SHAREapy. The Podcast

Aaaaagggghhh…. This title kept coming back to me this week. I am not a fan of the title of my own newsletter/podcast this week. Lol. Normally I don’t even write a title until after I’ve written the piece. This week, I decided to do podcast ONLY because I felt like I wanted to talk to you guys and confess some things without the ability to edit them out… or filter them. This podcast was recorded in...

…All The Time. There’s a standard call and response in the church… matter of fact, for this one, it’s probably bigger than the confines of any organization and it seems to have seeped into active AND inactive members of the organized church. One person says GOD IS GOOD and the response is….. Yup. Some of y’all got it but haven’t seen the inside of a church in years. The response is “ALL THE TIME.”...

The Day The Clouds Broke Away I need to paint a picture… with words… on the canvass of your mind. I can’t write today. It’s weird but I’ve experienced it before. It’s like trying to funnel a firehouse through a straw… too many ideas, too much power and too much of a flood. I’m going to record and just let it flow. I know I have some people who like to read the weekly newsletter.. back to writing (...

The Angels In My Eyes I’m gonna tell you a story. You probably won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Not because you won’t understand the words or the story, but because this whole concept is wildly foreign to most people. It was foreign to me… just 7 months ago. I’m going to teach you a bit about RP. RP is Role-Playing. It’s acting and improv… basically. It’s just done, inside a video game....

A Father’s Day gift… from our Father. Today we’re celebrating Father’s Day here in the U.S. Happy Father’s Day to all the Fathers out there. I’ve had the honor of being a dad now for 15 years. My Hannah Bear just turned 15 years old last week, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve watched fatherhood make a significant improvement in the last decade and a half. If you are old enough to remember it, try to...

Your regularly scheduled program… Nevaeh Bravo, 10 - her grandmother is grief stricken by her loss Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares, 10 - her father stated that he’s comforted because he knows that she would have been brave for the other kids in her classroom during the attack. Makenna Lee Elrod, 10 - she used to leave cute notes around the house for her family to find Jose Flores, 10 - celebrated being on...

The other day, I was talking to a friend about ministry and they said “now that you’ve dipped your toes in the water…” Meaning … into ministry. You ever been in a conversation and as soon as something is said, you can’t even hear anything else? And the last words kinda echo in your mind? “Now that you’ve dipped your toes in the water” … you mean… of ministry? You mean me? Joel? Toes in? Oh naw… yo...

I wonder what Van Gogh did to channel his inspiration for Starry Night. I’ve loved this painting since I was a kid. Weird but true. Every time I’ve seen it I’ve been able to identify it as Starry Night. I think I know it well enough that I could spot a fake if I saw it. He embellished it. He reinterpreted it and reimagined it. That’s the only way he could make the most beautiful picture in existen...

Maybe this is going to be a published piece. Who knows. But I’m thinking through who we ask to pray and when. As “crazy faith”ful of a person as I am, I still somehow stay insanely logical and I think, since God is a God of order, He likes logic and systems. Someone asked me why I didn’t ask them to pray for me the other day. In that moment, I realized how freakin complicated of a question AND ans...

I Didn’t Wanna Write An Easter Message 🙃 Honestly. For so many reasons. Where do I start? I’m not even going to get into my week. So many things have been wrong about it. But I’ve been able to stay pretty positive about it all, I think. This week is a special week in my heart. So maybe that’s helped a bit. I didn’t wanna write an Easter post … but not because of my week or anything personally goi...

Hope Restored > Hope Lost Welcome to Share. The Newsletter. Before I get into the meat of the message today, I’d like to welcome in some new folks that have joined this community in the last few weeks! I also want to quickly reintroduce myself and this project! My name is Joel Barnes, I am a single father to an amazing 14 year old daughter, Hannah, and we live in Chicago, IL. I’m a single dad, but...

I Am Will Smith For better of for worse, today, I am Will Smith. Remember the “I am Tiger Woods” add from back in the day? Honestly, I saw it immediately. First of all, I’d like to say that I don’t condone violence of any kind except in direct response to a threat that looks to harm you or your loved ones. Try to read this newsletter or listen to this podcast with an open mind. This isn’t for you...

