to it then about. Unfortunately, we have to date things this way pre Covid I had.

Or maybe it was in the midst of COVID Either one, sorry, time is bad when you're getting old. Like me, early onset Alzheimer's hits pretty hard at 35. And I had reached out to him and said, hey, like, I'm really enjoying what you're doing.

Unity is something that's very big in my heart.

And yeah, I don't always agree with everything that you reach conclusions on, but it's nice to hear your voice again and it's nice, you know, you're doing something like this. I appreciate the effort. It's like, oh, Christian, do you want to be on the show? Like you're an author now. It's like, sure.

And next thing I know, like, two months later, I'm being interviewed like I'm someone important. And it just kind of spiraled from there.

Yeah.

The shows I run on NSL Podcast Network, I do let nothing move you. That's my Bible podcast. I go chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

I've done all the Pentateuch, I've done Luke, Romans, and I'm about to finish up Matthew. I'll be going back into the historical books after this. I also do Friday Night Frights with Joe Day, who co host with me there.

That's where we discuss all the creepy and fantastical stuff of the world. You know, you're like, Ness Monster, Mothman, Did King Arthur actually exists, Roanoke, so on, so forth.

Then I do why I don't like, which is a show where I discuss media that I'm not too fond of. And, you know, I explain, you know, why I think it's not good.

Like, how I think things might be better, but also, like, not be a way to, like, just completely trashing and say, if you like it, I don't like you. Like, I want to air my feelings out without, like, destroying someone else. And then finally, I'm on some indie show.

Systematic ecology is like 50 billion hosts now. And I show up, like, practically every other episode, it feels like, because, hey. Oh, someone wasn't able to make it.

Oh, Christian doesn't have a life. We'll put him on.

I didn't know you actually saw those texts when I put them out. Oh, no. I usually, I think people just, like, jump in a group chat or, like, who's available?

And what Christian's not telling you is he's like, I would love to be on that episode. And he just says that to every episode. No, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. I'll show you a little bit about myself later.

I want to go ahead and hear from Brandon because, man, when you're sporting a beer that nice, you got to get more camera time. You know.

I did not know that part of the lore, Christian, about how you and Josh were connected. Glad I got to be here to hear that.

And it's also nice to know, Christian, that you took my job at Systematic Ecology of the one who's just thrown into the episode.

That's our lot in life.

Yeah, he just doesn't have as cool a beard when he does it, but he has a magic head now, so I think it balances out.

Yep, magic. Hi, my name is. What? Okay, so I'm Brandon Knight. I am the host of my seminary life and Kung Fu Pizza party.

I came to know pretty similar backstory as Christian when it comes to south to the salvific aspect of things. Came to know Christ as savior when I was a little boy. Grew up in church believing home was homeschooled. Went to a Christian high school.

Yes, I was very sheltered at one point in my life. I cannot beat the white. Even angelical charges.

That's a great way to get people interested in listening to my show. More relationally driven aspect with my faith with Jesus when I was in college also started exploring other Christian traditions.

Had pretty much grown up Baptist. Spent a lot of time like in the reformed kind of camp there right around college as well. Thankfully converted. So that's me.

My faith background a little bit kind of like more. More relationally with my faith in God. Now I have two shows. I started my seminary life just before I met Josh.

Josh posted in a Christian podcaster group. We used to both be a part of that. He was casting hosts for a deep theology show and I was like, yeah, that sounds like something I would do.

So sent over an episode where I talked about C.S. lewis and Tolkien. Little did I know that was the correct answer to persuade. Get you to like him.

So if you go back into the early episodes of Systematic Ecology, you'll hear me talking with Joe Day about wrestling and Sonic the Hedgehog. Josh and I talking about Bob's Burgers and how I met your mother, Will and TJ and I reviewing the original. The first. Not the original, but the.

The first Dune movie of the trilogy. And then I think even one of the early episodes from when I returned to start doing cameo appearances.

I think one of the first ones I did was with Christian. I don't know if you remember this. Talking about the. The fan fiction fan theory, that being said, is a dart. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I completely forgot about that until I was thinking about doing this episode and what I wanted to say. So, yeah, my seminary life started when I went back to seminary to finish my master's degree. I have not. I'm going to correct the correct, Josh.

I have not mastered divinity. I have mastered art. I have a master of arts in church ministry. That's fine. I just don't want to take. Take that, you know, stolen valor there.

I have not mastered the divine just art. But what is art but all of our just isn't the divine art itself. Anyway.

So started out as a show where I was chronicling my journey through finishing my master's degree. Since then, it's become this show where I talk about just.

I take on this posture as a I am the lifelong student and that you don't have to go to an institution to continue to learn and to study theology. Theology is for everyone is what one of the taglines for the show is. And so the show more so just covers like, okay, I've been reading this book.

I've been studying for these sermons. I've been listening to these podcasts and these are the things that I'm learning and want to share with you all.

Kung Fu Pizza Party is completely different. It is a show where I promise to deliver high flying action in 30 minutes or less and serve up some wisdom one slice at a time.

Primarily through reviewing what I have broadly called martial art media, but more so like kung fu, ninja and samurai movies. So talk about everything from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to maybe some like, not necessarily like traditional kung fu content.

Like, I did a review of the Adult Swim cartoon Primal last year. I covered the first two seasons and try to like pull some, you know, what is naturally coming up in the content as a way to like, talk about.

Usually it's a. It's not like strictly like a faith show.

Like, I'm not trying to show you how Jesus is in every Bruce Lee movie, but rather just kind of like, what are the moral implications of what is going on in this piece of me?

Yeah. You are though gonna work on a animated series of Jesus teaching us kung fu, right? I think that's important.

I just saw the other day and I don't know if this is a clip from an actual anime. I'll let Christian help me with this one. Watches more anime than I do. It was Jesus playing tennis and it was anime style.

