"Go Home!"
EPISODE 200
Enjoy the Journey
Today — as this drops — it’s the fifth anniversary of our first show’s release. And since it’s also our 200th episode, we took some time to look back and share our Favorite Things about doing Bible Geeks (including a few favorite clips!). We kick it off with a “meta” Finding Jesus, talking about why we always start with Christ. Then we get into why we’re still here and don’t plan to stop anytime soon. To anyone who has ever listened, engaged with us, or supported us, we want to offer a HUGE thank you! You have made this a fun and encouraging journey, and we couldn’t have done it without you!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Thanks for sticking with us for five years of Bible Geeks!
Episode Transcription
Why are you still here? That's very Ferris Bueller of you. The show, yeah. Go home. The show's over. Go home. Well, hello everyone and welcome to Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 200. 200. I'm your host, Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. It's fun to say 200. I've been waiting to say it for a little while. And it's not only an exciting day in that we've released 200 episodes, but today, if you are listening to this episode as it releases on February 7th, 2024, this is our fifth anniversary. Five years after we launched the podcast back on February 7th, 2019. And if I'm doing the maths correctly, yeah, five years. Happy birthday, Ryan. Yeah. Happy birthday, Bible Geeks. It's very exciting. Well, also happy birthday to you because it is your birthday next week. So that is exciting as well. I won't ask you how old you are. I don't think that's an appropriate question anymore these days. More than five. This episode, we could do a lot of things. We could probably roll right into some more substantive discussion. But I think every now and again, it's nice just to stop, take a break, and maybe just go a little bit meta and talk about what we're doing on the show, why we're here, what we've been doing. Like, looking back over the last 200 episodes, there's a lot to talk about. And so maybe let's get into an icebreaker to kick this thing off like we like to do. OK, yeah. If you can't do this on your fifth anniversary and 200th episode, I mean, when can you do it? So the icebreaker question to start us off here is, what would be the subject of your other podcast, Bryan, if you weren't doing one about the Bible? I have no other podcast besides Bible Geeks. But if I did have one, I think it'd be pretty easy. I did actually used to have a podcast about coffee a long time ago where we talked about coffee and how to make coffee and how to roast coffee and all kinds of different things. I do love myself some coffee. I roast my own coffee at home, but I'm probably not in love with coffee as much as I used to be. So I probably would not kick off a coffee podcast again if I had to. Another area of particular interest of mine is reading these days. I love me a good book. Actually, our Bible Geeks Book Club episodes recently scratched a nice itch for me. I enjoy talking about those kinds of things. It actually reminds me of a good friend of ours who is a supporter of our show. She just started her own podcast. It's called Her Strength in Him. And her whole focus on those episodes has been talking about goal setting and planning. And she's been talking about books that she's reading and folding scripture into those conversations. And man, I'm pretty sure that's what I'd be doing if I wasn't doing something like the Bible Geeks right now. I do appreciate it when people talk about books and talk about growth and personal development and all those kinds of things. I think it's where I'd be. How about you? I love it. I love it. We'll have to link to that show in the show notes. I guess the reason I do a podcast on anything else is because I like talking about it, not because I think people are dying to hear me talk about something. So I'd enjoy an excuse to talk about great movies maybe. There's a college football podcast I listen to that ends with the host talking about what you're watching, what you're eating, and what you're thinking. It's just kind of general musings and recommendations and ends up being a pretty fun part of that show to listen to. The key, as I'm sure we'll talk about, is having somebody you want to talk to and then something that you're excited to engage in. It's like if you would enjoy sitting over coffee and a piece of pie talking about it, then maybe I would enjoy spending a little time. But I have to say, like you said, that it wouldn't sustainably last through my life if it wasn't about the Bible because there's just not a lot of room for hobbies. So this is something that is worth it on a lot of different levels. So maybe we can sneak in a few references to movies and what you eat and every once in a while. You hear that everybody. Bryan just said this was not a hobby for him. So putting that on record, I'm going to throw that out into the world. Let's move on to our first actual segment here on the episode where we talk about finding Jesus. We're going to start with Jesus as we always do. And maybe as a question to kick off this episode, why do we start with Jesus? For 200 episodes, I won't say we've always started with Jesus. There might have been one or two episodes where we started with something else, but Jesus was always near the front of every conversation that we had. Why is it that we start with Jesus? And what verse really captures the spirit of that intention that we like to start our episodes with? Well, I think I don't even know if