This is the Bama Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we return to ordinary time on the podcast and prepare for some fresh studies of the text.

It's time to start a new chapter, start a new session, start a new turn over a new leaf. Shout out to your church colleague, Jeremiah Johnson on that ordinary time thing. He's been mentioning that a lot in his sermons and I apparently found a way to apply to the podcast.

There you go. I do love it. It's an interesting time in the church calendar that people have said a lot of things about to make it anything but ordinary, but that's the idea.

So let's maybe start in case you're wandering into a podcast app and it is, you know, giving you our most recent session and if that session is session eight, season eight as it will appear in the podcast apps.

This is not the beginning where we are. This is this is the beginning of a new season for us, but it is not the beginning of the work and not really not the best place to begin the best place to begin is at the beginning. And so you want to go all the way back to episode zero to our introductory lesson.

And we kind of lay out the whole idea of what we're doing here. And of course, even since we recorded those original episodes, we have learned and we have grown and all sorts of things have happened, but that especially sessions one through five are intended to go through in order and give you an overview of the Bible and church history and the grand narrative that God is telling in the world.

It is all one big story. And that is that is the suggestion. Obviously, we can't reach out of your phone or your computer and make you do that, but that's our suggestion.

Yeah. And let me go back to something you just said a moment ago. And we've talked about this at our last, we had a retreat not too long ago with the Baymont teaching team.

Talk, we talked about we will at some point. I'm almost positive. I don't know when I'll make no guarantees or promises to you, but at some point we got to go back and kind of redo that body of work, probably with the whole team with everybody's voice involved.

Because you said in a moment ago, Brent, we were different people back then. We started this podcast in 2016. That was a long time ago, like not a long, long time ago, but that was a long time ago.

We were, I was a different person in 2016. Were you a different person in 2016? Yeah. No kids, a different world, a different, yeah, seven years actually makes a pretty big difference.

Yeah. And guys, I got to tell you, I've learned a lot over the course of those eight years. I've learned a lot. Marty Solomon has learned a lot, just like I learned a lot in the eight years prior to that.

So I get emails. We just got an email recently from, from people that they will, they will point out how unwoke some of my, and I don't, I mean that a positive way. I mean, they're right. They're right. I thought in season one that I was this great warrior for bringing down the patriarchy and speaking positively about women and redeeming the role of women in the, I mean, that's one of the more common email.

There are common emails that I get as women listening to season one saying, man, there's some things that are just so beautiful and so life-giving and so freeing. But then you do this other stuff over here. And that's just, that's just me being ignorant. That's just me having not grown and learned. That's just 2016 me. I would totally agree with you today.

So at some point we got to get back there and kind of redo those things because those things are super important. Just know when you're listening to that. If you have the opportunity to hear us now in 2023 before you go back to 2016, just hear us say, I mean, I don't know who you were in 2016. Oh, listener.

I would imagine that you were somebody different in 2016. The world was different in 2016. Our cultural consciousness of what we talk about and how we talk about it and what we accept and what we're angry about was wildly different in 2016 than it is today.

And so these things are kind of locked in a period of history. And that's important to me. I just want to, I just want to acknowledge that when you want to be like, Marty, you're so, you're so wrong in the language you, yes, yes, you are right. You are, I just want to say you're right without any passive aggression.

And that was where I was at then and luckily Jesus is still working on my heart. And it took us way too long took us years before we added any women to the Baymont team. It took us years before we had a woman that we interviewed on the podcast. It took us years before I broached other conversations that have made people upset.

But that it's just all a part of the journey. So be gracious with that. But there is a body of work that started back then that Brent referred to those first five seasons really are kind of the larger body of work. And we'll get back and redo it. We will, we'll make it more, we'll make it better. We'll improve it.

But that's the main, that's the good stuff. And Brent, you've, you've given up an encouragement before about, and I like this recommendation, binge the first five seasons like however you drive in a car working out running on a treadmill, just put that on 1.5 speed and just bench to those five seasons, because you can always go back to the sections that you were like, wait, let me do. And then you can get caught up to real time. They're always there to go back to.

But yeah, would you give any more words to that than that?

Yeah, and you know, make notes. If you, if something intrigues you in the moment, like sure, make a note of it. And say, hey, I definitely want to go back and check out episode 43 again. That was a really great one.

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