In this episode, Nate provides an update about the state of the podcast going into March. While there was much energy toward episodes each week on the M'Cheyne Reading Plan and New City Catechism, reality set in going into February, and the former will only be monthly, while the latter will not be at all.
Instead, there will be upcoming episodes highlighting what a Circle is like from the inside, as well as the broader vision for NewCity in this next season.
For the episodes related to the M'Cheyne Bible Reading Plan, you can find them here.
In this episode, Nate provides an update about the state of the podcast going into March. While there was much energy toward episodes each week on the M'Cheyne Reading Plan and New City Catechism, reality set in going into February, and the former will only be monthly, while the latter will not be at all.
Instead, there will be upcoming episodes highlighting what a Circle is like from the inside, as well as the broader vision for NewCity in this next season.
For the episodes related to the M'Cheyne Bible Reading Plan, you can find them here.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, nate Claiborne, and we have several things to talk about today. This may or may not be the most interesting episode that you've ever listened to on this podcast I actually don't think it's probably going to even crack your top 10, but there's some important things I wanted to pass along, both looking backwards and looking forward, and so some of that relates to our Bible reading plan and then just our podcast schedule in general, but I'm going to do all of it. Under the heading of this is the March update for the McShane Bible reading plan, and so one thing to note there is that I'm only going to do these updates on a monthly basis. Now, it was very aspirational on my part, but then the other part of it was I'm in some sense trying out this monologue where I don't actually have a guest that I'm talking to. It's just me talking to you, the listener, and I don't know that it's actually all that interesting to hear me just kind of monologue about the Bible. I feel like I've got a lot of interesting things to say, but I also realized when I listen to podcasts I enjoy listening to conversations, and if it's just me talking about Bible reading things. However interesting they might be, it's not as invitational, it's not as engaging, and so I don't want to subject you, the listener, to things like that more than necessary. So in this segment right here, all I really want to do is just point to. We have a lot of other podcasts that involve me talking with other people, other people talking about books of the Bible that are relevant to our Bible reading plan. A lot of them relate to Exodus, and that's primarily because we preached through Exodus last fall and the fall before that. So if you go to our Bible reading section in our church center app, I've got links to all sorts of episodes, some of them about stuff that we've already read in Exodus. So we've got a preview of Exodus. That I did with Dr Nicholas Reed from RTS.
Speaker 1:I did a bunch of episodes with Mike Allen. We did one on Exodus three, which we read a little more than a week ago at this point, but we also did one on the plagues and how they are a polemic against the gods of Egypt. We did a sort of summary of the first half of Exodus, which is basically where we are as of today. It's probably, you know it's looking back over the first 15 chapters or so of Exodus. Mike and I also did a deep dive on the 10 Commandments and then a former professor of mine is a Hebrew professor. I was able to record with him to talk about the case laws, which is those chapters coming up after the 10 commandments that you're gonna be getting into next week, and we didn't spend a lot of time talking about it in the sermon series. But as you run into questions about how to make sense of those chapters next week, I would really encourage you to listen to the case laws with Gordon Johnston. That we recorded and there's a link to it in the show notes. There's a link to it in the Church Center app.
Speaker 1:A little bit later on in Exodus I recorded a podcast with my current PhD advisor His name's Glenn Kreider and we talked about how God reveals his name in Exodus towards the end and that was kind of a theme for our Advent series. So I encourage you to go check that out if you missed it. And then I also was able to record a podcast about the sacraments in Exodus, both in not just. I think it was with well, I know it was with Ben and it was around the time that we finished the first half, so it's kind of related to the Passover, but I'm pretty sure we extended that conversation to talk about later parts of Exodus as well.
