One of the most humbling things that’s happened to Cameron since the publication of his first book of poetry, titled Forbearance, came when former poet laureate Ted Kooser posted one of the poems with a note saying he wished he’d written it! In this episode, Mark asks Cameron about that experience, and about the creative process behind this collection of poems. Some reading, some analysis, and a lot of storytelling make this a fascinating window into Cameron’s work, especially touching on its biblical, theological, and even cosmological layers.

Get your copy here: Forbearance by Cameron Brooks (Cascade Books)
Read more of Cameron’s writing on his Substack: Conversant

THE COMMENTARY is an in-depth conversation about vision, worship, and life at Grace Presbyterian Church.

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The Commentary is back — and we’re on a mission to recover the generational mindset of the Church, something we might call “Cathedral Thinking.” Spurred by an essay on this topic, Cameron and Mark ask what lessons the cathedral builders of old can teach us, not just about ecclesiastical architecture, but about investing our time and gifts in work that won’t come to fruition in our lifetimes.

Read Jonathan Thompson’s “The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Cathedral Thinking.”

THE COMMENTARY is an in-depth conversation about vision, worship, and life at Grace Presbyterian Church.

Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or Spotify 

If we raise our kids to be rule-followers, they may very well grow up to follow the world’s rules rather than God’s. That’s the problem with mere moralism. On the other hand, part of raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord involves teaching them … well, the rules. In this episode, Cameron and Mark think through the challenge of moral instruction, especially when it comes to raising kids to “get” grace.

THE COMMENTARY is an in-depth conversation about vision, worship, and life at Grace Presbyterian Church.

Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or Spotify 

This year Grace launched a new approach to our small group ministry, which included a name change to better reflect the mission: small groups are now Community Groups. We’re at the half-way point for this semester’s plan, so Mark and Cameron decided to compare notes on how the new groups are going — and what they like best about the fresh format.

THE COMMENTARY is an in-depth conversation about vision, worship, and life at Grace Presbyterian Church.

Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts or Spotify 

If the democratization of media in the digital age has overthrown the gatekeepers in journalism and politics, what impact is it having on the Christian faith — particularly when it comes to ecclesiastical authority? When push comes to shove, who should I listen to, the elders of my own congregation, or the influencers with the bigger platforms? It’s not a new question, but as Cameron and Mark discuss in this episode, it raises new challenges for the life of discipleship.

One man’s heresy is another man’s Christianity — especially if the man in question is a modern historian. In this episode, Cameron and Mark contrast the approach to early Christian history within the Church to the methodologies of the contemporary academy. Are all claims to be Christian equally valid? If not, by what standard can we distinguish between true and false? This conversation will give you plenty to consider.

Last time, Mark and Cameron discussed the “end of reading” as a cultural crisis. This week they’re back to talk about its potential impact on the Church. To interpret the Scriptures well, and to be steeped in them to such an extent that our prayer and discipleship are shaped by them, we have to be reading the Word. In this episode, you’ll find advice on how to incorporate the habit of Bible reading into your life.

There’s a crisis in the headlines: students arriving at even elite colleges are overwhelmed at the thought of having to read … entire books. Is this apparent decline in literacy something Christians (as “people of the Book”) should be concerned about? In this episode, Cameron and Mark discuss why it should matter to us, and what might be to blame.

Grace just hosted an extraordinary conference with Dr. Dan Brendsel, the author of Answering Speech, and in this episode Mark shares a selection of his favorite moments from the event. You’ll discover how music — from pop songs to symphonies — illuminates the relationship between Scripture and prayer. And you’ll hear how the repeating motifs of the Bible’s story shape the way we live and pray in the story God is now writing in and through us.

Think you don’t have any enemies? Maybe you’re fortunate — or perhaps you’re in denial. The Psalms say plenty about enemies, and not all of it is comfortable to read, let alone pray! In this episode, Cameron shares some of the challenges of praying the Psalms in the twenty-first century, while Mark gives some context to help explain why the psalmist sometimes longs for such rough justice.

If you’re going to follow Christ, then you’ll have to make some sacrifices. But talking about sacrifice is so much easier than having to do it! In this episode, Cameron asks Mark how to prepare for those inevitable moments when you have to make a sacrifice.

It may be ancient history, but it’s relevant to so many questions we’re still asking today. That’s why Grace’s new adult Sunday School class is taking a deep dive into the history of the first five centuries of the church, from the Apostolic Era to the Council of Chalcedon and the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. In this episode, Cameron quizzes Mark about the value of knowing our history.

Over the summer at Grace, we’ve been reading Dan Brendsel’s Answering Speech, a profound — and practical — guide to the life of prayer. In this episode, Mark and Cameron share some of their favorite insights from the book. They also talk about Grace’s upcoming event with the author coming up on October 26-27, 2024.

The Commentary is back! Cameron and Mark are back in the studio, reflecting on lessons from Grace’s three-year journey through the Gospel of Matthew — and looking forward to a new adventure: a study of Ephesians. But first, to get acquainted, we’re exploring the beginnings of the church in Ephesus in Acts 19.

