Freely Given

In this episode Gretchen Ronnevik talks with Amy Mantravadi about the monastic life, and in particular, the nunnery of Katharina Von Bora, before she escaped and married Martin Luther. They talk about the Cistercian nuns, their cloistered life, and the situation they were in that was ripe for abuse. With a calloric intake of about 1,000 calories a day, and a sleep deprived schedule, being thin and...

While Katie finishes up some family stuff, Gretchen invites on Amy Mantravadi to talk about writing about the reformation. They talk about character studies of Luther, Erasmus, Melanchthon, and of course Katie Luther. Amy has written 2 novels about these characters, and has an obsession with church history. They talk about the bondage of the will, the broken bonds in relationships from the Reforma...

Katie Koplin is busy with a big family move and finishing up this year of grad school, so Gretchen Ronnevik invited on one of the young women she mentors, Gretchen Larson, to talk about what it's like to be a young, single adult in the church, what they need from the church, and how to foster intergenerational relationships. Gretchen Larson is a chef at a Bible camp, finishing up her studies on th...

In the last episode, we talked about the tradwife movement. In this episode we move on to talk about what a homemaker actually is.  Citing Edith Schaefer's book on the Hidden Art of Homemaking, we talk about the vocation of reminding people of their humanity, and their need for food and rest. We talk about all the various things that make us human. CS Lewis writes about how the easiest way to sin...

What's the difference between a stay at home mom and a Tradwife? In this episode Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin, 2 women who have been stay at home moms, talk about the Tradwife movement, and all it contains. The easiest place to begin this conversation is from the male counterpart, or the Alpha Male mindset, to see the female counterpart to the joint movement. They talk about what this moveme...

Co-host, Katie Koplin has curated a gospel central devotional for moms, and it's coming out this next Tuesday. We talk about how she chose the various contributors, and the themes that arose as the submissions started to come in. Learning our limitedness as mothers was one of the major themes, and how to hold hope and hard in the same room. We talk about the hard and good together, and how sometim...

We have back on our dear friend, Sarah Crowder, as she talks about her contribution to the upcoming devotional "Encouragent to Motherhood." In her writing, she shares about her kids one by one, being diganosed with type 1 diabetes, and mothering in hospital rooms, where death is near. She talks about the looming of the law when health issuses are life and death. As humans, we have what she calls a...

This week we are interviewing our friend, Pastor Brad Gray about his book He's one of the special Baptists who publish articles and books with 1517. We talk about preaching the gospel, free from manipulation, and the hope for those who are discouraged. We ask him big questions about his book: Finding God in the Darkness. We talk about our faith in the midst of suffering, questioning God, and what'...

This month's bonus episode we discuss the book "The Spirituality of the Cross" by Gene Veith. This is a great book to read during Lent, as is looks at the centrality of the cross in our spiritual life. Katie Koplin and Gretchen Ronnevik focus their discussion on the beginning of the book, where he talks about morality based spirituality, speculative based spirituality, and mysical spirituality, an...

In this episode, Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin talk about the impact of story on our theological understanding, and the use of story in the life of Christians. Using the starting point of Psalm 107:2, we discuss how God works through story, and the baseline of him expressing himself through The Word, and ponder how deep that concept goes. The work of story connects the abstract to the concret...

Jane Grizzle is one of the contributors to the upcoming devotional edited by Katie Koplin: " Encouragement for Motherhood. " Jane wrote about motherhood in the context of having a diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She is also currently working on her doctorate in ministry. Her contribution to the devotional talks about what it is to parent through limitedness. We talk about the reality o...

Is Valentine's Day a Hallmark Holiday? We sit down with Dr. Dan van Voorhis from "Christian History Almanac" and ask him about the history of St. Valentine's Day from a church history perspective. He shares with us 3 different historic people named "Valentine" in the 200s, when Christianity was illegal in Rome. He shares how the first valentine letter on the record was one of condolances, not roma...

This is part 2 of our conversation on no-contact relationships, and looking at how various relationships of Jacob's are reconciled, and the spectrum of what that looks like. Regardless of how reconciliation happens, it never goes back to the way it used to be. A new relationship with new boundaries are formed.  We share the episode of "The Office" when Michael hits Meredith with his car, brings ev...

