The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR
Welcome to the TNC Podcast, where real conversations meet raw emotions and faith!
Join Pastor Joe Liles and the team as they dive deep into life's messy moments, exploring everything from overwhelming feelings to the surprising emotional landscape of God. Each episode is like sitting down with friends who aren't afraid to get real about spirituality, personal struggles, and finding meaning in the everyday.
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The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR
"He Is Not Here: Are You Looking for Jesus in the Right Places?" - Easter Podcast
Join Pastor Joe Liles, Roseanne, and Tavo as they dive deep into the resurrection story and the messy, beautiful realities of faith, family, and following Jesus. In this raw and candid episode, we explore the Easter message, unpack the challenges of new parenthood, and ask the crucial question: Are you experiencing God where He is moving, or stuck looking in the past?
From sleepless nights with a newborn to spiritual growth, this podcast offers real-life insights into walking with Christ in every season. Whether you're a parent, a believer seeking deeper connection, or simply curious about faith, this episode will inspire, challenge, and encourage you.
Is back. The jingles back is back. Welcome to the TNC podcast. We are recorded in studio, and we have some special guests joining us today, back in the studio after eight weeks, joining us here to bring back, really the the true three, not the Trinity, right? We have another three that exist in the church. Um, we're going to talk about that in a second for our Easter message. But we have the three hosts of the podcast back live today. Tom is not with us today, but should be back next week. But to my right, sitting as a new father, right of a Gosh, nine weeks old now, two month old, two month old, two month old, baby. Hope it is the one. The only Tavo table is back. We're so glad you're here. Well, thank you, Rose. I have so many questions about how time with baby hope is yes, yeah, and it's gonna be wonderful. We're gonna talk about that. Okay, to my left, you've heard her wonderful voice already. She is the director of operations at the neighborhood church, making sure everything runs smoothly and that everyone is communicated with on a daily basis. She gets all the questions. So if you have them call the church line, it is the one, the only Roseanne. Roseanne, that's great. It's great to have you on the podcast, Roseanne, and then and I am Joe Liles pastor at the neighborhood church, and so we love to just talk with you on our podcast about little breakdown of the message, usually what we experienced on Sunday. And for the first time in our podcast, right on our podcast channel, we posted the message like so we're not just talking about it. You go, oh, there Sunday, I have no idea. You can actually go back and listen to the message. Now we're going to continue to do that. So that way you can listen on Mondays to the message, typically on a Wednesday or Thursday, we'll post the podcast, and that way you can follow up. And what we do on the podcast is we try to dive a little bit deeper into the life of the church, maybe into the parts of the message that weren't out there on Sunday, because we have about 20 to 30 minutes to preach, and that means that there's a lot of information that we might not have got to that we can share more about on the podcast, and we just dive deep into it. We really talk about our own stories within the midst of the message and so But speaking of story table, you've been out for eight weeks, eight weeks, eight weeks on parental leave. Mm hmm, with Kara at home. Kara, amazingly, has like 13. How many weeks is she? Is she like
Unknown:19 weeks? Uh, honestly, I don't know. She goes back on June 1. Wow. She's got another 445, we've got another
Pastor Joe Liles:five weeks. Wow, that's awesome. Wow. That's really got a good tell us. How has life been at home. Oh,
Unknown:man, with baby hope, I don't know, I don't know where to start. Where should I start? Start at
Pastor Joe Liles:the beginning. So, baby hope, born. She was born early at the beginning, yeah, born early, beginning of her life. Born
Unknown:early. Okay, well, yeah, she was. We went to the doctor. The baby was very small, and so we went to get an extracurricular ultrasound, and some doctor came in and said, You guys ready to have a baby go to the hospital right now? Okay? And we were like, who are you? I don't trust you. I don't trust you. I have plans today. Yeah, right, yeah. I we had a whole set of plans. I was going to go have lunch with my mom. I was going to watch the Book of Mormon with Taylor Smith later. That's right, was that a whole day planned out. We were having a wonderful Saturday, yeah, uh, turns out we ended up having to have a baby that day. So, yeah, it we had two more weeks of church planning. Yeah, we're in the book. Oh my gosh, yeah, that just disappeared, and that one went out the door, yep. So we went weeds for you. They interrupt your plan. I They sure do. Oh, man, yeah,
Pastor Joe Liles:she took your schedule
Unknown:right away, right away, and that owned you. And I was navigating a very tight line, you know, like every day had the very specific goals that needed to be achieved, and it was all it was all out the door. So, yeah, I mean, we went and we had a baby, somewhat dramatic, yeah, and, but yeah, Carol was induced and the baby was born. She was five, five pounds, seven ounces. Little, tiny baby. She was born on the point fourth percentile. Wow. Seriously, very small baby, wow, which is big part of the reason why we essentially disappeared for two months. Yeah, right, because a couple of things. One, if the baby is a little has a little more weight, you can fight the baby a little bit and just learn to breastfeed. Yeah, yeah, right. We didn't have that luxury. And so we just had to, we had to go to bottle because the native the baby needed weight, yes. And thankfully, the baby needed weight so fast that we couldn't wait for a carous milk to fully come in and oh, wow, we drove over to Kim's, who was still in town. Say, Kim, do you have any milk for because we need it immediately. Wow, there were tears. It was a Yeah, there was a thing. But yeah, thankfully, she's, she's, she's, she's been growing well, yeah, we went to the doctor yesterday. She, she is at 10 pounds now, great. And she's skipped on up to the 19th percentile. That's a huge skip, something like the 12th percentile, the head circumference. And there's some other yeah tiles, but they're all healthy, all on the small side, but, like, well within range, they're not, like, point fourth percent, yeah. So yeah, that was a little dramatic. The first, you know, we have family in town, and we're, like, we have been advised by our medical team, yeah, to create a. Bubble around the baby, just because the baby being so small, if there is any disease, it wouldn't, it would be straight to hospitalization because the baby has no fat, yeah. And so, okay, it looks like we're gonna have a bubble, which was not our plan. We had planned to just be out and about very quickly, yeah. But we had, we created a bubble. And if you know Kara, she does not like to sit at home.
Pastor Joe Liles:No, Kara is not a homebody, no. But
Unknown:mostly, Kara has been wanting to have babies ever since I've known her, yeah, being a mom has always been her greatest dream, and so she's loving it. She is loving every minute of it. Me, on the other hand, the Switch comes in. I've experienced some bouts of postpartum depression. Oh, okay, alright, just because I am I have many interests. I have many things that I like to spend my time doing. I have, you know, projects I like to work on. I got books to read. I got to view shows to watch, Sure, absolutely. But a lot of like, useful things that I like to do. I like
Pastor Joe Liles:how you said, I have projects, and you name it, a couple like, like the joy things, yeah, watch TV.
