Freely Given

This is an episode done in front of a live audience at the 2023 "Here We Still Stand" Conference in San Diego, California. Katie and Gretchen kick off a new series talking about prosperity gospel, and the way that it sneaks into our idea of families. Do you get extra sanctified in marriage? Will getting people married off save the church and our culture? What if you do everything right and your ch...

This week, Gretchen and Katie talk about what it means to be humble, as opposed to feeling insecure in our vocations. Insecurity and pride are actually closely related, as we become consumed with people's view of us, instead of finding our security and identity in the love of God. When we are rooted and established in the love of God, we are free to serve our neighbor. But as we serve our neighbor...

Gretchen and Katie talk through a listener suggested topic of people pleasing. They talk about their own struggles in this area, and how people pleasing can be the opposite of vocation, or interfere with vocation. They theorize why this is a constant struggle, and walk through what vocation is, and what vocation isn't. How do you know if you are loving your neighbor, or you're just trying to be li...

We are discussing the book "A Tumblin' Down" by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. (Our September book club book.) This is a fiction book about a pastor's family. This book starts with a pastor wrestling with a passage of scripture that doesn't fit well into his theological framework, and trying to figure out how to pull a sermon from it. Each person in this family goes through seasons of struggling with thei...

We invited our friend, Mike Cosper back on to talk about his article he recently wrote for Christianity Today about Tim Keller. He quotes Tim for saying that the point of contextualization isn't to make the gospel more palatable, but but make the offense of the gospel clear. We discuss what it means that the gospel is offensive, and what it means to contextualize it. For many years, it has been as...

We finally finish up our conversation on birth by talking about postpartum and breastfeeding vs formula. Putting it in the context of the doctrine vocation, they speak freedom into all of the guilt that women feel during this vulnerable time. We talk about pride we have in soldiering through, shame we feel in failure, shame with give to others, and the illusion of keeping up the supermom routine....

Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin discuss today the issue of pain in childbirth, and whether or not taking pain medication during childbirth effects your sanctification, or your moral standing. After overwhelming response from our last episode, there's some more things they'd like to say to encourage. They sort out the truth from the lies about sanctification itself, and what happens when we put...

In this much requested episode, Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin talk about birth, and some of the pressure we put on ourselves--or on our faith--that everything goes as we think it will. They talk about shame in childbirth, and how women try to put some kind of moral superiority over how you give birth. Between the two of them, they have medicated, unmedicated, preemie birth, and even homebirth...

In our monthly book club episode, these 2 Lutheran women (Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin) discuss Beth Moore's memoir, "All My Knotted Up Life." This books covers heavy topics from sexual abuse, Bipolar disorder, racism, and her personal story of being a women who works in churches, and her journey out of the Southern Baptist Convention that she loved. It moves from her childhood in Arkansas t...

Gretchen and Katie both saw the Barbie movie, and want to talk about it the cultural statements made in this movie. They talk about the idea of utopias, and the danger in creating utopia. This movie also talks about when our ideals hit reality. It presents reaching for perfection as a heavy burden to put on people, and how humans often process emotions and thoughts through play. They talk about pa...

We are discussing 1 Corinthians 10:31, and what it means to do everything to the glory of God. This is where are series of Hobby Lobby verses collides with our vocation series, and we look at the context of where this verse comes from. What does it mean to do everything to the glory of God? Does it mean do our best, and make sure our works are worthy of how great God is? We talk about the debate a...

We are interviewing Courtney Burns, who is a school counselor for Faith Lutheran School in Las Vegas, NV. She talks about the intersection between theology and counseling, as well as separating mental wellness to gauging the strength of someone's faith. She talks about kids understanding authenticity, how both parents and students missed emotional milestones during the pandemic, and being present...

This episode Gretchen Ronnevik and Katie Koplin discuss Acts 2, where we read about the early church, and how it grew. We look a the multiple ways that the Holy Spirit works through church, and even multiple ways that people are healed and saved through Christ. We talk about tradition, and prescriptions that we give ourselves to replicate what happens at this church or that church, we sometimes fo...

