Membership

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastors Keith Simon and Patrick Miller tackle the complexities of church membership. While many struggle with the church’s imperfections, we must remember that the church isn’t our idea: it was Jesus’s. Warts and all, Jesus established, loves, and died for this community. Exploring biblical metaphors like the family of God and the body of Christ, they redefine membership as a sacrificial devotion to a flawed local body. 

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastors Keith Simon and Patrick Miller tackle one of life’s biggest questions: Is God sovereign over everything? They explore the three pillars of God’s character—his absolute power, infinite wisdom, and perfect love. From ruling over nations to the smallest details of our individual lives, they discuss how God’s plan is comprehensive and unwavering. The episode addresses difficult topics like human responsibility and the existence of evil, illustrating how God uses even the hardest circumstances for his glory. You’ll learn why God’s supreme rule is the ultimate source of strength and hope. 

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastor Dave Cover asks how far God’s redemptive work in Christ reaches into the ordinary stuff of this world. Work, art, science, business, technology, and the care of creation. Pushing back on the popular “Christian” notion that only faith, family, and friends ultimately matter, he returns to Genesis 1 to show that human beings were created to bear God’s image by ruling over and cultivating his world, a calling distorted but never erased by sin. He makes the case that the Christian hope is not escaping our bodies on earth to float off to heaven. It’s Jesus returning to join heaven and earth and restore all things, raising his followers in glorified bodies to reign on a renewed earth. The result is that no follower of Jesus has a “secular” job, and every act of love, creativity, justice, and honest work—from heart surgery to cutting the lawn—is a signpost of the glorious earth that God is bringing to this world in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastor Dave Cover unpacks the belief that shapes everything else in our lives: How we view the Bible. Beginning with C.S. Lewis’s observation that almost everything we believe rests on the testimony of an authority we trust, he makes the case that the New Testament is a credible, eyewitness account of Jesus, written by apostles who carefully preserved their rabbi’s teaching and were willing to die for what they had seen. He explains what the Bible actually is, why both the Old and New Testaments were received as God’s Word, and how that text has been faithfully transmitted to us across thousands of years. Above all, he shows that no one held a higher view of Scripture than Jesus himself, then closes with practical advice for reading the Bible—starting in the New Testament and praying the Psalms—so that we don’t merely know it but experience God speaking through it. 

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastors Keith Simon and Patrick Miller discuss the difference between Christians who ask, “What’s the bare minimum I need to do be saved?” and Christians who ask, "How can I follow Jesus every day?” Jesus calls us to follow him as citizens of his kingdom. He’s not a cheap ticket to heaven. By examining Jesus’s ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, they show how he targets the heart to transform our approach to money, sex, power, and justice. 

In this episode of The Discovery Class podcast, pastors Keith Simon and Patrick Miller explore a foundational question: What is the gospel? By tracing the biblical narrative from the Old Testament to the Roman world to the modern world, they explain how Jesus fulfills God’s promise to send a saving king. After this, they explore the proper response to this good news: not mere belief but total allegiance.