Pastor Burnout: Why Your Pastor May Be Struggling in Silence
FULL DESCRIPTION
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He's just a regular guy with a cool job that God loves for some reason. Welcome to The Steve Marston Show, a daily journey in learning how to live more like Jesus, conversations with those that God is working through, and dad jokes. It's the most unique show you'll hear today. Now, here's Steve. All right. It's great to be with you. The Steve Marston Show is underway. And a special thanks to those of you listening on radio.
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AM 630, the word in San Antonio. And those of you listening on 99.5, the word in Little Rock. Our radio audience is kind of the backbone of what we do. And we've been on for several years now. We really are thankful for every afternoon at three o'clock, you joining us on those two amazing radio stations. There's another part of you that are listening on your own schedule, on your own time online. And we're.
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Grateful and thrilled to be with you as well. And speaking of online, I want to tell you this. We have a free PDF that's available at our website, stevemarschdonshow.com. It's Five Tips for Bible Study. Our show is about growing and learning our faith and walking closer to Jesus every single day. mean, the little tagline of the show is, helping you live more like Jesus. And that's what we try to do. And to that end,
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this free PDF is going to help you open your Bible and get the most out of your time with God because it's strategies to help you understand and know what to do in order to study because I think a lot of times we fall into a trap of doing a lot of devotionals or doing workbooks. Nothing wrong with those, but we want to be able to learn and discern God's Word for ourselves.
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without the filter of someone else, right? So this will help you do that, just strategies of things to put into practice before you open God's Word and as you're reading the Scripture. So anyway, I really think it's helpful and I think it will be a benefit to you, and it's free. You can check it out, stevemarschadonshow.com. Just look for that free PDF, Five Tips for Bible Study. I wanted to start the show today with a conversation I had at lunch with a friend of mine.
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And I always know when I go to lunch with this guy that he's going to pepper me at some point with some Bible slash spiritual kind of topics because he's a guy who at one time in his life was on staff at a church. He even pastored a little small church and he's seen kind of the underbelly of some of the negative things that can go on in church life and it really left a bad taste in his mouth.
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and now he's not necessarily a big fan of quote-unquote organized religion as he calls it and he fills a connection still with Jesus but he just has some trouble going to church and finding a niche there because of all of his past experiences and I know the questions are going to come so I'm kind of already you know ready to go when he
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and I meet for lunch. And today's questions were pretty interesting and some things that I didn't necessarily know the answers to. And I think this was a teachable moment, not just for myself, but for you as well, because we're going to run into people that want to question and find out more about our faith. And that's something that we have to be ready for to be able to answer those who have these questions. And look,
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And answering, I'm not sure, I'm not totally positive, I don't know, all of those answers are legitimate as long as you say, look, let me do some research and I'll try to get back with you on it. And one of the things he brought up today was why do we have the Bible that we have? Meaning, why those 66 books versus some of these others that are quote unquote religious texts that didn't make it in?
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is somebody trying to keep us in the dark on some different things. the popular view is that back in the fourth century, I know this is going to get in the weeds a little bit, but just hang with me here, there was a council that was brought together at a little place called Nicaea. So it's famously known as the Council of Nicaea. And the popular theory is that
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All 66 books of the Bible were chosen there, and since that time, that's been what we have as Scripture. So it's almost like they sent out a ballot to everybody and they checked, oh yeah, this book, this book, not this book, not this book, this book, yes, no, yes, no. And then they counted up the votes and that's how we got our Bible. That's not how it worked, okay? Because again, that's the fourth century. There's a lot of time before that that there were people
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living and following Jesus, right? So the earliest manuscripts we have on all of this really go back to the time of Christ, and those manuscripts were kind of policed by those people who were eyewitnesses, meaning they could look at a writing and go, oh yeah, this really happened because I saw it. I was there. Or they could say, this isn't true.
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I was there. I know what happened. So they were able to put in what was truly Scripture and police what was not. And that's how the canon of Scripture came to be way back in the first century, not all the way later on in the fourth century. But one particular book that he asked about was the book of Enoch. Now, I've never...
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really heard of the book of Enoch, didn't know a lot about it, and I was really kind of surprised to find out that the book of Enoch is actually quoted in the Bible book in the New Testament of Jude. In Jude verses 14 and 15, it talks about a parallel of Enoch chapter 1 verse 9. So the question was, why is it the book of Enoch in the Bible? Is someone trying to pull a fast one on us?
