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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
Okay. Welcome to the overflow.
Speaker 2:Super, super fun.
Speaker 1:This is overflow one.
Speaker 2:Yes. Episode one. First one.
Speaker 1:First of all, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. And what we wanted to do in this first installment is just walk through kind of where we're going with this thing. Like why are we even doing this? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's so many podcasts out there.
Speaker 1:There's pastors who podcast, there's influencers who podcast, and I think it's helpful for us to just talk for two seconds, why us, why now, what are we doing?
Speaker 2:Right, well,
Speaker 1:think What are we doing,
Speaker 2:I mean, are we and what are we doing? So I think that as we've talked about this and dreamt about this, really, it's funny, nothing has changed for us in the over twenty years that we've been a part of Keystone Church, just the methods have changed. That's And the tools and the vehicles, if you will, has changed. Our heart from minute one has been, we desire so deeply to share who God is, what he's done in our lives and for that to overflow into the lives of others. I mean, there's so many exciting things we're gonna cover.
Speaker 2:And so I think a podcast is just the next rendition, is
Speaker 1:that a word? Sure.
Speaker 2:I think it is, rendition of getting that message out, particularly to Keystone Church, that you would be able to hear what God's done in our lives and what God's placed in our hearts that we don't have time to share every weekend. We don't have time to share in, you know, an individual message. And so thus, the overflow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, you know, it's not like we're grabbing for more platform or we're grabbing for more influence. It it it is just our whole prayer for always has been, god, whatever influence you have, whatever opportunities, doors that open, we will only wanna walk through the doors that you walk through, that you would open for us. And, when it comes to this podcast, the overflow, you just said something that I wanted to address. And the first audience Yeah.
Speaker 1:Of this podcast is Keystone Church. And that is we're passionate about that. And definitely we know already that there are those who will be looking in from outside of our local church, but the first audience, our first heart, our first calling is the local church, and then our first calling is to the local church God has asked us to lead and that is Keystone Church. And so that speak to that a
Speaker 2:little bit. Yeah. Well, absolutely. And what excites me about what you're saying is we know that God has called us to Keystone Church. That's a priority assignment the Lord's given to us.
Speaker 2:But the big seed church, really people everywhere, you know, we're joining the podcast world, I guess you could say, but in my heart of hearts and our heart of hearts, the more, the merrier. The more voices that are speaking the truth that we all so desperately need, you know, that Jesus is our hope, he's our way, he's the truth, he's alive. The more voices, the better because we have a world so dark and so deeply in need. So, yeah, it starts with the church we've been assigned and that we love so dearly, wanting to bless your lives, wanting to see your families grow, wanting to pass along our wins, our losses, our hits, our misses, in hopes to encourage you, but also to any and every person that would be listening, God is for you and we believe that the message he's placed in our heart, we pray, will just help you on your journey.
Speaker 1:The name, the overflow. Overflow. Let's talk about that for a second. The name, the overflow, why did we name it the overflow?
Speaker 2:Multiple meanings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went through a lot of different conversations just talking about, man, what is this? And I'm a passionate believer that when you name something, that's like a biblical thing. In Genesis, God named, God named, God named. So when you put a name on something, it needs to ring true. It needs to reflect the truth.
Speaker 1:And so we did a lot of heart digging of what are we up to? Like, why are we doing this? What are we doing? And really it is an overflow of the content, the messages that God has given us. Every church has a voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it would take a lifetime of preaching, a lifetime of teaching, a lifetime of counsel, and you still wouldn't scratch the surface of the truths of God. I mean, it is a Mount Everest of truth and content and application. And so for us, every church has a voice that you take your journey up that mountain, trying to cover it all, trying to cover as much as you can, the whole counsel of the word of God. But we wanted more. We wanted more than I could preach on a weekend, that you could teach to our women or that you could preach on a weekend more than what we could cover.
Speaker 1:Some of the insights that we're having in smaller gatherings and smaller meetings, some of the people that we've had the honor of walking with that I think could help others. And so the overflow is for me, it's two mental images. It's loaves and fishes and it's jars of oil. And that comes from two places in scripture, one in the Old Testament, one in the New Testament. The jars of oil is where that great prophet just said put out a jar and fill it up with oil and it'll keep overflowing, overflowing, overflowing.