Unknown:There's some, there's some. Like, music, but I love things. I had projects, I had plans. I have a piano to tune. I have languages to learn. I have books to read. I have so many, oh, please tell me your piano got tuned. Well, it's tuned by me. Oh, great. To an acceptable range, to an acceptable range. Okay, that's good, yeah, um, so, so it's been tough being completely at the mercy of a as yet irrational creature.
Pastor Joe Liles:Yes, there, yeah, there's nothing that creature demands, right? And and you have to
Unknown:provide. And just literally, 24 hours a day, just being pulled to and fro from one direction to another, not a single moment being able to do what he had planned to do, and just watching the weeks go by and your taxes not getting done, right? And the I had a studio I wanted to set up my studio never got it done. Isn't it
Pastor Joe Liles:amazing? Like you imagine that you have eight weeks, and you're like, I can get so much done in it, squeezing a couple projects, and then you get to the end eight weeks, you're like, what happened? Yeah, like, all the same things that I had before, yeah, are still there, yeah, yeah. And
Unknown:that's why, when somebody said, Oh, you're back from vacation, and they said that word vacation in my blood boiled, because this is not a vacation. It is not so, yeah, we talked to Adam Lewis at some point, and we just, kind of, we stopped by the house to pick some something up. And he's like, oh, yeah, because he had, he got exactly two months too from State Farm, yeah, yeah. And he said I had plans. I was going to build the build out the shed behind my house, yeah, turned it into an apartment for family to come visit. He's been monitored every year, yeah, yeah. And I had two months and I said, this is this is my opportunity. You know what? He said, Yeah, didn't swing a hammer. Like nothing happens. There is no way. Yeah. I mean, like mom is busy 100% of the time, yeah, either trying to feed baby or trying to do the things that come before or after feeding the Yeah, right. Our babies struggle to eat, struggle to latch, which mean we were what they call triple feeding learning, okay, yeah, great. Means you try to breastfeed, and then you pump, and then you do the bottle, yeah? And the whole process takes two hours, and she had to do it every three hours. Yeah, correct. And so what else do we do? So Kara is literally all day long, every single minute sitting on the couch trying to either feed the baby or get ready to feed the baby, yeah, which means, literally everything else
Pastor Joe Liles:is is on you, is on me, yeah, yeah, you're moving. You're moving. I am moving. Everything else running, right? We
Unknown:went camping a couple of with that camping trip that we always do, and I loaded that whole truck and that whole trailer, and I drove the whole way, and then I unloaded that whole truck and that whole trailer, and then I unloaded it again. Yeah, I unloaded it again, yeah. And Carol was just watching me. She's like, I'm so sorry. I can't
Pastor Joe Liles:this is a different camping experience than we've ever I don't know
Unknown:very different. So, yeah, you know, we're getting used to it. I've never been, I've never been too crazy about babies. You know your baby guy, Joe Tom's a big baby guy, I
Pastor Joe Liles:wanted to, I was like, Kara, yeah, like, early on, Father only. Like, I wanted to be a father. So, I mean, really, it's the reason I drove an all nighter last night to get back to Kaylee's meet. Like, my desire and heart is to be the best father that I can be, and I wanted that from an early
Unknown:age. Yeah, well, I'd like to be a good father to talk about the infant stage. Yeah, I've been greatly encouraged by the the vast swaths of other men, yeah, who have told me that they didn't have any fun at all for the first couple years. Yeah,
Pastor Joe Liles:so I actually shared that for the first four months, like that post partum, little bit depression, like there's, there's a reality that I don't think men talk about. So one care amazing, right? There's such a side of this that men don't understand. I'm going to say that out loud, right? That that is existing where we want. Help want to be a part of, and we just don't understand that, and and you guys are in it, and so we love that and appreciate, like, that's so important. There is a side that I often talk to men about, right, when sharing about the life of an infant, right? I am one. Like, even wanting to be a father. I expected this interaction with my child, yeah, out of the gate, like, like, ready to go. I hold the baby. The baby looks I'm like, You're my dad. Like, you're my dad. This is amazing. Am I here? And I cannot even tell you how bad it got in the first four months for me, where I was like, the expectation I'd set for myself was so different from the experience I was having that I really felt lost way. And then I couldn't help in the way that I wanted to. I do the feedings, and I couldn't do this, like, even the things, I was like, Oh, this is going to connect me to my chat. Like, I wasn't involved, you know, and, like, and then I would stay up, then I would get in trouble for staying up at the same time she was up, because one of us needs sleep. And so then I would get in trouble for that. And and I was trying to help, but now I'm in trouble for helping. And, like, all these things are happening. I'm like, Oh my gosh, and I can remember to almost to the day, the first time that, like, Kaylee actually looked up at me, like, at four months. And this was four months I was in this looked up at me and was like, Oh, that's my dad's voice. And I kid you not. I remember the look, I remember the smile, I remember she keyed off, like my vocal Pat, like, all the things that I've been hoping for for four months, yeah. And then finally she looked, and I was like, Oh, we're in it, you know. And, and it's interesting to say that, because I just went and saw my new nephew, yeah, Ezekiel, right? And Ezekiel is also Zeke two months old. I mean, born within weeks of each other, yeah, yeah, they were. And so got baby time. But yeah, that baby, I mean, I would be talking that baby's just looking off at the world, nothing. This Uncle Joe, not a deal, right? Only mom,
Unknown:I will say, I always like to lead with the negative, but there's, there's always, you know, she's, she's a cutie bite, you know? Oh yes. And she's kind of adorable, yeah? And it's fun, you know, to kind of look, there's, there's some fun moments here and there, fleeting, yeah, yeah. But you know, she's alright. She just kind of chills. She was, I went to bed last night, finally, like, finished whatever, everything I needed to do. She was taking care of. Care was taken care of. It's midnight. Yeah, you have between midnight and eight, yeah, to sleep. This is my window, yeah, and I lay in bed, and there she goes again. She starts because she's flight, she's in her basket, and she's here right both arm, and she's sucking on that passive fire aggressively violently. I'm like, Oh, no. Two hours later, she had eaten two full meals, wow. So just out of nowhere, she decided to cluster feed and yeah, and Kara and I are the opposite, because Kara, like Kara, if she's tired, like a 10 or 11, yeah, she is gone. She's a zombie. She's completely gone. She is, you're talking about Kara. Kara, oh yeah, yeah, she, she's out. Yeah, on. I can, if I, if I'm up, I can pretty much stay up indefinitely. I can stay up till seven tomorrow, yeah, but if you wake me up, I'm useless. I cannot respond. I'm limp, yeah, you know. And Kara is the opposite. And so at midnight, when the baby starts going, I was like, Okay, this is me, because Kara is not if I try to talk to Kara, all she'll say is, you know, like a whale. This is such family life. I love it, yeah? So it's like, this one, this one's on me, so I guess it's gonna be a tired date today. Yeah, yeah. So here we are,
Pastor Joe Liles:and then 12 to two nailed it down, yep, nailed it down. Cluster feeding. Cluster
Roseann Bowlin:feeding. Okay, that's great. She's gonna grow Yeah,
Unknown:which we were wondering why she slept so much yesterday, and then she woke up and she ate so much. Yeah, that's gross, right?
