McGregor Podcast

A full church calendar can look like a list of events, or it can look like a set of open doors. Pastor Mark Bricker and Christian Miller walk through the member meeting and Newcomers Coffee on Sunday, September 13, the middle school snowball fight on September 16, a Prayer and Praise Night on Wednesday, September 30 where the worship team introduces three songs they wrote themselves, and an Octobe...

What do you do with a question you are afraid to ask in front of other people? At every Hot Topic night, McGregor invites anonymous questions written just for this podcast. In this Q&A closing the series on the hard sayings of Jesus, Pastor Mark Bricker brings them to Pastor Russell Howard one at a time. Pearls before pigs in Matthew 7. Jesus in Gethsemane asking for the cup to pass. What it m...

I AM Seven Signs of the Savior "I Am the Good Shepherd" (John 10:11-30) Jesus makes his boldest claim yet: "I am the good Shepherd." In the fourth of the seven I AM sayings in John's Gospel, He steps into a role God had claimed for Himself centuries earlier. Ron Cook opens in John 10 and traces the promise back to Ezekiel 34, where God, fed up with leaders who fed themselves while the flock scatte...

What do you hold onto when the night is long and your mind will not quiet down? In this Beyond the Notes, Pastor Russell Howard returns to Psalm 121, the psalm he preached as "The God of the Sleepless Night," to sit with one word the pilgrims could not stop repeating: keep. Six times the psalm says the Lord guards, preserves, and watches over His people. Russell traces six takeaways from that prom...

Psalms - Songs of the King "The God Of The Sleepless Night" (Psalm 121) Some nights the thing you cannot fix only grows louder in the dark. Psalm 121 speaks straight into that hour. Pastor Russell Howard walks through this ancient psalm of ascent and the God it points to: a God who saves, who is strong enough to hold whatever you are carrying, who secures His people so they will not finally fall,...

What changes when you read Paul's letters in the city he wrote them to? Mark, Tamar, and Christian open the last Sunday of August with the Journeys of Paul trip to Greece and Turkey, running May 17 through 29, 2027 with Pastors Russell Howard and Cary Robinson. Around 25 have committed and there is still room. The 55 Plus office has brochures. From there they move through the fall. Parent and Chil...

Jesus said "whoever is not against us is for us." He also said "whoever is not with me is against me." Which is it? In part two of this Hot Topic teaching from McGregor Baptist Church, Pastor Russell Howard shows that the two statements agree. There are two camps and no neutral ground, and he follows that straight into the question people ask most: what about those who never hear the gospel? His a...

I AM: Seven Signs of the Savior "I Am the Door" (John 10:1-10) In John 10, Jesus makes a claim that both comforts and confronts: "I am the door of the sheep." Pastor Peter Finch teaches through the sheepfold imagery of the ancient Near East to show what Jesus meant, and why the religious leaders who first heard it were so unsettled. Jesus is the one door, and everyone who enters by Him is saved, k...

We are taught to forgive. But what happens when we forgive and reconciliation still feels impossible? In this Beyond the Notes conversation, Pastor Omar Edwards returns to Sunday's teaching on childlike forgiveness and opens Romans 12:16-21, what many Bibles call the marks of a true Christian. He draws a careful line between forgiveness, a one-way choice to release anger and the desire for payback...

Why would a loving church ever put someone out of its fellowship? On this Beyond the Notes episode, Pastor Russell Howard takes us past his Sunday notes on church discipline and into a real case history from the New Testament. Walking through 1 Corinthians 5 and 2 Corinthians 2, he traces how the church at Corinth confronted a man in serious, public, unrepentant sin, and how, about a year later, t...

Matthew - The King has Come "Childlike Forgiveness" (Matthew 18:21-35) When Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive, he thought seven was already generous. Jesus answered with a number meant to stop the counting for good, then told a story about a servant forgiven an unpayable debt who refused to forgive a small one. In this sermon closing out Matthew 18, Elder Omar Edwards traces the c...

When will we actually be back in the worship center?   Mark, Tamar, and Christian give the honest two part answer. A certificate of occupancy is one milestone. A room ready for a thousand people on a Sunday is another, and the audio, video, and lighting install is the biggest piece left. Best case is sometime in November.   From there the conversation turns to the fall calendar. GriefShare starts...

