What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? In this episode, we gather for a post-Christmas, post-New Year pastoral debrief. We talk about symbols and meaning, Christmas and holidays, signs and seasons, and how modern churches quietly cleared the path for culture to push Christ out of Christmas without much resistance. We explore the strange and largely arbitrary ways the world measures time, along with the old Adam’s never-ending pyramid project. That is, his need to build meaning upward by effort, progress, and control rather than receive it as a gift. From there, we return to symbol and meaning. We ask why ancient liturgy’s nostalgia or ornamentation, but the distilled shape of reality itself, why the Lord’s Supper isn’t a side practice, but the beating heart of the Church, of worship, and of the Christian life. And why stories’ decorations for faith, but the way truth takes on flesh and finds us where we actually live. This is a conversation about time, worship, memory, and why the Church invents meaning but receives it again and again at the table.

Today on the Christian History Almanac, we go to Washington, D.C., to consider one of the world’s most famous cathedrals.

Today on the Christian History Almanac, we remember the unveiling of what is, perhaps, the most famous altarpiece in history.

Albrech Dürer is said to have brought the Renaissance north of the Alps and perfected the mass production and distribution of images.

Tanner Olson is a poet, author, and speaker. He has a book soon to be released with Zonderkids, on all the things we can pray to God.

Weekend Edition for September 7-8, 2024

Day Trippin’. In this episode, we talk about Easter, altars, cosmic mountains, church history, open fonts, restored virtue, saints, angels, powers of darkness, idols, icons, images, searching for the truth, and how Jesus is the archetype of all archetypes, and in between we read Luther on the Old Testament by Heinrich Bornkamm.

Author and Poet, Rachel Welcher, joins Kelsi to talk about her collection of poems entitled, "Two Funerals, then Easter" in which Rachel shares personal stories of both grief and joy.

Just My Imagination. In this episode, we read Eugene Peterson’s book, Under the Unpredictable Plant, and discuss theological imagination at length. What are the consequences when the church takes its cues from a culture with no imagination? Can Christians tell biblical stories without a theological imagination? What happens when the earthly and heavenly are divided by a lack of imagination into merely rationalized explanations?

Kelsi chats with singer/songwriter, Andy Gullahorn, about his writing process and the impact of ending stories with the good news of grace and the gospel.