Newsletter Update 3.27.22 Share. The Newsletter is 6 months old y’all!! Can you believe it?! There’s so much to celebrate and so much to update you all on! I’ll update you on the Newsletter project, the ministry, and my health stuff. I got some good stuff and some rough stuff… just like the news. Some of it is my favorite to share… some of it isn’t. 🤔  Sounds like “SHAREing my blessings and my br...

1:07pm CST - 3.20.22 I almost forced it y’all. Honestly, I got so fired up about this week’s topic that I almost forced the episode and I was about to ship later today, even though I was not going to make the 3pm deadline. I almost forced it. Now, I want to be clear about something. I could have delivered something that you would have read and/or listened to and probably enjoyed. I DO have enough...

I took a shot for the first time in 2 years… Oh relax it was communion. Yes. I snapped a picture as my friend prayed for us before we took communion today. While fully in tears. I didn’t exactly know why I was taking the picture but I knew I had to before he finished the prayer. You gotta remember… I’m a dad and content creator… I took this picture without even unlocking my phone or losing a word...

Wild week… I began to write a story this week. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t for YOU. Lol. This story was a story that I was going to share with my therapist. I’ve always been an “audience” person. I’ve always had to have a 6th sense about me when it comes to communicating around people. Not everyone can hear everything. More importantly, God has very clearly shown me that everyone isn’t SUPPOSED...

“Praying For the World, Far and Near” Of course I had another piece written for this week. But as the week unfolded and I could feel the hearts of the world get heavy, I felt profoundly urged to pray out loud. It has been heartbreaking, to say the least, to see what’s going on in the Ukraine. In this piece, I start with a prayer for the world and for peace and eventually bring it closer and closer...

God give me strength…. I’ve had this vision about writing and ministry and how it should look, sound, feel. I’m so glad that God had made me a person who listens and attempts to obey the “spirit” of ministry over the plan or production of ministry. I have a commitment to ship a newsletter every Sunday at 3pm. There are so many unpublished pieces. Today, I’m grateful for my conviction to write and...

Big ole tears just fell out of my eyes as I said the title of this title out loud. Let me stay focused here. This is a tribute piece. It’s so easy to focus on who doesn’t make it through our difficult seasons… it makes for better memes to point out who “wasn’t with me when I was shootin’ in the gym” or to think “when you didn’t need me any more” or “it wasn’t convenient for you”, that our relation...

*Trigger warning* This is completely unedited, unfiltered, raw and possibly even incomplete. I had a migraine this day and had laid down for a nap and this is seconds after I had waken up. I may delete or edit this or re-record… not sure. For now, I’m sending this to a friend and I need a place for it to land. I shared this first with a very small and trusted group of people for their feedback. Th...

Ok. Today I’m going to aim for the heart of this entire project. This Newsletter/Blog/Organized And Scheduled Ramble… is designed for ME to SHARE (at this stage) and for YOU to hopefully be inspired to SHARE. My mission, is to “Teach people to share their blessings and their bruises to connect to each other with Love and Empathy. Honestly… this is my purpose on earth. That seems clear to me becaus...

Yesterday we took our dog Gracie to the Emergency Room because she hurt her back. The day before, on Friday, I was on one of my weekly SHARE•apy calls with my good friend Diana and all of a sudden I hear Gracie start yelping/crying/whimpering. Honestly, first thought was that Hannah was trying to dance with her and she wasn’t havin it. But then the whimpering continued and I asked Hannah what was...

You ever have that friend that’s stupid optimistic? So optimistic you think they’re a bit nuts, actually? So positive that it’s past “almost annoying” and it’s … “so annoying you can’t even hear it” sometimes. You might not even tell that person what problem you have going on, because, no matter what the word combination is, they are going to tell you that “everything is going to be ok”. And somet...

And to be 100% honest, at first, I kinda felt like I got a tie or a pair of socks or something like that. Not that I was being a brat…. There’s a kind of a history here. Lol. It wouldn’t be the first time I got something that I didn’t understand why I got it. Once my daughter mom got me an iced coffee and I took a sip… pulled it away from my mouth and said, “there’s no sweetener in this”. She said...

I had a couple really cool conversations this week that I want to share. Warning. There will be some “bad” language in this one because this is basically a story about following Jesus IRL (as the kids say it. Lol. “In Real Life”) I had a conversation with a friend this week. A newer friend made within the last 6 months. We’ll call him Dre. I was talking to him about how to create his brand. I was...