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I said, well, let me go do some research, let me check, and here's what causes some of the confusion, not only about the book of Enoch, but there's also a book called the Gospel of Thomas, and there's even another one attributed to the Apostle Peter, and those didn't make it into the canon either. So why? Well, it gets confused because of the name. Like, Enoch was a real person according to Genesis, and he didn't taste death.
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He was one of the only two people in Scripture that lived and God just kind of snatched away and pulled them up into heaven without them actually dying. And then you read in Hebrews what's called the Hall of Fame of Faith, you know, that chapter 11. Enoch is mentioned there as a man of great faith, but the book of Enoch, just because it bears his name, was written long after the real person lived.
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and in the New Testament. So basically scholars have said that just because Jude contains a statement from the book of Enoch does not make it inspired. An important distinction is they say that the book was a collection of Jewish apocalyptic writings composed over a period of time and generally dated centuries immediately preceding and surrounding the time of Christ.
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It was not literally written by the book of Genesis, Enoch, but presented under his name. And why is it in the canon? Well, they say the early church largely inherited scriptures already recognized within Judaism, and Enoch 1 was clearly influenced among some of the Jewish communities, and apparently some Christians, and by some Christians, but it was not broadly received as part of the Jewish canon. Therefore,
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it didn't pass the test. When they put it up against the other gospel writings and the other inspired writings from like the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter and such and James, it just didn't pass the test. It didn't tell the same story that everything else did. So therefore, it was policed by the early believers. And here's my thing. I really feel like that God is a big enough God
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and loves us enough that he will make sure that we have what we need. You know, he promises that in the scriptures for our food and our housing and our clothing, but I really believe his word has been protected all of these years because of his hand being on it. And the reason why these books, why they may have some good teachings or whatever, don't meet the standard of what the early church said has to be
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as far as scripture goes. So it kind of comes down to just a matter of faith that God has given us exactly what we needed in scripture.
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The Steve Marston Show continues. Discipleship has never been more fun. Those of you listening on the podcast, thank you so much. For those of you may be listening on radio and would like to have this show to be available to you on your own schedule, on your own time, well, here's what you can do. Just go to your phone and open up your podcast app and look for the Steve Marston Show and subscribe to it. It would really help us out first and foremost.
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and it will automatically be sent to your podcast app on your phone whenever we update. So we're grateful for everyone listening. And again, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And every Tuesday we like to do a little segment called That's Not in the Bible. And it's just kind of blowing up some myths that people have. And it's not just outside believers, it's some Christians as well, of things that we...
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kind of automatically assume or maybe we have been taught that's in the scripture, but really not so much. So that's what we do on Tuesdays and I thought it would be fun to really tackle this one today. Following Jesus is all about following rules. Now when we start to think about that, we think in religious terms that yeah, you're giving up your life and you're all of a sudden
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going to live by this long list of rules and regulations so that you can be approved by God and that He will love you and accept you into His heaven. That's a lot of what the non-believers believe out there. In fact, you know what? For a little bit of my life, I kind of thought the same thing. I kind of kept Jesus at an arm's length because I thought that. As a kid, I remember being eight or nine years old thinking,
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I don't want to live like that. I don't want to live under a thumb of somebody. It just went against what I believed even as a small kid. And I think we're all wired like that to a certain extent. Where we think that, yeah, the human heart, the human condition, we want to be free. We want to do our own thing. And we get confused because we feel like religion, quote unquote, Christianity,
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wants to make sure we don't become sinful or sinners and to save our souls from hell we must perform and do these things. Well, it's just not true. In fact, if it were, I'd be running the furthest thing away from it. Because number one is I don't want to live like that. But number two, and more importantly, I don't know that I could do that. In fact, I'm sure I couldn't do that.