In this episode we have on one of Gretchen's closest friends who happens to be a foster mother. Alison Olson adopted her oldest 3 kids through a private agency, but a few years ago, they started foster parenting. They've had several kids go through their home. They currently have 7 kids. 6 of them are not adopted, and 1 of them is likely soon to be adopted. We talk about what it's like to live in...

This month's Book Club, we are doing a short story by Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." This short story is set in the South, before the civil rights movement. It follows a grandmother, traveling with her family, as she gives various definitions and applications to what it means to be a "good man." Keep in mind, Flannery is trying to show that no one is good but God, and see how tha...

We are interviewing Austin Hanson, who teaches science to middle schoolers at West Central Public Schools. Picking up on our vocation series, we are wanting to talk with people in various vocations,(as we find them) to talk about how their faith impacts their work.  This was an amazing conversation with a very gifted teacher who talked about sometimes being the first male authority figure in a chi...

We are back to our conversations of Bible passages and comparing descriptive and prescriptive interpretations. This week we are discussing the story of Ruth. Does this story teach us to go out and "find our Boaz?" Can a woman be a Christ-figure? Should Naomi have left Bethlehem in the first place? We often have strong opinions, and insert those strong opinions into these Bible stories, and miss th...

In this last episode with guest Rachel Joy Welcher, we discuss the concept of modesty, and how we talk to our children about their sexuality and their bodies if not through "purity culture" or the secular culture. We talk about the purpose of bodies, the purpose of clothing, and what it means to have grace and understanding in these things. This was such a rich conversation of 3 moms discussing wh...

To continue our conversation of legalism that becomes cultish, we brought on Rachel Joy Welcher who wrote a book on the purity culture movement. Rachel is Gretchen's book editor for a current writing project. However, she's an author and poet in her own right. Her book "Talking Back to Purity Culture" looks at the history of how we got here, and steps back from a reactionary way of doing theology,...

For our June book club bonus episode, we are discussing Robert Farrar Capon's "Supper of the Lamb." This is an unusual cookbook that is written by a theologian who shares all his thoughts on cooking lamb. He shares 8 meals for 8 people that can be cooked with lamb. During these instructions, he talks about the placeness of an onion, the  excelsis of wine, and the shedding of blood. With humor, joy...

How can we stay safe in our faith? In Part 2 of our discussion of the documentary "Shiny Happy People" we are discussing homeschooling and the umbrellas of protection. We get a bit into the history of homeschooling modern history, and then discuss homeschooling within the context of freedom or fear. We also discuss different kinds of homeschooling, and what made the Gothard brand of homeschooling...

In this episode we talk about the documentary of "Shiny Happy People" and this part of American Church history with an explosion of legalistic ideals that lacked Christ. Both Gretchen and Katie followed the Duggar family when they were on TV, and Gretchen even went on mission trips as a teen, assoicated with the Gothard teachings.  We talk about the quiverful movement, and how that easily gets tie...

Author, speaker, and poet Tanner Olson is with us for this episode to talk about the vocation of being a poet. We talk about sharing hope, the writing process, and understanding that our work is for someone. We talk about the challenges of this work, the struggle of sharing things online, and deciding what to share.  He shares about touring and collaborating with Blake Flatley, and Heidi Goehmann,...

We are excited to welcome the rapper, Flame, onto the podcast to share about the idea of vocation, and where our good works belong. Flame comes from a background in Christian spaces where the pressure to show yourself as spiritual, or pressure to show yourself as elect, or pressure to live out a more spiritual vocation. We talk about why he speaks so boldly about Lutheran doctrines, and how he sta...

In our series about prescriptive vs descriptive, we walk through the story of Esther. Though this book does not mention God, it refers to the promises of God to redeem. It's one of the passages in the Bible that people often try to gather prescriptive instructions for being a wife. This story is so relatable, as Esther doesn't know how it will turn out. No angels show up and tell her what's going...