All right, welcome to the podcast. The Scriptures are Real. I'm your host, Kerry Mulestein,

and we're excited to have you with us on this podcast where we try and take the scriptures

and make them more real.

We share stories about the scriptures and about ourselves and about times when the

scriptures really came to life for us, and that made them more applicable to us.

I'm the host, Carrie Mealstein, and today it probably won't be the first episode that appears,

but it is actually the first episode I'm recording, and I'm grateful to have someone who's willing to help me figure out what I'm doing.

I'm joined by my guest, Stefan Tager, who has just been a friend for, I think, about eight years now since we first met on a

pioneer workshop kind of a thing, and then we've talked together for quite a while. And so I'm just

grateful to have you with us, Stefan. Would you just introduce yourself for us? Yes, I'm grateful to be here,

Carrie. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm Stefan Tager. I grew up in Massachusetts, and I live here in Utah, and I am a seminary teacher,

seminary and institute teacher. Currently, my assignment is at Institute, the Orm Institute,

and I've also taught adjunct at BYU for a few years now.

And my research is in homiletics, which is the study of preaching.

And more specifically, I study the role of storytelling and narrative in teaching and preaching.

And yeah, that's me. I'm excited to be here. Well, thanks. And I'm sorry. I know your name is Stefan. I have a friend who goes by Stefan in Europe, and I was saying it wrong. I apologize. Anyway, Stefan sounds much... I'm okay with that. I'm totally fine with that. Well, Stefan, you've got a text you'd like to walk us through.

Why don't you just start us out?

Sure, absolutely.

So my text comes from Genesis chapter 12.

It's verses 1 through 3.

And to sort of help you understand how this scripture came alive to me,

...