And his partner next to him was like, Jesus, this match point depends on you. And he says, I did not come here to be served. And then he serves the thing and like spikes it and he's like, but to serve. It was all anime.

I don't know if that's a real one or not, but it made me chuckle.

Yeah, that thing that I gave me.

Love.

That definitely sounds like something someone made on their spare time for the sake of a joke. And I love it for it.

Yeah, yeah, that, that very high quality.

If that's the case. Like, they got some art skills.

Yeah. Also I, I do want to say with Kung Fu pizza party, the 30 minutes or less thing, he started adding challenges. If he goes over 30 minutes.

And I don't think I've been invited back as a guest since he started that. So.

Because invited you, we just haven't recorded that.

Wait, I haven't broken it yet.

No.

And you know how much I love talking.

Yeah.

But to be fair, in the opposite of defending Christian, when he was tasked to do a 20 minute episode, like little bonus for Christmas, he did record our longest episode of Systematic Ecology.

You gave two episodes to cover and you knew better.

Oh, but I'm going throw out another random thing here. Since you mentioned the Darth Jar Jar thing. My wife actually has a Darth Jar Jar tattoo that she got recently, like this year.

I don't know your wife, but of course she does. It's great.

It's fantastic.

Adds up somehow.

It's just. It's wonderful. Okay.

For myself, I'm gonna try and do this quickly because hopefully people just know they can listen to other episodes and learn more about the hosts. But.

Okay.

Came to Faith really fun fact. I came to Faith Really Young with. I don't remember if it was children's church or what it was, but the teacher was Ms. Christie.

And later on when I got like re baptized and like rededicated my life to the Lord, it was also thanks to someone else named Ms. Christie, but not the same person. Just, you know, fun fact. But yeah, so really young. Traveled a lot, felt the call to ministry fairly on fighting it. Still fighting it.

Like currently I'm fighting that, I think. But like, I don't want to do that. Come on.

But.

You know, transparency is good, I think.

Grew up in a Pentecostal home, but I have some family members who are Catholics who I had like a lot of, you know, witnessed a lot of tension, saw some of that kind of like making fun of Catholics or Baptists buying each other's backs kind of stuff here and there. Heard a lot of Catholics aren't really Christian, Baptists aren't really Christian.

Etc then I went to college and met some Catholics and Baptists and we're like, ah, this isn't adding up. They're giving me free food and seem to talk about Jesus a lot. And I like both of those things quite a bit.

So I started caring more about just the idea of like other religions, other faith traditions. I got really curious when I was like, I think maybe some of what I've been fed wasn't completely accurate but never really crossed the line.

Just was like curious about other, other things.

So there's that Joshua's person your pastor warned you about. You know, if you leave this church, you run over.

That's true. And that's what happened. It wasn't until after that I ended up leaving the church. I was at.

I had a point in my life, various reasons I tried to like, I guess I was deconstructing. But at the time it was more of a I was mad at God and didn't want to believe. So I just tried to find a bunch of holes in my faith.

And the term deconstruction wasn't really a thing yet, so it was more just me, I'm mad and want to not believe this thing. And then naturally, I found a lot of things that contradicted each other in the Bible and was like, ah. For some reason, I'm still not satisfied.

I don't. I don't know. I feel like I found the key and I should be like, I'm done with this. But then I just wasn't.

Ended up stumbling onto, like, Pete Inn's books, some different stuff, and going, okay, maybe there's different ways to read the Bible, different ways to think about my faith. And now I'm kind of a weird mixed mud of a bunch of different ideas. And I make progressive Christians mad and conservative Christians mad.

And everybody's just mad. But they can't say too much much because I run a church unity podcast. So there's that. So I have. That's. Yeah, that's part of just who I am.

And that's where like, we have the whole church podcast started off as I thought it would just be easy to have a nice, nice little unity podcast. What an easy topic. It's not.

We had other podcasts and stuff before then. This is kind of the one that stuck. And I met a lot of cool people, like Christian. Oh, I've known Christian, but Christian's been on the show.

We've rekindled our. Our friendship through this. I met him because of Killer Bunnies and Doctor who don't ask Questions, but we need. I need to regather myself.

But we met Will through that. A bunch of other people through this.

Will was really cool and talked about comic book stuff, and I was like, hey, man, I wish I could get this guy to start a comic book show. And I couldn't convince him to start a podcast. So instead I had to create another podcast and have him in it.

And then I auditioned other people and was like, if I get a big enough crowd, I won't have to do that much. And I could still hear Will talk about comics.

And it worked, and now it turned into something completely different that's this whole huge, like systematic ecology is almost like a network within the network with all the different, like series and different things that we do over there and like 14 different hosts. And it's crazy, but we try to cover all of pop culture that we can from various faith traditions over there.

We still have whole church here talking about church unity. I've also done.

I started Dummy for Theology, which was me originally just going over big theological ideas that people have disagreed about for like centuries and then going, hey, here's the different things. I don't know an answer. I'm just giving you guys different things and what the implications are, depending on which side you take of the issue.

I try to run it as a regular podcast. That didn't work because I'm very adhd, which you guys probably can tell.

Strict schedules are hard for me, especially when I'm trying to do something on my own. I try to create something a little bit more genuine. So I re released it as be Living Water.

And I even said, hey, there's not going to be a strict release schedule anymore. And to prove it, I haven't released anything since, so. So there's that. Then.

I do some of the voice work for a friend of mine who writes like scripts and does something for.

It's called the Bible After Hours, which is just kind of a more progressive reading of the Bible and going through scripture kind of stuff, which I think that show. It's done Leviticus. It's done some other random just Bible here and there. Wait, no, it didn't do Leviticus. Christian did Leviticus. It did Judges.

I help with too many things. It did Judges. It did some of Gospels. I think in Psalms. It's been for like forever and probably not anymore. I'm just tired of.