Pastor Joe Liles:Yeah, growth, yeah. I got in trouble at my sister's house because I had, I had the baby while the baby was sleeping, which sleeping with the sleeping baby is one of my closest to heaven delights in life, because you cannot do anything else except be with that child without child asleep in your arms, and it sets well,
Unknown:you can roll over and suffocate. Wow, wow.
Pastor Joe Liles:That was a moment. That was a moment, yeah, yeah, I sleep in the chair. Yeah? Bobby, like that. Bobby, on the ball. And so this child is just sleeping in my arms, and I'm in heaven, right? And apparently they have a schedule. Brother, Joe, yeah, so take that in, like, secondly, I'm Uncle Joe. So when Uncle Joe comes, I'm the fun Uncle Joe. So like, schedule, like, I don't know, I come in for 10 hours. I was there for 10 hours. I'm coming in hot. And so they all looked at me. My parents were there because they're helping out right there. They're living over there right now for three or four months. And then Andrew's home, her husband, Heather's home, and I'm looking at it, and the baby's just sleeping, and it's wonderful. And they go, hey, the baby needs to wake up and feed. And I'm like, No, the baby, baby's sleeping. I was like, so the baby sleep? And they're like, No, we have a schedule, right? So they hand me the bottle. They've already prepared it. They hand it to me like they force me to have the bottle. And I'm like, Okay, and so, so I baby sleeping, and I put the bottle next to baby's mouth, and baby starts like, so can. Like, right, ready to go. And they're like, no, no, this needs to be awake feeding. And I'm like, but the baby's eating, and they're like, Oh, wow. I was like, What do you mean these be awake? Somebody read a book. Yeah. It's like, Baby needs to be awake. And I was like, I don't want the baby to be awake. My mom's like, you wake up that baby, right? Eight o'clock, I'm about to start a fight. Grandma. Yeah, I got grandma. I got grandma. So the baby woke up. The baby woke up, and then they thought, I couldn't get the onesie off. Like, they had a swaddle onesie on right? And, like, let us do it for you. And I'm like, Look, I've been around the block, and I was like, I'm gonna take i one handed that swaddle onesie like a champ. My mom looked at me, and she was like, it was really good. And I was like, one, I don't know if there's like, a really good for a swaddle onesie. Like, I don't know if that's a like, at some point I'm just going to unveil her and unzip things.
Unknown:You know, it's funny. Hope won't take a swaddle. No, she's like, if she's extremely tired, she'll accept it. Yeah, sleep. Most of the time. She won't accept it. She'll just, like, fight. Her arms are out and up, which is kind of funny, but also very frustrated, yeah, very frustrated. How do we do it? Yes, right. Yeah, that was like that too,
Roseann Bowlin:real thing. Oh yeah. She was fighting it, and she wanted out. Oh
Pastor Joe Liles:yeah, yeah, all right. So that was baby talk. That's the baby section. That's the baby so how are things right now? So, 10 pounds, 10 pounds, that's amazing. So doubled in weight, doubled in weight. Super healthy on Easter, adorable. She's super healthy. Slept through Easter. She sleeps through a lot. She sleeps through a lot. So we are rocking 160 B in here, and baby slept. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, we're
Unknown:definitely, we're not doing the schedule thing. We're doing the Wake window thing. Oh, that's great. So it's like, you just let the baby sleep, and when the baby wakes up, you know, you have a there's a clock, there's two hours, you gotta do the thing, and she's totally unpredictable. And so we don't, we don't know what we're doing, but yeah, hey, they're figuring it out.
Pastor Joe Liles:I'm not gonna lie. I'm gonna tell you I'm 15 years in right with kids in high school. Hey, that's the same statement. Like every day is a new day. Like I said today, we had to come in and do kind of a tighter podcast, because Landon shipped a tooth yesterday, and then Jess was like, Hey, cool schedule this. And I was like, Cool. My calendar was booked. And I was like, so I'm gonna have to change a lot in order to get that but, yeah, gotta go pick them up and get a tooth extract. Tooth extracted today, which was none of the plan as of Tuesday. So that's great. So that's life. Well, that's great question for you regarding worship, experience with a new baby in worship, should we provide little baby earmuffs for babies when they come into worship?
Unknown:I have no idea. My baby doesn't need anything. She's not, yeah, she was good. Yeah, she's fine. She was good. Hey, she's, you know, she's too young, I think, okay, too, yeah, to care too much where we'll see when she gets into toddlerhood, yeah? What? What it's going to be like?
