MarsCast

In the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Does that make our forgiving others the condition of God’s forgiving us? In Part 2 of our series on repentance and forgiveness, Dr. J. Mark Beach examines the question with Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the parable of the unmerciful servant. Dr. Beach shows why the Reformers refused to...

What if the way you were taught to forgive undermines the way you’re told to trust God? Many of us grew up hearing that God forgives only those who repent, so we should forgive that way too. It sounds biblical enough. But what happens to our assurance when we sin in ways we never notice? In Part 1 of a three-part series, Dr. J. Mark Beach joins Jared to challenge the “transactional” view of forgiv...

Don’t think that you need to take the first pastoral call that comes along. Don’t wait for a perfect one, either. Somewhere between paralysis and presumption is a faithful way to decide, and most men facing a call have no map for finding it. In part two of our series on the pastoral call, Dr. Paul Ipema explains how an internal desire and an external open door work together, why an inquiry deserve...

Reformed churches are facing more pastoral vacancies than at any point in Dr. Paul Ipema’s lifetime, and the elders left to fill them are rarely trained for the work. Send a letter of inquiry today, and perhaps one pastor in ten will even consider a call. So how does a search committee avoid both the three-year drift and the six-month mismatch? In part one of this two-part series, Dr. Ipema, who d...

Why would the apostle who calls marriage a living picture of Christ and the church also tell some people not to marry? In the final episode of our Christ and culture series, Dr. Marcus Mininger takes up 1 Corinthians 7 and a claim that rarely makes it into church life: good things can still be the wrong things to build your life around. He moves from Paul’s logic to the questions it raises about d...

In part two of this series on Christ and culture, Dr. Marcus Mininger dives into Paul's stunning move in Ephesians 5 — quoting Genesis 2's account of marriage, then declaring, "I am speaking of Christ and the church." Mininger unpacks what it means for marriage to be Christocentric by design , not just illustrated by Christ but built from the ground up to point toward him, and wh...

Can your job as a plumber, your Monday to Friday at the office, or your Saturday grocery run be an act of worship, or is "Christian living" really just a Sunday thing? In this opening episode of a three-part series, Dr. Marcus Mininger unpacks two impulses every believer feels but rarely reconciles: the belief that Christ changes everything , and the assurance that even if we lose everyt...

Two of biblical counseling's most influential leaders died within a year of each other (Adams and Powlison), and the movement has been fracturing ever since. In this series finale, Dr. Jared Poulton joins Jared and Dr. Alan Strange to bring the story into the present: the growing rift between "clinically informed" and "historic" biblical counseling, the theological debates...

Every biblical counselor assumes their approach comes straight from Scripture alone, but what if the underlying architecture came from an apologist rather than a counselor? In this third episode of our MarsCast series on biblical counseling, Dr. Jared Poulton joins Jared and Dr. Alan Strange to reveal the hidden intellectual DNA of the biblical counseling movement: how Cornelius Van Til's pres...

He was a pastor with a PhD in speech, no formal training in counseling, and a class he never wanted to teach, so how did Jay Adams end up rewriting the rules for how the church cares for hurting people? In this second episode, Dr. Jared Poulton returns with Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. Alan Strange to tell the origin story behind the man behind biblical counseling: a reluctant professor at Westminster...

What happens when the church stops trusting herself to help her own people—and hands the job to the therapist's couch instead? In the 1970s, one pastor's book sold a quarter of a million copies by daring to say pastors and elders were still competent to counsel their flocks from Scripture alone. In this first episode of a four-part series, Dr. Jared Poulton joins Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. A...

For much of the 20th century, many academic theologians operated on the assumption that Calvin's successors (Beza, the Westminster Divines, the scholastic tradition) had in some ways betrayed him and traded a warm, Christ-centered theology for cold, rationalistic system-building. Then Richard Muller spent decades in the primary sources and found the picture was substantially wrong. In this fin...

Every faction in today's church-and-state wars has a Calvin: the Christian nationalist Calvin, the two-kingdoms Calvin, the theonomist Calvin. But what if they're all working with a myth? The real Calvin was a French immigrant with no voting rights, frequently at odds with Geneva's city council, and ultimately exiled from the city. In this episode, host Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. Venema...

