GC Podcast | Grace Communion International Resources

Sharing God’s Story in and Through Your Life

Cara Garrity: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Jeff Broadnax, who will be leading us in sharing our testimonies and what God is up to in our everyday lives. We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices.

We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be, to the glory of the Father. Amen.

Jeff: Good morning. I’m Jeff Broadnax, regional director with GCI here in the Eastern region. I’ve served as a pastor for 34 years. And the last few, I’ve been serving as a regional director where I serve pastors. And I help pastors, not only lead their congregations, but help their congregations do the kind of thing that I want to talk about today.

And that is to learn to see and share God’s story through their own life story. I’m honored to be here today and share this with you, and I hope you’ll take the journey with me because this one is a personal one. It’s one that will allow each of us to stop and to reflect and to pay attention to not only what God is doing, but what God has already done.

Because very often when we look at what God has already done in our world and in our lives, it gives us clarity as to what he is doing and frankly what he will do. So, let’s begin with prayer. And then I want to walk you through just a couple of passages of scripture as we move into this clarifying discussion for reflection, for implementation, and for a passionate living sent, of sharing God’s story through our lives.

God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we are grateful that we can come and know that you know us, but not just that you know us, but that you specifically made us. You specifically designed the two cells that would come together to make us. That is not just unique, it is powerful.

And what you want from us is that we will see you and that we will see that we don’t have to be anybody else in the world. We just have to be who you’ve created us to be, to come to discover why you made us, why you use us, why you allow us to reflect you very specifically and uniquely in the world.

And so today, as we reflect, it is our desire to be able to see from you what you are doing in our lives. I pray, Lord, that you will bless the words that are spoken to actually be a clear path to a deeper understanding and a deeper discovery or removing of the cover of what you’ve been doing in our lives and what you will continue to do.

And so, we thank you. And in Jesus’ name, do we pray. Amen.

In the book of Acts 1, it was that moment where Jesus was standing before the disciples, and he was about to ascend. And the disciples asked him if it was now the time to restore Israel. And Jesus went on to tell them in Acts 1:7, that’s not what I want you to worry about; I don’t want you to focus on those things. The time and the seasons are not given for you to know.

But he does say in verse 8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And at that point, he was taken up.

And I want to focus on the statement that he made that you will be my witnesses. We know from our 21st century court of law that a witness is somebody who goes and they make an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with the help of God. And if you can, if we can filter that back through what Jesus was saying, cause that’s really what he was saying.

He was saying, you’re going to be a person who will be in Jerusalem and Judea and all of Samaria and the ends of the earth. You’re going to go where you’re safe, where you’re comfortable, where you’re slightly uncomfortable and where sometimes you might be scared to death. And you’re going to tell what you’ve seen, heard and experienced about me.

The Greek word for witness there is martyr. And so, when we think of martyrs, we often think of people who’ve given their lives, in death, for something, but really what that word is meaning in Greek — it may come to that. But what he’s saying is that a witness, or someone who operates in that “martyr,” is somebody who will tell the whole story, tell the whole truth, tell the life story.

And sometimes even telling that hard truth may cost them everything, but they stand on that truth. They stand on that story. And so, what Jesus is saying is he wanted the disciples to be ones who would tell ...

Missional Rhythms w/ Charles Fleming

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we are blessed to have Charles Fleming with us as a guest, a professor at Grace Communion Seminary. And today we’re going to be continuing our exploration of our 2025 theme of Kingdom Living through the course that Charles teaches at GCS, called Missional Living.

So, thank you so much for joining us today, Charles.

[00:01:15] Charles: Cara, thank you so much for having me. It’s a joy to join you.

[00:01:18] Cara: Yeah, I’m looking forward to our conversation. I know that this class is really rich, so I kind of just want to start from the foundations. What does missional living have to do with the concept and practice of kingdom living and kingdom culture?

[00:01:37] Charles: Cara, that’s just a great question. I really appreciate it because in a sense, it addresses what I see as three of the big challenges that churches across the denominations, not just those of us in GCI, but across the denominations, are facing as we try to help people to become more missional. I just mentioned those three questions because they shaped the way I designed the course.