we actually talked about this, but I think I think we have. I think we have. We talk about OK, deep cut long time ago. Maybe we've mentioned this. OK, yeah, there's a preacher that we both love and respect to, at least when he was at Monte Vista and we were both there, started every sermon with the words Jesus said. And he said it was such passion and power that it just kicked off the sermon in an amazing way and highlighted that Jesus is the center of everything we do. And every kind of sermon that you're going to preach about any kind of topic can start with something Jesus said. And I just think it made a really big impact on both of us and kind of sits in the background of this segment. And so it's like that time when people were leaving Jesus and John six and Jesus asked, Do you want to leave me too? And Peter said, Lord, where will we go? You have the words of life. And that's the idea of this section. Jesus has the words of life. Jesus is the source and all the prophets and all the apostles speak God's word. But we're Jesus disciples. We're not Paul's disciples. We're Jesus disciples. We follow him. And so this just is a way to help us keep that front and center and put Jesus where he belongs at the heart of everything we do. I think you stole my answer and it's not going to be a surprise, but I have to pick a different one. I do, though, think that Jesus is the answer for everything, which any topic we talk about here on the show, Jesus has to be at the center. He's the cornerstone. He's the foundation of it all. It is about being like the teacher. It's about following Jesus example and listening to his words and developing a relationship with him. It's having this friendship with Jesus where we listen to him and we obey him, just like he talked about in John 15, how when we say we love him, well, we're going to be his friends if we do what he told us to do. And so I think it's really important for us to develop that relationship with Jesus, to follow Jesus in everything that we do. And so looping him into every discussion, it's really an important starting point. It is square one. Jesus is square one for where we go. And I think in our conversations that we have, it makes sense to start with something that Jesus said and then obviously adding in the rest of the scriptures to surround what he's talked to us about and what he's commanded us to do. It's just a super helpful way of level setting things, I suppose. So maybe as we move on from this conversation, let's talk about some of the favorite things that we have noticed along the way in 200 episodes. These are a few of my favorite things. All right. Well, I'll kick us off with my favorite thing. Number one, and that is appropriately for our first item, the opening clips. It's an example of the fun of just surprising each other and just, you know, two dudes having fun, which we do here while we're talking about important things. I once heard one of the Beatles talking about how John and Paul were always trying to get a response out of each other with their songwriting. And that kept them going. You know, it just keeps you inspired whenever you're trying to see if you can maybe delight or surprise or get a reaction from a partner that you like working with. And I love that part of our process. And it's just one of the fun ways you always surprise me, that opening clip. I didn't know you were going to do that at all on our first episode. My hands as we talk are going crazy. So if you tied those down, I wouldn't be able to say anything. And I never know what the clip is going to be when you send an episode for me to review. And at first, those were just silly clips, and then we would title it something else that went with the episode. And there was a couple of times that the episode's title was in that. But then in episode 21, I think I was just going back and looking at it. When we had our wives on, Adrienne said something funny and Sherlyn said, Title for the episode right there. But I think from that point on, we've always taken the titles from those opening clips. And one of our friends, Taylor, told me years ago, she loved to listen and find out what silly thing would start the show. So I thought it would be fun to have a tour of some of our opening. I have the chicken. I have the word. I have God's authority here. This is where this is where it's at. We may have gone too far with our colloquialisms here. You just need to decide to stop, man. You just you just choose to say no more. He says, it's not that easy, Mom. It's an addiction. Let the love flow set free the love, Dan. Yeah, I think our daughters might have a podcast of their own in the future or YouTube channel. That definitely could happen at some point. Hey, guys. Behold, behold, which is the Bible word for what in the world? Look at that. Is this a good time? Is a bad time? Prime time? Bible time? People are asking, is this the end time? Jesus says, no, it's the meantime. It's a squeaky chair, man. But yeah, in what, 167 episodes, it's not shown up as a third host of the show yet. So I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And I'm the squeaky chair. Seriously, those have always been ridiculous. And it's one of those things when I'm editing the show. And as soon as I hear something that is like, oh, yeah, that's it. Like, you just know it when you hear it. You know it when you hear just the laughing or the funny statement or the weird phrase that was used. It's like, oh, yeah, that's it. Or the opportunity to rick roll everybody. Oh, yeah. I'm not ever going to let you go. And it makes me think of one of my