I don't want to hear him talk to me about Psalms anymore. I think that's the problem. If I'm helping you on a project and I get bored, project kind of stops happening. Don't let me get bored. I'm like a puppy.

So I think that covers the gambit of things I know of. For those who want to know about tj, also very similar to all of our stories, Got saved Young grew up in the Pentecostal Church.

He has changed his views on a lot of things, but he is still with his church because that's his church, you know.

Yeah, it's a very TJ thing.

Yeah.

Yes, it's very TJ Again, if this is your first time. Yeah.

I think his bio when I asked him to Write a bio for the whole church. Literally was. I was born, I live. Yeah. And I. You know, it's pretty accurate. I met TJ at a church camp. I was one of his counselors. And want to think.

One of my favorite moments in park and Rec is when. Who's the guy Chris Pratt plays in that show?

Andy.

Andy. Yeah, Andy.

Andy.

And he's talking to Rod Swanson. He's like, come on, it's not weird. It's kind of like, you used to be my camp counselor, but now we're like, both old. It's cool, and we can hang out.

And he said that. I'm like, that's me and dj. Nice. Like, literally. Yeah. So am I missing anything? Did we cover the basis of who we are?

Yeah, I think we're gold.

Okay, cool. It would help if TJ was here. What all do we do on our various shows last year that we're most proud of? Okay, that's. That's an easy one.

The short end of it is this year saw the return of a Lent themed series that I do every year or I. I'm now going to start doing every year. It's called Fish Fridays. They come out every Friday. So every Friday from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday. And it kind of takes a different.

It's looked different every year. This year was more devotional focused. Next year are we going to talk about stuff coming out next year or 26 years? I'll save it then.

The other big thing that happened this year is I was really focusing on two ongoing series, one called Rabbit Trail and one called Experiential Preaching. Rabbit trail is a 10 out of 10 would recommend. Serious concept by Christian Ashley. He has complimented it before. Basically, instead of.

Wait, that was Christians.

It was his idea. I complimented him for it.

Yes.

Because I love the idea.

Oh, you're the IGN review on the back of the book.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay, I need to put one.

Basically how it works is that I sit down and I talk about, hey, this is a 5 minute recap of the sermon I preached recently. But the bulk of the episode is.

And now I'm going to tell you about the thing that I wish I could have talked about during the sermon that I didn't have time for. Couldn't make it fit. It's an illustration that I thought it would go over people's heads. And that's. So you get something kind of different. Every.

Every episode there's one coming out here pretty soon that's going to be. Or it may have come out by the time this episode comes out.

Where I'm going to talk about, okay, this is when you should make an exception to not going down a rabbit trail while you're preaching. And you know, like, okay, how do you weigh when this is a good idea? Things like that.

Experiential preaching is a concept I've been kind of working on in my own preaching. I'm sure other people have done it. I'm not going to say I'm original in any of this, but basically it's during a sermon.

I'm trying to find moments where I can bring the congregation into the sermon actively.

And so that looks like more than doing some big multimillion dollar stunt that mega churches should not be doing at Christmas time, but they always do. Or. And it's more than just the turn to your neighbor and say, lord, greet Lord, bless you real good.

You know, it's more than just like the light crowd work stuff. You know, in times past, I've done pausing the whole congregation and now we're going to have a moment of meditation.

Because the sermon was about meditation. Communion, I think, is a really natural way to have this kind of like living component in a sermon.

This is an actual prayer that comes up in the right around St. Patrick's Day. But Ren Collective did a whole song reworking of it. And so it was a review I did for Fish Fridays this year.

Well, I have another show, duh, so I should talk about that now too. As for Kung Fu Pizza Party, you know, it's a. It's way less thematically focused, whereas my seminary life tries to focus more on series.

When you're just doing movie reviews, sometimes it's like, okay, well, tonight I'm gonna watch a Jet Li movie. Because that's what. That's what I'm craving is some Jet Li. I did review every Karate Kid film in the run up to the new one, Karate Kid Legends.

I also, I was. I. Which the Karate Kid, I have the top five because I was promoting on social media.

And I did one in July about the trailer that dropped for Mortal Kombat 2. And also the cast listing for Street Fighter had just come out and broke the Internet. Number four was my review of the Art of Peace.

A nice little a book about how we shouldn't be constantly preparing for warfare, but preparing but kind of like life after warfare and seeking out peace in our life rather than constant warfare. Great little book. Don't recommend the author. That's a good guy. And then number five was the Next Karate Kid featuring Christian Ashley.

And great news for Christian Ashley because since the Karate Kid Part two was our undisputed champion of the year, I'm going to re watch and re review it when the show's anniversary happens in September. And Christian was supposed to be on that episode originally and scheduling didn't work out. And I feel so bad for him.

He went from potentially being on the episode. The Karate Kid Part two is oftentimes considered the best one in the franchise. He went from.

He went from that to the one that is typically considered the worst one in the franchise. The next Karate Kid. I don't think that I have a bad take on that part, but.

So yeah, I did two other really cool specials this year with Kung Fu Pizza Party that I'm proud of. One is called the Blessed Takayama Memorial Battle Royale.

Blessed Takayama was a Catholic samurai who at the blessed status in the Catholic Church, that means he's right before sainthood. So that's something that scholars are actively working on to see if he performed any miracles so he can reach the level of sainthood.

He would be the first individual Japanese person to be canonized. If that does happen. There's been groups. I don't know how all this works. Like niche.

I don't know how directly all of this works, but there's been like groups of Japanese people who have been canonized before. This would be the first time someone individually who is Japanese would be canonized.

So once you hit that blessed status, you could start naming things after them. So I named this special event where basically I pick out 30 movies and I use a random number generator and I eliminate them.

And I have to keep talking while I'm doing this. So I'm just riffing the whole time because you're not supposed to have dead air because then I have to edit it or not edit it.