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If it was a list of rules and commandments that you've got to follow and you've got to make sure you dot every I across every T, man, I'm just going to fall short and it's not even going to be worth my time. So I can't do it anyway. So why even try? But see, that's the beauty of what Christianity is versus really every other quote unquote religion out there, because every religion has those kind of
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barriers and those kind of burdens is probably a better word that you have to perform a certain way and hope that the deity Whoever it is, whatever it is, whether it's an outside deity or located somewhere deep inside of you finds that you have performed adequately and that you have met the standard and you have at least one more good thing about you than you have bad things and there you go your
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automatically in. Christianity is so the opposite of that. It's not about rules. In fact, Jesus talked about these Pharisees, this group of religious people who were doing just that. They were putting on the people that they were in charge of so many burdens about following rules and doing this and not doing that. And Jesus even condemned them for not even helping them
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out in these rules. But see, what Christ came to say is, come to me all of those of you who are under these rules and under these burdens of life, of rules of trying to make it on your own, and I will give you rest, is what he said. And there's freedom in that rest. There's freedom in knowing Christ that comes when we
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repent of our sins and we say, God, I can't do this life without you. I accept what you did for me on the cross as forgiveness of my sins and the rebellion that I have in my heart towards you and towards your word. So I ask for forgiveness. He comes in, the Holy Spirit comes in and lives inside of us. And then all of a sudden what happens is, yes,
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Christians start doing things and start living a quote unquote a certain way, but it's not in a way of trying to be a good person. It's in a way of allowing God living through us. Do you see the difference there? It's not our own strength. It's not our own ability to get it all right. No, it's allowing the Holy Spirit of God to manifest through us.
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Because as a person that can't keep rules like myself, I'm not going to be able to be joyful. I'm not going to be able to love my neighbor. I'm not going to be able to think of others before I think of myself. That's not the way I'm wired. It's not the way you're wired either. However, when we yield to the Spirit that's living inside of us as a born-again believer, all of a sudden now, these things that Jesus commanded
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They're not hard for us to do because we're allowing Him to do it through us and in us, not because of us. Does that make sense? It's not anything that we can say, oh, look at me, look how great a Christian I am. No. Paul said the exact same thing in a verse of Scripture in the New Testament, that it's not a gift of works so that people should boast.
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about how good they can be, but it is a gift of grace. It's God reaching down and saying, not only am I going to save you, but I'm going to come and live inside of you and help you live this victorious, amazing, abundant life that I have promised and to be able to make a difference in the lives of other people because you are allowing me to shine through you. That's what Christianity is all about. It's the furthest thing
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from following a bunch of rules and having a bunch of regulations. It's total freedom from all of that.
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Steve Marston Show continues. It's where faith and fun are both taken seriously. Happy to have you here and want to let you know that our website is all new. We'd love for you to check it out, stevemarstonshow.com. We've got a free PDF there for you, five tips of how to study the Bible. They're just real strategies of how you can open your Bible and get the most out of your time in God's Word. So you can check it out again for free digital download.
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SteveMarsdenShow.com. Just look for the free PDF. Okay, it's my pleasure to welcome in this next guy. This has been a guy that I have thought a lot of. It's been a long time since I've had him on the program. Probably too long. I to welcome back pastor and podcaster and author. It's Philip Miller. How you doing, buddy? Hey, Steve. It's good to be on the show again. I missed you and it's just good to be back. It is. It's good to talk to you.
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One of the main reasons I wanted to bring you on is because one of the things that's on your heart is about pastor burnout, because that's a real thing. And there's people that I read a statistic or a study that came out not too long ago that showed, I think over two thirds of pastors felt like they were ill-equipped for the job. Therefore, they felt all of this anxiety about being
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what they needed to be for their congregation, but yet were keeping it to themselves because they thought, hey, I'm hired for this job, this is what the job is, but yet I just don't feel like I'm measuring up, and therefore they're feeling all the stress and all the weight of it. I know you felt that from personal experience. Absolutely went through it myself. And you know, I would add to your list probably more on the hearts of a pastor is not that...
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You know, we've been hired by church and all that kind of good stuff. We've been called by God. And we all, I think, deal with the feelings of inferiority of we're just not measuring up to God's standards. And, you know, I felt that. And there's a hundred different reasons that pastors go through the problem of burnout. A lot of it is...
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They are overworked. Some of it is self-induced. think that was me that I put way too much on me than was necessary. I put more on myself than God did. just trying to compensate, trying to live up to the high standards of a pastor, and they can really kind of get in your head a little bit and cause you some real problems.