Roseann Bowlin:We should call that to watch for that startle reflex, yeah, but, yeah. But what? I mean, it's worship. I
Pastor Joe Liles:think I want to call the toddlers in our church now, toddlerhood from now on, toddlers, toddlerhood in the neighborhood. Alright, I kind of like that. That's really alright. Hey, let's jump in a little bit and talk through our Easter but really the Holy Week. And the first thing I want to do is, if people are listening, I just want to shout out a huge thank you to all our volunteers. One can we say how incredible the volunteers are that help make this church go so many people were involved in Holy Week, because what people don't realize is they show up on Easter, but it's a whole week of experiences that take every single day in the life of the church and many weeks before that, right? So Palm Sunday involves one ordering of all the palms and getting everything ready. That's two months prior to anything that happens with Palm Sunday. And then in Roseanne, you were huge in helping out with that and sitting down and going over that our worship coordinators getting everything set up. We have Palm Sunday set up. So we have people in here on a Saturday laying all the palms, because you can't lay them early, because they get crunchy, right, and then the room kind of smells musty, right? So you lay them the day before, and it's beautiful. And we lay them everywhere in them everywhere in the church, uh, we had people building Easter crosses, right? Gary Dennis built the Easter cross for us, right? And then built it so we had pegboard inside it so we could place palms in the Easter cross on Palm Sunday, which ended up being beautiful. And I think we'll do every year from now on, because it was gorgeous learning experience. We did that also on Saturday, we put all the palms in the Easter cross. Beautiful. We had people helping. We came Palm Sunday morning, and all the palms had drooped on Saturday. Beautiful. It looked like this full expression of like, a Palm Sunday ground. We came in and all the palms like, oh, like, and so that was a moment. So we're going to do that on Sunday morning next year. That'll be the change. And then we have good Friday. Good Friday, we come and reset the whole space. We change all the chairs, we bring the altar out, we clear the whole stage. We set up candle stations all around the church, right for our ending in prayer. Well, prayer station, prayer stations with candles, with candles, that's a better way to say that. And and then we set all those up so that whole space is reset. And then Saturday, Sunday, Easter. Saturday, we reset the whole space again. This is involves 2030 people in addition to, like, the house band right, which practiced four or five times before Easter and before our dress rehearsal on the Saturday. Right. They were amazing. They were amazing. Loved Easter. Loved Easter. Um, incredible. And so they put in a ton of. There are 17 people in the house band. So that was, and that's in addition to the Good Friday band. That's addition to the Palm Sunday stuff that's going on. And we still had youth on Wednesday night. So like that, youth bands going on. So like all these things, life of the church still goes during this time. And then you had broadcast and media. We had, I think, 30 plus volunteers for worship that were greeting at the doors and helping out with fellowship, right, and setting up the space. And then kid city had nursery toddlers and a 1500 Egg Hunt back there, so they were setting up back there. So I just want to say huge thank you. On behalf of the leadership of the church, the staff of the church, as we sit here, right, knowing that our work is made possible by the volunteers, which are really incredible. We had a photographer in on Sunday. So I'm hoping that we captured a lot of the neat volunteers helping, right and do the and then we have all pictures. So we'll share out those pictures and make sure there's a place where you can kind of see the life of what was happening in the church and all the setup that went in. And if you haven't check your email, because we did a thank you to the volunteers in the weekly email too, with some extra pictures in there.
Unknown:So do you remember the photographer with the loud shutter? Oh, the ELCA photographer,
Pastor Joe Liles:he came up to me beforehand. It was like, Do you mind if I like, get close to worship? And I was like, Look, you have full freedom. And I was like, if you see something and you have a creative vision for it, please take it. What he didn't tell me is he has a loud shutter,
Unknown:which is a setting, but I guess he forgot, right? And
Pastor Joe Liles:then he went on the automatic shot so and you can hear it. Oh, worship. Oh so distracting, yeah? So we had Scott, Scott and Scott wood in this past, amazing, awesome. Yeah, church guy, but also, like pastors kids, so knows the life of the church. So we're going to be able to see a whole bunch of the life of what Easter was like, which is really incredible. So So yeah, so we talked on Easter a lot, just about our Easter experience. But what was your moment of worship? On Easter table, you attended Easter. You came as a family. On Easter Roseanne, you were here, right? Attending Easter, also, right, and helping out wherever, because you just jump in and help out, even though it was attending. What was your moment of what was your moment of worship on Easter? Just from sitting in and being present
Roseann Bowlin:on Easter? Mine what I and I don't want to take away from any discussion that we have, but mine truly was, Jesus is not here. He's already moving forward, yeah? So we need to follow him. Yeah, that's great. So that was, that was it for me. It was, you know, why are we looking in the tomb? Yeah, yes, he's already gone, yeah. But I also think about the people of that time and how they truly were crushed because their king had died a sinners death. So I think about that too, and how impacted they were by the resurrection.
Pastor Joe Liles:No, I mean, it's, it's really great, because I think something that hit me this year is what you just talked about, the positioning. The positioning of the cross outside of the city gates, right on a path right as you're walking in. Is this reality that, yeah, he was put out with the marginalized and the outcast, right? This was not a royalty, you know, moment. This was a crucifixion and it was gritty. Oh, yeah. Gritty is a great way to explain that, raw, gritty, right? Yeah, and, and so this resurrection reality is the hope from all that, right? But I love it, because we're still looking in the tomb, right, like all of us want to see where. And it was a very important that that first point of the message that you just made was the first point that I made on Sunday was we're looking for where Jesus was in our life. Like the women went back to see where Jesus had been laid, and they had already been there. They had gone back to prepare the spices and everything else for the burial. And so they had already seen Jesus in zoom. And we do that constantly, to go back to where Jesus was in our life, where we last experienced God, and we want that experience again. And I think the most important message we can hear is that, hey, he's not here. And I love what the angel said in the tomb. They said, Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Right? It's like, that's just a powerful statement, right? And I think we go back into our lives and constantly look for Jesus where we were in our life. And maybe that's a part that we've moved on from a past that we've kind of, we've died to ourselves already, yet we're trying to find that Jesus again, and so we need to move forward with Jesus and see that. So, yeah, that's great. That's great. That was a wonderful takeaway. What about you table attending as a new family? Attending as a new family?