Speaker 1:And then when Jesus, you know, said they were all hungry and what did they do? It was loaves and fishes multiplied over and the baskets kept filling and filling and filling. And so our our prayer is whatever has started on the weekend or in those other rooms, that this would be an opportunity for more of an overflow. Really is kind of a discipleship mechanism, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And the only way for that to honestly have any value to you as you're listening and to our lives is that it's an overflow of what Jesus is doing in our personal lives. You know, you can't give what you don't have. And so I know that for me in my life, it's such a daily deep reminder that I need the presence of God fresh. Because if I don't have the fresh presence of God, I may have knowledge from my past or experiences from my past, but it's gonna fall flat. We could be, you know, the the best speakers in the world and the and powerful delivery, but without the presence of God, it's gonna hit a wall.
Speaker 2:It's gonna hit a lid. And so part of the overflow, we pray, is just the honest sharing as we go of God's work in us and that's gonna overflow, we pray and bless God's work in you. So it's a layered, layered, layered title. And on
Speaker 1:a heavy note, this is my favorite Yeti in the whole wide world.
Speaker 2:It matches your clothes.
Speaker 1:It does match.
Speaker 2:Did you do it on purpose?
Speaker 1:No, didn't. But this is absolutely my favorite Yeti in the whole wide world. And I wanna tell you why. I have not been able to find a yeti that had this camo. I can't find any camo yetis that are out there.
Speaker 1:Wow. But this particular so whenever I go fishing, I was in the Grand Canyon not too long ago, this is the Yeti I take. This is my bad boy. This is it.
Speaker 2:And it they don't sell them anymore?
Speaker 1:I I can't find one anywhere. I can't find it on eBay. I can't find it anywhere. I have tried everything, and I cannot find it.
Speaker 2:Don't lose it.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. I don't wanna lose it. And so, this is our guest today is Oh, yes. This is not a product placement. Though that would be hilarious if that's the way I
Speaker 2:did that. Ridiculous. Yes. No. I prefer pale lavender, but that's different color Yeah.
Speaker 2:Than yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a little that ain't happening.
Speaker 2:Not for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That ain't happening. You have a little guest over there too. Why don't you show us your guest?
Speaker 2:My phone?
Speaker 1:Nope. Oh. Show us your guest right there.
Speaker 2:Come on.
Speaker 1:Show us your guest.
Speaker 2:That's neat.
Speaker 1:That's my guest. Show us your guest. This is always with us. This is always with us. Explain.
Speaker 2:It is what it is. I've had allergy shots for twenty years. I took a break and thought to myself about year fifteen, hey, I am cured. And went off of my allergy shots.
Speaker 1:Mistake.
Speaker 2:Big mistake. Came back with a vengeance. So you know what? If I have to grab a little tissue, thank you for sharing this with everyone.
Speaker 1:Well, have our guests. Every week we'll have We do different
Speaker 2:have a guest.
Speaker 1:It could be a tissue box. Yes. It could be a Yeti.
Speaker 2:And I do have my phone, here's why, not because I'm gonna start texting while we're podcasting.
Speaker 1:So you brought two guests.
Speaker 2:But yes, but because so many times if something pops in my head or heart and I think of a Bible verse and I'm like, oh my gosh, we gotta talk about this. I don't have the Bible memorized. Yep. So we live in a wonderful era where we can Google it. So you'll see me Google.
Speaker 1:Can I say something about that? Yeah. This is a constant in our marriage is I will wreck scriptures I'm confident I have memorized. I will wreck them.
Speaker 2:Bless.
Speaker 1:I know. It's true though, right? Like constantly being corrected.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm trying not to correct
Speaker 1:you all Not the constantly.
Speaker 2:But I mean, it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, know, like, there's my brother Eric is like this machine of scripture memorization. Todd Wagner, it was a machine, pastor Todd Wagner, machine of scripture.
Speaker 2:Pastor Chris Seedman.
Speaker 1:Chris Seedman is a machine of scripture. And I look at those guys and I say, what is wrong with me?
Speaker 2:You're an amazing preacher.
Speaker 1:Well, appreciate you saying that, but I have to watch it,
Speaker 2:It's not just limited to scriptures, don't feel bad.
Speaker 1:It is not. I'll get movie quotes a little off and it's just, there's like a version that
Speaker 2:I I'm think fishing stories are
Speaker 1:Oh, come on now.
Speaker 2:If you share my
Speaker 1:testimony That's little for far. What?
Speaker 2:When you share my testimony for me.
Speaker 1:This is true too. The funniest thing in the whole wide world is whenever I'm on the stage and I'm in the middle, let me just speak from this angle, this is my better angle, this is the way I'm gonna be, whenever I'm deep thought, I'm gonna give you my better angle. But Susan wanted that side. But anyway
Speaker 2:because my hair's parted this way right now and it gets in my face and it's I have lot of hair.
Speaker 1:Y'all don't want to know
Speaker 2:all this? No.