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It really can, and I would imagine too, again, not being a pastor myself, but knowing a lot of you guys and the workload that you do carry. You feel that, but you don't want to complain about it because like you say, first and foremost, you are God called to do this. But secondarily, you feel almost like there's people in the congregation that are working 70, 80 hours a week just like I am. It's a different kind of work, different kind of ministry, therefore.
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You feel almost guilty, I guess, in looking for help. You know, I would agree with that, that I've done a lot of different kinds of things in my life to make a living for my family. I've been a school teacher. My dad was a bricklayer, so I learned to be a bricklayer and even did that for a living for a while. And you are exactly right. There is, we have physical limitations with, you know, if you're working out in the heat and
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there's a point at which your body just says, gotta quit. Right. You know, you're make yourself sick. When it comes to mental, emotional issues like that, I don't know if the switches don't work as well, but sometimes we don't pick up on the signs that we are, this is my story, maybe I shouldn't include everybody in that, but I didn't pick up on the signs until it was almost too late of just, was,
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I was ministry fatigued. was emotionally fatigued. There was just a lot of things going on. know, Steve, I would say that probably the thing that helped me to kind of come back from Pastor Burnout was getting a real sense and understanding of what God says is my job.
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Now, if you're working for, in this sense, you're pastoring a church of even 100 people, 200 people, 500 people, and you almost feel like you're working for 500 different individuals. And that's just almost an impossibility. What we have to do as pastors is we have to get a real confident understanding of what our job is, according to the Bible. And in one place, over in Acts chapter six,
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The apostles said, it's our responsibility to pray and to minister the word. And if we as pastors would kind of stay in our lane, if that's the right way to say it, we would probably avoid a lot of undue pressure. There's another place over in Ephesians chapter four that I think about that is talking about the pastor at the end of that long list of apostles and prophets and teachers. And he says, pastors,
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teachers, pastors really who are teachers. And he says that the reason that God gave them was for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. That a big part of our responsibility is not to do everything, but to teach others how to do the work of the church. Philip Miller is that guest. He is a pastor. He is an author, podcast host, and he joins us here.
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on the Steve Marston show, and we're talking primarily about Pastor Burnout because it is a real thing. And you're so right about that, equipping others, but don't, and maybe this goes back to your story too, but don't you think because, okay, I'm being paid by the church, I've got the time on my hands to be able to make all the hospital visits, to be able to be involved in every committee that the church sets up, and on and on and on, whereas the...
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you look at it maybe from a point that the lay person just doesn't have that much time. They're working and then we're expecting them to serve more. It's all on my shoulders. Do you feel it that way? Was that your story? Yes, I am one of those people that, and this is arrogance and pride. Let me label it what it is. Arrogance and pride says, if I want the job done right, I have to do it myself. Yeah, I know that for sure. Yeah.
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And that is, Steve, that's nothing more than thinking that only we can do the job. And that's really not our job. It goes back to what did God give us to the church for? And yes, I am to witness, I am to visit those who are struggling with health issues and all those kinds of things, but I'm not to be the only one.
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And if I could just reach out for a moment to the church family, check up on your pastor. I've been the pastor of First Baptist Church in Bryant, Arkansas for 20, actually over 20 You just celebrated your 20th year, didn't you? In June, in June of this year. I had been there for 20 years, have been there and continue to be there if they'll let me. But what I have learned...
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And really, when we went through this as a church family and they went through it with me, the one thing on the backside of it coming back is there's about five guys in our church right now that kind of have direct access to my life and can ask me any questions. And this is, I would say this to the pastor, but I also say to the church family, check up on your pastor.
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do suffer in silence. And we feel like that if we let the church know that we are hurting and we are suffering, that we are now exposing our weakness and we're afraid that they'll say, well, you know, he is no longer qualified to be your pastor. He can't be your pastor. He can't do the job. All these kinds of things go through our head, but there's really a lot of good people out there. And I've been the benefactor of a lot of good people in the church I pastor.
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who love their pastor and they want to help him. And we just have to be open to the help and to just really allow people to get in our lives. Just, you know, as we say, a pastor's just a man. He's not a Superman. And we need to allow people to minister to us as well. And I've been the great, I've had a great amount of blessings in that area.