One is just understanding what mission is and why it’s so important. A second one that I see people struggling with is what does the idea of the kingdom have to do with mission? How do you integrate that or how does that shape the concept of mission? And how do we go about living a missional or sent life?

That’s the practical side of it. Because even when people get a sense of the importance of mission, the how-to becomes a challenge. So those are three big, I think, misunderstandings. Two of them are misunderstandings. The first one, what is mission? I think people have an idea that mission is optional.

It’s an optional ministry. It’s not key to what the church is all about. And even the concept of missionary, because of our history, when Christianity was a regional religion, just restricted to Europe. And then in the colonial period, missionaries went out. We have this vision of missionaries being somebody that goes far away, which is so far — that’s included in the idea of mission. But if you just restrict it to that, then people begin to think it might be that mission is optional if you’re living in a, what you might call so-called Christian country.

The second misunderstanding: what does the idea of the kingdom have to do with mission? And a lot of people just don’t recognize that the kingdom is central to the whole concept of mission.

And I’m going to talk a little bit more about that later, but we really need to help people recognize that if we don’t have a robust view of the kingdom, if the kingdom is kind of like a blank placeholder that people fill with whatever their thoughts are, and it’s not a concrete concept, then it’s divorce from mission. And the whole idea of why the church exists begins to be skewed.

And then the third one is just how to do it. And so, maybe I can explain a little bit about the class by giving the backstory. When I was asked to teach this class — my understanding is that Mike Rasmussen, our supervisor of ministry here in the U. S., asked Greg Albrecht and the folks at GCS to provide some courses for people who would not be doing a master’s degree. There might be people working in the different Avenues, the Faith, the Hope, and the Love Avenue. Could GCS offer courses for people who were not pursuing a master’s, maybe didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree, but could get some training through GCS?

So, the class I developed is what I call a hybrid. It’s robust enough for pastors and others doing a master’s degree, but it is also designed, especially with Love Avenue leaders and members in mind. And so that’s the backdrop, background of how I designed it.

So, I asked myself, how would I answer those three challenges: helping people get a better view of what mission is and why it’s important; how you integrate the concept of the kingdom into the whole understanding of mission; and then how there’d be a practical sect...

Theological Ethics w/ Gary Deddo

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we are blessed to have Dr. Gary Deddo as our guest. Dr. Deddo is a professor at Grace Communion Seminary and has been participating in GCI and GCS since 2012.

And today for our first episode of 2025, we are going to begin exploring our theme of kingdom living through exploring particularly the course of theological ethics that Dr. Deddo teaches at Grace Community Seminary. So, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Deddo.

[00:01:35] Gary: Thank you, Cara. It’s a privilege to be with you and to address your audience.

I’m very happy to talk about the seminary and in particular this class that we call Theological Ethics. But that is a very important topic and very complex as anytime you hear the word ethics everybody gets stiff and maybe a bit worried. And so, it’s a huge topic.

It is complex, complicated in a way, but that’s what you need a class for, right? You need a class to have time, to have resources, to think and to talk and interact with others and to work things through, to pray things through, to study scripture that’s relevant to the topic. So, it really does take a good amount of time and some discipline.

And usually, a class helps us be disciplined. You’d make out plans and say I want to read this book, or I want to look into this. And then, of course, you don’t. But a class helps because you’re working with others. And so certainly this topic, theological ethics, does call for that.

And so usually we have a great time. This is, I think, the fourth time we’ve had the class, and it’s always been very productive.

And part of it is, it does take time, and it does take effort. And there’s so many complications, and there’s also many pressures on us to try to discern what’s good, what’s true, what’s right, what I ought to do. And a lot of times, of course, we’re thinking about what others ought to do and that’s certainly part of it, but we have to start with ourselves.

Yeah, we have a class on it that lasts twelve weeks and people put in about, oh, twelve hours a week for each of those weeks to work things through. We have a couple of textbooks.