Speaker 1:When I'm on the stage and I had not prepared to tell a story and it pops in my head and I'll share a story about you, something you've shared with me or something like that, and I'm out there and I will take a quick glance down.
Speaker 2:Which I don't mind you sharing.
Speaker 1:Of course, but I'll take a quick glance down and I can read her that I am messing this thing up and what are you gonna do? You can't like, in front of everybody, say, oh, did I get that wrong? And so
Speaker 2:And I have visions in my head of like, hey, can I borrow your mic and just tell this one part?
Speaker 1:This is it, man. I always yeah. It's close though. It's close. It's just a way that I tell it or something.
Speaker 2:It's the realities of pastor family life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Okay, where were we? The overflow, so it's loaves and fishes. It is jars of oil taking, and some of this is just us. We're just kinda letting it go and being a little raw.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:so it's jars of oil, it's loaves and fishes, and we want that to multiply in your life. And again, as it hits Keystone as a further building of the work that has been done with our voice and the other pastors' voices. But also, you know, if it does move beyond, then wonderful. We'll allow God to take it wherever he wants to take it and do whatever he wants to do. We'll celebrate that.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will.
Speaker 1:We'll celebrate that. So, all right, let's walk through the categories. I'm gonna tell them all at once and I have a cheat sheet down there, and then we're gonna go one by one and kind of talk about what to expect. So we boiled this down that there's basically six categories that we are going to be talk talking about regularly. And every time we gather, it falls into these six categories.
Speaker 1:Category number one
Speaker 2:I feel like we need seven to be holy.
Speaker 1:Six categories. And category number one is relationships.
Speaker 2:Okay. Big, huge, huge. And talk
Speaker 1:to us about what kinda what they can expect
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:On relationships.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't fully know what you're gonna need to expect but all I know is we are so passionate about relationships, starting with our own, our own marriage. Yeah,
Speaker 1:you're gonna talk a lot about us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hello. When you are, if you're a human being, you've got a story to tell and we've got stories to tell. We've been in our highs of highs and lows of lows, and every married couple, there's going to be so much that we hit on that I just believe is gonna help us, is gonna help you. We wanna talk about parenting. We wanna talk about young moms and dads.
Speaker 2:We wanna talk about teen moms and dads and grown adult kids moms and dads. We wanna talk about if you're dating right now, I mean, just relationships. We wanna talk about friendship because there's so much practical application straight from the word of God that it's kind of an endless topic and it's also endlessly needed. We endlessly need to talk about it. And so relationships, mark that one as a big, big-
Speaker 1:Yeah, marriage, family, relationships, conflict resolution would be big.
Speaker 2:If anyone knows me, I don't like, let me just clarify, I don't like conflict, but I love resolution so much, I'll walk in any room and I just love empowering and equipping other people to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:We have seen so much fruit at Keystone because of our diligence with conflict resolution. This is something that we train and equip. We don't like to use the word train. Train a dog, equip a person. But we equip Keystone, we equip our pastors to do conflict resolution.
Speaker 1:When we are hiring and we're looking at someone and saying, is God knitting you with our church as a pastor? One of the things we're looking for is how are you with conflict resolution? Conflict resolution is a big one. We'll be tackling that topic soon. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And God has given you a special just blueprint, a roadmap for conflict resolution. And tell a little bit about the the power of what that's done for our church.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, God talks in the Bible about my children work for peace, which I could Google that right now and find the verse, but go ahead and do it right now. But he says, my children work for peace. And so when we're following in his design and his people and the church, we build up leaders and we build up a culture that, you know, we're not gonna be the people who just cut others off. We're not gonna be the people who just walk out of the room. We're not gonna be the people who avoid conflict because it's scary and it can be.
Speaker 2:I don't care, even if you do it partly for a profession, you know, as a counselor, LPC, that's been part of my years and years of interacting with others is mediating and being involved in those moments of conflict. But, and it can be scary, but rather than run from it because you can't avoid conflict, How about let's learn God's design to pursue peace. Yeah. And not only peace, but so it's so beautiful when it goes even one next step where it's peace and restoration, peace and reconciliation. And that's not always available because we live in a broken world and people, we're all broken and things, you know, just aren't always the best case scenario this side of heaven.
Speaker 2:But as much as it depends on us, Christ follower, we work for peace.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of lies out there. Yeah. There's a lot of lies about that and we wanna expose those There's a lot of broken paths even taught by Christian voices.
Speaker 2:Well meaning.
Speaker 1:Well meaning Christian voices. And we really wanna try to clarify what we believe is a better way. Marriage and Family, we have a book called Legacy That Lasts.
Speaker 2:I like to say it's our heart on paper.
Speaker 1:It's our heart on paper.
Speaker 2:On audio.