In 1553, Michael Servetus was executed in Geneva, and John Calvin approved. It's the charge that haunts every defense of Calvinism, and also the story that gets reduced to a tweet and weaponized in every online argument about it. But what actually happened? In this episode of MarsCast, host Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. Cornelis Venema resist the easy verdicts, neither whitewashing nor weaponizing,...

MarsCast is back, and we're returning from our July hiatus with an episode worth the wait. Everyone's got a Calvin quote ready to fire, but whose Calvin are they quoting? The Calvinist Calvin? The internet-meme Calvin? The cold, predestination-obsessed villain who invented a God without compassion? Dr. Cornelis Venema, President Emeritus at Mid-America Reformed Seminary and one of the most...

What happens when Christians forget that grace, not merit, is the foundation of election? In this concluding conversation with Dr. Alan Strange, we move from theology to public life and explore how the doctrine of election dismantles pride, reshapes political engagement, and calls believers to a posture of humility. As debates over nationalism, identity, and power continue to intensify, Dr. Strang...

Israel wasn't chosen because it was great. God said so himself. In this episode of MarsCast, Jared Luttjeboer and Dr. Alan Strange open Deuteronomy 7 and discuss how divine election has never been about merit, national greatness, or cultural superiority. So what does that mean for Christians today who are tempted to baptize political power with the language of chosenness? The answer, Dr. Stran...

A short clip. A blunt question. And apparently, more than a few people had thoughts about it. When Dr. Alan Strange asked his evening class whether anyone really believes some nations or ethnic groups are superior to others, the clip made the rounds, and the comment sections lit up. In this episode of MarsCast, we slow the moment down as Dr. Strange walks through what Paul was actually doing at th...

Paul didn't write Romans because he had a lot to say; he wrote it because he needed a church ready to send him to Spain. That single missionary ambition is what holds the most theologically dense letter in the New Testament together, and it exposes one of the deepest fault lines in the church today: the split between doctrinal seriousness and genuine concern for the lost. In this final convers...

Why is Romans so long? Paul wasn't writing a theology textbook; he was trying to recruit a missionary partner, and the Roman church wasn't ready. In this episode, host Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. Marcus Mininger to unpack the three concrete obstacles standing between Paul and an effective mission to Spain: a church that had only heard caricatures of his gospel, a Jewish-Gentile rif...

Everyone knows Romans for justification by faith, but what if that's only part of the story? In this episode, host Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. Marcus Mininger to explore the provocative thesis that Paul's letter to the Romans is, at its core, a missionary fundraising document aimed at getting the Roman church to bankroll a mission to Spain. Drawing on nearly a decade of renewed sch...

The hardest person for an elder to pastor is himself. In this final episode of our series on pastoral leadership, Dr. J. Mark Beach doesn't let elders off the hook. He looks at the unchecked bad habits of the heart, the hidden sins that hollow out a shepherd's credibility, and the gap between what they confront in others and what they tolerate in themselves. He's candid about what that...

Some elders think the job is the meeting. They show up, they vote, and then they adjourn. Dr. J. Mark Beach disagrees. In this episode of MarsCast, Beach unpacks why the real work of eldership happens in coffee shops, hospital rooms, and living rooms, not the consistory room, and why elders who get the polity right but miss the gospel are practicing something other than Christianity. Drawing on Je...

What happens when a church treats its pastor like a contractor who's hired to perform, expected to comply, and fired when inconvenient? In this episode, Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. J. Mark Beach to expose the "hired help" mentality quietly shaping too many Reformed congregations. They contrast the transactional model of pastoral ministry — where the pastor answers to the peop...

What if the way your church thinks about pastoral leadership is quietly undermining it? In this first episode of a four-part series, host Jared Luttjeboer sits down with Dr. J. Mark Beach to examine what Scripture actually demands of a pastor: not a facilitator, not a talking head, not a carefully managed voice on the periphery, but a shepherd who leads. Drawing on Peter's jarring confrontation in...