Amity Podcast with Jono & Lauren

We're going to delve into our Christian testimonies and our trajectories of doctrine and life as believers. In this first episode, Lauren talks through her childhood up through her first year at Bible College. This is a mix of personal story and how struggles with sin and lack of assurance played a role as growing up. You'll hear bits of specific doctrines mentioned, but over the next several epis...

We're discussing the fifth message in our Gospel Culture series from Ephesians 4:25 and 29, and it's all about speech. While there's nothing particularly new in what we're talking about, these issues of the heart and tongue are truly some of the most prominent in our daily lives as Christians. And so, reminders are always helpful!  Catch up on the sermon here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p...

Buckle up folks, it's a long ride! We knew this episode might get away from us a bit, there was just so much to cover. You may find it helpful to take a break or two or if an hour-length episode doesn't intimidate you, grab a coffee and settle in. In this episode we look at two contrasting ways of approaching doctrine and Christian living; pietism (or pietistic evangelicalism) and Confessionalism....

We continue on in our Gospel Culture sermon series at Christ Sanctuary. This week Jono preached on two sections from Romans; Romans 12:10 and Romans 15:7 on the topics of Welcome and Honour.  In this sermon look back we're trying something a little different and spend less time recapping the sermon, and a little more time on application or some things that didn't quite make it into the sermon...

Well folks, we're going THERE. And by "there" we mean, parenting . This was a requested topic that we were at first reluctant to talk about because... we're not experts and every family is different!  So as we once again sit down at our kitchen table for a chat, we seek to share some big-picture principles for how we parent and set family culture. There's very little how-to or actual applicat...

*A fun extra episode* We've gotten a couple questions about how/why we made the decision a year and a half ago to move out of town and get a "lifestyle block" or little "homestead." This is just a little chat on the process of buying our property, how we wrestled through some of the pushback, and what we enjoy about living the rural lifestyle (the animals!) If you like pictures of animals, scenic...

We put Jono a little out of his comfort zone and ask him to tell his story of hearing loss from childhood. If you know Jono as an adult you might not realize the extent of his deafness, or know the full story. So have a listen and hear him discuss what happened and how it shaped his childhood and his adult life, his attitude about it all, and his perspective about it as a Christian. 

As Ray Ortlund has said, Gospel + Safety + Time is the way forward for Gospel Community. We talk through Jono's sermon from 1 John 1:1-9, continuing on in the Gospel Culture series. There is so much we could say on this topic, but in this episode we touch on some of the reasons why we as believers might hide in darkness, what makes the church safe for sinners, and how actually saying the words out...

It's Jono's turn to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly...pieces of advice that is! Our conversation journeys through talks of pastoral platform building, common sense lessons when you want to learn something new, and then a more personal delve into one of the hardest decisions he's ever made. Once again, it's ministry and marriage; two of our very favourite topics to talk through together!

Jono began a new sermon series at Christ Sanctuary, and started it off with a sermon on Gospel Centrality. So in this episode we discuss his 3 main points: The gospel is historical, the gospel is covenantal, and the gospel is cosmic. Our minds get a little blown since this is a topic you could discuss without end!    LIsten to the sermon here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjD7ZsMeqHs  If you hav...

On this episode we talk about a piece of bad advice, which provides a jumping off point for our conversation about ministry and marriage. Then we talk about the good advice and how its shaped our view of friendship and mentorship. And next week week we'll talk though some bad advice + good advice that Jono has received.  Some reccs mentioned in the episode:  Christine Hoover's "By Faith"...

We look back to Jono's sermon on a very familiar text, Psalm 23. As we talk about the pastoral imagery in this psalm, we thought we'd just enhance that by adding in sounds of roosters and birds throughout. This is what happens when we record in the middle of the day! As we worked through Jono's sermon, we mostly focused on the Christo-centric nature of the psalm, and Jono walked us through how he...

Wrapping up our 2-part little interview with the last 5 Qs... Things you might want to know about your pastor but maybe haven't asked. Some of the topics in this episode have us getting quite vulnerable and the conversation was cathartic in a way. But we hope our thankfulness for our church family and the Lords work in her midst shines though. There's no place we'd rather be!

This is part 1 of our time together going through questions inspired by the blog post here http://www.tom-talks.org/blog/2018/12/5/ten-questions-you-want-to-know-but-may-be-afraid-to-ask-your-pastor We enjoyed working through these questions and hope it helps you get to know us a little better, especially in the context of ministry. While we do have a circle of people in our lives who know the ans...

We did it! We kept this episode short AND we finished the Sermon on the Mount! We discuss Jono's sermon from Matthew 7:24-29 and then do a little recap of our takeaways from the series through the SOTM (and inadvertently have nearly the answers).  You can watch the sermon here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcWYPrcCnOA Podcasts mentioned: https://kaisis.buzzsprout.com/ and http://theologygals.com...

In this episode, we (mostly Jono) discuss our church's recent decision to change the Statement of Faith. Yes, this was a requested episode!  Jono explains what the change was, and then we talk about the pastoral, missional, doctrinal and personal reasons this change was made. While these podcast episodes are largely informal, there were years of study, prayer and discussion before this decisi...

We look back on this past Sunday's sermon from Matthew 7:15-23.  This is a sobering and heavy topic, and we get a bit worked up as we talk about wolves, false teaching, and predators within the church.  We touch on the horrific details that have come out of the investigations into the late Ravi Zacharias' life and ministry, and though we went longer than we'd planned, we hope you can wre...

Jono and Lauren discuss one of the latest books Jono has finished; "Faithful Doubt: Habbakuk" by pastor Travis Scott from White Blackbird publishing.  -A thorough and helpful book review from Timothy Padgett https://breakpoint.org/faithful-doubt-a-book-reflection/ -Check out the book: https://www.storied.pub/books/faithful-doubt -Another article on the topic of faith and doubt from Laura Wifler ht...

We begin our weekly mini-series called 'Sermon Look Back' where we take the time to talk through some of the previous week's sermon. This gives Jono the opportunity to deep dive into some points that maybe he didn't get to cover as much as he would've liked, or discuss some questions/objections. Here we look back on the sermon entitled "Enter by the Narrow Gate" from Matthew 7:13-14 You may here s...

**EDIT: this first episode is a bit of a car crash, if car crashes could be awkward and not know what they're doing. Maybe start with episode 2 or 3** We take the plunge and finally start a podcast! We've been talking about doing this for over a year, and here we are...2021, the year of the podcast! We start off light-hearted and a little awkward, go through some ice breaker questions and then get...