Speaker 1:And we'd encourage you, maybe we could have a link for you to get that on Amazon. But we believe in this so much, and the big, big truth was where God showed us this truth in scripture where God over and over in the old testament, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Legacy, legacy, legacy. But then the reality when we dove in, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were jacked up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And there's a lot of dysfunction. So we tracked their dysfunction.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then we saw Joseph come on the scene. And Joseph's story actually resolves every one of those dysfunctions. It is masterful in the word of God if you've not seen it. So we went through that and then looked and extracted from all that brokenness and that redemption, all of that principles and guidelines and help biblically Yeah. For parenting
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And creating a legacy that will last.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. And family culture that will last, that you want to last. And throughout probably all a lot of our conversations, because there's certain themes in my heart and in my life that God has just kinda burned into me. They'll they'll come out over and over again.
Speaker 2:And even as you said that, one of the themes is patterns. Yeah. I I consistently, and maybe you too, the longer I go, the more clients that I have had the privilege to counsel, being in this pastor role that you and I have the privilege to be in, and even in our own family and our own marriage, you see patterns play out. With Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you saw patterns play out that still play out. Yep.
Speaker 2:And so sometimes we just think, oh, it's just me. I'm crazy. My family's broken. What is wrong with me? Well, spoiler alert, there is something wrong with you.
Speaker 2:There's something wrong with all of us. And that's the message of the gospel that there's a good news for the prophets.
Speaker 1:Chapter one, we're all horrible.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is. I know we have to explain that later. Yeah. Yes. Chapter one of Legacy of the Last.
Speaker 2:We're all horrible.
Speaker 1:We're all horrible.
Speaker 2:We're all horrible. But we are. But the reality is is that God is putting us back together and the patterns that the Lord is kind, if we have eyes to see that he'll expose, we can learn from. And it normalizes the battle, but we want I I don't believe we don't wanna be people who are normal in this life because it's normal for I've heard even higher percentage, one out of two marriages end in divorce. And the fifty percent that are still married, maybe twenty five percent happily.
Speaker 2:Like, we don't wanna be the norm. We want to live in the rare air of God's abundant more than we could ask or imagine. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and I said I was gonna do all six at once and then go one by one, then we just went one by one, didn't we?
Speaker 2:Well, we're gonna dive deep into that relationship. But it's such a
Speaker 1:big Relationships, which is marriage, kids, all that, we're gonna talk about parenting. We're gonna open up the door for that. And then current world events is another one that we're gonna really lock in on. That's something unique we really wanna speak to. Things that are happening in our culture.
Speaker 1:Maybe not every single thing, but just the things that the Lord says, hey, I'm compelling you to speak. And on those, we are going to venture into that world because God's called us to be salt and light. Biblical worldview, which is bigger than world events. It's how to build a big, bold biblical worldview. Church, we wanna talk about church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love church. We love the bride. We could talk about church hurt. We could talk about how to avoid that. We'll talk about that in a sec.
Speaker 1:Biblical, the Bible and theology, which there's deep, deep truths that run through that that we wanna examine and take a little more time unpacking. And then the final of the six would be soul care.
Speaker 2:Soul care.
Speaker 1:Counseling, stuff we see in psychology. You are a twenty year practicing counselor. Let's start there just while we did relationships, let's briefly talk a little bit about soul care.
Speaker 2:Well, and can we just say the seventh category is the spontaneous things that we're like gonna have to say, I'm so sorry that The that just
Speaker 1:seventh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:See, that's a holy number and it's true.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We can't prepare for
Speaker 1:Well, gonna have guests.
Speaker 2:Okay, guests.
Speaker 1:But they make their way into all of these categories. Yes. So you could say the seventh category is guests if you wanted to.
Speaker 2:Or miscellaneous ridiculousness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, miscellaneous Then
Speaker 2:it's inevitably gonna happen.
Speaker 1:So talk to us a little bit, what can everybody expect when we talk about soul care? Just like we did with marriage and family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that we will delve into where does psychology and the Bible meet? Where do how do you wrestle through a society and a culture where when people know things are wrong with me and and want to get better, psychology has an answer. Well, what about the Bible? And so I think we'll delve deep into that. And I mean, those are waters I love to swim in.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, deep inside that.
Speaker 1:Well, you've been practicing as a counselor for over twenty years, maybe twenty five years, something like that. And we have, I'll say this, you wouldn't say, you've actually taught in counseling conferences and you've helped other counselors. God's given you incredible truth. We have incredible colleagues where you will talk to them and just grind on truth, just really just whittle it down and get it right. And so there's a lot that we have learned.
