Roots and Branches Podcast

Pastor Brent and Paul Arneberg sit down with special guest Jeff Moulton to recap the history of our Deepening Roots and Growing Branches ministry initiative. We are now 3 years in and God has been incredibly faithful as we’ve pursued the Lord’s vision for our church. Listen to Paul, Brent, and Jeff reflect on the amazing ways we’ve grown as a church family.

Paul and Pastor Brent continue our conversation about the importance of prayer. We talk about individual and corporate prayer, recommend some good resources about prayer, and give a challenge for our church to grow in prayer this year. You will be encouraged by this episode!

Paul and Pastor Brent start a new two-part discussion on the importance of prayer. Prayer is central in the Bible and imperative for the Christian life. Paul and Brent discuss examples of prayer in the Bible and how we can best understand prayer theologically. As a church, we want to grow in prayer this year. Join us!

Paul and Pastor Brent discuss God’s amazing design for the church as a community of faith, a family of believers, and a spiritual house within which individual image-bearers can grow into mature Christ-likeness through the gospel. We need each other as we follow Jesus! Paul and Brent dive into Ephesians 4 to help us understand the importance of the Body of Christ.

Paul and Pastor Brent sit down for our last transformational outcome: Individual to Community. We live in a hyper-individualistic culture where we have elevated personal autonomy and self-defined identity to be supreme. This “expressive individualism” is a culture that has moved from forming to performing. Listen as Paul and Brent discuss the problems with radical individualism today.

Paul and Pastor Brent recap the special pre-conference sessions by Dr. Jonathan Leeman, the editorial director of 9Marks. The theme was on the church, state, and civic engagement. Listen to Paul and Brent recap some of the most important lessons about how we approach politics and understanding the role of government.

Paul and Pastor Brent had the opportunity to attend the annual EFCA Theology Conference in Chicago. The sessions covered biblical marriage, divorce/remarriage, abuse, singleness, and many other important topics regarding how we glorify God through marriage and family. Listen as Paul and Brent recap this conference.

Paul and Pastor Brent cover more of our transformational outcome: digital to analog. We explore more about the side-effects of the digital age and the unique ways we need to put technology in its proper place. Paul and Brent also discuss Disciple-by-Doing and the ways we can recover analog activities at New Life.

Paul and Pastor Brent discuss a new transformational outcome: digital to analog. We begin by defining an over-arching view of “technology” that helps us understand the good and bad aspects of how we develop tools for bearing God’s image in the world. There are unique challenges to the digital age that we need to carefully consider.

Continuing our interview with guest Mike Larson! We dive deeper into regenerative farming and learn more about how the old ways can re-capture God’s good design for creation. Paul and Pastor Brent discuss specific applications to life in a church family, especially as we move into the future of “disciple-by-doing” at New Life.

Special guest Mike Larson joins us to share his experience with “regenerative agriculture” in order to illustrate how embracing God’s design in creation brings fruitfulness and joy. In part 1 of this interview, we will reflect on the problems with our culture of consumption, learn about regenerative agriculture, and understand the ways a regenerative model of farming displays the glory of God.

Paul and Pastor Brent dive into another transformational outcome: consuming to stewarding. This stems from Genesis 1-2 as we are created to be fruitful and to “work and keep” God’s creation. We glorify God by stewarding the fruitfulness of ourselves, our families, our friendships, our vocations, our material things, and every aspect of our lives. Listen to discover how our culture’s false promise...

Paul and Pastor Brent discuss another transformational outcome: fragmented to integrated. We live in a culture that tends to compartmentalize, divide, and distort our understanding of God’s good design for us and his creation. Yet the gospel of Jesus Christ brings all things under the Lordship of Jesus, causing us to come to see our lives as whole-life discipleship. This episode will challenge you...

Paul Arneberg hosts part two of his solo podcast on goal setting. Paul helps us think through ways to set godly goals for the coming year, centered in the gospel, and saturated in the grace of God. Let this episode inspire you to have goals that honor the Lord and help you take steps forward in maturity and fruitfulness for God’s glory.

Paul Arneberg starts a new year with a discussion on goal setting from a biblical perspective. Many of us are overwhelmed when we begin a new year because we feel pressure to set lofty goals or pursue major life achievements. How can we put goals into a proper perspective? How can we pursue spiritual growth and maturity in a healthy way? Paul provides some ideas for setting goals for 2024 in a Chr...

Paul and Pastor Brent continue with part two of Entitled to Selfless. Here we focus on the biblical calling to selflessness, servanthood, and humility. Namely, we look to the example of Jesus and discover how His earthly ministry reveals a gospel-centered and transformational approach to our entitlement and self-focus. There is much to ponder as we apply this transformational outcome to various as...

Paul and Pastor Brent begin discussing a new transformational outcome: moving from Entitled to Selfless. The issue of entitlement runs deep in our culture. We are self-focused and self-asserting in most contexts, and this even takes on a moral dimension of feeling offended when our selfhood is violated. This episode explains post-modernity’s roots in Romanticism, and highlights the ways our view o...

The dramatic conclusion of our transformational outcome: anxious to peaceful. In this episode, Paul and Pastor Brent dive deeply into the biblical vision of “shalom” and the gospel-centered approach we must have to know the peace of God. This anxious age requires us to be intentional about being a non-anxious presence in every aspect of our lives.

Paul and Pastor Brent tackle another transformational outcome: anxious to peaceful. We live in an anxious age. How do we decipher our anxious culture? How can we find peace with all the anxious thoughts and anxiety-producing things thrown our way? In this episode, Paul and Brent reflect on how we can be a “non-anxious presence” in our world.

Paul and Pastor Brent talk about how we can be intentional to pursue discipleship through modeling a gospel-centered life, spending quantity and quality time with others, capitalizing on moments to have discipling conversations, and setting milestones along the path of spiritual growth. This episode will encourage you to seek a whole-life discipleship, side-by-side with the family of God, as we pa...

Paul and Pastor Brent sit down to define “Disciple-by-Doing” and help us understand more about the unique ministry vision of New Life. This creative approach will shape the development of our indoor and outdoor spaces as we seek to embed the truths of Scripture into hands-on discipleship. We aim to develop a training center to form ambassadors of Jesus Christ by inspiring awe through creation. Lis...

Paul and Pastor Brent look back on Celebration Sunday to recap this significant event in the life of our church. Our theme was: celebrate the past, joyful in the present, hopeful for the future. We talked specifically about the proposed building project and property development, and how every one of us can be involved in the vision God has given us to invest in the future of our church.

Paul and Pastor Brent tackle part two of our transformational outcome “busy to restful”. We dive deeper into the biblical vision of abiding in Christ and being restful in the truth of the gospel. We don’t have to try to be enough for God through our works, nor do we need to impress others with our busy schedules! Find freedom, rest, and joy as we take the yoke of Christ upon us.

Paul and Pastor Brent introduce a new topic that is probably very convicting for many of us: busyness. Our lives are full of activity, movement, obligations, and tasks. How do we understand the busyness of our culture? Why do we often have a fear of stillness or quiet? How can we examine ourselves and move toward restfulness in the gospel? These issues and more in this new episode!

Pastor Brent sits down with Mark Revell to learn more about “belonging” in the local church. Mark is the Director of Training at ReachGlobal and a PhD student studying the ways Christians find belonging in churches in the country of Hungary. He has a wealth of experience as a missionary and his research helps us gain a better understanding of how the local church beautifully displays the reality o...