And I should edit it better so I'm just riffing the whole time. And then whatever movie won, which was the Clones of Bruce Lee. No nuance. That's the name of the movie, that one.

So then I had to rewatch and re review it. And that is going to happen again February 3rd, which is Takayama's feast day. So this is going to be an ongoing thing.

The other one I did, which I should definitely have Josh on sometime, is called Drunken Fist Happy Hour, where I take that 30 minutes or less stipulation, put it to the side and just hang out and have a conversation. I did the first one, the only one I've done so far with Mark Flower from Grubbing Grace.

We got some different beers together and reviewed them and also paired them up with different movies and talked about something that's really important to Mark's ministry and his heart, which is gathering at the table and kind of the community. Similar. Very similar to what Josh is doing here. Just kind of a different take on the community, the unity aspect of our faith.

Yeah. I love Mark, and I love that episode of y' all pairing with the beers.

No, that was it. Yeah.

Yeah. I thought there was a pizza one. I thought, too.

We did. We. We also. Yes, we did one before I came up with this idea of the Drunken Fist Happy Hour. I.

We did an episode together the first time Mark was on the show where we paired up, where we were coming up with pizzas and pairing them up with different movies. And in case you've never listened to Mark's show, you should go check him out.

But he's a foodie, and he's has a lot of really unique ideas and a lot of unique experiences when it comes to food. So I'm over here picking out, like, Domino's, and he's got, like, this top shelf with brie and gouda and all this kind of stuff.

I'm like, man, this guy knows his stuff.

It was so funny because he's like, okay, a pizza with a black garlic. And I'm like, I just want to try these pizzas, man. Yeah. But then, like, the Chicago expert, too. That was a good one.

All right, Christian, same question.

So on. Let nothing move you. I started off the year in numbers, and then I finished off the rest of the Pentateuch that I had started the year before.

I had a great time with that one.

Then I decided one of the things instead of As I was going through the schedule, because I go book by book, I realized, do I really want to do, since I started with Luke, do I want to do Matthew, Mark and then John back to back to back? Not really.

So what I wanted to do instead is like, when we reach like a natural ending to like, you know, Pentateuch by itself, let's go to a gospel, historical books, let's go to the next gospel, then go through all the poetry, wisdom books, then we can finish off with John and then I can go to the rest of the New Testament. It's obviously years and years down the road, but I do like to plan somewhat for parts of that.

So normally I'd have other people with me, I'd ask a couple people to go in, but I wanted to be selfish. I want the Gospels for myself.

And one of the parts of that was because I just wanted to focus in on what I was thinking about them and how could I properly represent what is Jesus saying in here as best as possible? I say, like, everyone here assembled would have terrible takes always, and I'd never listen to them again, never want them back.

But like, I just wanted to like, narrow the focus solely on where I was going. And that was a good choice because most of them have been over an hour and some of them have been almost, some of them beyond two hours.

And that's just me talking. So God forbid I bring someone else into that fold, you know, because other people have this thing called a life and I'd rather not ruin theirs.

So, yeah, I'm about to finish up Matthew at this stage. Matthew 26 just released.

I've got two more, then I'm going in the book of Joshua and then I'll be bringing back more people on, you know, to get there takes and everything that's happening as we go through the historical books of the Bible. Let's see then for Friday night frights. This is the year where Joe actually joined me.

I have been in the past put on Facebook on the Systematic Ecology page because I'm too lazy to make my own page for anything because I don't market. That's not me. That's about as close as I get as posting a poll. And he had put like, hey, if Mothman wins, I want on. I'm like, you know what? Sure.

And you know, it's nice not having to fill in empty space by continuing to talk because eventually I run out of breath. And it's nice to have someone like Joe along for the ride because surprise, surprise, Joe and I Don't always agree on everything.

So it was an absolute delight to have him come on. And he has fantastical ideas I think are stupid.

He.

I have fantastical ideas he thinks are stupid.

And yet this unholy marriage has happened, and we love each other at the end of the day, and we get to discuss the same things and have fun with them. I'm especially proud of one episode that I was, like, born to hate just by the very nature of what it is.

And that was the whole hellier docu series that Joe decided to do. And he knew I would hate it going in, so I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

And yet I did at the end of the day, and we had a good conversation based on, okay, why do we both not, like, what's going on here? What could be done to improve it, but, like, what's also behind, you know, actual stories of, you know, some of these sightings?

That was super fun to do then. On why I don't like the easiest one yet. I released one episode a couple of days ago, and I finished season one of Mushoku Tensei.

That is the show that has immense promise but terrible execution. And that's why I don't like it. So there's that.

That was my least favorite episode of why I don't like this year.

Excellent, Christian.

We should do a crossover. I've already watched it, but you should watch Ninja Vengeance. That one I did for Ninja Vengeance. Ninja Vengeance?

Yeah, that was the one I did for International Ninja Day. I was very sad that you didn't.

Think it was great because, like, the name sounds like something I want to love.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly what Christian just said of has a lot of promise. It's a movie about a ninja going up against the Ku Klux Klan. Of course.

That should be great. And it just majorly drops the ball.

I loved your episode. Talking about that movie I never watched.

Also, I get a lot of entertainment listening to these things, and most of the movies you talk about on Kung Fu Pizza Party I've never seen, but I love your reviews. It makes me feel like I've seen them.

Oh, good. I guess that's good to know at least.

You know what, Brandon? I'm up to doing that.

Okay, Cool.

Nice. Oh, man. Yeah.

Then I suppose I'll talk about that indie podcast, Systematic Ecology. I had a lot of fun this year. It was tiring at times. I was getting done with seminary, and there were times like, do I want to stop doing this?

Because it's taking up time. It was also like, I have a lot of fun doing this. I don't want to leave. I stuck with it. We had a ton of great episodes this year.

I mean, I can't list them all.