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Pastor Philip Miller is our guest here on the Steve Marston show. So we talked about reaching out and checking up on your pastor, making sure he's okay and what kind of things we can take off of his plate. But you also mentioned about equipping the believers and the congregants to be able to do some of the other ministerial work. Let's drill down on that a little bit. As a pastor, talk to other pastors about what that looks like. Okay, well, I can just give you my example.
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We've just recently started something at our church and about a couple of times a year we set up kind of a quote ministry fair right in the middle of our foyer as we walk into the church and we set up everything that we do everything from the building and grounds committee to the Ministry that we have a meal team meal train top ministry and we just lay it all out there
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for people to sign up and we call it Find Your Place. you know, we just all the time, I guess, we just keep the narrative going that it's the church's responsibility to minister and to serve. It is my responsibility to minister and to serve, but I need to stay within my abilities.
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And we need to constantly, yes, we can have just really specific training courses, maybe a six week course on sharing your faith. We have not me, but other people who will have a group meeting of, we're gonna reach out and serve maybe our shut-ins, maybe those who are.
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ill, maybe the homeless, and they just have a meeting and they just kind of organize and say, this is how we're going to do that. And I may, I may know very little about it because, you know, I can't do everything. Right. And so, uh, I know that they're doing it and I'm, I'm all about a person.
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God puts something on their heart. They come to me and they say, you know, I think we ought to have this ministry. And the first question I ask them is, are you going to lead it? And when they say yes, and I said, well, let's go, let's do that. I will be a supporter. I will be a prayer supporter. I will be, you know, somebody who can offer some advice. But ultimately, it's God's ministry through them, God's ministry through me through them.
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And so I just really don't have to have that on my plate. Absolutely. And I think another area that's so easy and so basic is Sunday school, or the cool hip term is small groups. Yeah, absolutely. But to have those leaders be sure and reach out and minister and invite and take care of their little group that they have, that's equipping the saints, and that's really growing the church in little small segments.
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You know, we do twice a year. We have a quote Sunday school, all teachers are meeting and we gather them all together. And it's really a, um, an afternoon of reminders. It's not, we're telling them new stuff and you know, this is the new way to, uh, do small groups. It's, it's really, Hey, here's some reminders. Uh, if you've got absentees reach out to your absentees.
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If you got folks who are sick, folks in the hospital, see to their needs. Do they need, you know, they need our meal team to step in and provide some meals for a while. If they've had a baby, how can we step in and help them lift some burdens? And, you know, and I also tell my teachers, because, I mean, think about the teacher, they're almost in a smaller role as I am, but.
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They're preparing a lesson every week. They've got responsibilities. So what I do is I encourage my Sunday school classes to set up little groups within the group of, this is the group that's gonna check on our sick folks. This is the group that's gonna check on our absentees. I'm not gonna say it works 100%, but if the teachers will just...
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open up the class and say, you know, instead of having our Sunday School class this week, what we're going to do is we're going to organize. Maybe one time every year we're going to organize, and we need people who will commit to checking up on our absentees. We need people who will commit to check up on our sick folks. And we have some classes that do really good job with that. That's awesome, and I love that's the way you're supposed to do it, I think. Pastor Miller is our guest here on the Steve Marston Show.
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We've got just about a minute and a half or so left. Let's talk about Bogart Press. I know that was something that is dear to your heart because you do a lot of work with them. Yeah, it's a blessing to me. fact, Mondays are my writing day. I sit down and right now I am writing what we call the Adult Study Guide. It is nothing more or less than Sunday School literature. And you can simply go to Bogart Press.
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and check that out and see what we offer. offer literature all the way from the little bitties all the way up to the senior adults. And I'm the writer for the adult study guide and we are a through the Bible curriculum and we have a 10-year plan. Now, I know that's fast, but we try to go through the Bible. What we do, we go through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in a 10-year plan.
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And obviously you can't do reverse, but we cover the books as best we can in that 10 years. then we also, think a good way for people to check us out and see what we're about is at least for the adult study guide is just go to wherever you listen to podcasts and just simply search.
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B-O-G-A-R-D, Bogard Press, and it should pop up the Adult Study Guide. And they are dated material, so we have the old ones, and you should be able to scroll through there and find our most recent. And you can just listen to me read. I'm not the greatest reader in the world, but you can listen to me read the Adult Study Guide. We do that for a couple of reasons. People are busy.