favorite lines in a song. Never gonna give you up. That's too good. And it is one of those things. It's OK. Keep listening to find out why in context this is actually a really powerful thing that we said. But at the time, it just seems plucked out of context. It seems ridiculous. So I would concur. That is one of my favorite things as well. But as I'm thinking about my first favorite thing, I love our segments. I just love having an arsenal of like ready made frameworks to think through things. It's been such a helpful way not only in the show, but like in my own personal study. And even I'll just say, by the way, I've been in some of my recent sermons. I've been including some of our segments into my sermons because they're just so they're so easy to talk through the Bible in these sort of casual ways. Like, you know, flying through the book. That's just such a cool way of thinking about just doing a real quick overview of a book. Heavy words where we get deep into some of the meanings behind some of these powerful words. Do you understand where we're asking, grappling with some of these difficult questions? Favorite things like we're doing right now. Deep thoughts and how we can tie in some really powerful things into some of the things that we're studying and talking about. What's the deal with that? Top four proverbs, a closer look. And let's not forget the A team. The A team is one of my favorite segments. That is the thing you can have a draft with is just great. And these segments have evolved throughout the years. I think our most recent one is a closer look and anytime we can include Captain Picard in a stinger audio before we get to talking about the Bible, it's always a good day for me. So I love the show format. I love the way the segments are folded in there. It's just a blast for me to use these kinds of casual, lighthearted conversations, but let them get deep. And I think each of these segments have a real special spot in the show as we've sort of evolved them over the years. Yeah, I think they started really early, too. I think maybe episode three, we started with deep thoughts and we've just continued to add them. And I'm about to teach a class on how to study the Bible. And I want to talk about different methodologies and different ways of interacting with the text. And those are a lot of the way, you know, the heavy words. OK, do a word study. Here's how to do that. Answering a question like, do you understand? That's a way to engage with the scriptures or going through a chapter like poetry in motion or doing an overview or a survey of a book or a character study like Hello, my name is. So really thinking about what those are doing, what we were trying to do, I think, is find different ways of interacting with the Bible. And then it was always fun. It always has been fun to see what's a fun way of positioning this with our uniquely child of the 80s, you know, nerdy kind of dad sensibilities there. Who is your daddy? You had that ready to go. I love it. We've been waiting for a segment to use that with. But no, those are great. So my number two is the listener connections. And yeah, we hear from people all over the place. I love getting questions. That recent one that Adrian and I took on was really cool. We just always love getting questions. And we have a backlog of some that we're excited to to still take on and courage more to come. But, you know, like we have a dear friend and a supporter from Germany, Giselu, who sends insightful musings about verses that we discuss. And I always am built up by her emails and thoughts. I loved hearing about a friend of the show who's going through cross training again this year to grow. And families have told us they listen to the show on their walks together as a family. What a fun way to engage with something. Lots of people have told me how they like to share our videos, that the videos are that short thing. It's easy to share with a friend as a way of starting a conversation and just sharing God's word. And then there's all these questions we've gotten for the ask the geeks, the guests we've had, the social media interactions. It's just so fun to get to know and share conversations and connections with our favorite people, the people who love Jesus. And you're probably not interacting with us unless you have an interest in the most important things there are and the fellowship we have with people who are God's people. That's the best thing in the world. So I wish we had a way for those voices to appear here. Sometimes on an NPR show or some podcast, they have a phone number. People can call in and read their questions, but it has been really cool nonetheless. I would love to hear voices asking questions or making comments, but we'll take it. And that's a good idea for upcoming feature on the website. Just send us a recording of a question and we'll play a show and answer it. I like that. Maybe we'll do that at some point. I totally agree with you, though. It's for me, it's really there's other reasons to do this show that we'll talk about in a little bit. But having that listener connection is just the icing on the cake for me. It's just such a cool way of knowing that people are listening. They're tuning in and just the opportunities we've had to get to know people and even have people on the show. Like a lot of our guests that we've had over the years have been a really great way of getting connected with people. So I do love that for sure. My second favorite thing is our families. I do have to just say honestly, like for our wives who carry the brunt of the burden while we're holed