Speaker 1:Beyond Exodus, though, we are almost through Luke, and I think I failed to share the introduction to Luke earlier. That's kind of what. If we had been doing it weekly we would have talked about it. But if you wanna go back and listen to a conversation where we introduced the book of Luke, give some overarching themes and ideas. That will kind of help you make sense of how the book is pieced together, you can go listen to that. We also have that for first and second Corinthians. We're right in the middle of second Corinthians right now. We finished first Corinthians last week, so there's a couple episodes there. Those are some older episodes, which you'll notice if you listen to them. I think the theme music is different, just the way we went about recording those. Those were from back in the early stages of this podcast, when we were really all we were doing was Bible introductions for the most part as far as books that we have coming up. So right now we're in.
Speaker 1:If you're doing all the tracks. We're in Exodus, we're in Luke, we're in Job and we're in second Corinthians. So the way the Luke track is gonna go, I think when it finishes Luke it's gonna jump to John, and so we've got an introduction for the book of John and then the Job track is gonna move on to Proverbs and we've got an introduction to that, and then for the Corinthians track it is, I believe it's just gonna keep on through Paul's epistles. So after we finish second Corinthians it's gonna go right into Galatians, ephesians, philippians, colossians, and then just I think it keeps going all the way through. It may even go all the way through Revelation. We'll talk about that, obviously, when it comes there.
Speaker 1:So this, if you're reading that track, second Corinthians is probably not as familiar to most of us as first Corinthians is. But I know, as we get into Galatians, ephesians, philippians, colossians, there's a lot of familiar territory in those books. But if you did want to go back and listen to some introductory material, some conversations about how to read those books, well, we will have those links in the show notes and in the app as well. But looking ahead, like I said, I'm only gonna kind of record these episodes at the beginning of the month to sort of provide any resources we already have for the Bible reading tracks that we're doing in the McShane Bible reading plan. But in a general sense, I would be interested in having conversations and I will do this, I think, with staff as well of actually talking to people how they're engaging their Bible reading, rather than me just sort of talking about what we've read and reflecting on it. I would be interested if you would like to talk about how you have benefited from this plan. Shoot us an email. We've talked about that as well. The podcast at newcityorlandocom gives you an opportunity to give us feedback, to engage and to even make requests even. But, moving forward, I would rather talk with other people about how they are engaging the Bible reading plan rather than just tell you about the Bible reading plan, and so, like I said, this will be the one update for the month. We'll pick back up in April. Talk about the books coming up in April. Give you the resources for that as well.
Speaker 1:The other thing you might have noticed is we did start off trying to do a podcast episode on the upcoming New City Catechism question for each Sunday, and I think Ben lays out really well in one of those early episodes, the significance of Catechesis and kind of why we were doing that. And what we've just found is our aspirations in December, when we were planning, things outpaced our availability and our scheduling potential, and so we just found it was really difficult for us to schedule those on a regular basis, as much as we aspired to record them, as much as we aspired to resource people as it relates to these Catechism questions. But the other thing that we kind of ran into was there's actually really good other resources out there for Catechesis, especially conversations that are children friendly, which I think some of what we realized and you can listen for yourself is in those podcasts that we did record. We're still kind of talking to adults. We're maybe talking to adults that are going to talk to their kids, but we're still very adult-centric Even me saying a phrase like that adult-centric that's not actually helpful if you're trying to talk to your kids about theology, and so there are some other resources out there that you could find that are more geared towards.
Speaker 1:I think, what we thought we were gonna be able to do and just didn't have the bandwidth and the resourcing capability. We're still obviously committed to using the new city catechism in corporate worship and we still will continue to do that through the rest of the year. But we also had not really been in a habit of always having multiple episodes every week, and so you might know how this goes. There's a lot of energy that you get when you're doing your reflection at the end of the year and you're planning for the new year and you kind of have all these ideas and a lot of them are really good ideas that you would like to execute on and then, as the year starts going, you find that it just is not possible to keep up a pace that sounded great on paper but was not really designed for reality. And that's kind of what we realized with these catechism podcasts is that we just we're not gonna be able to maintain the weekly pace for them, with really stuff going on in the life of the church, stuff going on in our personal lives and then just stuff going on with schedules having to come together in a certain way so that these conversations could happen. So, moving forward and looking ahead, I didn't want you to keep wondering where those were or expect them to come back, because they're not coming back at this point.