Unknown:I think one lesson is that babies are very distracting. That's true. So it's, you know, shout out to whoever works at the nursery, because that's an invaluable work. It's huge to let people sit and participate in worship and focus, I think there's, there's, there's a moment of coming, coming together with your brothers and sisters in Christ, and with all these people you know and you know on a you know, varying. Degrees of death, I suppose, but, but, but that you know, with some quality to what their life is and to what they're going through and and you can see their story, yeah. And for many of these people, you can see where, knowing their story, you know where Jesus came in and where Jesus continues to come in to their lives, and to be able to to hug all these people on Sunday morning school and sing together He is risen, and all our hopes are fulfilled. Yeah? Is a really, really special moment, yeah, and it always is for me, this Easter was a little different for me, obviously. And he's typically, there's lint leading up, leading up to Easter. And typically, for Lent, I will do something, you know, sometimes something more involved, sometimes something just simple, depending on what the circumstances are. We're flexible, you know, yeah, we're not crazy. But this year, I told Kara, we're just having a baby. What is the one thing we got there's we don't have the brain space to even figure out what else to give up. We've already given up. We don't even know what we've given up, where we've given and but, but there's a there's something really, really special when you do that preparation work during Lent, because when I've done it in the past, you get to Easter, and the sensitivity that you feel to the spirit when you when you come together and worship and worshiping on Easter, it's something that's hard to describe and hard to replace, yeah, and so I missed it. Yeah, I missed it. It was my worship was, you know, he is risen and and everything's changed. But there was something of a memory past that I was hoping. Mm, I there's a geneseq that I'm that I'm that I'm missing here, yeah, you know. And so I guess that just speaks to the importance of prayer, you know, yeah, and having a life of prayer and and devotion, it just, it kind of clears the fog a little bit, right? You know? So, yeah, so, the So, so I guess that's kind of the picture I'll paint. Yeah,
Pastor Joe Liles:no, I love how you name that, though, because that was, I mean, that goes back to illustrate that first part that we're looking for Jesus, sometimes our relationship with God, mm hmm, in how we've experienced it, right? And those experiences are special. Those experiences are where we've felt God's presence, right? And so we yearn for that again, right? We yearn for this kind of moment when Jesus walked with us, yeah, we felt this special moment with God, and Easter became this reality, and then we realized that, like, Oh, our lives have changed, yeah, like, and our hope is like, Wait, will I not experience that again? You know? Like, there's almost this like, yeah, like, you can name it, like a missed opportunity, or like, there's this moment, like, I'm missing it. Is it not going to come back? Or does it change now, and I have to rediscover something entirely new, right? And maybe there's a season where it does come back, because in an interesting way, I sat out hearing Kaylee sing on Sunday, that's right, right? So, and she led the last song, and it was interesting, because we're now 15 years into the church, right? So imagine that, I think the church has been going for 14 years. We got here a year early, right? We knew we were playing in the church about a year before that. We got, actually to, like, northwest Arkansas so, and so we're starting this family, and everything else is happening. You know, Kaylee was born when we got here. She's Arkansas native, and so is Landon, and I'm sitting out here at the end of first service, and Kaylee's leading and for one of the first times in leading worship, she kind of just released, Mm, hmm, right? She, she moved, yeah, like she, she felt the spirit, and just went out to the different people, right? And, and I was watching this moment, and I was realizing that, you know, this church that I've planted with so many people like you said, you gather with all the people that you've done life and faith with. And I looked at and I was like, I've never considered in 15 years that this would be a church where other parts of my family would lead in, and that God isn't doing the work just in me, right? And maybe it was always intended, never about that, that there's another life of the church coming right, where, in a beautiful way. It's not me like and it's the other leaders raising up, right? And it's the other staff that are coming in, and it's other people leading, and we're seeing that in Tom hellmuch and the kid city leaders and the preschool now, right? And everything else. And I stood back, and I looked at Kaylee from a perspective of family, and I realized, like, oh my gosh, this is a moment where I'm worshiping with my daughter leading worship, you know? And, and it just stopped me, right? And I look over and Jess is teared up, right? And she's right, and we're just standing next to each other. And it's a moment like, look in his family going, oh, like word now in the presence of, like, being led by our family in a different way, right? And, and it was like this, almost like, proud parent moment, and the. Same time, it was like this very faithful, like, almost like, oh, we can rest into this now, like we can rest in this beautiful moment that God is doing a work here, in so many people, and really special moment, right for Jess and I. And then Jess tried to leave, and I said, you have to stay for two services so. And then she was like, ah. And then we became a church family again, right? So it
Roseann Bowlin:was beautiful. Though. You could see the Holy Spirit working through that song, through Kaylee in the entire space. Oh, and yeah, was amazing. And
Pastor Joe Liles:yeah, it was just beautiful. And here's the other part too. Is like, if I think about the neighborhood, these kids flooded out from their seats, right? Not prompted. They just flooded out from the seat and started dancing in the front, right? And, and I was like, Oh. I was like, this, this is who we are, like, unprompted. This is the life of the neighborhood church, right? And this is the life of how the spirit moves through this church. And, and you could see it. And I was like, okay, like, you know, just a beautiful moment to actually rest from all of the all of the strategy and all of the programming and all of the planning and the preparation, and then to realize that he's, I think he said, in a great way, he's risen like at at the end of it, all right, we live into the miracle that Jesus rose from the dead as a promise to make the kingdom real. And you just step back and you're like, the kingdom is so much bigger than anyone of us, anyone of us at all times. And so just a beautiful, beautiful Easter moment. But let's talk through Scripture. Let's kind of open up the word, dwell in the Word, and see what's going on and and talk through the Easter message a little bit. So we're going to be in Luke chapter 24 and we always like to take a little moment as we prepare our hearts for the word, just to take a breath pause, to slow down and just take in the word while we are on the podcast. And so Roseanne, if you'd like to start us off in Luke chapter 24 the resurrection of Jesus in verse one,
Roseann Bowlin:verse one, but on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb taking the spices that they had prepared, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly, two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.
Pastor Joe Liles:The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be handed over to the sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again? Then they remembered his words.
Unknown:And returning from the tomb, they told all this to the 11 and to all the rest. Now it was Mary, Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told this to the apostles. But these words seem to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in, he saw the linen closet by themselves. Then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Pastor Joe Liles:This is our gospel reading as David when I found joy, my verse ended right in the middle of a sentence, right? Uh, Verse eight says, Then they remembered his words. And that's verse nine, which got us into the canonization of Scripture and how this was written, and why did they cut it in the middle? Because there's always a point. I mean, that's in verse eight. Then they remembered his words,
Unknown:yeah. Why? Why would you cut the verse there? Yeah. So verse eight is then they remembered his words. So
Pastor Joe Liles:typically, when you cut a verse in the middle, it's because they're emphasizing two parts of that singular verse, right? And the the first part holds such presence that they it needs its own weight, right? In Scripture, then they remembered his words. Speaks of all the promises of the kingdom, that you will rise again. I must go to the cross and I must rise again. And it's actually this. It's almost like a break separating what's happened in the first part to what's happened in the second part. Right? The first part is this discovery that the tomb is empty, the angel saying this, we know these things are true. Them thinking it's not true, everything that's happening. And then the shift to, hey, this is what Jesus spoke. Right? Jesus spoke these words. And honestly, we talk about it every year, the disciples. So it talks about the apostles. Apostles are those who walked with Jesus, right? Who now walk after Jesus, but even in the same before the ascension, they're still kind of walking with Jesus, but it's a resurrected Lord. But we have this apostolic nature of now the disciples, where they hear the story from the women coming back from the tomb, and they still don't believe, right? We get to this place where they still don't believe, and they have to go see it for themselves. And so you have Peter running to the tomb. And I really broke down this first part of the message, which we've talked about in a little bit. But the he is not here. It is such an important part, because we look for Jesus where Jesus was in our life to experience that again. And yet Jesus is on the move. So I intentionally did not choose any other part of the scripture where they actually meet Jesus. The next is the walk to Emmaus, where the. Who have their eyes closed to seeing Jesus, walk with Jesus, and they finally see him, and then Jesus disappears. I love that. But if you see this, it's not about knowing that you're with Jesus, it's about trusting that God is still with you, right? That's why the walk to maze is so important. Once they recognize Jesus, Jesus is gone, right? There's no more of that. And so you have this reality where we really need to understand that Jesus has gone ahead of us, and is still going ahead of us, right? It's almost like Jesus now walked with us, is now drawing us to him, right, drawing us to where Jesus is at. And right now that's the kingdom. And so we continue to walk on that. And so I shared that first, that we continue to look for Jesus, where Jesus was in our life. And so I guess one of my questions would be, where have you look for Jesus before in your life like, where is that been? That profound experience? Because the women went back to the tomb, because that's where they last saw Jesus. They saw Jesus being placed by Joseph, who had asked for the body, received the body, went to the tomb and buried Jesus in ceremonial fashion, right, wrapped him in linen claws, and then the women went and saw where Jesus was. Knew he was in the tomb. The stone is put there, but they prepare the spices for the burial, right? And so they're waiting for this kind of three days before the body starts, and then they bury the body. So you have this moment where the women are going to experience where they last saw Jesus. They're going to experience where they know where Jesus is at, when has been a time in your life where, where you've sought to get back to a place where you last experienced Jesus or maybe a faith moment in your life.