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some people just simply don't like to read. And as you're driving to work or wherever, I have a lot of people feedback and say, thank you for doing the podcast. And then some people say, well, I'm driving to church on Sunday. I'm listening to my Sunday school lesson. So, you know, that's better than nothing. I'm not going to say that's ideal, but that's better than nothing. But you can check that out and see what we're about. And you're going to be an author of a book yourself that's coming out next year.
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that will bring you on closer to time and we'll dive in at a little cliffhanger there. Thanks so much, buddy. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and we'll have you on again real soon. Thanks, Steve. Appreciate what you do. The Steve Marston Show continues. It's where faith and fun are both taken seriously. Happy to be with you again today. And don't forget that we can help you out if you're a business owner, maybe
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ministry leader and you want to get your message out to our radio audience, which is growing. The podcast audience is growing. The website audience is growing. If you want to be a part of it, you can do so. Just shoot me an email, steve at Salem media.com. can partner together. Whether you're listening in Houston or San Antonio or Little Rock or any point in between, I will get you in contact with the people that you need to get in contact with. We've got
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digital marketing solutions for you as well as radio. And you know what? It's all really affordable. It's better prices than you'll find probably anywhere else. So I'm just throwing that out there. If you want to be a part of the Steve Marston Show and our growing audience of faith-filled people who want to live more like Jesus every day, you can get in contact with them and we can introduce you guys to our audience.
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again steve at Salem media dot com is the email address. Alright, let's get to some stories that you may have missed. The Chosen, we've been talking a lot about that. Well, it's back in the news again. You know, season six is coming out I think in November, which is going to cover the Passion Week and Jesus's crucifixion. Well, there's been a sneak peek of season seven, which will be the finale.
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And it's called, He's Alive. In fact, Dallas Jenkins has given a close up look at the production of the seventh and final season with a little video dialogue. He talked about how it's been very bittersweet and what they've been doing. in the new footage, shows actors playing Peter and John running to the empty tomb. And another scene shows Mary Magdalene amazed and eager to share the good news that he's alive.
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And the video also shows crowds as well as single character groups. says, Jenkins, that it's going to be a long season while he's hugging a cast member there. It's really a pretty neat deal. It's been a wild journey and one that has been amazingly successful by any metric that you can measure. And someone says here that it's the most important message that Jesus is alive. can
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hold on to this truth and carry it out into the world even though the chosen has come to an end. A fan wrote, the filming will come to an end but the chosen will live on and the story will be a witness for Jesus. Again, season six comes out in November on Prime and then season seven will be out after that. Another story you may have missed, this was pretty interesting to me. Kelly Williams wrote this piece,
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for churchleaders.com and it's called, The Response Too Many Pastors Skip That King David Didn't. She said, you you go to any Christian news site and there's a good chance you'll find another story about a pastor or ministry leader who has fallen morally. Some of these scandals are recent and others happened decades ago. But either way, the headlines keep coming, she writes. And she says, when those stories break, they tend to have the same...
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collision of grief, confusion, anger, and a quiet question that most people are afraid to say out loud. If God holds his leaders to a high standard, how could he use a man like King David? And she goes on to list King David's sins, and they were big. Adultery with Bathsheba, he engineered the murder of her husband Uriah, then took her as his wife. And the Bible says that God was displeased.
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yet David never stepped out of the title that he's most famous for, a man after God's own heart. Yeah, you ever thought about that? Well, she goes on to talk about David's infidelities as well as his polygamy of sin, marrying up to, I think, eight wives. Well, why is he still called a man after God's own heart? She said it's easy to read that as a moral combination.
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Commendation, can I buy a vowel please? It's easy to read that as a moral commendation, a statement that David was a great person, but that reading creates a lot of problems. She says a better way to read it is that David was a man who pursued God, not always one who succeeded, but what made David exceptional was not his record, but his response. She said three things stood out. He knew when he was wrong and he said so.
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He did not go back to the sin after committing it, and he kept serving even though he was under the consequences of his sin. She says that's just not apparent in a lot of these pastors that have fallen in the recent days, weeks, months, years, and even decades. And I think she has a wonderful point. This is a great piece. Again, it's at churchleaders.com, and it's written by a lady by the name of Kelly Williams.
