The Mission Hill Youth Podcast

In the fall of 2002, the DC sniper caused terror across the DC area by choosing people at random and shooting them from a distance. When his reign of terror ended, the world was surprised that it wasn't just one, but TWO snipers at work... and one of them was only 17 years old. The story of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo is a fascinating case study on the importance of discipleship, becaus...

One of my favorite things in the Bible is when the Biblical authors use very strong language to talk about something. I love it because it reveals what they truly feel about it! In our passage for this episode, Paul has some very strong words for a certain group of people. These people were telling the Philippians that it wasn't enough to just follow Jesus. If they wanted to be TRUE followers of J...

One of my biggest passions in this world is to help people get excited to read the book of Revelation. It's a complicated book for sure, but that doesn't mean you can't understand it! Contained within it's pages are beautiful images, profound truths, shocking warnings, and the immense love of God of His people and His creation. I was asked to teach a breakout session on the book of Revelation at t...

We're back in the saddle again with Philippians, and today's passage is a doozy! Have you ever bailed on something, and the reason you gave was about your preferences? For example, have you ever left a church because you thought the music was too loud? Have you ever refused to go to a club meeting because you just didn't have any friends there? Have you ever written a strongly worded email to a pa...

You know what can prove to be difficult? Expositional teaching. By that I mean teaching from a Biblical text. It's extremely rewarding, but the process can be tough. It's a weighty thing to handle the Word of God. One of the coolest things to me is when God puts that kind of weight on the heart of a teenager. We have a small group of youth in our youth group who have felt the call to try their han...

You know what's something that is necessary for life, but we don't often think about? Especially if coffee is your life?? Filters! Filters are important. They capture the bad stuff and let only the good stuff go through. We use them in our coffee and our water. Something else about filters is that we all have access to them... but some of us don't use them. And you wouldn't think that'd be a big d...

Today's episode of "A Little Dose of Heresy" is a little different, and a LOT of awesome. Why is it so awesome?? Because today we have a guest speaker: Braden Shannon! He is joining us for this episode to enlighten us on one of the biggest heresies the church has ever had to face: Gnosticism. If you want to know more about what Gnosticism is, then take a listen! We're glad you're here, let's get i...

If someone gave you the choice right now between living and dying, I'm willing to bet we'd choose living. We don't want to die. It's one of the most universally feared concepts to ever exist. It's ironic, then, that we fear death so much, yet so many of us wander through this life not really LIVING life. The apostle Paul is in prison while writing to the Philippian church, and his life is on the l...

This episode is different from our other heresy episodes, mainly because this one serves more as an intro into our next sub-series of heresies that deals with Jesus' humanity/divinity. Since it's an intro, it's a little more surface level because it isn't just one heresy, it's a blanket term that deals with multiple heresies. So it's important to listen to this one! That way the next few episodes...

There are a few things in this world that are universal to every human. One of those is "suffering". It doesn't matter who you are, eventually, you will suffer. However, the Bible's stance on suffering is unique, because it teaches us that, for the follower of Jesus, joy can be found in the midst of the suffering. Paul is in prison while writing the letter to the Philippians. It's safe to say that...

Our text for today is a prayer that Paul offers up for his friends, the Philippian church. For many people, when it comes to teaching or preaching the Bible, especially prayers like in our text, the application can quickly become something like, "be more like Paul" or "pray more like Paul". Well, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're not Paul (unless your name is Paul, in which case you're...

Welcome to the first episode of our series through the book of Philippians! Philippians is unique among Paul's letters in the New Testament. Whereas most of Paul's letters deal with correcting faulty teaching or rebuking those who are walking apart from Christ, Philippians is a letter dripping with joy and friendship. But, as with ALL books in the Bible, if you want to understand it better, you ha...

One of my favorite shows growing up was "Power Rangers"! It was so good, so campy, and so predictable. The Power Rangers would fight the puddies, then the big bad guy would should up, they'd get in their Zords (which were these dinosaur robots), fight the bad guy, the bad guy would power up and the zords couldn't cut it anymore, so they'd all join together to form Mega Zord, and He was powerful en...

This is a bittersweet episode for us, as it marks the end of our Jonah series! Jonah has definitely been probably my favorite book we've done so far at Mission Hill Youth, because it's equal parts challenging, hopeful, and hilarious. In this episode we tie a bow around our Jonah series by recapping the historical context, the plot, and the point of it all. This episode is a bit different than the...

We say it all the time, especially in church circles. "God is love, God loves you, Jesus saves, salvation belongs to the Lord!" And it's true! These are true statements! But sometimes we say these things without giving a second thought to the reality of what they truly mean. The truth is, the width and height and depth of the love of God is incomprehensible... and a little offensive. We are in the...

Psychology tells us that how we think about things often reveals a lot about us. For example, did you know that when we picture in our minds the people we respect, they tend to be taller than they actually are? Fascinating stuff! But that's how we picture people we respect. But how do we picture the people we don't respect? That's the question at the forefront of our lesson in Jonah for this week....

Have you ever had the opportunity to share your faith with someone, but you chose not to because you might mess it up? Or you might make yourself look like an idiot? I have done it SO MANY TIMES! It's understandable, but it's also problematic, because when we do that, we are really showing that we don't trust that God can move EVEN IF we are a mess. In our story for this lesson, we will see that t...

Have you ever been part of a group project, and you all just can't seem to get on the same page? How does it usually go? If you're anything like me, it NEVER goes well. Unless those people are united in their goal, it's just 5 separate minds trying to accomplish a task in 5 separate ways. It's just chaos! If that's the result of humans not being united, can you imagine what would happen if God the...

If you're like me, you KNOW that God is merciful, and you have no problem singing about it at church on Sunday. But sometimes, when you've dropped to your absolute lowest point, it's hard to BELIEVE God is merciful. Luckily for us, we have places in scripture like Jonah chapter 2 that serve as a great reminder of the surprising nature of God's mercy. How low is too low? How far is too far? Tune in...

One of the doctrines that make Christianity unique is the doctrine of the Trinity. We worship a God who exists as three distinct persons, all having the same essence. In other words, the God we worship is 3 "who's", 1 "what". This can be a difficult concept to comprehend! In fact, for some people it has proven to be so difficult and complicated, that they have rejected it altogether in favor of ot...

Jonah doesn't want to go to Nineveh. Jonah really, really, REALLY doesn't want to go to Nineveh. "How desperate is he to get away from Nineveh, Brent?" I'm glad you asked dear listener. Let's just say that Jonah's desperate enough that he's willing to compromise on his most fundamental belief, if it means not going to Nineveh... a series of decisions that not only cause him to spiral even more out...

God's on a mission and calls Jonah to go with Him! But Jonah has a mission of his own, and he is much more about HIS mission than God's. Why does Jonah run? We don't know for certain (yet), but the author leaves us clues as to what Jonah is truly like when the rubber hits the road (or rather, the ship hits the sea). On this episode we walk through Jonah 1: 1-6 where we see not only the reality of...

Welcome to our first episode in our series we are calling "Your Dose of Heresy", where we learn what theology IS by learning what it is NOT. For those who my not know, a "heresy" is a formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches. For our first episode we are tackling a heresy that, like all heresies, is still alive today. What...

The book of Jonah is probably one of the most watered down books of the Bible, and usually the message goes like this: Jonah was a prophet who ran away from God, but after spending some time in a whale, he learned to be brave and do what God asked him to do. So be brave like Jonah! Then we go to bed feeling great about ourselves. While the sentiment is admirable, it doesn't even scratch the surfac...

This week Jeremiah Yeager teaches us about what it's like to be a christian in todays world.