I mean, I had a great time with Kevin doing what if Leia had Trained Ben Solo instead, where I redeemed the sequel trilogy from being the absolute abysmal dumpster fire that it is alongside him. You can boo me all you want. I'm right at the end of the day. Let's see.

I had a great time discussing the super Jertastic films with, once again, Kevin and Will and Andy Josh, and did a great episode where we did our favorite companions of Doctor who.

It.

I mean, it's. There's not a lot.

I mean, I remember doing them, but I can't remember, like, everything I've been in because I've been in a lot, so I can't, like, list them all off. We'll be here all day. So, yeah, I really enjoyed doing that. Now, like, my top five downloaded.

I didn't write that down because it's not that I'm don't like numbers. It's that I don't think to look at them. But I did at least look at, like, the top two for let nothing move.

You know, that was Deuteronomy 32, which was with Joshua, where we discussed some of what Dr. Heiser had done as well. And the reason that number was so high, because it crossed over the whole church, which has more, you know, people listening than my show.

I'm sorry. Just because we've been on so long. Like, I really think it's just that consistency of TJ always being here.

No one's gonna listen to this episode because TJ's not here.

They're like, where's TJ?

We're officially wasting our time.

We're gonna keep going.

And I think my next Highest one was Matthew 2. And suspiciously, that kind of happened around this Christmas season because I had released that last year. So. You know what? I'll take the W. Yeah.

It's funny because Systematic Ecology, depending on what metric you look at, has three different top downloaded episode. Spotify thinks it was Will's episode with John Hendrix when they were talking about the. Let's see, he didn't do the Bonhoeffer. He did the Mythmakers.

Yeah. With Lewis and. Yeah. I had to look. Turn around and look at the name of the book, which was great.

Where we actually get most of our numbers from our hosting platform seems to Think it's Must We Attack the Cyclones Again? An episode that you released last year with Tripolar that was a primarily political episode.

And then Google Analytics, for some reason they it thinks that our top episode was what's News episode. I think you were also on talking about Peacemaker, Strange New Worlds and some other stuff. Yes.

So who knows what the top episode of Systematic Ecology was?

I did look at the Friday night fright numbers out of curiosity, and it was like the. Did King Arthur exist? It was one of those where Joe was convinced we would be talking for like 10 minutes and yet he forgot who he was dealing with.

And we talked for almost an hour.

Yeah, take that. Oh, man. So no whole church. We do got some consistency here. The only one. Google told me something else.

I don't remember what it told me, but both Spotify and our hosting platform thinks it was our episode with Dr. Beth Allison, Dr. Beth Allison Barr. So our episode with her was number one according to Spotify and Google, which was cool.

I think I really liked the series we did on Whole Church this year where we did the job fair, talking to people just about how their faith helps in their regular day jobs. And then we did a science fair that wasn't planned, but I really like how that worked out.

The science fair was, of course, building up to your Matter Matters, a podcast with in association with the ELCA that Pastor Will Rose is going to be creating and I'm going to help edit and it's going to be up here on the network soon. So it'll be ELCA slash on the podcast. Podcast. Yeah. Trying to think what it was.

So I did say this magnet, whole church, I don't know the top ones for the other ones barely released anything. So it was probably when I did the name change and people were like, hey, what's that for? Be Living Water. Yeah. Yeah.

I really don't know about the Bible after hours, but I could look. It probably wouldn't be hard to look. Let's see. I'll look at Spotify because that one's always easy.

But yeah, I like the series we did on the whole church. I like the different things we did on Systematic Ecology.

So we always have like an annual theme and usually it's really just an extra series that we do. So this year it was. The theme was supposed to be polarization and the series was like Finding the Good.

But I feel like for a couple of these, we did these like mashup or Versus films, like what we did for Halloween where like monster mashups and I Like how it played into the annual theme. So we started treating the theme more like a theme and instead of just a series.

Gotcha.

Nice.

Which means everybody, you owe the Bible After Hours a download today.

Yeah.

You always finish what you're listening to first and then you go listen to something. Yeah.

Well, it's really funny.

Was your favorite here. I'll just podcast those for a second. Josh, what is your favorite episode since you, like, contribute so much to the Bible? What was your favorite one?

Man, I think I liked all of the judges ones, really. I enjoyed except for like the last two when there were some stuff that were in the script that was wrong.

And then I fumbled because I saw something incorrect and I was like, I don't know how to do the script now. So that. That was a struggle.

But I liked some of the earlier ones, especially with like, Deborah and when you get into, like, Gideon, I think that that was a really fun episode to do. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So those are fun as far as what's funny about that too.

So whole Church and Systematic Ecology both have at least 10 people that that's their, like, in their top five podcasts. And I'm like, hold up. You're telling me y' all have enough time to listen to these shows that much?

And we can't even get enough people to listen to Bible After Hours to get numbers? Maybe it's because I'm not releasing episodes. Maybe it's my fault. Yeah, probably. It's fine though. Don't worry about it, guys.

So we're gonna go ahead and move on.

This is going to be the year of the Bible After Hours.

You know what? It might. Just because of that.

Out of spite.

Yeah, it was like.

So there's like 25 people for both whole church and SG that according to Spotify, that were top 10 wearing their top 10 podcast, which is kind of cool.

That's cool.

If I, you know, wasn't as lazy, we probably would have done all those, like, recorded thank yous for all those people. But I'm lazy. So we're gonna go ahead and move on. What's next for our shows coming up in the next year?

Brandon, you already kind of started a little bit and I know you're ready to go, and I'm coming up on time, so I need to stop Being adhd. So, Brandon, what's next?

And this year is called My Seminary Life Presents Fish Fridays the Musical. I will elaborate. So for each week, I'm so excited. It's still going to be like a little bit more devotional focus.

But each week I have chosen a song that I think connects to the themes, the postures, the. The usual scriptures that come up during the Lent season. These are gonna be praise songs, hymns, ccm, and then just like regular old pop music.