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Look, I assume it's a lady, I'm not sure about that, but Kelly Williams is the author. So check that out, really a powerful thing. And then this story you may have missed, know, American Idol has been the talent show of record for our generation. And there are several famous Christian singers that went on to win American Idol. So churchleaders.com did a little deep dive and to find out exactly where these past winners
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American Idol that claim Christ are now. And she said the season two renter Ruben Stuttered won in one of the closest finishes with Clay Aiken back in season two. He has a gospel foundation that he's in his post Idol catalog. He's got a 2004 album called I Need an Angel and more than two decades after his win
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Stoddard remains active as a soul and R &B performer, regularly returning to his church for holiday and gospel programming. How about this one, Carrie Underwood? Well, we all know about her. She lives her life saying that she is a Christian. In fact, she released an album a couple of years ago that was an all Christian album called My Savior. And she incorporates her faith into performances that have openly spoke about
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her experiencing postpartum depression and leaning on her beliefs during that time. Jordan Sparks was season six winner. Jordan is working as a Broadway actress and has lent her voice to The Chosen Adventure, which is the spinoff that The Chosen series had as an animated film. Scottie McCreary also has continued in his faith, direct a song called Red Letter Blueprint.
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that he performed on the Grand Ole Opry in a hope that listeners would hear it and find hope in this crazy world. And Chris Allen, who's from Conway, Arkansas, which is right there in the listenership of 99.5 The Word, he continues to make music and gives back to his Arkansas church and participates in global mission work. So pretty neat. A lot of people that have one American idol
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still claiming Christ and still working good stuff for the kingdom. Love it.
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Here at the Steve Marston Show, we're serious about faith, but we love a good dad joke too. The dad joke of the day comes to us from the home office in Greenbrier, Arkansas. Said, told my doctor I broke my arm in two places. Doctor said, well, you need to stop going to those places.
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Boy, it takes someone with the backing of an MD degree to know that's for sure, right? Welcome back to Steve Marsden's show continues.
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Discipleship has never been more fun. And I want to tell you about our website, SteveMarsdenShow.com. If you haven't been there, we encourage you to check it out because it really is becoming more than just a place for a radio show or podcast to live on the internet. I mean, it's more than just back episodes. This is becoming a resource for everybody, whether you're a believer or non-believer. We have got this
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designed with all the internal links and tags and all of the stuff the computer nerds are putting together for us. We're reaching people through Google whenever they type in a Christian kind of phrase or a topic that maybe we've talked about or had a guest on about is bringing it up. And it's going to be an encouragement for countless people at least has the opportunity to do that and become so much more than this.
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one little radio show or podcast, it's going to really have the opportunity of helping people. So we're thankful for that. That's kind of been the prayer. And we would love for you to check it out. SteveMarsdenShow.com is our official online home. And we're, again, grateful that God has opened the doors that he has for this little venture. It's time for our Faith Between Your Ears segment. This is where we learn a Bible verse at the beginning of the week and we memorize it.
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and work to memorize it all throughout the rest of the week. And this week's comes from Micah, the Old Testament prophet. Micah chapter 6 verse 8. And it's kind of a condensing down, you might say, of the Ten Commandments, just kind of giving you the Ten Commandments in a more pithy way, you might say. Here's what the verse says. He has told you, talking about God,
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Oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of you? Well, there's three things. To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. That is our verse to memorize this week. And again, I know the first objection is, oh, well, I'm too old to memorize. You're not. Just get that thought out of your head. You can memorize these scriptures. In fact, I think it's imperative
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that you and I do so because knowing God and knowing His Word are cause and effect. If we don't know His Word, we're not going to know Him near as deeply. And the more we know His Word, the better and deeper we'll know Him, the closer we'll be. It's just the way He has set things up. So let's learn it. Micah chapter 6 verse 8, it's faith between your ears.
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for this week. Okay, we leave you every day with a call to action. It's your next step. And I think your next step is really pretty simple. Check on your pastor. Make sure your pastor is not feeling overwhelmed. And if he is, help out. Take something off his plate. All right, we're done for the day. Back on the radio tomorrow at three, everywhere else online at SteveMarsdenShow.com. Adios.