For three years, Mark has been preaching through Matthew’s Gospel — and so has his friend Luke Le Duc, pastor of Wheatland Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, PA. In this episode, Mark asks Luke about the greatest challenges, surprises, and insights this experience has prompted. Consider this a behind-the-scenes look at how two preachers approach the same text!

In this episode, Mark talks to Maestro Delta David Gier, music director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, about the lessons in transcendence and longing we can learn from artistic “God-seekers” like the composer Gustav Mahler. Particularly in our increasingly isolated and tech-mediated culture, art like this has the power to summon us to contemplate the higher things.

In this episode, Mark and Cameron share some of the lessons learned while getting their degrees — not in theology, but in creative writing! For Mark, the memory is almost a quarter century old, while for Cameron it’s current, but in both cases our hosts have discovered spiritual lessons from the writer’s workshop. From the importance of discipline to the need to separate your idea of self from your work, the principles are surprisingly applicable to the life of faith.

Cameron is back, and he has some questions about the Olivet Discourse, particularly the way that Jesus calls us to “stay awake.” In this episode, he and Mark unpack the meaning of that term, and explore the new perspective it lends to how we should wait for Christ’s return. Instead of being passively attentive, what if Jesus is calling us to a more active form of wakefulness?

Work isn’t a necessary evil, and leisure isn’t synonymous with idleness. These are just two of the myths busted in this episode. Mark talks to Worldview Academy executive director Mike Schutt about how thinking rightly about work and leisure help us improve the way we do both. Along the way, they roll their eyes as “work/life balance,” quibble with Aristotle, and explain why leisure sometimes requires a lot of, well, work.

Worldview thinking is a method of examining the underlying assumptions we all make in forming beliefs. In this episode, Mark talks with Worldview Academy co-founder Jeff Baldwin about an unexpected topic: the faith required to be a consistent atheist. We all take some things for granted, even those of us who claim to accept nothing on faith. This conversation will help you see that, and understand how it aids us in speaking with the self-professed “unbelievers” in our lives.

Unexamined assumptions have a powerful effect on your thinking, not because they’re convincing but because cause they are invisible. In this episode, Mark and Cameron discuss three assumptions — the myth of majority rules, the myth of progress, and the myth of nature — that don’t stand up to scrutiny, narratives that need to be challenged if you’re going to think clearly about the world.

Since 2019, Mark has led a class line-by-line through the Westminster Confession of Faith. All the recordings are available as A Good Confession. As the end approaches, Cameron asks Mark why he chose to teach the class in the first place, and what his favorite parts of the Confession turned out to be.

At the beginning of a new sermon series on the Olivet Discourse, Mark suggested that biblical prophecy is a lot like an impressionist painting: it’s designed to be interpreted only from the proper distance. In this episode, Cameron and Mark explore this comparison and ask how it might be helpful for people who want to understand what the Bible says about the “last days” but are intimidated by all the complex theories and enigmatic solutions that often accompany the topic.

“All men are mortal,” or so the syllogism goes. But that’s easy to forget in the modern world, where the realities of suffering and death are concealed behind euphemisms and often hidden from sight. As Christians we acknowledge that death is inevitable — “it is appointed unto man once to die” — but also that death is a consequence of sin, the last enemy Christ will overcome. How do we live faithfully with the reality of death? That’s the question Mark and Cameron explore in this episode.

In this short episode at the beginning of Lent, Mark shares from the latest volume of Jonathan Gibson’s series of liturgies for daily worship, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, and then follows up with a recording of his reflection from this week’s Ash Wednesday service at Grace.

Is it a lecture? Is it a TED talk? Is it an entertaining bit of folksy wisdom? People have all sorts of ideas about what a sermon is, and what it’s for — most of them quite wrong! In this episode, Cameron and Mark talk about the sermon as an act of worship, one of the ordinary means of grace. What does this signify, and how does it influence the way a sermon is prepared, delivered, and heard? Let’s find out.

Your commenters are back! When people visit Grace, one of the unique features they often comment on is the Order of Worship, a multi-page printed booklet that contains our liturgy for the service, including music, prayers, texts, and all the usual announcements you’d expect to find in a church bulletin. In the first episode of 2024, Mark and Cameron explain why we produce these booklets every week rather than using screens or hymnals, and how you can use them to enhance your worship.

For the final episode of 2023, something a little more light-hearted than usual: Cameron and Mark review their personal bests (and in some cases, worsts) of the year through the lens of the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Prepare to enter a little too deeply into the minds of our hosts — and enjoy a year-end roundup to tide you over until we return in January.

Mark and Cameron grasp toward a theology of "place" in this episode, looking at the way human beings are situated in places throughout Scripture and trying to apply the duties and joys observed there to our own quest to find a place in the world. As we increasingly work outside the office and have options to live wherever we choose, what does it mean to be committed to (and rooted in) a particular place?

Following up on our last episode, Cameron and Mark talk about the experience of using Jonathan Gibson’s liturgy for daily worship O Come, O Come Emmanuel during the season of Advent. What is a book like this for, and how is this new volume different from the earlier one, Be Thou My Vision?