We're gonna have kind of the gamut of things here. Only seven episodes, so there's probably other great songs that aren't going to be represented in this series. But I'm very excited for that.

Other than that, I'm keeping things kind of wrapped up. You're gonna have to just show up and check it out to find out what's going on.

But if anybody wants to support any of my shows on our official websites for like a hundred dollars a month, I will release my own episode each week. That is the veggietale song he could have chose.

That's a wonderful.

Yeah. He followed up with what Brandon could have said was my belly button by.

His cheeseburger. We are the Pirates who Don't Do Anything.

It's gonna be a phenomenal series. We're just waiting on a single person to decide to donate a hundred dollars a month. Month. So if that's you, now's the time to act.

There you go.

The change you want to see in the world.

So that's MSL when it comes to Kung Fu Pizza Party.

And a lot of it is because the Sonic the Hedgehog film was so dang good that now we're actually getting some good quality video game films. And so with that this year is going to be the year that Kung Fu Pizza Party goes to the arcade.

So at bare minimum, the hope is that each month I'll be releasing an episode that ties video games and the martial arts together.

Obviously there are some easy picks there, like the original Mortal Kombat, Immortal Combat Annihilation films, the Jean Claude Van Damme Street Fighter film. Got a couple other things in the works as well. So I'm excited to do that and see how that works.

So is this when you also reveal that a show called Kung Fu Pizza Party that's going to be doing a video game here surprisingly has the ninja Turtle Michelangelo working with producer Cooper to come up with your themes? Or is that we're going to reveal that later?

We can reveal that one later.

Okay. I love it. It's cowabunga.

Cowabunga.

Yeah, I, yeah, I'm excited just to kind of give this a try and if it works, you know, try and figure out how to have like a overarching theme every year moving forward. But got a couple other things in the works.

Like I said with Kung Fu Pizza Party, it's kind of nice just having something casual where I'm like, okay, I just finished this show, so I guess I'll talk about it now versus like my seminary life where there's been times of like, okay, gotta stay within these parameters and talk about this stuff. It's very freaking.

Yeah, Yeah. I love both a lot.

And I'm really glad Kung Fu Pizza Party comes out on like Fridays because by that point, like, I'm listening to all my, like, news podcasts and everything and I'm like, man, here's something that's just fun. It does just feel better, you know.

Good, good. That is my hope. I just. This is supposed to be the fun.

It does get serious a lot of times talking about some of these themes that come up in the movies.

Oh, yeah.

He's probably going to be lined up for a lot because I'm doing 90s video game content, so I'm sure he's gonna want to hop in a lot of those. But so, yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I already said Christian's gonna be back, so I got a couple shows I'm networking with that.

Yeah, Christian will be back and quieter than ever. Speaking of which, Christian, that's an inside joke. Sorry, guys.

Yeah, for some reason, my audio doesn't like working with other people. I don't know why. I'm just a guy who talks. I don't edit. And that's the theme of my other shows.

If I didn't have Joshua editing, let nothing move you, I'd just release it as is. And you know what? I know some people don't like that. And you know what? Go in peace. That's who I am. So what am I preparing?

Well, I did mention it earlier, like, I'm finishing up Matthew, and that means I'm going back into the historical books of the Bible. I'll be starting off with Joshua, going all the way to Esther. Whenever that ends, it ends. I don't plan out that far in advance.

There's also sometimes when I say, hey, I'm planning to do like one or two chapters, and someone says, but I really want to focus on this one, and I may give in to their demands like I have done with Joshua in the past. No, it all kind of depends. So when that ends, who knows?

The good news is, I mean, outside of the other good news is that the Bible is really long and I have many opportunities to continue doing this. And somehow if I'm still doing this and I finish Revelation, I guess I can start from the beginning again. You know, it'll be fine.

Or by then I'll convince you that Enoch should count.

Well, if you have as many schedule slips as last time, I'll have covered first Enoch, because that's what I do when someone can't show up. I go to the Pseudepigrapha or Apocrypha, which is fun, but, you know, it only happens because of someone else.

There's always the Book of Mormon too.

That's true. I got a copy on my bookshelf.

I mean, I do too. I've got the Quran too, if I really wanted to throw out the hair. So we can do that Bible fan.

Fiction, there's always the Book of Mormon. So.

Also, for the record, the whole church does still love all of our Mormon listeners and former guests. We just also don't agree with everything.

The viewpoint of the guy with the beard does not reflect. Yeah.

Removing him from the ministry, so. Oh, I'm not done, Joshua.

Fine.

I mean, unless you wanted to talk about what I was talking about.

I was just gonna say I I do actually appreciate how you just group chapters together. And even though I'm like, I want this one, you're like, we're doing these three.

And at least on one occasion I picked a chapter because I want to talk about a specific verse that I didn't have enough to say. And then we end up talking way more about one of the other chapters I have had no plans to talk about at all. So that was great.

It's a bit of godly serendipity providence at work.

So yeah, that's it for let nothing move you on the other shows I am planning for why I don't like to actually finish Mushoku Tensei, which would require me to do another season. And that's 20 some episodes. It take about six and I'm not going to say the other number ish episodes to complete that six.

I hate you and everything you represent.

Then after that, my plan is to go through the sequel trilogy because I don't like the sequel trilogy and there's one thing I actually hate about it and it's been years since I've watched it. So maybe I will find some redeeming factors in the abomination of desolation and the reason why God turned his back on humanity. But you know what?

We shall see.

And then after that I do plan, if I get that far, to go and do the one more day storyline for the Amazing Spider man where I'll be starting off with a couple issues earlier and civil war to build up to why that happened. So that's for why I don't like.

That is an easy one to do too. Man, that's bad.

Oh gosh, yes. It's godforsaken. Some would say.

Yeah.

Then let's see other shows that I'm on. I am systematic ecology is what it is. I'll continue to show up, you know, as needed and then some because that's just how it goes. I am planning.