Speaker 1:We wanna take some of those conversations and some of those truths that we've learned and some of the things happening for soul care, one of the things that I wanna talk about is the idol of therapy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Big time. This is whole podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, and might think, well, that's Brandon's message. No. It's our message. Yeah. There's an idolatry of therapy even in the local church, even with well meaning Christian voices.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I hear more about counseling and therapy than I do about Jesus. And that lends itself to the main thing when it comes to soul care. First of all, soul care is important.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But it is no substitute. It's not like you divide your life. I'm gonna go to counseling and then I'll go to church for my Jesus thing. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. If your counsel is not coming from the Holy Spirit, from the word of God and from the power of the resurrected Christ, good luck.
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example of this that grieved my heart so deeply. There was a woman years and years ago and she had a family member that she was very close to, and it was a teenage girl, one of her family members. And she we knew this family and she came to me and I'm counseling at the time and I couldn't counsel them because they I knew them and there's ethics involved with who I can and can't counsel. But she came to me asking for direction for this teenager, this girl who desperately needed touch of God in her life and needed healing and just very broken family dynamics. So she comes to me and I began to offer her several different avenues, biblical counseling included, of just, you know, what I believed this girl would benefit from.
Speaker 2:And I often like to say, if you have a child in crisis or if you, you know, grown adults, we find ourselves in crisis, layers of support is so helpful. And so to have different layers of support offers a building more structure. Well, same thing with a soul. And so these layers of support included get your get your girl in the church. Find a student ministry where they are surrounded with the things of God and community and leaders speaking into them.
Speaker 2:Get her in church. And I'll never forget her words to me. Yeah, well, we need professional help. And I thought, oh, she's lost if she follows your path. She is done for.
Speaker 2:And I can say that as a professional, one of the first things I tell you You're
Speaker 1:very successful too. I mean, you've an incredible track record, you've helped a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Jesus. And I would just say, you know, if somebody comes to my office the very first time that we meet, we talk about expectations and what to expect. And I'm very overt, every counselor has a theory and worldview from which they counsel, everyone, every single one. And so I'm very overt in that first, you know, expectations conversation of, hey, what are you expecting out of our time together?
Speaker 2:Let me share some things I'm expecting. And I'm quick to tell them, you know, I pull my answers from the word of God. I can pull my answers from the Bible. I don't have all the answers. I've got my own issues.
Speaker 2:I'll tell them. I don't have all the answers, but I know the one who does, and that's where we will run together. And I'll lead you there. And so, yeah, it's a big conversation and it's tough. Just as recent as, I mean, this is last week, I was looking for counselors because I just think it's always good to have kind of a ongoing, you know, who's in our area that's biblical, that's Christian.
Speaker 2:And we partner with a great, you know, one great group in this area. But I was looking and I was so sad. Like I could not find anything close by. And I mean, maybe I missed, there may be the name out there, like I don't have a website. I just have never taken that step.
Speaker 2:It's been word-of-mouth. But so maybe there's great ones and we just need to find you. But just going online, and as I began to read the about and where do you pull your theory for help, how to help someone, I was so discouraged that there's a vacuum of biblical voices, and it's not sitting and preaching a message. That's the other thing people think is, oh, are you gonna come and hear a sermon? No.
Speaker 2:When you open the word of God, just go read Proverbs. How practical that God is with how life is supposed to work and does work. And the soul care element for it to truly be care and healing that lasts.
Speaker 1:We talk about soul cares, all these other topics, one of the things that is our vision is that we would have, our vision is that we would have links like if we have somebody we wanna refer, here's a link, here's a link to this. And so this actually becomes something like I follow some phishing podcasts and that kind of stuff. And one of the things I love is when they're showing what they do and then down below, you could just click the link to the very things that they're using. And, and so when we have resources or when we have those kind of assets or recommendations, we'll throw those out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We may wanna talk about food at some point. That's not one of our categories.
Speaker 2:Food. Yes. Could be the seventh one.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't that be great?
Speaker 2:The seventh is a big miscellaneous.
Speaker 1:Big miscellaneous. Okay, another one that we've already mentioned, but let's go into just a touch more detail. How about why talk about current world events? We're going to address current world events. And I think my first stab at that answer would be because the church is salt and light.
Speaker 1:The church is a city on a hill. And to withdraw from the public conversation is to leave people trying to figure out where they are, and often they're left with the voices that are very far from the voice that you find in the Bible. So current world events. Now there's some it's gonna get tricky and we're probably gonna make people upset because we're gonna come in I keep hitting the mic, we're gonna come in, I use my hands, it's just gonna Me too. We're gonna come in with some opinions.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we're not gonna get it all right. Just go ahead, let's get that expectation up front. We don't have all the answers. We're not coming onto this podcast like, oh, we've arrived.