Roseann Bowlin:I think it's important to note that they were going to prepare his body for burial, for final burial. It was done when he wasn't there, they had a paradigm shift. They had to, yeah, had to, and he was fulfilling prophecy. Fulfilled prophecy. So where do I find Jesus? Where do I look for Jesus? Where he has been? I think for me, it's in prayer like you did this for me. So do this again for me.
Pastor Joe Liles:Yep, say more about the prayer.
Roseann Bowlin:I knew you were going to say that. It's a prayer of expectation. I think I expect this to be fulfilled because it was fulfilled before. Mm, hmm, yep. And instead of like you said, move forward, yeah, ask for something beyond that, not, not like a genie in a bottle where, you know, God give me this, yeah, it's asking for peace or serenity, or whatever it is. Go beyond that. That's what I need to do. Go, go to where Jesus went. Yeah, where? Is Jesus now, rather than where he was? Yep.
Pastor Joe Liles:What about you? Tebow?
Unknown:I think, I think if I can try and, I guess, interpret where you're coming from a little bit, I'd imagine what you're talking about. When you're talking about going to where Jesus was, is is you're speaking into a sort of a spirit of stagnation, right? That can correct me if I'm wrong.
Pastor Joe Liles:No, I think you're right. It's a spirit of, I would say where Jesus was in your life. Is a spirit where you've experienced Jesus before, right?
Roseann Bowlin:That place of comfort,
Pastor Joe Liles:it could be, well, here's here's the part. It could be a place of comfort, it could be a place of tragedy, where Jesus and you felt God in your life, right? So it might not necessarily be stagnation, as much as it is. It's tied to an experience of, I had this happen in my life, but I felt the presence of God here, right? And so, and then tying that to the women of the tomb, this is tied to the crucifixion for them, right? But that's also tied to their ministry with Jesus. They walked with Jesus, right? They walked with Jesus to the cross. They they were present on this journey to the cross because they were present in Jesus's ministry. So they remembered, you know, they remember Lazarus, and they remember the feeding, and they remember the teachings, right? And they also remember the crucifixion, but they are going to the place where Jesus died, which means that they are in a space with Jesus, that Jesus has died. They're not in the resurrected Jesus yet, right? So they're living into this moment that has I'm with Jesus in a space that I've known Jesus before, right? And I think even in my life, I do that often too, where I go back to that moment where I've experienced God, right? Where I've experienced God. And if that sometimes it's like in quiet prayer at night, right? And I know that there's this, like 1130 hour, like to like 130 hour, where, if I go outside, and I sit out in these chairs that I have, and I look up at the stars, and it's peaceful and quiet, I've experienced God there before. So sometimes, when I feel lost or I feel like I need a moment with God, I'll recreate that experience. I'll. Go back to the place where I knew Jesus was before in my life. And I'll be like, well, if I found Jesus before here, I'm going to go back to there, right, instead of in this resurrected Jesus reality, believing that the promise is true and going ahead with that knowledge of the promise. So I think in the question of, where did you experience God before, it's do you go back to places where you have felt the tangible and real presence of God before in your life, seeking that same thing again.
