Well, my good friends, my dear listeners here at Five Minutes in Church History,

tomorrow is a very special day for all of us, maybe more for me than you,

but tomorrow is our 12th anniversary.

We first aired on August 14, 2013, and here we are 12 years later.

Thank you for being with me and for listening and for being part of five minutes. I am so

grateful when I get to meet you in person. And I think of you often as I record these, and I appreciate you

being on this really fun journey with me. Let's hop into this week's episode and get at 12 reasons

why we do this and why I like church history. That's a lot. So here we go. First, we get perspective

in this world of breaking news and where everything is catastrophized, or conversely, sometimes

we can miss really important things. It's so helpful to have the past as perspective.

Second, we get to visit our relatives. Our old intro to five minutes used to say,

this is our family history, because that's what church history is. This is our family history.

And you know how fun it is to hear the great stories about, you know, the crazy uncle and the exploits of former family members and accomplishments of family members.

Well, church history is our family.

Number three, we are keeping continuity with the Bible.

The Bible took place in place and time. It is historical. It's not just propositions dropped from

heaven. It's not some visions that are just recorded and given to us. It is real people

in real places and real time. It is history. And so we are keeping continuity with the Bible's emphasis on history when we pay attention to church history.

Fourth, we need examples. We need inspiration and we need courage from examples.

And church history is full of examples. To elaborate a little, number five, we need positive examples. And we get plenty

of positive examples, folks who were faithful disciples in the time and place where God put them.

But we also need, number six, negative examples. We need to guard ourselves from the missteps that

...