off for a couple of hours talking to each other. And then there's like the editing and the video production and the writing and everything else that goes into the show. They really are pretty amazing. I remember after we had taken a break for a little while. I remember getting a message from Adrian and she said, OK, I'm never going to see my husband again. I said, I'm so sorry, but I really need to have Ryan back in my life. So it is super cool that we get this opportunity to have our wives support us in this way. And I will forever be grateful for them and their support. Also for our moms, we've talked about our moms a lot and how they support us, especially your mom, who every time I see her talks about the show. And I love that so much. Just everyone in our lives who's chipped in and supported us. We also have a handful of Patreon supporters who financially support us, which we don't talk about very much on the show. But man, it is so awesome to have these kinds of people just being willing to back us up and help us support us through all this stuff. So thank you to everybody. Our undying gratitude to all of you for all the ways that you've just held us up, held up our arms like Moses in the battle throughout this whole activity over the last five years. It's been a while. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you know, there's very few times that I have any questions about how something's working or what it was. Did that work in the episode or just some crossroads we're at that I don't go and ask Adrienne what she thinks. She's my she's my thinking partner and everything. And she has made a huge contribution on into the show and into me, not just the time, but her wisdom. And and yeah, like you said, the support that she and Sherilyn and so many others have given to us is really meaningful. My third favorite thing is our challenges. And somewhere along the way, you found that great quote from Dwight. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. Too good. I love it. It started. We started the show while I was doing this thing in my preaching. I called it the year of 50 challenges. And so almost all of my sermons, at least my Sunday morning sermons, had a challenge. And it was just trying to do like a practical little way of connecting what I preached on to something. I was saying, see if you could get all 50 challenges this year. And I made a checklist as we went for them to kind of move through it and think about it. And we happen to be, like I said, starting the show. I think our second episode, we started kicking in some challenges and it's stuck. And I think it goes with our emphasis on practical discipleship, just trying to ground these big ideas, which is another thing we talk about a lot. I talk about in my preaching and your preaching, you talk about it, that there's, you know, God has big things he wants us to say. And there are these truths that are life changing. But there's a living applied kind of corner on all of these big truths where it has to rubber meets the road. This is how it gets lived. So I was looking back at some of our challenges and the second one, really the first few that we did, all just start to give a flavor of what the show is about. From the first one, we were talking about, not surprisingly, habits. Weekly challenge. Shocking. Identify a small habit that supports your bigger spiritual goals and incorporate it into your daily routine. And then we talked about talking about our baggage, just digging in and like getting real with someone else. Then we talked about meditation. Choose a passage and meditate on it this week. These are the kind of things that we often have led people to. We've had a lot of challenges about singing, about talking to people, about engaging with others by asking them a question. We've done a lot of journaling and listing that we've told people to do, write three things down, you know, that kind of thing. So I just have benefited myself from just forcing myself to think about what does this look like in real life and then trying to live it. So I like those. The verb. What is the verb? What is the verb? Yeah, as a brother at church that I talk to sometimes about teaching likes to ask, what is the "so what" on this lesson? Oh, it's so good. I've enjoyed our challenges a lot. And while I've not always been successful in them and maybe we could at some point do some better check ins on some of these challenges. But I do think it is a powerful way to really round out a conversation and send us off into the week doing some powerful things. I think my third favorite thing is a little bit related to that. And it's just the focus that some of our studies have had even from the earliest moments of the show. I think we knew that it would be really helpful to tackle topics over multiple episodes. It's really hard in a 30 to 40 minute show to sit down and really grapple with some of the depth of what we find in the Bible. And so it made sense to really cover things over longer stretches and do these series. And so one of the things that we did early on was to look at the miracles of Jesus and the fruit of the spirit. We had multiple discussions about like, how do we talk to our younger selves or how do we talk to young people today? But I think it's really when it started getting into the book, when we did that reading plan through the New Testament and when we did our cross training series and all of these things that that's when it really started to click for me. Like how we could build something that was bigger than just a few episodes strung together. And maybe that didn't