Episodes

We tend to read Jesus' "triumphal entry" as a humble, gentle ride into town — but for the people watching, it was loaded with meaning. Pastor Chad walks us back into Passover week in Jerusalem, where a city remembering its liberation from Egypt was now living under Roman oppression. On the same week, two processions enter the city: Pilate riding in from the west on a war horse, surrounded by soldiers and the religious elite — a display of power, force, and fear. And Jesus riding in from the east...

We tend to think the world has gotten darker — but maybe our vision just needs recalibrating. Just like your eyes need light to reveal the color that was there all along, Jesus came as the light to show us what humanity looks like at its best: love in action. Walking through the healing of the bent-over woman in Luke 13, Chad reframes the old "What Would Jesus Do?" question by watching Jesus break a Sabbath rule to restore a daughter of Abraham — proving that people matter more than any rule, an...

We're wired to miss the gorilla in the room. Chad opens with the famous "invisible gorilla" experiment to show how attention works: when fear narrows our focus, we go into threat-detection mode and our world shrinks to enemies, categories, and the next disaster. But awe does the opposite — it widens the frame until people stop being symbols and start being human again. Walking through Mary and Martha, the Good Samaritan, and Matthew 25, this message reframes "the fear of the Lord" not as terror ...

In this message, Chad explores what happens when awe feels out of reach in the middle of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. Using the story of Peter walking on water and Jesus’ invitation to “look at the birds” and “consider the lilies,” this talk reframes faith not as trying harder, but as learning to widen our perspective. When fear narrows our world, awe expands it—and what shapes our attention ultimately shapes our lives. This is an invitation to notice where your focus has drifted, to gently r...

We were handed "the fear of the Lord" as a posture of dread — grit your teeth, suppress the anxiety, just trust Jesus harder. But the Hebrew word (yirah) was never really fear; it was reverent awe, a perspective shift. In Mark 4 the disciples and Jesus are in the same boat, the same storm, the same lack of control — the difference isn't their circumstances, it's their lens. Fear narrows the frame and screams "something bad is happening and I must control it." Awe widens it: "something bigger is ...

We're being formed by a world engineered to keep us reactive — every headline, every clip, every algorithm built to keep the herd running so it's easier to steer. Chad starts with a confession: a sharp response video he almost posted but didn't. From there he walks through Jonathan Haidt's "elephant and rider," Durkheim's collective effervescence, and Bonhoeffer's warning about stampedes, then lands on Jesus in the wilderness refusing power. The real question isn't how do we win — it's how do we...

We live in a moment where everything is reactive, urgent, and demands an instant take — and our knee-jerk reactions reveal what we actually believe about God. Drawing on psychology and the gospels, Chad argues that religious blindness isn't born from ignoring Scripture; it comes from obsessing over systems while missing the person standing right in front of you. The danger Jesus names isn't blindness — it's thinking you see clearly when you don't. Before reacting to the next thing the world thro...

When the world feels unsafe, the first thing we lose isn't our beliefs — it's our perception. We stop seeing faces and start seeing categories, threats, and labels: people who "look like trees walking around." In this raw, honest message, Chad names the fear, anger, and grief so many of us are carrying right now, then turns to the strange two-stage healing in Mark 8 — the one time Jesus has to touch a man's eyes twice — to make the case that seeing clearly is a process, not a failure. Drawing on...

On the Arsenal's ninth anniversary, Chad trades the usual vision-casting for something quieter: an invitation into a "year of awe." Drawing a line from Elijah — who looked for God in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, only to find him in a gentle whisper — to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts were burning long before they recognized who was walking beside them, Chad makes the case that meaning is usually present before we can name it. After nine years of his own deconstru...

We tend to think we have to go chasing awe — book the trip, stand at the Grand Canyon, wait for something big enough to move us. But awe rarely announces itself. More often it interrupts us: a toddler obsessed with helicopters, the impossible ordinary work of learning to hold a fork, the trillions of living things quietly keeping us alive. In a guest week framed as a conversation rather than a sermon, Daniel and Britney pick up last week's invitation to slow down and add one small shift — tuning...

What if the thing we're missing at the start of a new year isn't more discipline, more hustle, or a better version of ourselves — but more depth? Chad opens 2026 by gently dismantling the resolution machine and offering a different invitation: stop trying to fix yourself and start being present. Through family photos and a son's 21st birthday, Moses pausing at the burning bush, and Jesus refusing to rush past the children, he names the quiet ache so many of us carry — that life keeps moving fast...

On Christmas Eve, the God of the universe didn't arrive with power, certainty, or control — he chose to become small. Small enough to be held, small enough to cry, small enough to need warmth and care. Chad sits in the quiet of the candlelight to ask what that says about love: that it isn't about being right or standing over anyone, but about closeness, vulnerability, and a God unafraid of our humanity. This is the final candle of Advent — not an idea or a concept, but a name: Jesus. And the inv...