Unknown:Well, I mean, I think if you sat in your chair outside, yeah, do you call it a chair when it's outside? Furniture, patio chair. Patio chair, there you go. Still, chair. Somehow, instinctively, I know the furniture names change depending on locations. But anyway, you sit in your patio chair and you look at the stars, and it's peaceful, and that for you, is a moment where you experience God, because it's a moment where you're opened up in prayer. Yeah, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't keep going back to that spot. There's, I don't I don't think like I think God is always calling it to growth, and so there's always going to be a challenge to growth. But at the same time, God is the same, yesterday, today and forever. And the truths of God are timeless and eternal. And if something is true once, it's true forever. And if it's true that you encounter God when you make room and space for God when you're in this watching the stars. Man, go watch the stars. You know, that's, I think that's, you should totally keep doing that. You know? I think if we, if we can draw something from it, is that there is, there is a next chapter, you know, in all of our lives that we are always being called for. And I think that is one big problem, if in that we can get to in church life is, I guess I'll use that word again, but a spirit of stagnation, where, where it is not assumed that growth is part and parcel of the Christian life. It is. And if there isn't growth, something is very seriously wrong, yeah, in your Christian life. And so growth needs to be happening, because something that's alive grows, yeah, something that's dead flows downstream, right? But something that's alive growth. And so it's one of those tests that you can, I suppose, make when you look at your own life and you study your own behaviors and where your relationships are. And you can, you know, obviously, we're not going to be perfect, but are you growing? And are you growing in faith, and then even asking the question, what does it mean to grow in your relationship with Christ? So I think, I think, yeah, I think there's always looking forward to what is the next layer of pretense and sin and deceit that I live in? Yeah, that God's calling me to shed, yeah, you know. And what is the actual, the next, actual, practical hands on work that God's calling me to do. And I think I mean something I harp on all the time to separate the internal from the external, yeah, is to try and create discombobulated human beings you cannot, like you cannot just say, Oh, I'm just a hands on practical Christian. I don't do this prayer stuff and Bible reading. That's, you know, I'm just more about, more about the mission. Yeah, my friend, what you are about is works. And this is, it's not going to work. It's not going to work for you. It's only it's i, if that's what your mindset is, I don't care. Like, because that happens on anywhere along the spectrum of our ideological and political leanings, right? You can be a very conservative or a very liberal workspace works righteousness person, and if that's where you're at, you're either gonna grow very moralistic and judgmental of people, or you're gonna grow very, very exhausted. And so on the other hand, you can't just say, all I do is pray and then, because then you're also going to feel holier than thou. You know, you're going to walk around thinking that you're you're just you pray more, you out, pray everybody else. But at one point the book of James needs to come into play. Your your prayer life. It just, it naturally should, yeah, work itself out in some kind of practical application of your life, and to separate those things, I think is, well, technically heresy, yeah, you know, if you know, if we're going to go all the way back to Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, that you know you can just work yourself to salvation anyway, yeah, technically heresy. So we cannot separate these things. Mm, hmm. And so there's growth in every, in every part of our lives that we're being called for. I hear you talking
Pastor Joe Liles:about spiritual disciplines, right? All the time, all the time, well, and that's what I hear too, right? Like stagnation or non. Nation, right? And going back to the things where we do find God, yes, those timeless truths, is kind of how you spoke about it, those timeless truths of, hey, scripture, reading, and the discipline of prayer, right? And the discipline of going into these different ways to experience God, those don't change, right, like, but you can't strengthen them. I mean that. That's why, when people need to get healthy, we go back into great I need to walk more often. I need to run. I need to work out. I need to eat healthier, right? Those are timeless truths. If you want to get healthier, there are ways to get healthier, like it across the board, you can go back to those, right? We can also understand that as we change like as new dead, getting healthy now looks entirely different, very the time that you had as a single person to go get healthy and go do all these things that looks entirely different, right?
Unknown:And then I didn't do it then, yeah. What do now? I don't know,
Pastor Joe Liles:but that's, that's the movement forward, right? I think as our lives change, we need to come back to God and say, Great. How do we experience God? Now, if I go back into the place where I was a in college and I was single, and I was sitting at that out bench looking up at the stars, yeah, I'm recreating experience where I experienced God, yeah, in its space where I was not in the same season a lot. Yeah, if I go back to that season, and I go back to that experience, thinking it's the same now I'm at a I'm at a loss. It's gonna be a new one. I'm gonna lost success. I have to embrace that experience as a father, as a church planner, as a staff person, as a all these different things that are happening, as a brother, as you know, the son, all these kind of I have to experience that entirely different now, and I have to go sit in that space, entirely different, yeah, but still treated as a discipline. Yeah, right, where I go back to it.
Unknown:I think, you know, as much as I talk about the spiritual disciplines, it's important awesome to also caution that they are we can start to get, I mean, we're so hopelessly given to works, language, you know, that we can just manufacture for ourselves the heart that God wants us to have, and and we can't. And I think that's the heart of the gospel. Well, one of the hearts of the gospel, the gospel has many hearts. Yeah, you can't. You can't fix yourself. You can't. You can't do it your heart. You cannot just by working. You can't. We can do all the spiritual disciplines in the world. You cannot change your own heart. The disciplines that we do, we do in response. And so I am always that passage in in Hebrews, is it Hebrews? I think so, where he says, if, if, today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. I think that's where I think that, like, it's always a response to a call that the gospel places on your life, yeah, and it's a natural outworking Well, if, if I hear His voice, and I don't harden my heart, What's tomorrow look like, and it should look like, I really want to pick up the Bible, and I just want to devour that thing. And I want to understand. I want to hear that voice again, because his voice is so delicious, yeah, you know. And so I want to hear it again. And where do you encounter God's voice, if not through Scripture? Yeah, you know. And not, not because you understand it all, not because it all makes sense, but because, as you dig, you start to discover the a universe, yeah, of as as many mysteries as there are answers, but through that, you'll start to look at yourself, and if, voila, your heart starts to change, yeah, you know? And it's like, I didn't do it, yeah? And it's not by works, yeah, it's just by God, right? But it is by faith somehow, and it's just sort of happening, and it kind of doesn't end either, but it doesn't, it doesn't matter that it doesn't end, because it's not something that I'm trying to accomplish, grasp, complete and check off and move on. It's now something it's a river I'm now going to float on for the rest of my life. Yeah, it is. It's a living organism. And ultimately, it's it's not like the sort of the Christian life, and the life of faith isn't just something about acquiring knowledge, just reading books. You can read all the you can read the Bible a million times and not be transformed. You know, we don't worship the Bible. You can also pray and do all sorts of penances and rosaries and all of those things and find nothing. Yeah, there's just something about the Spirit indwelling in you, and these things start to manifest themselves. And that's the only way answer to how Christianity even works in the first place, because the Spirit fell down. You know, we're in Easter season now, absolutely in I think seven Sundays Pentecost is coming. Yeah, that's the only explanation to the church. Even in this passage that we read today, it says, when they heard that Jesus had rose again, they thought it was idle tail. Yeah, right. Because, yeah, that's what it sounds like. And if you think about it for a second, you think that an invisible man died for your sin, like your mistakes, and then somehow your mistakes are written off because invisible man did that, an Invisible Man's going to come back. You can put it in a very crude term, Oh, yeah. And it sounds very ridiculous. Sounds vital. It sounds like idle tail, yeah. And, and what Paul says, though? He says, Greeks want wisdom. Jews want what is glory? I forget. Hebrews want something, yeah, but we preach Christ crucified, yeah? Which is foolishness? Yeah? To Gentiles, yeah. But to us, guess what it is? It's power, yeah? It's power because the Spirit has been poured out on us. And so the spirit comes down on the day of Pentecost, and everybody goes, Well, what we thought was idle tail, turns out, is the the thing that's transforming how we understand the world. From here on, Paul says, when he goes to somewhere, I don't, I forget. So one of the letters he says, When I he says, I didn't come to you with lofty intellectual presentation of the gospel, but I came with a demonstration of power. And so I think, yeah, there's, there's something in your heart that there, there is a response, there is a hearing, there is a looking for it, and there's a thirst. There is something that that you're you're going for, you're looking for. And in looking, you find without fully noticing that you're finding, but you only kind of understand it in retrospect. Yeah,
Pastor Joe Liles:you know, I lived off of Hebrews 11 one for years. Yeah, which was faith, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So you're talking about this vanishing, you know, this invisible man, right? Yeah, that's the reality of what's happening here, right? It's the assurance of things hoped for. Yeah, right, and we hoped, but there's an A blessed assurance now, right, like that. This is true, right? And then our conviction, right is, even though we don't see it, that we are convicted by it, right, and that we move with it. And I think that's the most important narrative. And how I kind of closed out the message on Easter Sunday was that everything that you're sharing right now, we cannot hold ourselves. If you have an amazing prayer life and you read Scripture every day and all you do is hold that in your own personal relationship with God, right? The Kingdom does not grow. Yep, it cannot grow because you're not sharing that experience of God with anyone but yourself, right? I think there's this dual reality of our experience with God, that we have this personal relationship and this, it's almost this inward expression and this outward expression, right, like and the inward expression is how we are filled. It is how we are sustained. It is how we are deepened with our relationship. It is how we go through life in order to take the next step. And the outward expression is validating the truth of God's word. Yeah, right. Saying that I am a walk I've called people a walking miracle before, because of how things have happened in life and how they were healed. And I said, you're literally a walking miracle. You are a testimony to a relationship with God on this earth. And if we don't share that with people, then we end in the space where the kingdom cannot grow.