What did Jesus mean when He told a crowd to eat His flesh, or told a crowd of would-be followers to hate their own father and mother?   Recorded at a Hot Topic night hosted by McGregor's Journey Together ministry, this teaching opens a short series on the hard sayings of Jesus. Pastor Russell Howard lays out three ground rules for reading them well, then works through the bread of life discourse i...

"I Am the Light of the World" (John 8:12) When Jesus stood in the temple and said, "I am the light of the world," He was not offering a nice idea. He was claiming to be God, reaching back to the name God gave Himself at the burning bush. Russell Howard walks through John 8 and 9, showing how Jesus made that claim in the brightest place in Jerusalem, why it enraged the religious leaders, and what H...

Matthew: The King Has Come "Church Discipline" (Matthew 18:15-20) Jesus knows the church will include people who don't yet belong to Him, and He gives His people a way to respond that seeks restoration first. In Matthew 18:15-20, Pastor Russell Howard walks through the process Jesus lays out for confronting a brother or sister caught in sin: a private conversation, then a small group of witnesses,...

Fifteen babies born into one church family this year. A Wednesday night with tables overflowing. And a stack of deadlines that all land before the month is out. Mark, Tamar, and Christian start with a correction, the preschool and children's choirs meet at 5:30 and not 5:00, then recap the Journey Together kickoff and a first-time guest who nearly stayed home. From there: DivorceCare and DivorceCa...

What if the thing you keep reaching for was never meant to satisfy you? In the opening study of "I AM: Seven Signs of the Savior," David Miller begins in Exodus 3, where God reveals His name as I AM, then moves to John 6, where Jesus takes that same name for Himself. Miller walks through three marks of the bread of life: it is provisional, it is plain, and it is prescient. Along the way he traces...

Do Christians have a guardian angel individually assigned to watch over them, or is that more folklore than Scripture? Pastor Ryan Flint takes us Beyond the Notes from Sunday's study in Matthew 18, chasing a question the sermon intentionally set aside. He covers what Scripture confidently says about angels, who they are, what they do, and the guardrails for how believers should and should not thin...

Matthew: The King Has Come "Every Sheep Matters" (Matthew 18:10-14) When someone drifts away from church, it can be easy to assume they made their choice and move on. Matthew 18:10-14 shows a very different heart. Ryan Flint, McGregor's Worship Pastor, walks through the parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one sheep that wandered, and shows that this story is not abou...

In this episode of Around McGregor, Mark, Tamar, and Christian catch you up on life at McGregor this week. They cover the Renew construction progress, this Wednesday's Big Kickoff with fellowship supper and a full slate of new discipleship classes, and a preview of an upcoming workshop with Dr. Greg Lanier, "Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up," built to sharpen discernment about what is taught ab...

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? The disciples asked, and Jesus answered by pointing to a child. In this Beyond the Notes, Pastor Russell Howard returns to Matthew 18, the fourth of the five major discourses in Matthew, and traces a single thread through the whole chapter: the little ones. He makes the case that these little ones are not mainly toddlers but the less mature believers a...

Matthew - The King has Come "The Children Of The Kingdom" (Matthew 18:1-9) In this episode of the McGregor Podcast, Russell Howard unpacks Matthew 18:1-9, exploring Jesus as the Chosen Servant who embodies gentle grace and brings global glory. Discover how Jesus navigated conflict, extended compassion to the hurting, and sought to fulfill the Father’s will above all. Russell Howard challenges list...

After a slow summer, how do you step back into the full rhythm of church life without feeling behind? In this episode of Around McGregor, hosts Mark, Tamar, and Christian catch the church family up on everything starting back this August. They cover Newcomer Coffee this Sunday, the renovation progress on the worship center, the return of Wednesday nights on August 12, the school year kickoff, and...

How to Handle Life's Interruptions "When God Delays What We Desperately Need" (Luke 8:40-56) What do you do when God takes too long with the thing you cannot wait for? In this closing Journey Together teaching, Pastor David Miller works through Luke 8 and three kinds of interruption: the shocking one, when a father's daughter is suddenly dying; the daily one, when a woman has bled for twelve years...

Does living faithfully for Jesus mean avoiding offense at all costs, or is some offense simply unavoidable? Pastor Cary Robinson goes beyond his notes from this past Sunday's sermon, digging into Matthew 17:24-27, where tax collectors confront Peter about the temple tax and Jesus responds by paying it anyway, despite being under no obligation to. Pastor Cary unpacks what that decision reveals abou...