SHAREapy. The Podcast

Allow me to reintroduce myself…. My name is Joel. Joel David Barnes, first of his name. I want to reintroduce myself because it’s time. It’s time for me to explain what the future of my life will be. My mission in life. My purpose in life. I’m a pastor. And I wasn’t made a pastor in the traditional way. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t get chosen by anybody. Well, not anybody human, at least. In 20...

It’s almost one o’clock in the morning, and I’m sitting here simply in awe of what we get to bring into the world. If you listened to my last brain dump... testimony... whatever we’re calling these things... you heard a little bit of the origin story behind why spiritual gifts matter so much to me. Why being clear about your spiritual gifts... or at the very least becoming more informed about the...

This is what it looks like to be physically on E while spiritually bursting at the seams. It’s not a flattering video, but it is an honest capture of an important moment in my ministry life. As much as I enjoy polishing a well-crafted written piece, I believe there is tremendous power in the raw, unfiltered testimony of someone simply in awe of what God is doing. That’s what this audio and video c...

Share. A Piece: Before You Call It a Spiritual Gift Clearing up the confusion before we try to identify it We’ve spent the first two pieces in this series slowing down. First, we asked: What are spiritual gifts actually for? Then we asked: How might the people around us help us recognize what God is already doing through us? And I think before we move into actually identifying our spiritual gifts,...

Share. A Piece: Maybe Your Spiritual Gift Is Easier for Everyone Else to See Discerning What Others May Already See in You. In the last Share. A Piece, I asked a question that I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about: Who gets stronger when you show up? I was talking about spiritual gifts and the idea that maybe the first question we should ask isn’t, “What gift did God give me?” Maybe it...

We are consuming more Christian content than probably any generation before us. Sermons. Clips. Podcasts. Reels. Devotionals. YouTube. TikTok theologians. Pastors we know. Pastors we’ve never met. People with microphones, platforms, Bible verses in their bios, and an opinion about almost everything. And I don’t necessarily think access to all of that is bad. There is some incredible teaching avail...

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about spiritual gifts. Partly because we’re beginning to explore them in my 2:42 discipleship group, and partly because I think a lot of us have been taught to approach spiritual gifts by immediately asking one question: What’s mine? What is my gift? Am I a teacher? An encourager? A leader? Do I have mercy? Faith? Discernment? Administration? And li...

Wanna know why my faith is strong? First of all, it is unmistakable to me that God has given me the gift of faith as something He wants me to share. I can tell you for certain that there’s a supernatural gift…and responsibility…on my life regarding faith. There’s a whole rabbit hole I could go down there, and I will be doing a deeper dive into spiritual gifts in the next couple weeks. Today, thoug...

The 2:42 Report July 2026 A monthly praise report celebrating what God is doing through Scripture, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. July marked the beginning of something deeply meaningful. On July 6, the 2:42 Discipleship Community officially gathered for the first time. Since then, we have met consistently, opened God’s Word, shared honestly, eaten well, prayed for one another, and grown...

Today is my birthday. Forty-eight years young. Birthdays have become one of my favorite spiritual disciplines because they force me to pause and reflect. Reflection is one of my secret weapons. It invites God into the story. It allows me to look back and ask questions I don’t usually ask in the middle of the journey. Where have You brought me from? What have You carried me through? What have You b...

The danger is not simply that artificial intelligence may be wrong. The danger is that we may become so accustomed to immediate answers that we lose our ability to seek God, endure uncertainty and grow in the tension of waiting. Let me begin with the necessary disclaimer. I use artificial intelligence. I find it fascinating. I believe it can be helpful. I believe it will become even more useful as...

One Person at a Time I make content for one person at a time. I have always written my pieces for one person at a time. I’ve always cared for the one person who “needed to hear that” when I communicate. Some might say that I’m not thinking big enough, or that what I do isn’t scalable enough to be 10x’d or mass-produced. But to me, as one individual person, what does it matter if the message is 10x...