Speaker 1:We will continue to hopefully have good and I say hopefully. I think it's more than a hope that we would have conversations that we're gonna be publishing on the podcast feed coming up. I really hope you listened to the last episode that Ben was able to record with David Goodman. That was really capturing some of the essence of the slowdown spirituality learning event that just happened, and so, if you missed that, this podcast that he been recorded with David is a good entry point into that and has some resources attached to it. We also coming up later this week we have the service for Jason that we're gonna install him as Associate Assistant Pastor. Associate Pastor I think it's Associate Pastor first, then Assistant Pastor. There's a whole pathway there, but we are going to officially ordain and install Jason Dunn as Pastor and if you go back a couple episodes, you have the opportunity to listen to me talk with him about his road to ordination, just how he ended up coming to that position and how he studied for it and the training that he received and just the heart that God's given him for missions and for caring for people. So I'd really encourage you to go listen to that and really celebrate this time with us this coming Sunday.
Speaker 1:Later on this month we're gonna shift gears a little bit and one of the ideas we had back in the fall and again, scheduling is just one of those things. Just haven't been able to get together but we really would like to give you a sense of what a circle is like, what kinds of conversations happen there If you're not in one. I think, demographically, there's people at New City that are not in circles that would like to be in circles. I think there's people that are probably skeptical of the value of a circle, whether it would be a good use of time, whether it's something they can fit into their schedule, and so we're gonna have a couple podcasts coming out later this month that are just giving you a sense of these are the kind of conversations that happen in circles. We're gonna feature some all of life spotlights on Sunday morning that interview people who are currently in a circle and have been in a circle for a while, so they can speak to that experience, and wanna just let you be able to see and hear a little more detail, not from, necessarily, the pastors who are casting vision for it, but from people who have been experiencing it. The same thing, you know, it's the same thing. We're hoping for this Bible reading plan is it's less us trying to promote something and more something that you can hear from other people how they're experiencing it and benefiting from it.
Speaker 1:A little bit later on, towards the end of this month, around Easter, we will hopefully be able to post the content of the a new city next update. Just, some of you may remember, we did a big new city next update in towards the end of March 2022. So that's been by the time you'll hear it on the podcast, it'll be over two years since the previous new city next, which was really a big vision casting service that we did, that recapped sort of the history of new city up to that point, kind of looked at the current state as a pivot that was shifting towards a new season at new city. So new city next and some initiatives that we were going to have to pursue. One of them was a staffing initiative, and so there's a podcast that you can go back to from November of November of 2022, I believe that introduces several of us me included as new full-time staff and the roles that we were able to take on, and we did a short update sometime last year.
Speaker 1:It was not a separate service, I think it was just part of the Sunday morning service. That was kind of a recap of how we had accomplished the things that we had set out in new city next, but it was less of a here's what's next after next. I don't know how that exactly works. That's like makes me think of postmodernism, as what comes after modernism but then what comes after postmodernism, is it post-postmodernism? So I don't know that you would call what's coming up here a next, new city next or a new city next next or anything like that. We should probably come up with a better branding for it. But it is going to be a overview of where we are, since new city next and then some vision casting for what is on the horizon in the months and years to come, and that it'll be part of the service with Jason this coming Sunday.
Speaker 1:But if you miss it, we are also hoping to publish it here on the podcast so you can hear that as well. So we've got circles updates. We've got new city next update coming for you later this month. We are hopefully not gonna have too many episodes that are like this, which is just me telling you about other podcast episodes you can listen to because they're already published or other podcast episodes you could listen to because they're going to be published. But when we made a big change, like we did, and started down one track and then decided to take a different track, I felt it was worth an explanation in podcast form just to let you know what's happening. So that's what you can look forward to for the rest of the month of March, and I will be back on here in a few more weeks to talk about the battery.