But the topic itself is important. We call it theological ethics. And the reason we qualify the word ethics with theological is because not all thinking about right and wrong, not all teaching about right and wrong, is theological. That is, it doesn’t connect with who God is or who a particular god is or who the Christian God is.

And in this class, we want to link together who God is — the God revealed in Jesus Christ according to Scripture — and then see what does that have to do with how we live our lives, how we discern what’s good and right, how we avoid being deceived or used, or use others or treat others poorly.

So, you want to connect together theology, which is our knowledge and faith in the living God, and how that then yields fruit in our lives: what we do, what we think, how we act, how we react. So, it’s a theological ethic.

Often without the connection between who God is and trusting in God, we just do what’s right because we just have a feeling, and then we think about it later. Or we’ve heard someone say something, and it sounded good to us, so we went with it. Or sometimes it’s out of guilt or fear or anxiety that we decide to act a certain way, react a certain way, and there’s not a lot of prayer; there’s not a lot of thought.

Or later on we realize, wow, I didn’t take into consideration that. Wow, if I would have realized that, I probably would have decided differently or reacted differently or decided differently.

We want to bring our theology, our faith, our worship, our prayer together with what we think and decide and how we react and reply, and yes, even sometimes how we vote, what that adds up to. So, it’s a theological ethic. In the biblical way to talk about this comes up, actually, in Romans chapter 1. And then Romans 16, the last chapter as well, Paul says his whole ministry is to do nothing other than to bring about the obedien...

Discipleship and Christian Ethics Pt 2 w/ Dr. Dennis Hollinger

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to this next episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we continue with our ethics miniseries with our guest, Dr. Dennis Hollinger. Today we’re going to be exploring the connection, the integration, the dynamic between Christian ethics and the life of a disciple, of discipleship. And so, I really appreciate you joining us again today, Dr. Hollinger. And we are looking forward to learning from you again.

Dennis: Thank you so much, Cara. It’s a joy to again be with you, and with your listeners.

Cara: Absolutely. So, from our first conversation, one of the things that I took away is, especially when you outline this as actions and character or aspects of ethics, is I can’t help but think about that’s, well, the shaping of our character, our actions is part of the life of a disciple, right? And that process of discipleship.

And so, I’m curious. Does Christian ethics have to do with the daily living, the day-to-day of being a disciple of Jesus?

[00:01:56] Dennis: That’s such a significant, important question. Thank you, Cara. Maybe it’s helpful if I start with just defining what we mean by discipleship. What is a disciple?

Jesus in the Great Commission said, “Go, or as you go, disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.” And then a great promise, of course, comes at the end. “And lo, I am with you always till the end of the world.”

And so, the Great Commission is not to go out and make converts. It’s to make disciples. What is a disciple? I think a disciple, we understand it best, is a person who has come to Christ through faith in Christ, who’s experienced salvation and redemption in Christ, and as a result now is called to follow Christ in all arenas of life.

That means to follow Christ in our relationships, in our business if we’re in the business world, in our communities, in our churches, in our ministries, whatever we’re called to. And so, I think that when we think about a disciple a disciple is one who follows Christ. And that of course impacts the way we live.

[00:03:19] Cara: Yes, thank you. I think that is a great place to start. And can you give us some maybe examples of what this might look like in the day-to-day life of the disciple?

[00:03:32] Dennis: Yeah. I like to think of our Christian living or being a disciple as having three components, what I call the head, the heart, and the hands. And I wrote a book on about this some years ago, really, called Head, Heart, and Hands: Bringing Together Christian Thought, Passion, and Action. It’s interesting that there are a lot of Christians and there are a lot of Christian movements or denominations that accentuate one of these over the other, sometimes almost to the exclusion of others.

And let me just unpack that for us. There are some Christians who are primarily people of the head. What is discipleship for them? Well, it’s simply knowing if I have enough knowledge of the Bible, enough knowledge of Christian doctrines and theology, then I’ll be good disciple of Christ. So, when they go to a church, what do they go to church for? It’s to fill their minds. The head.