I can distinctly remember walking into my grandfather’s house as a kid and smelling his Italian gravy, as he would call it. That smell wafting through the house as we walked in the front door, through the front room, and into his kitchen off to the left. It was easy to track down the source of the smell... spaghetti sauce that had been going since 5 a.m. We would get there at two, after church. We...

The Spiritual Difference Between Peace and Pettiness If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know that I see God in the IMPOSSIBLE. I’m a huge nerd and numbers guy so if I pick up on something that is a mathematically impossibly good thing, I try to give the credit STRAIGHT to God. But something happened yesterday that was interesting. I built up the courage and battled a bit of angst to text s...

I just want to share something that I thought was the result of years now of contemplating and thinking through, and wondering, like, God, what do we do with this? And it has to do with the fact that we get so much information at such a rapid pace. There’s so much content. There’s a need for a creator, a content creator, to create content in order to capitalize on clicks and views and the whole ni...

Substack—what’s up, guys? Seems like maybe a long time since I’ve done something specifically for Substack, but the reality is God has had me creating in so many ways lately. He’s had me contemplating, writing shorts, recording short videos, and telling a lot of the story of my past season—some of the stuff that you guys know already—and sort of recapping that, capturing some of that, capturing so...

I believe the evil one himself has draped a veil of confusion and deceit over the eyes of every American. Maybe you feel it too. Because somewhere along the way, we stopped assuming we were hearing the truth. From the press room to the pulpit. From headlines to hashtags. From platforms to podiums. We have learned to sift through noise instead of trust what we see and hear. And now we are left with...

One Year Ago I gave Up Isolation For Lent One year ago today, I gave up isolation for Lent. I’m going to tell you about how that changed my life. In order to make sense of the concept of “giving up isolation”, I need to give you a quick summary of my previous season and to understand my previous season, you have to understand a bit about me. For the majority of my life, I thought I was an extrover...

I wanna tell you guys a story today. The story of the love of my life. To accurately tell the story, I have to give you a bit of a recap as to how we got here in the first place. On June 11, 2007, Hannah Marie Barnes was born. Her mother and I had a 2 1/2 year relationship but had decided to coparent this new life. I had no idea how difficult yet exactly right, that decision was going to be. I nev...

On November 26th, 2025, At 3:15am I thought I started having a heart attack. I was completely knocked out asleep and I felt something happen in my chest that I can only compare to the feeling of a butterfly the size of a frisbee fully contracting its wings once violently and then maintaining an unbelievable pace from that moment forward. I was dazed and confused and terrified. Hannah’s here. Don’t...

In this SHAREapy reflection, Joel shares an unscripted moment inspired by a late-night conversation about listening—both to people and to God. He explores what it really means to hear from the Holy Spirit , explaining how God’s voice always aligns with Scripture and bears the fruit of love, peace, and self-control. Through practical examples, like catching negative self-talk and shifting thought p...

(You can watch this message on Youtube HERE )We believe that if you teach people to share their blessings and their bruises, to connect with love and empathy, we can eradicate isolation in the world. We believe this not because we just woke up and thought of a good mission statement. I’ve been praying over this ministry since before it had anything. Before we had a logo. The only thing that God ha...

The Pressure to Report (You can watch this video on our YouTube page HERE ) I feel like I’m supposed to come on here and talk to you all about the pressure that we’re feeling in the world to report everything. I feel like this has been coming up a lot in my personal life. And while I may not feel the same pressure to report my feelings and all the things that are going on in the world, I know that...

In this episode of the SHAREapy Pod, the SHARErs discuss their three-month journey of intentional connection and personal growth. Ayo, a software engineer and combat sports enthusiast, shares his motivation for meeting every other week, emphasizing the importance of deep, spiritual conversations. The Joel and Ayo reflect on the benefits of vulnerability and mutual support, highlighting a recent in...

Below is the written transcript of a message I did for the “Be Still” Gathering, in Chicago, September 2025. If you want to watch the full video, click here , or your can listen here in the Substack browser, or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts (search “SHAREapy. The Podcast). It was an honor to be invited write a message for this gathering and we are excited to continue to support Monica in her women’...