Is it okay for Christians to cut off contact with someone? Is it okay to cut off contact with family members? What about forgiveness? In this episode Gretchen and Katie talk about the new term "no contact" that is replacing the traditional term of estrangement, and looking at various ways healing looks, and forgiveness playing out in person to person relationships. This continues on our series on...

In this month's extra book club episode, we are discussing Brené Brown's book: "Dare to Lead." We talk about mixing secular and Biblical sources and the right and wrong way to do that. We talk about her definitions of vulnerability, and when and where it's appropriate to be vulnerable. When she presented this information in as she presented it to various armed forces, she explains how any act of c...

We are back with author Sarah Hinlicky Wilson to talk about her kickstarter book on the Transfiguration.  We talk about the parallel of Jesus' baptism, and the transfiguration, and how God the Father speaks in both situations. We talk on the play on words with the Greek of booths/tents/tabernacle, and what Jesus was also showing them about himself during this Transfiguration. The line is drawn bet...

We are having author Sarah Hinlicky Wilson on this episode about her new book "7 Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration." She is also the author of the fiction book we read for our book club, "A-Tumblin' Down." She talks about theories of the Transfiguration, and why people think Moses and Elijah were on top of that mountain with Jesus. The talks about different accounts of the Transfiguration of...

Gretchen and Katie are back at recording and they talk about where they've been, and what they learned. They talked about faux-grace that's really just people pleasing. They talk about learning to be graded and the return to school. They talk about grief, kids, joy, and their "word for 2024" as they look ahead. We talk about purpose and beauty of stories, the upcoming books for our book club, and...

This month, we discuss the book "The Soul of Shame" by Dr. Curt Thompson. It was a really fun conversation, and Katie called it her top read of the year. Both Katie and Gretchen loved this book, mostly because it talks about a lot of guilt, shame, forgiveness, and vocation plays out through a counseling lens. While the author does have a Christian lens and brings in the Bible, he does limit his ex...

This is a special crossover episode with Kelsi Klembara from the podcast: " Outside Ourselves. " Kelsi is also the online content manager for 1517 and mother to 3 kids. She holds an MA in Reformational Theology from Concordia University Irvine. We talk about the Advent season, and the three parts of Christ coming: coming to us in the incarnation, coming to us in word and sacrament, and coming agai...

We are interviewing Blake Flattley and Steve Zank to talk about the new "Freedom Lessons" album that they did with Flame. They talked about the thought process behind several of the songs, and how they chose various music genres to fit various parts of the small catechism. They talk about how the battle wrap performed by Flame and Loso to show the battle between old Adam and new Adam, the use of f...

Gretchen and Katie have a conversation with Rev. Bob Hiller about prosperity gospel, and how it sneaks into churches in a way that we start targeting the healthy people, the young families, and those who have something to offer the church. We talk about the idolatry of growth, and how idolatry works in these scenarios. What are the goals of the church, and how can you tell if a program in the chur...

We have Old Testament scholar, Chad Bird, on to discuss with us the ways we twist the book of Proverbs into a prosperity gospel, especially in regard to our ideas of family. This episode we talk about Proverbs 13:24, and what it means and doesn't mean to discipline our children. Rather than giving us a formula for discipline, we talk about the goals of discipline, and ways that our reliance or foc...

In this book club episode, we discuss "Art and Faith" by Makoto Fujimura. This was a book recommended to us, and we sort out the parts of this book that we appreciated, and the parts where we would disagree. Fujimura is an artist and a Christian who writes about the theology of making, and how imagination and faith interact. We talk about the Japanese influence in theology, and the struggle to tra...

As we discuss ways that prosperity gospel sneaks into the family, we decided to start off by looking at the book of Proverbs, as these are often the verses that are cherry picked and often used to take prosperity gospel ideas in regard to the family. We invited Old Testament scholar, Chad Bird to discuss the book of Proverbs. He talks about how it is a book of observations, not promises or command...