Speaker 2:So, you know, we don't wanna say we're gonna make somebody mad, but we will make, probably make somebody And we may, we have to may retract something, I don't know. Yes. But we're, I think the heart behind the why is exactly what you said. If the church isn't speaking to what's happening in our world, who is?
Speaker 1:You aren't.
Speaker 2:Who is? Yep. It's the opposite. It's people who don't know or love the word of God. And so God's people have to respond, have to engage, have to have to be both proactive and at times reactive to the things that are happening.
Speaker 1:And this will that won't drive our conversations. That'll be more of a we're compelled, you know, or we just we're so into it that we just, it's just an overflow of where we're at. Yeah. But I am excited about that. And that leads us to another big category.
Speaker 1:There we are, there's your friend. There it is.
Speaker 2:We decided to video and here we are. Look over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Another big category that's married to that is biblical worldview. I like to say it, big, bold, biblical worldview.
Speaker 2:And that will clash into often, that will clash into
Speaker 1:Current events.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Because it frames it.
Speaker 1:You define a bold biblical worldview?
Speaker 2:Can I give an example? Yes. All right, this is, maybe some of you guys have heard me share this. My kids have been tortured their whole lives by this mindset. And I'm just like, I don't even know which one to pull from, but I'll just pull from an easier one.
Speaker 2:Back in the day, there was this store called Justice. It was so fun. It was the best. But I was the mom who would walk my little cutie kids over elementary school and younger or whatever, over to the wall of t shirts and I would have them point out the lies.
Speaker 1:That's so true.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:That's so true.
Speaker 2:The lies.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Or like Melina.
Speaker 2:Like follow your heart was one of my, you know, big ones. And you're like, why? That's so sweet. Because Jeremiah seventeen:nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Speaker 2:You know, again, we're not bashing humanity, we're simply stating our diagnosis. And so let's not wear a t shirt saying the opposite. Let's follow God's heart, let's follow God's. So I mean, my sweet children,
Speaker 1:it's The something technical term for this is syncretism. It's something that the Old Testament Hebrews were constantly, God was constantly pulling them away from this, whether it's through his prophets or whatever. It's syncretism. It's where we have a form of religion or we wanna follow God, but we're buying lies from the culture Yeah. And we marry it into our walk with the Lord.
Speaker 1:And part of the calling for a prophetic ministry, and that's part of what we do, part of that calling is to call out the secretism. Yeah. To extract the idols, extract the, you know, scrub out the filth, you know, and those cultural lies. To identify a lie, you have to know the truth. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, that's old counterfeit analogy. What do they do to
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's true, but I've heard it a million times.
Speaker 2:To the dollar bill.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do you know you have a fake $100 bill? Well, train them with the real thing and then they can really discern what discern. Discern. That's my kids are all over me about this word.
Speaker 2:Okay. We don't know why that discern turned into?
Speaker 1:Discern. Nope. I use a Z not an S. I've been trying to correct myself.
Speaker 2:I thought you try. You were dis you did discerning Not this
Speaker 1:too late, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or the other weekend?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Anyway, so to I don't even know what I was saying.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, that threw us all off. Was worldview.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about big bold biblical worldviews syncretism. Syncretism. And to discern what is The more you have a big bold biblical worldview, you can discern the lies from the culture. And we feel a calling to that. And one of the things that God has just done through a heart that we have, we have a heart for a lot of things, but one of our passions is the young generation.
Speaker 1:We're so passionate about the young generation. And I was looking around, this is before 2020, but definitely around 2020. I was looking around and I was beginning to realize that we had always believed in a big bold biblical worldview, but we began to really become convicted that if we did not share and clearly teach a big bold biblical worldview to the young generation, then they were quickly being scooped up with massive lies and the erosion culturally of lies was happening so quickly. I think a lot of parents don't have a clue how bad it is with the young generation because they're not talking and they're not hearing it. When you begin, 20 just broke it open when parents began to understand what their kids were learning and began to say, woah, these influences are being not only discussed among teens and social media, but maybe even some stuff happening in school libraries and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden you're like, woah, wait a second. This needs a correction. We're gonna be teaching a big bold biblical worldview, which marries beautifully with that cultural
Speaker 2:Use current that worldview, yeah, to have the conversation.
Speaker 1:We wanna talk about the Bible and theology, which again marries with that bold biblical worldview, but Bible and theology, there's just some stuff. Like, we wanna go headlong into some heavy stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, we really wanna dive in to some of the controversies that are happening. Like right now, there's a big war it seems between and I'm gonna throw out some words. We're not gonna explain it all right now. But like dispensationalism versus other interpretations, preterism, I don't know if that's the way it's said, preterist view of understanding. The end times, like the end times, like how do you which is right and what is right?