I have not finalized things, so I have not actually brought this up. So I guess I'm bringing it up right now live on the air, you know, when this actually releases.

Weeks from now, a week from tomorrow to actually one thing, one thing I used to do back in the day was I would. I did this thing called Spidey Swing buys for our YouTube page on systematic ecology. My idea is to just drop all premise of just one issue.

Just like do one or two at a time and just release it as is in podcast form While also doing the YouTube thing. So I have not finalized that idea, but, you know, just for the sake.

Of bringing it up, I like it. I like it. I. We don't have a ton of time here, so I will say whole church.

I don't know all of our plans, we've not planned as far in advance as usual, but I do know we plan on doing a series soon that's going to be behind, I don't know, behind the stage, behind the scenes, behind the pulpit something. And just kind of looking at like, what's it take to get a pastor hired? What goes into the music that plays at your church?

What goes into these church events and just kind of looking, you know, behind the scenes a little bit. So I think that'll be a fun one. Something a little bit more unique for Systematic ecology.

We are doing an annual theme this year that is the faces behind us looking at the inspirations behind our main characters. Instead of talking about Spider man, we'll talk about like Aunt May and like the first one up in that that I'm super excited for.

I'm recording like next week and I'm going to be talking about Uncle Iroh and that's gonna be great. He's just hero among heroes.

And sometimes you just got to remember those things that inspire our heroes to be who they are, the reason behind the season, you know. So I think that'll be a really fun series.

Seeing what we're gonna do with that, seeing some of the different stuff that's going on over there and that show's always growing and expanding and changing. That'll be really cool.

Some of the other shows we have in line with up, we have a few we're in talks with that are going to be more female led podcast. So you need some more women leadership representation. I'm excited for that on the network. Yeah.

I don't want to say too much until that's officially on board, but we do also have a couple of those female led ones will be more science specific if they join in. One of them is more theology leaning, so we'll see if those play out. And of course, we do have coming. I've already mentioned it.

Pastor Will Rose with Thomas Johnston are releasing your Matter Matters, which is a faith and science podcast in association with the ELCA being released on the Anazole Podcast Network. And we might have a few others.

Brandon mentioned somebody he knows might be interested in doing something and I know we've been in talks about some stuff. So I want to see more growth this Year we kind of been all doing our own thing.

And that's mostly because, like, we all have busy, crazy lives and we still love each other. It's not like we stopped being on each other's podcast and stopped wanting to do more.

It's just there's only so much you can do, you know, Josh can only.

Talk for so long in a 30 minute time stream.

Oh, actually I got something I am thinking of and probably going to be creating a website with our own merch for the network that will also link to everyone else's website. So it'll be more of like an actual hub. So it'll be kind of cool. So you'll get a little bit more stuff from the network and not just these shows.

All say this thing that says network. What is the network work? Yeah, and more shirts. Because who doesn't want more merch?

I will say real quickly, I. I did forget Friday Night Frights. Joe and I will get back to that at some point.

We've been on an hiatus because all my jokes to the side, I do actually have a life and he has a life of his own too.

So even though we only do monthly, sometimes that gets in the way because you kind of restrict yourself to a Friday and sometimes those Fridays don't work out. So we'll be back eventually. Pretty soon.

I thought I saw one like last month. Right? Or the month before.

Two months.

Okay. I was like. Because I knew it was gone for a while and then I thought it had come back and then I thought it was gone again and now I'm just confused.

Yeah, it's fine. It's nowhere near as bad as Living Water or Bible after Hours. So as long as you're beating that.

Bar, it turns out that when your own life is hard enough and you add another person into the equation, it complicates matters.

Yeah, I think what you should do is beat the other person up until they show up all the time.

Joe suffered enough this year.

Lock them in your closet and only release him for podcast.

No, I won't be the one that.

Does that to him.

Yeah, I mean, clearly I don't actually do such things either. That's why TJ is present right now. He's here.

So before we wrap up, we do always like to ask everybody for a single tangible action that would help better engender Christian in Unity today I actually want to ask, what do you think our listeners could do to help better support our network or, you know, your shows specifically, anything like that? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Brandon?

I think for supporting the network, my big thing, if you're looking for an easy late New Year's resolution, it would be just try something new. We have quite the variety of different things here and clearly we're gonna have. It sounds like some new shows. At least one.

The whole church content because you're a Bible nerd and the idea of listening to me talk about kung fu movies seems a bit of a stretch for you, then maybe just give it a try for a month. You don't have to stick around, but just give it a try.

Same with, like, you know, you know, Same with, you know, if you are the geeky content, you're listening to Systematic Ecology religiously and you just dropped in for this episode because it's. It's Christian, it's Josh, you thought T.J. was gonna be here too, then maybe you should stick around and listen to the.

The more churchy Bible content here on whole church or let nothing move you with Christians. So that would be my thing is, you know, just give something a try. We have. What do we have, 10 shows? We have like 10 shows or something. Like I'm.

If you're not listening to all of them, just pick one. Clearly the Bible after hours one of you needs to go listen to. So just give something a try.

Yeah, the Bible afterwards could use some list Christian. What about you, man?

Yeah, I'll go along with Brandon in a very similar fashion. It's like if. But I'll go in a slightly different direction. If one of these shows is one of you're afraid to get into them.

Because I'm afraid this goes against my theology. I argue to fight against that for a second. I'm not asking you to give up your theology.

What I'm asking is that you who's talking, what are they saying? Why did they think the way that they do? That is a reason why I am subscribed to the Bible after hours whenever it does release.

I probably disagree 90% of whatever he says, but what it helps me do is. Helps me. Here's how he came to this conclusion using the same scripture I read. So what am I going to do with that?

Am I going to say he's an idiot or am I going to say, okay, why do I disagree with him? If we were to have a conversation together, what would I say? How could we have a dialogue about this?