land with as many people like having to spend an entire year talking through something. But that's, I think, when it led to our guided studies that we've been doing now. And I've just been really excited as we've been working on parenting, looking at what's good, talking to yourself. And then as we did our talking through Ephesians series recently, I just love the focus that these topics have had. And it's been helpful for me in my own personal study in the ability that I have to write these things and to put these ideas together. And hopefully it's been an encouragement for you. And if you've been able to have these conversations with other people or you've been able to point people to these studies, that's really just again, it's the icing on the cake for me. It's really super geared toward me and what I can do and how I can move forward. But as other people are blessed by it, I really hope that God's word is being spread in this world through some of these studies that we're doing. Yeah. You know, we've tried to be efficient with this stuff as we do it, but it does take time. And so if you're going to put some time into building something, you want it to be something that people can use, that's going to be a tool. And so as we've done it, I know you and I both have thought about, OK, what do the churches that we're working with need? What kinds of sermons do we want to be preaching? What are the themes we're focusing on? And then taking those and not only making a tool for the through the studies and the books that we're building and the conversations and videos, but then being able to turn those into sermons has been really helpful, too. It's like having a partner brainstorming and crafting together a sermon plan, which is nice to have, too. I have benefited from them and I feel good about those packages that we've put together that are going to be able to sit there. And if you haven't ever, for instance, taken on our cross training, maybe think about that. Think about how do you engage in developing yourself as a disciple over the course of a year? And we go systematically through these different aspects of discipleship. And I think it's a really helpful thing to keep coming back to. Or, you know, if you're looking for a reading plan, I feel really good. There's a lot of reasoning and thought that went into the way we designed our reading plan. And there's videos that go with that. So that's a little pitch here for anybody that hasn't engaged with those. I think I hope that they're useful to people. And if there's a guided study or if there is a way of packaging these things that you would benefit from or the church that you're a member of would benefit from, let us know. And we'll consider the different ways of putting this stuff out here. I love it. Yeah, as we are disciples under development, we are not hard and fast stuck in any way of doing things. So if there's something we can do to improve, definitely let us know. We'd always appreciate that. Let's move on to our final segment here on the episode on our 200th episode where we reach out just a little bit. I love this question. Why are you still here? It's very Ferris Bueller of you. The show. Yeah. Go home. It's over. Go home. Why are you still doing this show, Bryan? And where do you want things to go? Oh, man, I love the question. It is good. But I think for me, it's always been about the two by two nature of important work as Jesus sent out his disciples two by two. Any excuse that I have to talk to my best friend on a regular basis, I'm going to take it. That's why I was saying, you know, all of our friends and family and everyone else who listens in and those interactions we've had, I called that icing on the cake. Really, the cake itself is this conversation is the opportunity to talk to you. So while it's true that I do enjoy our listeners and I love the people who benefit from these conversations, I'm just so happy that we're able to stay connected. And, you know, it fits into my year of the shield theme that we talked about on a recent episode about friendship that for me it's just that that is what the value is in this show. You push me. These studies push me. These opportunities I have to be introspective and the challenges that we have push me. And it's not a slog. It's fun. These are fun conversations. This is just like sitting across the table. I think you said with coffee and pie talking to somebody. I mean, that is what this is. Although I don't have the pie with me. We really do just need that would be an upgrade. Oh, it would for sure. Yeah. But for me, we can do these guided studies and hopefully these land with people. But, you know, whether or not they do, whether or not people find value in these things, I do. And for me, that's really just the biggest bulk of it. I love getting emails from people. I love hearing how we can do things better, how we can improve. I love questions. I love it when people are supporting the show and all the things that they're able to do. But if I can just do a little bit better tomorrow in my personal life than I did today through these conversations, it's that growth mindset that not only you challenge me with on the show, but I think we collectively challenge each other here in the work that we're doing to just be better at this podcast, to be better at our presentation, to just take one little step in front of another one. That's going to improve things for our listeners and for us. I think it's just such a powerful way of growing together. That is the focus of this show for me. So why am I still doing this? It's just about the