Speaker 1:And this is what I've been taught, and this is what is a conservative biblical strong view. We're gonna talk about that. I wanna talk about that there's different ideas on how you're saved and what salvation looks like. We're gonna talk about the Holy Spirit. One of the things that we wanna make sure, it's interesting, we are a church that's always believed you don't have to choose.
Speaker 1:You don't have to choose.
Speaker 2:Explain that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so like we can talk about the Holy Spirit and we are a strong Bible church, you know? We preach like a Bible church, but we'll preach the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:And the experience of
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Holy the topics that we've talked about we wanna do is our journey in the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1:whole And the truth of it is it's not the friends we were running with, It's not the church we went to. We started Keystone. Our journey in the Holy Spirit is our journey in the word of God. And so we wanna talk about that coming from both, from different corners of the Baptist expressions. There's a lot of diversity in Baptist world.
Speaker 1:But from that, which there's some things we really love about our heritage and all that, we'll talk about that and honor it. But also just where the Bible has taken us on our journey in the Holy Spirit. So we'll talk about Bible and I can't either. How to read the Bible for all it's worth. There's some wrong ways to read the Bible, there's some right ways to read the Bible.
Speaker 1:Maybe correcting some stuff out there, like some stuff that's just a little loose. Again, we're not gonna be haterade on other pastors and all that. My experience with pastors is there's very few that are just really bad dudes. Most pastors are really great guys that wanna get it right. Without naming names, we might address some of the things that I'm worried about.
Speaker 2:Themes, patterns.
Speaker 1:Themes and patterns that are worth exploring and helping the church to see it when it's there. Maybe with some grace and charity.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Can I just say along that these lines, you know, part of it, as you listen to us, we're hoping to impart on you just skills for your own life? Because guess what? We're not the ninja Christian. You have the Holy Spirit of God, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, we each, one of us have the Holy Spirit of God inside of us. And while God does call leaders, He does call pastors, and we'll talk about that too. And there is a role there that is to be honored and to be understood of a pastor's role. Each of us that are Christ followers, we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, all the power that the Holy Spirit brings available to us. And so as we talk about how we navigate world situations or messaging that we're hearing, we're so excited that you can too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That you can do that in your own life with your own family. It's just something we hope that will overflow.
Speaker 1:Yes, final category, church.
Speaker 2:Wait, is this six or seven?
Speaker 1:This is the sixth category and the seventh is whatever. On the seventh. The seventh is whatever. But the sixth category is church. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And one of the things, one of the early topics we're gonna hit is church hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's definitely, you know, happening in our culture.
Speaker 2:And it's a buzzword right now.
Speaker 1:And it is a buzzword.
Speaker 2:Side note, it's always interesting when buzzwords begin. It's just like, think if you start to hear any kind of buzzword, period, like church heard, that's one. But you hear a buzzword in our culture, lean in and dig deep and ask who is the messenger?
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's the spirit of the buzzword of What's the of the
Speaker 2:spirit of the buzzword?
Speaker 1:Often it is so cynical. Often it is so negative. Yeah. And there's just, there's, you know, look, clicks happen with negativity. People are so much more prone to run to the accident and to the headline and the negative and the drama than they are the encouraging, building, and the move forward.
Speaker 1:But I agree, we've never spoken of this about that, about the buzzword. You're so right.
Speaker 2:Think about it. I mean, spoiler alert, but there are only two places that a message big picture ultimately comes from.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:It's either coming from the creator of our universe, coming from our God. Right. God of the Bible, or it's coming from the enemy. Yeah. And the Bible says every person belongs to one of those two.
Speaker 2:You either belong to God and you are his, or you belong to the enemy. Now some of us who belong to God are sleeping with the enemy, no pun intended, but we are in, you know, we are in the wrong space going back to our chains and back to enemy voice.
Speaker 1:He can't have you, but he can use you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, yes. And so, you know, when it comes to the buzzword, again, it's not throwing everything out and saying everything's terrible. No, it's like, where's this message coming from? Because I wanna make sure I'm aligned, I'm aligned with the messenger who is God.
Speaker 1:Well, and part of our heart is like, you know, what kinda church do we wanna have? I mean, what kind of church do we wanna be? What kind of church do we see? You know, is it cynical, you know, kind of looking at everything through this kind of wary eyes? Or, you know, is there another option?
