Hello, everyone, welcome to the Esau-Makali podcast.

I'm your host, Esau-Makali.

This week, as you will join on our...

I'm not going to call you co-host right now.

No.

But I feel like I've given you associate host.

That's kind of like...

A associate host.

It's like a raise, but it's not like a full thing. Okay. Our associate host and producer. You know what? I will take that. Mike Strailer. And we're blessed on the podcast to have the co-host of Truth's Table, Christina Edmondson. She's also a church elder at Cornelia Church. And she's also a church consultant. So if your church is wax, she can tighten your church up a little bit. Is that what you do? That's probably not how you advertise. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. But if you want to do right, there's a way forward. What if our podcast is whack? Can you help us out here too? Can you fix us up a little bit?

First of all, that's the first step is to admit where you are. Oh, look at this. We've made

step one. Is she already charging us? Are we going to get any voice after this? That might be why

you said, yeah, I need to come and help these people. Okay. Oh, man, it's been a rough week.

It's been a rough week. It's been a rough week.

I think everybody knows that even at this point, almost a week later, the most of the country and most of the church are still thinking through and processing the violence that has marked our country over the year, but in particular last week with school shootings

and particularly the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And so rather than just jumping into the political analysis of this, which is important

things we ought to do, I thought this has been interesting for me because this is the first

time that I've

experienced one of these things in a long time as a pastor.

For a long time, I've been a columnist, I've been a professor, I've been a podcast,

but this is the first time I had to think through how am I going to address this issue

in my congregation as a pastor of particular people who I know,

...