We grew up with a villain in the Christmas story — a hard-hearted innkeeper who turned the pregnant Mary away. But the word we translate "inn" actually means a family's guest room, and Bethlehem was too small to even have an inn. Chad reopens the Advent story to suggest there was never an innkeeper at all: Joseph and Mary were turned away by family, by a system that taught people it was normal to other, to shame, and to reject. We need a villain because, as Jonathan Haidt puts it, we default to ...

Most of us were handed a Christmas story whose whole point was what happens after we die — baby Jesus born so he could grow up, die, and get us a ticket to heaven someday. But that's not what the angels are actually saying over the shepherds. The announcement is "peace on earth" — now, here, to them. In week two of Advent, Chad reframes biblical peace as the Hebrew shalom: not the absence of conflict or stress, but wholeness, every scattered piece of you returning to center. And the doorway into...

We tend to treat the Bible like a magical book that fell from heaven in modern English. But it's an ancient, human collection of documents — written across thousands of years, in languages we don't speak, to people whose world looked nothing like ours. Daniel Gertson makes the case that context isn't an optional add-on to faithful reading; it's the whole game. When we rip a verse out of its time and place and read it through our present-day lens, we don't just misunderstand it — we can weaponize...

After four weeks tracing the lenses that harm us, we cross over into the lenses that heal — and the first one is Jesus himself. The "word of God" the Bible names isn't a leather-bound book; it's a person. So when Chad goes to Scripture, he goes through the character of Jesus, asking not just "what does this say?" but "would Jesus say that?" Watch how Jesus actually handles Scripture and a pattern emerges: he centers mercy over ritual, he prioritizes people over systems, and he interprets everyth...

Some of us learned to read the Bible through a "hierarchy lens" — Scripture as a tool to decide who's in charge, who's righteous, and who gets silenced. Robert Vargas names what that lens costs us and offers a different way in: not obey-or-be-condemned, but grace. God isn't Santa keeping a list; in Christ you are already loved, forgiven, and accepted — not because you earned it, but because grace levels the playing field. From there he reframes resilience as a faith muscle you strengthen one har...

"The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." It sounds confident and faithful, but Chad names what that posture actually does: it shuts down curiosity and conversation. Drawing on Zach Lambert's Better Ways to Read the Bible, this week looks at the literalism lens — the modern habit of flattening poetry, parable, and story into one-dimensional commands, and the way inerrancy got weaponized to gatekeep who belongs. From bald-mocking bears to snake-handling churches to a food pantry that as...

Most of us were handed a version of God we never thought to question — always watching, easily angered, quick to punish, impossible to please. Describe that "person" in any other relationship and you'd be warned you're dating a narcissist. In the opening week of Undoctrinated, Chad starts the work of unlearning the toxic God we inherited and reclaiming the one we actually meet in Jesus. Using the woman at the well in John 4 — long preached as a morality tale about a "sinful woman," but really th...

In this week’s message, Daniel Gertson invites us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the Bible—moving beyond rigid, inherited beliefs and into a more honest, human, and transformative way of engaging Scripture. Through personal stories, humor, and thoughtful insight, Daniel explores the tension many of us have felt when the Bible seems confusing, contradictory, or unclear, and reframes it not as a perfect rulebook or answer manual, but as a diverse, evolving story of how people have ...

For Father’s Day, we throw out the manly checklist and re-root ourselves in the way of Jesus. What makes a good dad? A good man? It’s not toughness or dominance—it’s presence, empathy, and love. Using the parable of the prodigal’s father and research from leading psychologists, this talk unpacks how Christlike fatherhood heals families and transforms culture—for sons, daughters, and all of us.

Jesus told us to love our enemies—but what if “enemy” is a label we created? In this message, we explore the psychology of division, tribalism, and how compassion disarms it. Chad reflects on his time at an interfaith summit, and we revisit Jesus’ teachings on enemy love, with insights from writings of Psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Kristin Kobes Du Mez. What if compassion is the way we unlearn separation? (Audio on this Podcast cutout early, but the point of the Message is still there)

What if awe is more than a feeling? What if it’s medicine? This week, we explore how awe expands empathy, creates connection, and rewires our brain. Drawing from recent research, scripture, and everyday wonder, we explore how living rooted in awe changes not just our worship—but our world.

Is it possible that awe—not fear—is the beginning of wisdom? In this message in the Rooted series, Chad dives into what it really means to be “God-fearing.” With scripture, psychology, and real-life application, this talk unpacks how our view of God shapes the way we treat others—and ourselves.