Speaker 1:And we've already said that we're not in la la land, we want to live in the truth, this is our vision even if the truth is difficult,
Speaker 2:but That's a whole, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a whole thing, but cynicism, church hurt, all those buzzwords, that's so helpful. But also in church, we want to advance kind of a new way. There's a lot of question about how church should be done. We want to talk about that. We want to talk about why we do some of the things we do and equip you with the reason behind some of the things we do at Keystone what it is, and that often it's thought out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like we're not, like if you say, hey, you know, I really didn't like when that happened. I'm sure y'all just didn't think about it. And our answer may be, actually we thought about it a lot. Yeah. And the truth is maybe you haven't heard another perspective and you've fallen into this quicksand of cynicism.
Speaker 1:But we do have some thoughts. Some of our values, for example, we wanna talk about production. There's a lot of cynicism around production. We wanna talk about why, why the production? Why do we have LED?
Speaker 1:Why do we have screens? Why all that? We wanna talk about that. We wanna talk about buildings and big beautiful buildings. Why would you have big beautiful buildings in a day and age that's very cynical among certain corners.
Speaker 1:Why do that? By the way, I've never come across someone who I've talked to out there that is offended by Keystone's building, is beautiful. It's it's it's often these corners of cynical Christianity, and that's really interesting to me.
Speaker 2:There's a theology that they've latched onto.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Self made or
Speaker 2:distorted or who knows?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We'll talk about that. Values. There's a lot of values out there that we wanna address. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that really explain who we are and we want to advance that. And if there's pastors that would listen in, maybe could give you language for what you know is true and it could help you explain it and so that it could put out that little kind of be an antibiotic for the bacteria of cynicism and negativity in the church, give you honoring language to help others. Again, we don't wanna be shocking for shock's sake to get headlines. We don't want to just get a crowd and clicks by sound bites. We really just wanna do our thing.
Speaker 2:Just wanna help.
Speaker 1:We wanna help. That's right. We wanna help and we wanna get some things off our chest.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do. And I will circle back real quick on the church hurt because we'll do a whole podcast, if not more, but on that and just to tie a bow on that, we both utterly acknowledge that people get hurt
Speaker 1:in church. Absolutely. We've been hurt in church.
Speaker 2:We've been deeply hurt in church. And the reality is not that you can avoid church hurt, but it's how to navigate it and how to understand it. And again, that goes to a biblical worldview when you understand it. It helps you know what the next steps look like. But God loves his bride and even when she falls down and scrapes her knee or she's going through a rough patch, he loves his bride and we wanna be people who love her too.
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:Where The seventh, can I just say the seventh? Can I
Speaker 1:do Okay?
Speaker 2:I'm driving you because
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2:I'm driving you crazy. It's our miscellaneous category.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's just the miscellaneous also expectation is sometimes you may take a whole podcast and it's just you, or I may take a whole podcast. Absolutely. We may have a friend join you or a friend join me or someone else will have more
Speaker 1:than Right.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of the unexpected. There's gonna be ready. Yeah, be ready.
Speaker 1:It's so good. And one last word, we are right now in the Spurgeon Room. Oh. Yep, I've named it. This is the Spurgeon Room.
Speaker 2:This now you named it?
Speaker 1:No, I've been talking, I've been on this. So an explanation of kind of the space that we're in, while there's right here is Matthew Henry's expository works. That is the only thing I think of. I think that's the only book in here that's not a Spurgeon book.
Speaker 2:Are you serious?
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is all Spurgeon. And so this is kind of the Spurgeon room with a few little exceptions, but I mean, just look around. It's like
Speaker 2:Yeah. All I guess ours? It's How we've been married twenty
Speaker 1:And and let me say it was a generous gift. I mean, a lot of this was a generous gift from a friend and he just wanted to do it. And I was like, absolutely, I'll do it.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Isn't that great? I love Spurgeon. Maybe that would be another one that I'll just do a whole thing on why I love Spurgeon.
Speaker 2:That's category seven.
Speaker 1:That's category.
Speaker 2:Wait, have we been married twenty six or twenty seven years?
Speaker 1:We have been married twenty seven years.
Speaker 2:Okay, twenty seven years. I didn't know about our Spurgeon.
Speaker 1:I know. This is amazing. I mean, start, look, Spurgeon.
Speaker 2:Special.
Speaker 1:Sword and Trowel, sword and Trowel, sword and Trowel, sword and Trowel, sword and Trowel, those are all sword and the trowel. I mean, just look around. There it is.
Speaker 2:So good. And Spurgeon, he's overflowed into this room. Yeah. We're That's gonna continue to overflow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Alright. So we'll see you next time on the overflow. Can't wait. Wanted to do a little intro, get you ready, and we're diving in next time.
Speaker 1:So we'll see you in the overflow.