And that improves my understanding of what I already think about, but also forces me to confront why I think the way that I do. So I'd encourage you to do that.

Yeah. Which now we're 15 minutes in an hour, 10 minutes in something. That's the whole reason the network exists.

Well, the whole reason network exists is so that we can all be friends and bum off of each other and just have one network instead of all paying for separate, separate hosting platforms.

But if we're going to be less honest about why it exists and just tell you, like, what our shared kind of goal is for all the podcasts on our network and when we add new shows, this is actually what we keep in mind is like, are you honestly asking questions about whatever it is, whether it's the Bible, pop culture, whatever we want to be podcast that's genuinely asking the questions and not just acting like we think we have all the answers or trying to fit Jesus in to every little square. It's more of a.

Are we honestly engaging with whatever it is we're talking about because we want to be like Christians that aren't afraid of the big questions or something. I forget what the. The slogan is. It's not a good slogan, but I.

With that in mind, though, I. I think a good way to support us would be keep us honest. Listen to the other shows.

And even if you disagree with Christians reading the Bible like I often do, there's a place where you can email the podcast. There's. You could probably find Christian on some social media or something and be like, hey, you said this.

I think you weren't really engaging with this properly, or I think you're wrong about this, or something like, keep us honest. Honest. We want to hear from people. We want to engage. We don't want to just be acting like we have all the answers.

So I think that's probably the best way to support us. And it's not a good business answer. Like, I should be saying, money, give me the money, SpongeBob.

But instead, like, honestly, we don't do this for money. And I think the best way to support us is just engaging and keeping us honest with what we claim to be doing. Yeah. So if we do that.

Well, you know what? Let's not. Let's not do that. Christian, your turn.

Could you actually lead us in prayer for this next year and pray that we just kind of do stay on track with that, being honest, engaging with stuff genuinely and not just kind of putting our own agendas and act like we have all the answers and keeping ourselves humble stuff.

Well, before we start, does everyone remember that part where Brandon said he read the outline to make sure. Okay, he's going to call me out here to do this? This was not part of the outline.

It just says, let's pray it does.

I'm always ready.

Yeah.

So let's do this thing.

Lord, thank you for this opportunity for us all to be together to talk about the stuff that we love doing and the topics that we want to discuss, the questions we need to ask, you know, the answers that may come or may not come and how we wrestle with that, how we can all work together despite our many differences when it comes to theology, when it comes to interpretation, and how we can continue to love each other despite this and because ultimately we love you more than we love how we think and continue to remind us of who you are and what you're going to be doing with us and bring us closer to you in accordance to your will, not ours.

Amen. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Griffin with that, guys.

I hope you all prayed with us or at the very least when you're not driving and take time and close your eyes and just say a quick prayer with for our show and for yourself. If you're going to keep engaging with us, pray that you can pray for yourself and how you're engaging as well.

Because we don't want to do this and then not do anything for you. You know, we don't want to just be spinning the wheels with that though we do always like to end our show with a God moment.

Just I'm sharing a place where we've seen God recently in our lives. Challenge, blessing, etc, Christian does need to keep it to one because we have one minute left of this show. Mine's gonna be quick, easy, ish.

Christmas Day, my father in law came over and he was wearing a Systematic ecology shirt when he came to see us. And I was like, whoa, he is supporting us. And that meant just the world to me that he was just being supportive.

And then I went to my parents home for their Christmas and my uncle was also wearing a Systematic Ecology shirt that I got him. And I was like, I don't know, something about just seeing people supporting us genuinely. And I just, I don't know, did my heart good.

So that's my blessing. Christian, one moment. What is it?

For those who don't know, I've been in the job hunt ever since I graduated from seminary in May. And I'm not here to tell you that I've suddenly found a job and everything has turned around.

I was about to jump out of.

My I would love to have announced this year, but it's not true. And that has been very tiring and taxing and it's caused a lot of harm to me spiritually and emotionally.

And yet at the same time, what it has forced me to do is increase my reliance on God and I'm very grateful for that. Also, real quick, Mailyn's here and I love her and that's my niece so too.

Ha.

Take that.

I also love Malin Brandon and what's where's somewhere you've seen God in recently.

You know, I'll just be quick. Christmas morning with the three year old is awesome.

Just there's a whole Christmas season with 3 year old is is very magical and just very enjoyable.

Yeah, I like it. I like it short, sweet, to the point with that. Guys, thank you all so much for your time. Thank you Christian and Brandon for your time.

Please, if you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend, an enemy or a cousin. If you didn't enjoy it, consider sharing it with an enemy, friend or cousin. Either way, just share it, okay? Makes TJ happy and he's pot almighty.

You got to do what he wants. Again, remember those T shirts that I mentioned? Check them out. They're a good way to support our show.

Send a little money to the podcast and let other people know about our efforts to educate. You know, unite the church, do a fate, do us the favor. Check out that link in the show notes for the all of the Amazon Podcast Network.

See these other shows that we've been talking about for the last hour and 15, 20 minutes. I think you'll enjoy them.

Christian Ashley, let nothing move you Friday night Frights Systematic Ecology why I don't like Clyde Swing by Magic Bald Head.

Man to Christian Ashley, let nothing move you. I was like oh cool. Send them off with a nice little on the back.

Brandon Knights My Seminary Life Kung Fu Pizza Party TJ Blackwell the whole Church Podcast Systematic Ecology Joshua Null Be Living Water Bible after hours just stuff you know and then will Rose the Homo Emily, your manner matters. There's probably more than I'm missing. Just check it out. Check out that link. We hope you enjoyed this.

Coming soon will be Thomas J. Ord to discuss with me and TJ about what? How our views have changed over the years. Doing this podcast.

And finally, at the end of season one, Francis Chan will be on. But he doesn't know about it, so you got to tell him.

Join the network, Francis.

Yeah, Francis.

Francis, Francis.