I got this newsletter update out a bit later than usual today. My weekend project was ripping everything out of a garden bed at the corner of the house, tilling the ground, adding new soil, covering it in landscape fabric and mulching it. Oh, and planting this tree.

So that pushed back my schedule a little. Today has been a big day! At the church where I’m serving as the Interim Pastor, a new official pastor was just voted in. He will officially take over in early June, which means I will spend one more month serving this church body while he makes the move to Northwest Arkansas.

However, I can’t put the rest of my life on pause until then, so the website will go ahead and launch next weekend!

And you can be a part of it

Right now, the website will launch pretty simply. It will have a home page, a podcast page, a contact page, an about page, and 5 articles.

The podcast page will include the latest episode at the top, some suggested places where new listeners can begin, links to the various podcast platforms, and a section toward the bottom with things people are saying about this podcast.

It will include screenshots of reviews left on Apple Podcasts.

If you have appreciated the podcast and would like to leave a 5-star review on Apple or Spotify, I will try to include it on the website!

Now, I am certainly not asking you to lie! Or even to exaggerate.

However, feel free to round!

Rounding is biblical btw. Unless the feeding of the 5,000 was just a result of extremely precise attendance takers, they probably rounded in the Bible, so I do encourage you to round (up) (to the nearest 5) 😁 

But all jokes aside, if you enjoy this podcast, taking a moment to leave that 5-star review is a way you can help other people find the show.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey! I don’t think I’ve announced the website on the podcast itself yet, but I will be doing so on this Wednesday’s episode:

I’ll be revisiting the topic of Binding and Loosing, which I previously covered on episode 52 last November/December. In that episode, I presented the “spiritual warfare” interpretation of binding and loosing from Matthew 16. I was asked (you might say challenged) to look more closely at the “church discipline” view of those verses, so that’s what I did for this week’s episode.

The end of an era

This past week I also concluded my 3.5-year podcast on Ezekiel, which was called The Book of Ezekiel: A Cross References Bible Study. It was such a delightful study, and the lessons I learned launching this one actually led to the creation of Weird Stuff in the Bible about 1.5 years ago.

I don’t recommend going back through the backlog because I was pretty “green” when I started the podcast, I didn’t know much about creating a good show, and there’s a lot of things I’d do differently if I started it today.

But if you’d like to hear how it all ended, I shared a personal testimony of how the book of Ezekiel impacted me personally for my final episode. (my story starts at 28:00)

Now that I’ve got the Ezekiel studies off my plate, I can devote more time to focusing on this podcast’s website.

Prayers still appreciated

It might seem small to launch with 5 articles. But just like I did all that work to plant one little tree at the corner of my house, it’s my hope that this website will grow into something beautiful (and weird).

I have a lot to do between now and launch day. My denomination’s district will be meeting for our annual council/conference starting tomorrow, so I’ll be gone a couple days. I’ll be sharing a Bible study (on Enoch) this Wednesday, and then Thursday through Saturday will be spent ironing out the final details of the website AND preparing a sermon for Sunday.

But I am confident the Lord will help me if I commit all these plans to the Lord, so please pray that He does exactly that and guides each of my steps this week.

-Luke