Episode 150 | The Music Of Advent

December 6, 2023 • Autumn Gardner, Adam Anglin

Adam and Autumn discuss the music that characterizes the season of Advent and examine its purpose and central themes. The songs of Advent give us language to live out of the past reality of God’s promises fulfilled in Christ’s first coming and look toward the future hope of Christ’s second coming. The songs of Advent encourage us to prepare our hearts for the coming King and invite us into the waiting and longing experienced by the people of God throughout history.

Episode 149 | Advent, A Season Of Preparation

November 29, 2023 • Autumn Gardner, Andy Barlow

Episode 148 | VFL Reads: The Misunderstood Reason Millions Of Americans Stopped Going To Church

November 22, 2023 • Autumn Gardner, Hunter Beaumont

“Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.” Religious abuse, moral failure of church leaders, and the pressures of culture that lead to deconstruction of faith all contribute to “dechurching.” Surprisingly, research reveals a less apparent reason driving the statistic cited above: a slow drift away from church participation. In this episode, Autumn and Hunter discuss an Atlantic article by Jake Meador that examines this slow drift. Meador suggests a response to waning participation in American churches. He states that churches in our cultural climate must call their people to a more committed, robust, interdependent way of being the body of Christ. Resources mentioned in this episode: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/ by Jake Meador https://a.co/d/ek6d5ud by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, et al