Greetings, Bible Scholars. Welcome to the Pastor Mike Job podcast. I'm here with my co-host Emily Lang Paul.

Hello. Emily, this is it. I know it. It's the wrap up of the gospel of Mark, and we have two

distinguished scholars, a doctor and an almost doctor. In addition to reverence to those doctors. So let's meet our guests.

With us today, we have Pastor Richard Webb. Hi, Richard.

Howdy. It's good to be here. You have your own podcast going. Yep, the Word with Webb. And we're right in the middle of it and having a blast. That's great. That's great. We also have Pastor Amanda Nepple. Hi, Amanda. Hi, thanks for having me. I do not have a podcast. No. But you almost have a doctorate.

You're like a year away, right?

You're away.

That's awesome.

God willing.

And. Hi, Amanda. Hi, thanks for having me. I do not have a podcast. No. But you almost have a doctorate. You're like a year away, right? You're away. That's awesome. And you kind of teased that a little bit in the sermon this weekend, which was great, and talked about what you're going to be zooming in on, which is. I'll be looking at the Hope Circle, and specifically the transitional experiences that people have as they move from

seeker to believer and believer to follower and follower to servant leader. So I'll be doing

interviews and talking to people to find out what those experiences are. And I've done a couple

test interviews with that and they've been really great and really encouraging. And yeah,

God is always up to good stuff. And so it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it.

So glad you're doing that because a lot of churches have a discipleship track or a highway or a way to do. So we call it the Circle of Hope. And people can find it on our website. Yes, they can. We're always happy to share with other churches, whatever helps get the Jesus thing going. Yeah.

But just because you have a model, just because you have a circle, a highway, a pathway, doesn't mean people are going to take it.

I mean, you can have the nicest road if no one drives it. What's the point? So focusing in on those

places that widen the funnel that allow the sand to get through, that allow people to move in discipleship to grow deeper. I can't wait to read it. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's exciting to, you know, just think about, like, people have been formed and transformed, whether they knew about the Hope Circle or not, right? And so this gives us a really targeted way to be able to talk about it after the fact and help people see what's going on in their own journey and their own life and as they are kind of growing in their discipleship and seeking after Jesus, like to help them say like, or to be able to recognize, like, these experiences either right on track with where you're trying to go, like you're right on time or here are things that you could think about to think about this differently and continue in your growth. So, yeah, I'm excited. It'll be good. It'll be really good. I'll just say this, too, for people who aren't familiar with hope or the way we do discipleship here. We take this seriously. I mean, this was Jesus' marching orders at the end of Matthews Gospel, go and make disciples. And so how do we make disciples? How do we grow people in faith? The circle is a circle because it ends at the bottom. I love that about it. I love that you work your way down. The first will be last. The last will be first. The greatest will be the chief servant. We've been reading about that in Mark's gospel as we've been

going along. And so the goal is not like, the way the world would see it is you move further along

in any endeavor, a career, a life goal, that you get to that place, and then you're in a place

of prestige, of power, you know,

of certain status.

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