growing together. It's about that two by two work along with you. I love it. I'm with you. It was interesting when we did, I don't know, a few months back, Kenny Embry put together those Balancing the Christian Life lectureships, online lectureships. And we were part of a panel talking about podcasting and seeing the difference between doing, just the different ways of doing it, right? All good ways of doing a solo podcast versus what we do. It just made me realize how almost oblivious we are to like things like marketing and trying to grow it away, maybe too much sometimes that we just follow our own path. I figure it's like the John Lennon Paul McCarty thing. I figure if Bryan thinks it's a good idea and I think it's a good idea, then that's probably that's good enough for me. I'll go from there. So it's, it is really a, that we've been on our own sort of path, just recording the journey and trying to make it useful for others, but enjoying doing it together. I think looking back to our first episode, the reason I do it now are the same as why we started. I just listened recently to some of that first episode. Like we talked about co-creating something meaningful with a good partner and the joy of collaboration. Like you said, the two by two nature, especially when the partnership mixes with fellowship and friendship. And I think over the course of time, we're figuring out what we can offer to the kingdom. And I'm looking forward to continuing to build some of these partnerships. we've been able to use these resources for sharing the gospel and continuing to think how people can learn and grow in the faith, which is what we've always been about. Cause like you said, we want to grow. We are in development. We are trying to push each other and have conversations that challenge us. And we want to offer that to others. And I'm excited about what we have planned for next, but there's like a boundary on the horizon where beyond that, I don't know what it is. And that's exciting too. what is, what's beyond the horizon, but I'm still here. I'm still enjoying it and glad that we're doing this work. Well, me too. Yeah. And I think this is an especially important conversation given what we're about to be doing here in short order. There is a conversation to be had about the future of the show, where we're going. And I do just want to just highlight everything we've already said. We're not going anywhere. We love these conversations. We love what we're doing. And so that's why we're going to announce right now that we're going to take a little bit of a break for a bit. And we're going to incorporate a more regular break into our cadence in upcoming months, because what we've realized with the show is that, well, we can just do this week to week. And sometimes ago we were taking like every seventh week off and just giving ourselves a little break. What we've realized is in order to bring some really important studies to the table here in this show and to really do the kind of work that we want to do and to keep it fun and exciting. It is helpful for us to take a step back and breathe a little bit and spend some time with our families. And this really does, again, go back to some of the goals episodes that we had recently, just our future and our ability to sort of experiment with things and change the way things happen so that we can give ourselves more time. So here's what we're going to do for the rest of February. We're going to be off. And when March rolls around here in 2024, we're going to kick back off with a new guided study. And so we're going to get into that study in March. And we're really excited about that study. And we're going to do that all the way through May. And then we're going to get on a regular cadence here on the show. At least this is our intention. If the Lord wills, we will be taking a couple of two month breaks. And that's really going to start at the end of this square. One series will be taking June and July off this year. And then our plan is to take December and January off. And then we'll just try to keep that cadence going as we come back for these really focused stints of weekly episodes that we'll have about guided studies, about the chosen, about books we're reading, about whatever it is that we want to talk about on episodes. We're going to come back and we'll be back for the attack during those times. So we're kind of excited about having a little bit more of a break, but then maybe just turning the show into like more of a seasonal conversation that we have a seasonal focused opportunity in the spring and the fall to basically be all about Bible Geeks. So that's it. That's really what we're thinking about doing here in the upcoming year. And so we're really excited for that. We hope you're excited for that and we hope you'll stick with us in those times when for two months you don't hear from us for a little while. Maybe it'll be a relief. Yeah, maybe it'll just be like, oh, good. I don't have to listen to those guys again for a while, but we do appreciate you all so much. And on our 200th episode, our sincere gratitude and thanks to everybody who listens. Keep it up. We're going to keep going. And in just a few weeks we will be back. Thank you all so much again to everyone for following us on the podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/200. And if you want to follow along with any of our old guided studies that we've done, go to our website and you'll find them all there as well. Thanks again, everyone, for tuning in. And until our next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC PLAYING]