Unknown:You're I think you're right. You can have some folks emphasizing that you need to love God, and some folks emphasizing that you need to love neighbor. And here to here again, be trying to make sure that we don't separate those things, yeah? Because I think the fact of the matter is they're both the same commandment, yeah, right. And the more you love God, the more you love neighbor, yeah. But one does not exist without the other, yeah. It
Roseann Bowlin:cannot. It cannot. And so now I want to change my answer. That's great. Now I'm just kidding, but I think that where people experience God like that, first aha moment, they want to keep doing that as Christians, and that's not always possible, because they're not in the same, like you said, stage of life, yeah, yep, and but they keep wanting it, you know, like I experienced God at 13, so I should be able to experience God that way at 23 or 33 and
Pastor Joe Liles:it doesn't now discerning why you experience God at 13 and discerning how you can experience God at 33 right? Or, that's beautiful, right? To go back and I'm like, wow, this is what led to me experiencing God. I might get close to that again, but I'm gonna have to experience God in a new way. That's an incredible discernment, and it should never be done alone, right? That's why it's so important to figure out how people have experienced God in their life. Because when I hear how you've experienced God and where you've met God, I'm like, Oh, wow, I didn't, I didn't think I could experience God in that way. And all of a sudden my heart has been open into other ways that I can experience God, right? When we experience God in any life scenario, right? And hear other people that have gotten through it and experience God in that time, you're like, oh, I can experience God in this because I feel God is absent, but you're telling me I can still experience God.
Unknown:You know, it's funny when Kara gave birth to hope, and her birth was somewhat dramatic, because she was induced, and it was, she ended up having a natural birth and we were, she was like, on the verge of saying, Okay, we need an epidural. It needs to happen now. But then the doctors like, well, you're kind of almost there now. And so it's like, no epidural. And then she went through the thing, yeah, it was extremely painful. It was extremely emotional, yeah, she it was extremely exhausting. She was, I mean, she her, she was, she had a sore throat for four days from. Is the amount of scraping, yeah, right, you know, we'll definitely have a, definitely very different strategy. And so we go through that, and it's an extremely intense experience that we have. And then we go to talk to some other people, and we have this, some this thing that we feel we can write a book about, and what we learn is uh, everyone does too, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. They have their we, they have Wilder experiences, right? You know, just sitting around and sharing birth stories with other women. Well, I'm not a woman, yeah, listening yeah to to birth stories. I was like, You What? What? What happened? Yeah, you know, like your baby was bigger than your body, yeah? You know, yeah. And then you did that, a couple of people were like that, like, the baby does not, cannot come out, yeah? So it's like, just crazy stories like that, yeah. And I think that's the same thing when you like, you have, when you first, like, start to experience God, you know, and there's that deposit of the Spirit in your heart that you feel. And it was like, man, something's changed in me, and you go through a season of intense, something like you need to figuring out what happened to you. And I kind of kind of settles a little bit down the road, and but it feels something, it feels like something that's so intense you could write a book about it, yeah. And then you go and meet somebody, and then you start to hear their story, and you're like, Wow, that's crazy how God met you, it is, and how, how you, how you lived through this. And it's incredible. What an incredible experience.
Pastor Joe Liles:So there you go, Easter Sunday, an incredible experience of God meeting us in a new way, right? And hearing how different people met God in that way and and then we travel forward. I think we're doing something really neat, uh, we're traveling forward, actually, in a really neat way, with how the disciples traveled forward and starting the early church. So we are getting to this Pentecost language. We are getting to this early church. And the next series is going to be truly about right, understanding the different years of the church. How did Sunday morning come to be? How did we end up here in 2025 on a Sunday morning, for an hour, right? Worshiping together. So we're going to go back to year 100 we're going to go back to year 1500 in the Reformation. We're going to go to 1990s mega church, multi site church, right? Kind of the media of church, right? That Advent and that nature 90 Sunday music. That's going to be an incredible Sunday. I'm looking forward to that. And then after that sacred Sunday, which is going to be our traditional Sunday. So, I mean, it's going to be el Ws, our Evangelical Lutheran worship book out the hymnals are going to be in the church. Acolytes, the whole deal. It's going to be amazing. Um, I actually think we're going to do communion in the little trays too, like the community, where you pick up and pick a tray, right? You come on. That maybe look like a kneeler up here, which I
Unknown:think would be really people, so long as everybody's not drinking out of the same car.
Pastor Joe Liles:This is true. Yeah, that. Well, man, that's a common cup. They just call it common sick. No thanks. That's what that is. So, so really great series. We're calling it church shopping all the years of the church right as we go through. So that'll be coming up next, and a lot of great thing is then Tom Helmut ordination. So Tom Helmut can coordinate in May 21 so really be good right before graduation Sunday. So that is the life of the church coming up the next couple weeks. And the TNC podcast and all God's
Unknown:people said, I want 234-793-6722,
Pastor Joe Liles:85, neighborhood
Unknown:church,
Pastor Joe Liles:that's great. Table. You forgot the number, alright, no
Unknown:one uses all the
Pastor Joe Liles:time now, all the time. Now, all the time. How many calls you get today? 15. Yeah, a couple. A couple. Alright. Jesus loves you. You.
