Coffeepot Fellowship Podcast

Wendy McCaig is the founder and executive director of Embrace Richmond - a community development organization which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. She is also the author of "From the Sanctuary to the Streets." Wendy is a coach for Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) across the United States.

Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and the author of numerous books and resources on the intersection of faith and great stories. Her first book was the best-selling youth devotional, "Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through The Lord of the Rings," followed by the award-winning "Walking with Bilbo: A Devotional Adventure through The Hobbit" (both with Tyndale). She's also the editor of the literary guides to prayer series by Paraclete Press, including "Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide" (Jan. 2016). A graduate of Wheaton College and Duke University Divinity School, she speaks around the country on the role of stories and imagination in spiritual formation. She lives in Lansing, Michigan, with her young sons and her husband, Tom, pastor of Sycamore Creek Church. 

Jemma Allen is an Anglican priest in Aukland, New Zealand, married to another Anglican priest. She is a board member of the RevGalBlogPals group and a contributor to the book "There's a Woman in the Pulpit." She is also a graduate student working to shift the traditional, stigmatized language used discussing suicide. While this interview touches on very important topics of the language around suicide as well as the finding and losing of faith, it also tells a glorious, touching, real tale of a mother-child reunion and a Happiness Dance. Bring tissues.

My colleague, Kendall Ratliffe, interviewed author and Spence Network leader John Chandler recently. True to most of my experiences with Kendall, I learned a new vocabulary word (pusillanimity) and much, much more. Kendall, thanks for introducing us to John and the great ideas he is putting into practice.

I was quickly out of my depth in this interview with Rev. Ruth Everhart. 37 years ago, in her senior year in college, Ruth and her housemates experienced a traumatic event. At gunpoint they were held captive, robbed and raped. In this two part interview Ruth shares insights, realizations, and questions about her pilgrimage from college, to seminary, to pastoring, to marriage and parenthood, and forward. All of this just before she publishes "Ruined: A Memoir

I was quickly out of my depth in this interview with Rev. Ruth Everhart. 37 years ago, in her senior year in college, Ruth and her housemates experienced a traumatic event. At gunpoint they were held captive, robbed and raped. In this two part interview Ruth shares insights, realizations, and questions about her pilgrimage from college, to seminary, to pastoring, to marriage and parenthood, and forward. All of this just before she publishes "Ruined: A Memoir."

Rev. Eileen Hix is a veteran children's minister at Sidney First United Methodist Church. She has lessons and insights for everyone. As we sat down at a local Sidney, Ohio coffeeshop it felt like the location where all our episodes should take place. We sat in cozy chairs under an enormous, steaming cup of coffee painted on the wall.

Lacette Cross could be a guest on twenty separate episodes of The Coffeepot Fellowship Daily Podcast. In our first episode we scratched the surface of many topics. Please do continue allowing God to pull on the threads that speak to you most today. What is a womanist? Who is Katie Cannon? What is a Jamaican Jump? What is "just love?" We may be the show that provokes many questions and answers one.

My friends and mentors sometimes ask about the podcast, and others may be wondering, “Jay, how do you make any money doing this?” Which evokes immediate laughter because the answer is, “I don’t.” None of wants to charge anyone anything just to help them out. When something is important or can change the world then we just want to do it. And yet everyone needs to eat. So everyone's question comes from a good place. They are concerned about my diet. Right? Well, we'll just see about that. This episode is a little different than usual.

Amy Simpson is an author, a speaker, a life and ministry coach, a freelance writer and an editor. Her books, her degrees, her accomplishments, her speaking and coaching are important resources to share and consume. What you will hear in this episode is why she does what she does. It's her story that holds so much power. It's her story that makes God stand up and say "Thank you, Amy."

Martha Spong has been raised up by a throng of similarly spirited women. She is the Executive Director of RevGalBlogPals(.org) and the Editor of There's a Woman in the Pulpit. She's a United Church of Christ minister who spoke to me while she was looking out the window on the steeple of her wife's Presbyterian Church. She tells a great story about returning to preach at the Southern Baptist Church in which she was raised.

Julia Seymour claims neither to drink coffee nor have developed magic hands when she was ordained in 2008. I, however, bet she's been involved in some pretty miraculous stuff (before and after 2008). From her view of Northern Lights Boulevard in Anchorage Alaska she's welcomed a moose (see picture) and many, many more. Catch a prayer of hers on our website or in the published book There's a Woman in the Pulpit.

Rev. Ruth Perkins Lee is the Director of Ministries for the global office of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). Ruth and her hospice chaplain husband have two young yet independent daughters. A recent CBF initiative around sabbatical is probably not unrelated to Ruth's frequent rediscovery of how very isolated faith leaders are. Hear some healthy ideas here so that you and your faith leaders are finding the space and support needed for congregations and their staffs.

One of Rev. Scott Larson-McGuire's stories involves receiving an anonymous letter. There really is nothing more infantile than an anonymous letter. If you are unwilling to have a mature discussion then you do not have the right to cloak yourself behind anonymity. If you are cloaked then your opinion should be too. Anonymity indicates that the author is severely in the wrong. If you are intimidated by the person to whom you wish to deliver a message then bring a (silent) pastor or friend for support. 

Kendall Ratliffe is not the first seminary graduate I've interviewed who has felt called to ministry within the church until after graduation. Their stories remain cliffhangers, to some degree, of whether they will return to serve professionally in churches. In each case, in my clear opinion, it is the church's loss if these leaders take their gifts elsewhere.

I use to sing the background music to "Rice Rice Baby" by Vanilla Ice whenever Stephanie Rice would walk into one of our seminary classrooms. Except the day she came in wearing a giant chicken costume. That threw me a little. If you want to hear the awesome song Stephanie sang at my ordination service check out the show notes on our website coffeepotfellowship.com. Stephanie actually left our Baptist seminary to become a Methodist pastor, by attending Union Presbyterian Seminary. Then she left Virginia and moved back to her family (and a Methodist seminary) in California. Graduated and pastoring her own United Methodist Church now she is credentialed and just as awesome as she's always been.

The day before Thanksgiving Cindy Hardy interviewed Michelle Bodle for The Coffeepot Fellowship Daily Podcast. Cindy is the Networking Chaplain with United Faith Leaders and Michelle pastors two congregations in Pennsylvania. Cindy and Michelle know one another because of a United Methodist outreach to young seminarians. Being a single female leader in churches gets explicit airplay today. 

Jim Peak is a VP and the CFO at The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. He embodies a wonderful confluence of qualities. He is a pastor. He has his PhD. He is an accomplished musician. The tone of his natural voice has a gentleness with almost no edges. During our interview it was hard not to think about how easily his voice would be able blend, as desired, in most choral performances or how very pastoral he could be in a counseling situations when hard things need to be said without provoking aggravation. And yet somehow it surprises no one that Jim is the person who is occasionally characterized as "the muscle" or "the enforcer" at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.

Arthur Jones is a 5th generation Methodist pastor and the founder of The Well, a 750 plus contemporary congregation in Plano, Texas. He is also a coauthor with his father, Bishop Scott Jones, of Ask: Faith Questions for a Skeptical Age. Arthur is another courageous guest in his willingness to be completely vulnerable and honest.

What's a muggle? What does it mean to tweet? What's fracking? Language changes. It develops. In writer and reverend Rachel Hackenberg's words, "Language helps us get at our faith." Hear more of Rachel's words in this awesome and interesting episode.