And then there are others that are primarily people of the heart. And these are people when they think about the Christian life and discipleship, think of their emotions and their will, their inner self. And a good Christian, a good disciple is one whose heart is experiencing the reality of God.

And oftentimes it’s best exemplified by, I’m moved in some way inwardly. So, these people, when they go to church, they want worship and they want sermons that move their heart, not their heads, but their heart, their inner self.

And then you have the hands people and these are the folks who say, no, the Christian life, being a disciple, is about doing in the world. And you have two components of this in a sense, two varieties of the hands Chri...

Looking Forward with Your MAP w/ Hector and Juan Carlos Barrero

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. Hello friends, and welcome to this episode of GC podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in the context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host Cara Garrity. And today we are wrapping up our series on processes and practices of discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plan. So, for the final time this year, let’s welcome back Pastor Hector. And Wonka, who helped us with this series from the start of the year all the way to wrapping it up at the end of this year.

Thank you both, Hector and Juanca, for joining us for this entire series.

[00:00:56] Hector: Thank you to you, Cara.

[00:00:58] Cara: No, thank you. Your insights have been invaluable to us. So, like I said, this is going to be our last episode for this series that you guys have shared with us from the start of the year to the beginning of the year, your journey of using a ministry action plan.

And at the end of the year, one of the things we do is look forward to what’s happening next year. The end of the year is usually, in that last quarter, that time where we’re putting together our Ministry Action Plans for the coming year.

And I would love to learn from you all. What are you guys going to do differently this year as you develop your ministry action plan?

[00:01:40] Juanca: Yes, Cara, definitely. Listening more, to have active listening. Sometimes as leaders, we have a very grounded perspective and that could be sometimes a challenge for the team members. At the same time, we have to honor the vision and the mission that we have written in the past.

And so, with this, what I’m trying to say is: try to be sensible. With all the different voices on the team, there are different personalities. Some personalities are just creative and like fire. Other personalities are very cold, but at the same time, they have great ideas.

And sometimes when discussing these ideas and in these meetings the outgoing personalities tend to be more vocal, tend to have more space, let’s say. And those voices that are maybe more introverted, those people that are more introverted tend to be left out a little bit.

Because they are so understanding. They are just like, “Okay well, he said that, and she said that, so let’s not — I was going to say this, but...”

Anyway, it’s listening a little bit more. In the 5 Voices, it is especially important to listen, to hear the creative people. At the same time, is this really going to work? Is there really a budget for this? The guardians are always going to be like, no, this is not going to be possible.

We love this structure, and there’s this ongoing conversation that is going to happen in this meeting. So, we have to be in nurturing more mode. We have to be soft; we have to be gentle. We have to be humble, right? Because we all want to participate, and sometimes with words we can just hurt or say things that are not right. We are only human.

But in these meetings, something different that we have to implement is listening more to the people because they have great ideas And it is, after all, the Church of Christ. We are the body of Christ. Everybody should have a voice. Everybody’s part of the body of Christ with different gifts and different perspectives.

[00:04:40] Hector: I will add that Paulina and I — I consider myself and I tell this to my wife, Paulina, that we are motivators. We are to be very enthusiastic, motivating people to do things. The things that they have in mind, we have just to guide, not to impose, but to guide people because they have so much to give, and we want to motivate them to give their best.

And this is my role to be a motivator, to tell people you can do it! Go ahead. I will be supporting you. I will be praying for you. I will give you resources if it is possible and needed.

So, Paulina and I are motivators. Now I see that as my role. So, what are we going to be doing differently? More motivators toward the people who are working in the Avenues. To be in contact with them and motivate them, inspire them to do their job in the congregation.

[00:06:00] Juanca: Yeah, and it’s definitely an art, Cara. It’s definitely an art to not judge. To not judge! Because there’s a difference between — in teaching, there’s a difference between evaluation and assessment, right? In evaluation, you just judge the quality. This is bad. This is wrong. You’re doing it wrong, and the results are insufficient.

And sometimes, regrettably, we are like that. We are like, “Guys, this is not working...